Lavender and amethyst and grape, oh my.

In June, my wonderful to-be mother-in-law (MIL) is coming to Michigan with me so that we can go with my super awesome mom and get some wedding stuff done. I don’t go to Michigan very often so it is going to be a bit of a wedding marathon. My goals are to show my MIL the venue, book a photographer, get my first dress fitting done, have my gorgeous maid of honor try on a few (ok, a lot) of bridesmaid dresses, book the florist, pick out linens and try some CAKE. Yum.

I started to book appointments and realized very quickly that I was going to have to be able to share my wedding vision with strangers in a quick and simple way so that they can help me have that beautiful day I picture in my head. I told the wonderful ladies at Waldenwoods (our venue) that I wanted the guest table linens to be white and the sweetheart table, cake table, guestbook tables to have purple table linens. My wedding colors are gray and “various” purples. I thought I was being clever by saying that I wanted a mix of a lot of different purple touches everywhere because then it wouldn’t matter if everything didn’t match exactly. The flowers are going to, then, bring together all the different shades. Reasonably, the ladies at Waldenwoods thought I should narrow down what kind of linen (satin, taffeta, etc.) and type of purple (muted, bright, pale, etc.) I was looking for so that that Lorrie from Special Occasions didn’t have to bring over a thousand examples.

I was a bit overwhelmed by this… I am not sure why. I think it is because I actually had to start making decisions. After talking to Wes about my anxiety, I decided to pick out a few different purples that I definitely want represented on 6.22.12 so that when I pick out linens, neck ties and décor, it will be cohesive. You can buy color swatches online to give to your vendors for $10 a pop. Boo. OR, you can go to Home Depot and steal paint swatches. I proceeded to steal about 25 paint swatches while looking over my shoulder hoping that that paint department manager wasn’t looking at me funny. Here’s my stash:

Here’s the kicker. Here’s how much my guy loves me… Wes also thought of this brilliant idea and stole not a few purple swatches like I did, but EVERY SINGLE PURPLE and GRAY paint swatch in our local hardware store. A lady working at Home Depot did give Wes a weird look on his way out so he nervously said to her, “Wife is making us paint the house again.” Hahahahahahaha. He was so pleased with himself that he promptly dropped this pile on my lap when he got home:

Then, he was severely disappointed to learn that I also had gotten paint swatches. His effort was awesome, though, and I love him so much for it. Gold star, hunny. I am very lucky to have someone that cares about reducing my anxiety over wedding planning.

Working out the imperfections

I decided that all my posts should not be about flowers, cake and invitations. Particularly, because weddings aren’t really about all those details. To me, it is about two people coming together and committing to be partners in everything from then on out. I like the idea of looking back on these entries 50 years from now and seeing how Wes and my relationship evolved during this chapter in our lives.

No relationship is perfect. I think Wes and I understand this very well. And, the best relationships require effort every day. A relationship can either sink you or be the most rewarding part of your life. On the day that Wes proposed was the day that we decided that it was worth the effort and we wanted to make our marriage the best it could be.

Many churches require you to take courses to get you “ready” for your marriage. I love the idea of trying to work out the kinks and building a great foundation for the next few decades. We aren’t taking one of these courses because a close friend named Rebecca is going to marry us. She is Wes’s advisor. She has seen the evolution of our relationship from day 1….even pre-day 1. Also, Wes likes to share all the intimate details of our life with her (most of the time I don’t mind this), so she is in a unique position to lead of our ceremony. J

Usually these courses involve talking about children, money and how to share responsibilities. I think Wes and I have these things pretty much worked out: we want 2.5 kids, we would like more money, and I cook as long as he does the dishes and pretends to like everything I cook. Easy as pie, right?

Well, one thing that we aren’t always good at is communication. Most of the time, we are fine. But, when Wes is tired and I am hungry sometimes the conversation breaks down and we end up doing something that we have recently identified as “spaghetti talk”. Something like this:

Meg: Why don’t you understand everything that I think?
Wes: I think you don’t understand me!
Meg: Well, I resent that you think that I think that.
Wes: I don’t understand.

Then, I make my mad face:

Wes makes his defeated face……

Don’t worry we quickly made up on this trip in Traverse City, MI.

