have an amazing wedding

revisit the budget

My sweetheart and I got engaged in February of this year, but we were both so busy during the spring semester that we didn’t have much time to think about wedding plans or choose a date. Since school got out, though, we’ve been devoting a good deal of attention to it (in fact we’ve been a bit obsessed, really) and have chosen our date—June 13, 2009, a little less than one year from today.

I know our wedding will be awesome purely because our relationship is awesome. And we’re not going to spend a ridiculous amount of our parents’ money on it. It’s important to me, though, to put a lot of thought into the wedding and really make every part of it reflect who we are. We’ll only get married once and as a ritual it’s very special to both of us!

Our wedding is going to be a balance between traditional and unconventional… I always thought I’d want to have a very unusual wedding, but once I got engaged and the possibility of marriage actually became a future reality, I realized that I do have a desire to experience a lot of the traditions—the bridesmaids and groomsmen, the bouquet and garter tossing, the wedding gown, etc. So we’re going to incorporate the traditions we really like.

However, my fiancee and I are not slaves to tradition, and we like to be strange and different as we see fit. For example, he has an engagement ring too—I gave him one a few weeks after he proposed to me and gave me mine. We both thought it was strange that women wear engagement rings but men don’t. I mean, both sexes are equally engaged, aren’t they? Or at least they’re supposed to be! So we did things our own way. Our wedding will be that way, too. Full of surprises for all of our more “normal” relatives!

Perhaps the wedding “tradition” that I’m most determined not to follow is the way people stress and freak out about the whole thing. Of course the wedding’s a big deal to me and I want it to be amazing, but that’s part of why we’re giving ourselves a whole year to plan it in a relaxed and unhurried fashion. And ultimately, it’s not really going to matter if a few things aren’t “perfect”—the main point is just to marry each other, and to have our friends and family present when we do it. I’m just going to plan very meticulously and then trust that everything will turn out fine!

Luckily, I’m very detail-oriented and I love planning (especially something as special as my own wedding!) so I’m really enjoying this process. My fiancee is quite into it too. As our plans develop further, I’ll record them here.