The Wedding :)

Yes, this will be an outlet for me to think about and figure out Brian's and my wedding. :)

We are right now thinking about March 3rd or 10th, 2012. October was just to far. If we can't do what we want in March we will use October as a back up but I think we can do it for March.

In Myrtle Beach people plan their weddings a year in advance. What is the first thing they do? Book rooms and venues. How long do I have? 9 months and counting. Brian has been teasing me about freaking out already and I am not freaking out but I am stressed about beating the clock.

The hotel I am using has rooms March 3rd or 10th (which is how we came up with those dates) and our preferred location has time for March 3rd and possibly the 10th. They have a Bar Mitzvah being held and they will know Wednesday if they have the 10th. I like this location a lot. We found out the night before that it was more expensive then we thought but after going to see it on Saturday and getting an actual price, while it is on the top of our price range it is about $1000 less then we thought and it might be doable.

Right now we are trying to find estimates on all the other stuff to see if we can afford this venue and everything else. So far, things are encouraging. We did look at another venue Saturday that I thought I liked on the website but neither Brian or I are sold on it and it is just too far so that is off the list. We are looking at other venues trying to price them out and see if that would work. But at this point we are hoping for the current venue. The more I think about it the more it fits. The quicker we can find all this out the quicker we can sign the papers and the sooner I can relax about not having the rooms and/or venue taken for the dates we want.

What else do we have to fit in our budget?

Bus transportation (venue and hotel are NOT close)
Cake (doing small 2 tier cake with cupcakes....cheaper, easier, more cake for everyone)
Dress
Wedding bands
DJ
Photographer
The Officient
Rehearsal night stuff
Flowers

I have emailed busing companies asking for an approximate quote. We won't know exactly how many people we will be busing until we send out RSVPs and get them back but an estimate should work. I have emailed Ripley's Aquarium (one of our ideas for Friday night) to see how much they would cost. I know doing 100 cupcakes would be about $250 at  a professional cup cake bakery in town, no idea about the cake. We went looking at wedding bands yesterday and we found two we liked and they both cost a little less then $1000 which works. Brian is budgeting $1000 for my dress but I really hope it doesn't cost nearly that. I think I found a photographer I like. I have no idea what you pay an Officiant. And flowers will just be bouquets and boutonnieres for the guys. We will get roses from Costco to spread outside and the table tops will be potted plants dressed nicely thanks to Caroline for the center pieces. Real simple, real elegant, really inexpensive.

My mom is coming this Saturday for one night so I get to show her the possible house, the current venue and hopefully sit in on some visits to other places as well. I am so excited to see her! Everyone has offered to help which is great I just don't know what they all can do as everyone is so far a way :-\. I will figure something out though :) I am feeling better about the whole thing, I just hope we can get all the information we need in time to secure the rooms and venues. It would not be fun to go through all this and then have to start almost from scratch because someone moved quicker then we did.

That is about it for now, any tips?