I digress. Back to my point. The conversation is unclear. In addition, these conversations end up being about trying to figure out what you are saying rather than being about the important issue that you should be talking about. Anyway, so we decided to buy a book about ways to better talk and listen to each other so that we can avoid situations like the one above. It is inevitable that bad things are going to happen and we are going to have to work it out together. This book is based on research done by a psychologist who conducted a study that showed that whether a newlywed couple will divorce or not can be predicted with 93% accuracy based on how positive or negative they are during the first 3 minutes of conflict discussion (Gottman et al. 1999). Crazy, huh?

We have just begun to read the book and I think it has helped facilitate a few conversations. So, A+ for us so far. It makes me very happy to know that on the day that we exchange vows that we will be even more prepared to deal with tricky situations as partners.

Did you all do something to prepare to for married life? Do you have any tips?

The countdown commences soon

Hello! There’s been some time in between my posts mostly because I have been busy. Super busy. But also, because there was nothing happening that was wedding related. That is soon to change. I thought having a nice and long engagement would allow me to have all the time in the world to get things done. However, the reality is that it is too soon to do most of the stuff and my groom is not notorious for planning way in advanced anyway.

It is going to be May in a few days which means that soon it will be a year until our wedding. I know a year sounds like a long time, but when the wedding is going to be in another state from which I live and because I work all the time, I have to be very strategic about when I can meet with vendors and get dress fittings and what not. In addition, I am going to be in Finland from August to the end of September studying in another lab so I lose that precious time. Even though my feelings are mixed about it, I am excited to go to Europe again.

So, I sat down the other day to make the calendar. It was a great idea if I do say so myself because the groom will know exactly when I am allowed to bug him about certain details. (Note: I am exaggerating…Wes has been great with planning. It is just hard for him to match my wild passion for table linens and hair pieces. Haha.) Also, I feel like I less apt to forget to make something or check on something with this almighty calendar.

Why should I be so worried about forgetting something, you ask? Well. Because I am crazy. I feel this drive to match all those super cute weddings out there without having to take out a second mortgage. I want to have my wedding featured somewhere because it was an awesome wedding for a fraction of the price! Therefore, I am making a lot of things myself. Since getting engaged March of 2010, I have researched what I want to do and the cheapest way to do it all. Here’s a list (likely incomplete) of all the things I hope to DIY:

Invitations

Save the dates

Menus

Programs

Table numbers

Seating chart

Dress rehearsal invites

From Project Wedding

Fabric flower pomanders, I had to throw pic of these in here ….aren’t they cute?

I stole this idea from this blog

Hair flowers

Half of the centerpieces

Signs

Guestbook

Initials for our bride and groom chairs

Possibly some ribbon wands… I will explain later

Out of town guest bags

My mom talked me out of making:

All the centerpieces and bouquets

My own cakes and cupcakes

I do have to say that I know that one of my bridesmaids who got married a few years ago accomplished a lot of these things while in college and in medical school. We’ll see.

I might not get most of these things done. No matter what, it is going a good day. J

Dealing with initial budget blues.

The to-be-hubby and I got engaged last March. Woah. How 10 months have flown by. We knew that we were going to have a long engagement for the following reasons:

1. We needed to save. We really didn’t want our wedding to be a source of large financial burden for anyone in our family.

2. We have a large family. Ok, Wes has a large family… and they are super close. Therefore, a large wedding was a need.

3. Why rush a good thing? I spent my whole life rushing to the next “step”. With Wes, it seemed natural to stop and smell the roses.

We spent the first few months of our engagement enjoying just being engaged. Very few serious “wedding” thoughts went through my mind and we had a very nice engagement party thrown by Wes’s mom for his side of the family in his homestate, Florida.

But, when we did start talking about the wedding after the spring semester ended, we started with dreaming big. Now we aren’t your typical big dreamers. Our idea of a grandiose evening is dinner at Carrabba’s. It seemed like a good place to start before all the financial realities humbled us. So, we wrote down the things that inspired us, things that seemed like fun extras, and all the things we wanted to be a priority. This was such a fun thing to do. We thought of long tables, white linens, bright flowers…not too many flowers, great photos, mojitos. We decided we would rather have a simple reeeeeaaaaallly good cake and a DJ. And, an open bar was a must. I usually am not a big flower person, but I saw this bouquet on TV so I paused the TV and took a pic of it.

