items i have bought for the wedding so far:

• small plastic squirrels
• small plastic dinosaurs, one gorilla, and some farm animals
• tissue paper
• stamps
• white christmas lights

you can throw a wedding with just those things, right?

updated plan!

 since calling off the wedding earlier last year (feels weird that it's 2011 already), changes have been made to our original plan.  we loved the la conner flats, but unless we wanted to wait until next summer, early fall to have the wedding, we needed to find a new place.  preferably, one that had indoor and outdoor accommodations.  we found that in the rexville grange, located right in between la conner and mt. vernon.  you maybe familiar with the rexville grocery; the grange is right behind it!

the nice thing about the grange is that there's this inside,

and this outside,

how time flies...

oh my.  i'm supposed to get married in a little over five months!  the new location and the new date means we have a lot of work to do.  i should probably get my shit together and start with the planning in earnest.  it was easy the past two months to just "focus on the holidays," but it will be may 21st before i know it, and i don't want to be one of those brides who spends all day flummoxed and stressed out. 

that's why i'm posting now...as much to remind myself as anyone else.  ha!

honeymoon!

okay, i admit, planning a honeymoon on top of planning (and paying for) a wedding has made it a very low priority on my list of things to be doing. at the same time, one of my co-workers made a point to tell me that he thinks doing something, no matter how small, after the wedding and before you start your new life as spouses, is very important. with that in mind, i talked to dave about maybe taking a short camping trip on the coast after the wedding, and we both agreed that would be okay.

then, i was reading a sunset magazine and there was an article about utah and i remembered the amazing day i had there on my way out to colorado. specifically, i fell head over heels in love with moab. i put beehives on everything for a while, planned on where i wanted to put on as a tattoo on my body, embroidered them and read about them and the history of utah (and the mormon church) for an entire summer. i couldn't believe i hadn't thought of it sooner! i brought it up to dave yesterday while we were driving around and his face just lit right up. we're not sure if we're going to go to moab exactly, but we know we want to be in utah, and we want to be surrounded by red rocks. yay!

check out this lazy baby goat!

it looked at me just long enough to blink sleepily before laying back down. no matter how much i called "hey! baby goat! over here!" it just slept next to her mama and refused to be cute for my camera. lazy baby!

how's the wedding planning going? pretty well. we have a caterer, we have a wedding dress, we have a deposit on the venue, and we have a pretty good idea what the invites will look like. we still need to either find a dj or a place to rent a PA system, nail down the menu, and find clothes for everyone else. i feel pretty good about the progress we've made, though. i have some stuff to do as far as decorations go, but nothing is too terribly complicated, so i'm not too stressed about that.

i've quit going on to the offbeat bride forums. they were beginning to make me crazy, and to be honest, they kind of fostered this "OMG my wedding is going to suck" feeling in me. when it's just me and dave talking about the wedding, i feel great. the moment i start to compare to anyone else's (and i do that way too often for my own good) i start to doubt myself. my dress was $50, and it is not fancy or princess-y in any way, which i think suits me, but then i see all sorts of fluffy, pretty dresses on other brides and think "maybe i'm missing out..." i see amazing photos that people obviously spent good money on, and i worry that my pictures won't be as awe-inspiring. i see groups of bridesmaids and groomsmen that look like they wandered over from a movie set, and i feel weird about not having a bridal party. i could go on and on. i like to think that i'm feeling a bit insecure because i want to do this right, because i only want to do it once and i want it to be the best it can be, but i worry that i'm just shallow and buying into the whole wedding-as-show thing.

when i stop and think about our wedding as more of a fun party for our loved ones, i relax. i remind myself that it's the marriage that's the important thing, and that being able to share it with our friends and family is the point. telling everyone that he's the one, introducing my new family, these things mean more than what i look like, how great our wedding favors are, or that the invitations were handmade. my wedding isn't a competition with anyone else, and it is only one day. i'm sure stuff will go wrong, i'm sure someone won't like the appetizers, and i'm sure that no matter what i'm going to have a great time.

gah

i keep saying i'm going to finalize the acorn drawings for our invites, but i keep putting it off. tomorrow maybe i'll bring my ink and pens into work, so when it's quiet there i can do it. i get self-conscious doing it at home sometimes, which is dumb, because no one cares when i doodle.

dave and i have come to an agreement; i do the invites, he does the food. our ideas weren't necessarily clashing with one another, but it's clear that i'm way more into the visual impact of the wedding stuff, like invites and decorations and such, and that dave will absolutely, positively perish if the food isn't exactly what he wants. i'm not going to make everything all crazy carnival, tiny top hats and circus freaks (like i would enjoy), and he promises not to spend our wedding slinging barbeque and getting his suit all dirty and greasy. this will be a good exercise in delegation and trust for us, right?

bought some paper!

the honest to goodness designing and wording of the invites happens...soon. like real soon! yes. going to happen.

also going to happen, i think i'm going to have to declare bankruptcy. like many kids in their 20s, i got a credit card and messed some stuff up, to the tune of $7,000. it was more than that, but i'm at the point where no matter how much i pay, it's not getting paid off. i don't want to carry this debt into my marriage, and since dave had to declare a few years ago, we won't be putting him back too far. ugh. not the *best* way to start a marriage, but not the worst.

it's stressful, to be sure, but what can you do?