ch ch ch changes

So it's been a week and we've already decided that a two-year engagement is absurd. The whole idea behind waiting was to pay of debt and buy a house. Well, I highly doubt we'll be able to buy the house we want in a year so I think we'll just be happy renters for a few more years. This means wedding!

As usually happens, this decision was made at 10:30 last night before what should have been a very early Monday morning. We then sat up until midnight talking about guest lists and officiants. I began my frantic search for something to write on because I just absolutely have to make lists - it's time to procure some sort of wedding notebook where I can make silly drawings and lists galore. Otherwise I'll end up with scraps of paper all over the place. In theory, I'd love to transcribe much of my brainstorming and note taking here - but I don't want to give up all my secrets.

We're setting a very slim budget (somewhere in the $3,000-$5,000 range, ideally less) and planning to do as much of the work ourselves as we can. I have an amazing and talented best friend who will be doing the photography at the wedding as well as engagement portraits and another dear friend who actually asked if she could shoot my bridal portraits (who would turn that down?). Due to my dear best friends success in the wedding photography world we had to set our date early to make sure she's available not only to shoot the wedding but to be there to hold my hand.

Now my mind is completely swimming in wedding plans:
The wedding will be a casual-ish, outdoor party in November. Decorations will be minimal. The colors will be autumn-ey and we'll use as much nature as we can, fall leaves and pumpkins and we'll raid the after Christmas sales for lights. We want to make our own invitations and found an inexpensive website to make save the date magnets -overnight prints. I intend to commission friends to make cupcakes and help with set up and clean up. I picked out my dress months ago (yes, I'm that girl) and we finally figured out last night what D might wear.

The one thing we have no real idea about yet is the ceremony. It will be purely a 'commitment ceremony' of sorts (though we both hate that phrase), seeing as we have no legal or religious rights to marry. In a sense we have absolute freedom to tailor our ceremony to us as we aren't bound by ordination. It will be quite an exercise in figuring out what part of our love and relationship we want to convey to our friends and family. I look forward to it, but in some small ways envy those who have it all spelled out for them.