Makin’ A List, Checkin’ It Twice

You thought I was talking about ol’ St. Nick, weren’t you? You know, not everything is about him this time of year…

I’m talking about yours truly!

I’ve finally started planning my wedding and boy is that a feat. Honestly, at the beginning, I didn’t even know where to start. My first thought was cake because that’s just who I am. My second thought was invitations, but I realized pretty quickly that I needed a when, where, and who for those. 

After following the mythical breadcrumb trail that my scatterbrain had left me, I decided my first step would be to hammer out a guest list. This would be easy. I only have 2.5 friends and Fella has 1.5 (we share the half between us), so our friends list was set. Fella’s family list consists of his mom (or mum as he puts it), his step dad, and half sister. Easy. My family list on the other hand… My dad has 6 sisters, all with spawn of their own, and my mom has 3 brothers and 2 sisters- again, all with their own subsets of kinsfolk. So that puts my family at around 2,000 (kidding of course).

Now about my family…. the last time I saw my dad’s extended family was at my grandma’s funeral were a legit fight broke out. That was about 2 boyfriends and 50lbs. ago (or simply put: 9 years ago). Suffice to say, most of them will not be receiving an invitation to my wedding. Sorry aunts Sharon, Audrey, Karen, Amy, and Debbie (Terry- you cool, you made the list ;)).

As for my mom’s side, I only see a handful of them 1-2 times a year (for Thanksgiving and Christmas), and feel obligated to invite them. Let’s be honest, they barely made the cut.

Now some would then proceed to figuring out a date. I feel like that is nonsensical… Say you determine the date you wish to wed your life hostage and then go venue shopping. What if you find your dream venue and it’s not available on the date you decided before hand? Are you going to keep looking settle for a different location or change your date?

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Since I had a number (less than 30), I started looking at venues. My wishlist for a venue wasn’t overly detailed:

• outdoors
• cheap

Yup. That’s it.

I started looking at different venues and quickly became perturbed. Venues (at least in my neck of the woods) do not list costs on their websites; one has to call or message them to find out. I know you’re going to cost half my year’s salary- just give me a damn number! 

Once I narrowed it down to a handful of potential places I guess I could get married at, it was time to start touring and comparing. And by touring and comparing, I mean going to the first one on the list, and booking it the same day. I like to make things easy.

Here’s a peak… swoon.

Yay me! So within 2 days, I had a guest list, a venue and a date (August 4th if you were wondering…). Now it’s really time to start planning.

Since we were visiting my family for Thanksgiving, we got back and were bombarded with questions about every detail: What are your colors/dress/flowers going to look like? Who’s catering/doing your cake/doing your hair and makeup/performing the ceremony? But there was one question that got me to pull out my laptop and start doing some research right then and there: Where are you going on your honeymoon?

Ever since I got engaged, that was the one thing I’ve been researching the most- honeymoon destinations. I decided on an area of the world (Caribbean), but couldn’t decide where specifically… and then I did.

The same day that Fella and I toured and booked our wedding venue and set a date, we decided that Belize will be our honeymoon destination. I dare you… Google it. Be jealous.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten making decisions for the wedding. I’ve started looking for ball park figures and quotes for things like catering, cake, photographer, entertainment, the lot, and I kind of got freaked out, so planning is back on hold.

… I am excited to go dress shopping though. 🙂