Okay, I’m trying to breathe now:). My fiance and I got engaged two weeks ago. Our plan was a January of 2005 wedding, since I would be in school and we’d need to work around it. Well, I knew my fiance wasn’t thrilled about the winter wedding, but I was set on it.
Until today.
I went to look at a site - it’s a museum downtown - it’s a place that I remember going as a child, a museum that I LOVED to visit. The museum is calledThe Valentine Museum and it’s absolutely breathtaking. There’s an old house that’s available for tours, and the gardens in the back of the house are used for weddings. We’d use a room inside for the reception for our wedding. When I walked in, the wedding coordinator said “How set on a January wedding are you? Because I think after you see the gardens and the portico on the house, you may want to change that.”. I assured her that I was set on a January wedding, but she was right - by the end of the walk-through (there was a wedding going on, so I even got to see that), I was in love. The place is breathtaking, and although it’s a little more than we wanted to spend, it’s still very reasonable. Plus, we’re going to save on decorating the reception site because…well, it’s a garden.
So, now the wedding has been moved up six months and I’m trying not to freak. I can’t BELIEVE how much there is to do in the next 11 1/2 months! Wow! Luckily, I tried on a dress on Saturday that hit me hard - it’s my dream dress (although, strangely enough, it’s everything I said I didn’t want in a dress), so that may be taken care of. But i’m still trying not to get into a panic. I think it’ll all be fine, it’s just less time than we originally thought (and my fiance is willing to help, but really wants his role to be limited to “Show up and say I do”.
Vegas. Drive-thru. Elvis. You’re in, you’re out. Bada bing, bada boom.
Okay, a bit unromantic. TheLadyLion said the same thing. We had a nice size wedding with about 100 guests and I have no regrets.
What I do advise you do is delegate as much as possible. It’s asking a lot of people and y ou have to trust a lot but you’ll be happier if you don’t have to worry about details that day. We deligated for the most part but we ended up being the last ones to leave the church that night as we were cleaning up. I was extremely unhappy about that. We should have left the party early rather than dragging our exhausted selves to the hotel.
Ava, congrats on finding a wonderful place to hold your wedding/reception. I was engaged in June and married the following April. No problems getting everything coordinated so you should have plenty of time now that you booked the hall.
You’ve found a dress – that usually takes 4-6 months to get in. Next you have to get your bridesmaids/groomsmen locked down and start shopping for bridesmaids dresses. Invitations take a few weeks so you have plenty of time. If you’re having a favorite minister, etc., you may want to reserve the date with him now.
The only thing that I can think of that might cause a time crunch at this point is a band, if that’s what you’re going to have. Good bands book up quickly. If you’re planning on having a d.j. then this is a moot point.
You shouldn’t have any problems booking a caterer or florist now. And planning the honeymoon is a bit premature this far out, unless you’re redeeming frequent flyer miles in which case you want to lock the flights in asap.
You have the site. You have a dress. Even if you don’t, you will.
You won’t need much in the way of flowers. You won’t want to be TOO formal because you’re in a garden already, so you don’t have to decorate.
Invitations? Easy. Also, with the Valentine Museum setting and all (gorgeous place, I agree), you might want to go with something simpler than the perfect-cream-with-lace perfect-envelopes lettered -in-24k invitations. And they’re easy. Have a friend or two over for an addressing party. No sweat.
Caterer? Figure out what you want to eat, call around to see who’s a) best or b) cheapest, depending on your priorities. Hire.
Rings? Get something you like. It doesn’t matter how sparkley or expensive or traditional or whatever. Do you like it enough to look at it every day for the rest of your life? Then it’s the right ring.
Believe me, this stuff can be done easily in THREE months. It can be done in two months without too much stress if you kick out the invites first.
It’s not the happiest day of your life, or the most special. It’s an expression of the FIRST day of your life as a legally and spiritually recognized team. Keep your sights on that and the rest will fall into place.
Simplify wherever reasonable. (Not having to decorate the reception site by having it in a garden is a good start, btw.) A wedding is as simple, or complicated, as the bride insists it be. So go with simple in whatever ways you can deal with simple, so you’ve got the energy to do complicated stuff where it matters most to you.
Remember that, more than anything else, it’s the people who make the wedding. One of my longtime friends threw her wedding together in something like seven weeks. The reception was at the local fire department. It wasn’t elaborate, but all the people she cared about were there, and everybody had a great time.
No sweat. The same thing happened to us. My solution? I let Mrs. Bernse do it all.
Heh. No, actually, it’s not a big deal. You’ve got TONS-O-TIME. We got engaged Valentines day 2000, started pseudo planning for a wedding the following spring, but bumped it to that Sept in May (4 months planning time).
I know. And normal brides would NOT be freaking out…LOL. But I HATE planning. I am terrible at planning anything. And so I figured with 18 months, well, if I screwed up, I had a cushion to fix mistakes - now that cushion’s gone. You know what I mean?
I’m much calmer now than I am when I wrote the OP. It was a momentary “Oh, my God, what the HELL are we doing?” moment. But I think I can do this. I’m all good.
