Well, Topher and I got engaged the end of June 2010, so I am a little behind on updating the progress of our wedding planning! I say "our wedding planning," because I have a fantastic fiance who has been involved in every detail and decision - EXCEPT for the dress - obviously!
As most of you probably know, I am an event planner by day, so becoming a wedding planner by evening (and sometimes between work during the day) was not too much of a stretch for me. I had been planning alternate versions of my wedding for the last couple years, just because I enjoy the idea of wedding planning more than the average person. I don't see it as work, but as the best thing to be "stuck with." Since I'm not planning on having any more weddings of my own, I want this one to be just right - I'm not saying 'no expense spared' because that would go against everything I know about event planning, a lot of it is wheeling and dealing to get the best price. Plus, I think it's a terrible idea to start off a life together with mountains of debt from a one-day event. I want the memories to last forever, and not be tainted by years of bills!
Anyways, we wanted to move quickly on the initial items, i.e. setting a date, which involved more than just closing our eyes and pointing somewhere on a calendar. To me, the date itself was not important, I had no specific day that was meaningful that I wanted to get married on, I just knew I wanted a fall wedding. So I wanted to choose my date based on the availability of whatever venues we decided that we would want. This included some vendors as well, because there were a few that I had my heart set on and wanted to make sure we were able to secure them - more about that later though.
We had recently moved to Washington, D.C. when we got engaged, but decided that since we met and initially made our home in Wilmington, NC, that we would get married there. This worked perfectly for my fall plan because I didn't want to be married in spring with everyone else having a May wedding, and summer in coastal NC is often much too hot - a point that reveals the next part of our decision-making - I wanted at least a part of the wedding to be held outdoors.
After some research and a very long weekend visiting many sites in Wilmington, we decided on having the ceremony at Airlie Gardens. I figured the ceremony would be shorter than the reception, so I was not as concerned about rain. We went back and forth over whether or not to have the reception there as well, but decided to hold that indoors to be on the safe side.
For the reception, we opted to go with Lumina Hall, a newly renovated event space on Wrightsville Beach that was the perfect size to have the intimate reception I was looking for.
Once we knew what they had for availability, we settled on Saturday, October 1, 2011 or 10.01.11!
I did a lot of things quickly in the first few months, i.e. setting up the wedding website, booking the venues, several vendors, choosing my dress, deciding on a Save the Date and invitation ensemble, and even working with the caterer a bit. Before the Thanksgiving holiday approached, we had nailed down a solid budget and invitation list, as well as come up with a theme and color palette. I'm quite ambitious, and like I said, this is all fun for me, so I moved pretty quickly.
The theme of sorts is The Great Gatsby. I want the whole feeling of the wedding to be a modern twist on a romantic outdoor garden party - which makes holding the ceremony in the Pergola Garden of Airlie Gardens absolutely ideal. I have a lot of design elements in mind for the reception that will help carry over this outdoor feeling to the indoor location. Another thing I will get to later on...
I think for now this about covers the progress we've made to date, and I will start to blog in a more categorical fashion.
Although the title of this blog is 463 Days till the Rest of Our Life, we are now down to only about 8 1/2 months, or 264 days -- almost halfway there!!
