Tomorrow Kiss My Tulle will have been engaged two months (well, we will have been proposed to for two months and engaged for one day less because some of us cannot seem to pony up and say "yes" without a 24 hour turn around). As of right now, we have one year and 2 months before our wedding. That looks like soooo much time – but, as past brides have been ominously warning me, not nearly enough. Apparantly, I need to ignore those endless wedding countdown lists and just get stuff the hell done.
Good to know.
So, in the interest of keeping ya'll abreast (hee. dirty.) of our wedding planning – here's what we did this past month:
- Kick started our pre-marital planning by reading The Nest Newlywed Handbook. Very shortly after getting engaged, we had a long discussion about how important it was to participate in pre-marital counseling and financial planning. The Boy has been married before and that marriage had some big issues that we wanted to avoid (if possible) by communicating openly to each other before the wedding. A friend recommended that I get The Nest Newlywed Handbook because it was a great resource for basic pre-marital planning. I read it cover to cover (I'm doing up a Bookworm book review for next week) and we had lots of interesting discussions (prompted by each chapters mini-quiz) regarding privacy issues, money matters, kids, and infidelity. (P.S. Team Practical just did a really cool round-up of questions for engaged couples to discuss – check it out.)
- In addition to the book, I did a little pre-marital counseling information digging and found out that (in Texas) if you participate in an approved pre-marital counseling program then you can have your marriage license fee waived. This is includes pre-marital counseling of the religious and the professional kind. After doing a bit more research, I located several of the professional counselors that qualify for this program in our area. In upcoming months, we'll find one that we are comfortable with a schedule our sessions.
- Created some cute Matron of Honor and Bridesmaids informational packets. Sure, I could have emailed them all this information but I wanted to make something a little more special. In my packets, I included a contact list, the dates and times of the events that the wedding party needs to attend, information about what attire/hair/make-up was expected, an image of the attire concept I am thinking of, and a handwritten note to each lady.
- Continued to work on our Target and Crate & Barrel registries. I've been adding and eliminating items as we have been making household decisions and seeing what items we actually need. I also participated in a couple of rebate-y type programs at Crate & Barrel that gave me free stuff for (basically) nothing. Awesome.
- Confirmed our wedding ceremony location and started discussing (and budgeting) for landscaping. We also have to frame in and finish the boat shed (seen in the right of the image) because it's just ugly. Sometime this week, my future father-in-law (a former landscaper) will be coming by to help plan and budget so in the meantime, I am tearing inspiration images from magazines!
- Signed up for a Wedding Wire account. I tried Martha and I tried The Knot but Wedding Wire was it. I love their guest list planner and budget planner – super easy to plug in info and have everything figured out for you. Looking forward to using this site more as my wedding draws closer.
- Contemplating dessert options. We're not really wedding cake people so we've been playing with various ideas for alternatives. Like a dessert bar (ala Amy Atlas), or lots of little cakes, or cupcakes, or even a sundae bar. We'll explore this more in May when we start interviewing cake people (and doing tastings!).
To what we did during our first month of planning, click here.
Phew. So, I've done lots in just two months and have plenty more planned to tackle during April. How about you? What did you/do have planned to accomplish this month? How soon after getting engaged did you start planning the wedding?