Holy crap, Ginger, I think I should let you plan mine! LOL! Except replace “Sister” with “mother” in mine.
And thanks all:). My goal is to get married. That’s what I want to do and everything else is secondary. We’d even thought about just going to Vegas, but now we’ve decided we really want all of our family and friends to be there. I’m just looking forward to marrying the guy I love:).
My cousin just called and told me to calm down. Since she’s my wedding planner (she only does it for family), I’ll follow her advice. I’m NOT one of those girly-girls who wants the big wedding with ALL eyes on me that day and everything to be perfect - I want to get married, spend the day with my family and friends, and have a good time. Those are three things I know we can do. I’m just worried because I always seem to mess something up with these sort of things - it’s why I no longer plan parties for people even in my family. I think I’m just going to accept that things will go wrong and deal with it.
Ava, one of the great things about weddings is that the majority of the attendees are also trying to make things go right. One thing I learned from mine is that it helps to delegate lots of little jobs to family members and good friends - they want to help out, and if the jobs are small enough that they can still enjoy the wedding, it works great. I had one cousin explaining to people that instead of a guest book, we were having people sign the frame of our engagement photo, a good family friend assigned to try to get people from the two families to meet and talk to each other, another family friend in charge of making sure the elderly grandparents made it to the side of the dance floor in time for our first dance. All cheerfully helped, because the duties were small and didn’t inferfere with their enjoyment of the wedding. Even if you don’t assign these kinds of tasks in advance, my experience is that people chip in and help, because they love you and want your wedding to go well.
First off, take a deep, slow breath. Then collect all your wedding-planning magazines and throw them in the garbage. All they are is a pack of ads and articles telling you how what you’re planning isn’t good enough, and that’s the last thing you need right now.
Each of you sit down in a quiet place for a while with a pencil and paper, and make a list of stuff that really means something to you. Make a second list of things that would be nice, but aren’t particularly important to you. Then get together and discuss your lists. Your first lists are the things you need to focus your time, energy, and money on, and the second lists are things you can do if you have enough time, energy, and money. All the other stuff the wedding industry tells you you need, forget it. Nobody will notice or care about that stuff anyway, so there’s no point in giving yourself extra stress about it.
Don’t sweat it, you’ve got plenty of time. I didn’t start looking at dresses till 8 months beforehand, and we couldn’t even lock in a date till 5 months before. Truth be told, I could have planned our wedding in a month or so with very little stress and extra work.
That’s IT! You just hit the nail on the head. THAT’S why I freaked out! All of these magazines give you this list of things to accomplish, as did the Knot - and a lot of them are BEFORE a year before the wedding. And I have almost NONE of that done. I think that’s what’s scaring me.
Yeah, the magazines are getting put in the attic. And I will NOT go back to that Knot checklist.
And I apologize for looking like a serious freak in this OP:D. I really am NOT this freakin’ flighty in person. I swear! Ask a few of the MADopers!
Oh–we made the bridesmaids’ dresses, too. The whole wedding, food, clothes, flowers, EVERYTHING came to under $4,000.
Like I said… you have PLENTY of time. I don’t think anyone I know has had that long. The longest I can think of was 9 months. You’re way ahead of the game–don’t sweat it
Some of the stories always start off with “This site taught me what not to do for my wedding!” And click on and read “The Titanic Wedding disaster” story! I laughed until my sides hurt, and there was even a happy ending!
We Doper women should hold a virtual wedding shower when the time comes!
Oh, that’s one of my favorite sites! LOL! I love reading those stories! Honestly, I’ve become determined not to be a Bridezilla and I have told my fiance and my friends that they have permission to slap me should I get near the bridezilla realm. But that site is hysterical!
And yes, I’m feeling better, thank you:). I’ve actually just done a lot of relaxing this week, so that’s helped. I’ve gotten my rest:).
Opal, that’s funny because of all of my friends, I am the one who has the LEAST amount of time to plan. Most of them have taken a year and a half to two years to plan!
avabeth, you and I don’t really know each other, but I do remember your name when I see you post, and I can’t say that I’ve ever see you say anything that struck me as weird or anything, but now that you have announced your soon-to-be nuptials (congratulations and best wishes and all that, by the way), I’m going to have to censor you (is that even possible on the SDMB?).
For now, you will soon go crazy and start posting pit rants about flower shop people and how they are evil and want nothing but to ruin your perfect wedding, and how you hate your mother and how she’s evil and wants nothing but to ruin your perfect wedding, and on and on. I just can’t handle it. I could barely handle my own beautiful blushing bride when she turned into Bridezilla a year ago.
Have a good one, avabeth! I’ll uncensor you in 11 1/2 months!
Just in case, but probably (hopefully) not necessary: I’m joking
You don’t look like a freak, you look like someone who’s feeling a little overwhelmed.
A sense of humor will help you a LOT in the next year or so. Trust me. As you start dealing with vendors, you’ll notice that a lot of them seem to take a perverse pleasure in making seemingly straightforward stuff an enormous pain in the ass. It’s enough to make the sanest woman want to go all Bridezilla on somebody’s ass. You can throw a screaming fit about it, or you can laugh about it. It’s a lot healthier to laugh.
