Wedding love and madness!

I’ve gone and let myself get obsessed with planning this wedding. I’d vowed I would never be one of “those brides” – obsessing over every little detail. Yet here I sit with giant bags under my eyes because I was burning the midnight oil on things like Chinese lanterns, shoes, parking options, and favors. When talk about getting married began it was, “lets have some beer, some music, some grub, and a warm day and we’re good to go”. The idea was to have those nearest to our hearts and to have a relaxing and fun time. We wanted so badly for it to be that simple. But there’s so much more to it than just throwing a good party, there’s so much more to us and to what this wedding represents to us – we certainly didn’t expect to feel this way. A funny thing happened after our engagement…people say as your relationship grows your love changes, and I guess this was one of those changes. I’ve always known Walker was the one for me, but now it’s so very real to look at him as my husband and me as his wife. That’s something that I never thought would mean so much to me. *ew feelings, ew* ;-) All of this solidified to us that this day should be just as sweet and playful and unique as our relationship is.

As convenient as it might be to just go with a packaged wedding, there are many reasons this would never work for me or for Walker. Outside of the fact that we want something more personal than that, we are both card-carrying control freaks. It makes it hard to buy into somebody else’s vision for our wedding, to not be able to say that special touch was our idea as a gift to you. Not that we haven’t seen a few great ideas along the way. But it’s very important to both of us to have an active role in the way the day and evening come together, no matter how exhausting it might be. We’re trying to harness our perfectionist tendencies so that no one gets carried away; of course we’re doing a lousy job. When it’s all said and done though, the satisfaction from feeling like we created a truly personal and memorable evening, and that we didn’t settle for convenience, is worth sacrificing a little sleep. We can only hope that our vision is brought to life on that very special day.

So this weekend I was flying solo in the planning department. I looked at three venues and I think we decided on one. I tried on the dress I had in mind and it was a winner. I was able to see the bridesmaid dress and it was a winner too. Picked out shoes for all the girls to select from. Narrowed in on a caterer and bakery. And finalized on theme and decor, ceremony setting, colors, etc... Here are a few shots from what we've agreed on so far.