Before we had got engaged, we looked at a place called Deering Estate in Miami, FL and we loved loved loved it. Because we loved this place so much, I think a lot of our initial ideas came from having Deering Estate in our minds. Well, I am from Michigan. Cue reality #1.
I knew it was going to be a source of tension, but deciding where to have the wedding was tough. Most of you know this by now, but the wedding will be in Michigan. I am so happy with our decision. My family is there (mostly) and my mom and I are very close. Having it there means she can help me more. And, I grew up there, so it means a lot to me. It wasn’t a tough decision because our families made it hard, it was hard because we really like Florida. I like to tell people that Wes bleeds Florida. Also, it should have been more obvious but Miami, Florida is also more expensive. Cue reality #2.

We have a tight budget. For good reasons! We want a nice wedding, but we also want a nice future! Maybe a college savings account for a baby one day instead of loans we can’t pay off. Michigan was chosen because it meant a lot to me to have it there, but it is a nice side bonus that it will be cheaper there as well. Cue reality #3.

I actually had no idea how much a wedding costs… in any state. I had bought these great wedding books that said that you should spend this percentage on such and such. Ok. So, what is the big number so you know what the percentage means? You know, the sum total of one day of your life (granted a beautiful, wonderful day), but only ONE day of your life. We picked a number based on the national average and how we thought we could do better than that since I love do-it-yourself projects and finding a good deal. We were driving to Michigan getting ready to look for wedding venues when we came up with that number. I will never forget Wes asking me how much these things cost….my answer was, “I have no idea. I have never gotten married before.”

Cue reality #4. We were greatly mistaken for what weddings cost even in MI. So, we greatly altered the “percentage based crap budget” we started with.

Has anyone else felt like this planning their wedding?

For any recently engaged brides reading this, please take this suggestion: Enjoy your engagement for a while and make your “idea board” and have fun doing it. And, when you get budget blues go back to your inspirations and know that you will find a way to make sure all the important things get worked out that day. Most importantly, at the end of all of it, you will be married to a great person.

Also I want to say, throughout this blog, I will give out all my ideas for saving money. In the end, I hope that I will get to post the budget breakdown on certain things so people can see what a real wedding costs! No stupid percentages. I saw another bride do this on a wedding website that I have become obsessed with “weddingbee.com”. It was immensely helpful.  

Who we are.

Hi! I thought I would start this in order for our friends and family to be able to follow what is sure to be an interesting and fun journey creating our wedding. In addition, I have been so inspired by the posts by other brides on their own journey. I hope that anything I write and my ideas might provoke something spectacular for their weddings in return.

So, let's begin.

When you met your partner, did you ever think, "Well duh! I should have been looking for this person the whole time!"? That is how I feel about my fiancé. He is the opposite of what I thought I would be happy with. That is because I was focusing on all the wrong things. My fiancé is conservative, studies ecology wants use his life to serve his community through public service and hates trying new foods! (I think he ate McDonald’s hamburgers most of the time before he met me.) I am liberal, study neuroscience, would hate to have all my faults out there for people to comment on, and live to eat. But, what makes me love this person so much is that he challenges me to be a better person every day. His love for ecology has led to many amazing outdoor adventures with many more planned. He has opened my eyes to the true reasons why I wasn’t happy with the direction of my career as it stood when I met him. In return, I think I give him the confidence to dream big and not be afraid to run for a political office. I think I have shown him that you can share experiences through things other than the outdoors, particularly through dancing, food and good wine. J

So, this unlikely couple met and nothing else has been so clear to me in my life. Marrying this person would ensure that my life will be filled with exciting and fulfilling experiences and that I’ll get to share those experiences with my best friend.

As I am sure every couple wants, we want our wedding to reflect us. We wanted a place historic and charming. We came up with the words simple and elegant. Nothing over-stated. We want to be outdoors because we both feel that it is impossible to recreate the beauty found in nature. I chose purple and he chose gray to be our wedding colors. I really want a theme or motif for the wedding to make sure it all felt “connected”. And, more than anything we want our wedding and the celebration to be personal. We want to be married by someone who knows us and what make us great, and furthermore, by someone who will let us direct our own ceremony. We truly feel that there is nothing more important that day than to be the directors of our own promises.

I hope that gives you a good idea of what kind of couple we are. I can’t wait to continue sharing the good and bad of the wedding planning process!