An Inspired Bride: Decisions, decisions....

As soon as I came down from my floaty cloud of after-engagement bliss, I was very excited to get started on wedding planning. I went out and bought some bridal magazines, started looking at bridal websites and researching online, and downloaded a wedding planning app for my iPad. The iPad app is awesome because it allows you to organize your guest list, seating chart, budget, planning notes, and contact information for vendors all in one handy place. But what caught my eye was the to-do checklist.

I’m sorry, what?

135 things to do to throw a wedding?!? That’s insanity. So we decided to get cracking as soon as possible and learned it wasn’t as easy as we might have thought. Okay, this looks easy. Pick a photographer. Well, you can’t find a photographer until you have a date. You can’t confirm a date until you find a venue. You can’t find a venue until you know approximately how many guests you’re going to have there. You can’t know the number of guests you can invite until you’ve set a realistic budget. And more importantly, you can’t shop for shoes until you’ve found a venue, chosen a theme and color palette that compliments that venue, chosen a bridal gown and evaluated whether you want colored shoes or white shoes to go with the gown, unless your bridal gown is ivory, in which case white shoes won’t work....and on and on.

Where do I staaaaaaart?!?!?!!

So after being at this since September, I am happy to report that we have made a couple of major decisions! Hooray!

Our official wedding date is June 14, 2014. I know this seems far into the future. But the truth of the matter is, I love being engaged! I’m sure that once the wedding gets closer I will be very anxious to skip down the aisle and become a Mrs., but you’re only a “fiancé” for a short time in life and I want to soak it up as much as possible. Plus, this gives us a lot of time to plan the perfect wedding of our dreams. Wedding planning can be stressful, but it’s also fun and I know time will probably fly by!

“Yep. I’m no longer a bride. I’ll never be a bride again. Now I’m just someone’s wife.”

“And I’m the happiest man in the WORLD!”

When it came to the ceremony, Eric and I knew we didn't want to get married in a church. Neither of us are particularly religious, and we want the opportunity to customize our wedding ceremony to really reflect us a couple. Not only have we asked longtime Dance Mom, Friend and Officiant Extraordinaire, Carrie Cassie, to marry us, we’ve also officially booked our ceremony space at the U of W Convocation Hall. I absolutely love this venue for a ceremony, it’s so gorgeous! I had never seen it before in person, but as I spend a lot of time on the internet looking at city weddings, I came across this space in the gallery and fell in love. The lush red carpeting, high ceilings, large windows and light streaming in...Eric and I went yesterday to see it in person and we were both sold!

Real weddings at the U of W Convocation Hall

As you can see it also has a balcony, which instantly made me want to recreate this scene from my favorite movie of all time, Love Actually....LOL!

And as I previously hinted at in this post, we officially booked the Millennium Centre as our reception venue on Monday night! It was really an easy decision, as this space is beautiful and we were both very taken with it. I also love how the high ceilings of the U of W Convocation Hall tie in with the high dome ceiling of the Millennium Centre. Plus they have a really cool room off the main hall called the Tapestry Room which Eric loves, and has some fun plans for. ;) We are very excited to have an awesome party with all our favorite people in this place!