Balancing Act
Otherwise Engaged
"Yes, we know it's crazy." That's my stock answer when wedding vendors gasp "That's crazy!" in response to the fact that my fiancé and I are in the process of planning a wedding in 84 days. Not 84 days from now-84 days from when we got engaged. To save you from having to do the math, that's less than three months of planning time.
Why are we doing this to ourselves and our loved ones? Are we masochistic? Are we pregnant? Nope. We currently live an hour and a half from each other, and let me tell you that after almost a year, that commute isn't getting any shorter. A mutual friend set us up, and she conveniently forgot to mention to either of us that the other lived so far away. Which, in hindsight, was probably pretty smart of her. (Thanks, Amie.)
The other factor in our time frame is that I thought a winter wedding would be beautiful, and Jeff-the lucky groom-early on adopted the mantra: "Whatever you want, dear."
What's allowing us to pull this off is that we decided to get married close to home. Here, to be exact. Originally, we tossed around a lot of different ideas-resorts, vineyards, the tropics-but nothing seemed exactly right. We started scouting places months before we were even engaged, which, come to find out, isn't that unusual. Finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with can be difficult, but a mutually acceptable place to hold the wedding is a whole other kind of tricky.
Fortunately, I have a lot of contacts through my career. Unfortunately, they always thought I was calling to yell at them about a late article when I phoned. (I knew my fascist reputation would come back to bite me someday.)
When I first contacted the wonderfully artsy site we're using for our reception-and identified myself-my contact timidly asked, "Are we late with an article again? I'm so sorry." After repeating "No, I'm calling about a personal event" to three different vendors, I decided to stop telling them my name until after I'd established why I was calling.
But the end result was that two weeks after getting engaged, we had secured our church, reception site, photographer, videographer, stationary, band, caterer, and all of our rental equipment. Oh, and I had my dress. One of the good things about being 5'8" is that you can buy off the rack-no alterations required.
And when I say "we had secured" all of that stuff, what I mean, of course, is that I had secured all of that stuff. Which didn't bother me in the least. And as for my fiancé, I think he was just happy to finally discover a use for my obsessive organizational skills.
His job is to arrange the honeymoon and the line of credit to pay for all of the stuff I secure. TPW
Why are we doing this to ourselves and our loved ones? Are we masochistic? Are we pregnant? Nope. We currently live an hour and a half from each other, and let me tell you that after almost a year, that commute isn't getting any shorter. A mutual friend set us up, and she conveniently forgot to mention to either of us that the other lived so far away. Which, in hindsight, was probably pretty smart of her. (Thanks, Amie.)
The other factor in our time frame is that I thought a winter wedding would be beautiful, and Jeff-the lucky groom-early on adopted the mantra: "Whatever you want, dear."
What's allowing us to pull this off is that we decided to get married close to home. Here, to be exact. Originally, we tossed around a lot of different ideas-resorts, vineyards, the tropics-but nothing seemed exactly right. We started scouting places months before we were even engaged, which, come to find out, isn't that unusual. Finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with can be difficult, but a mutually acceptable place to hold the wedding is a whole other kind of tricky.
Fortunately, I have a lot of contacts through my career. Unfortunately, they always thought I was calling to yell at them about a late article when I phoned. (I knew my fascist reputation would come back to bite me someday.)
When I first contacted the wonderfully artsy site we're using for our reception-and identified myself-my contact timidly asked, "Are we late with an article again? I'm so sorry." After repeating "No, I'm calling about a personal event" to three different vendors, I decided to stop telling them my name until after I'd established why I was calling.
But the end result was that two weeks after getting engaged, we had secured our church, reception site, photographer, videographer, stationary, band, caterer, and all of our rental equipment. Oh, and I had my dress. One of the good things about being 5'8" is that you can buy off the rack-no alterations required.
And when I say "we had secured" all of that stuff, what I mean, of course, is that I had secured all of that stuff. Which didn't bother me in the least. And as for my fiancé, I think he was just happy to finally discover a use for my obsessive organizational skills.
His job is to arrange the honeymoon and the line of credit to pay for all of the stuff I secure. TPW