I grew up, like most girls, a hopeless romantic. Playing barbies and house, I would imagine my life, married, working with many many many babies. As I aged, my visions changed, life changed. I began to realize that any cookie cutter would not be my life. I also started to feel that I might not be worth the grand things that life was supposed to offer. After going through one long term relationship where I imagined us married with three kids, to one where I wasn't sure if we would ever marry; I didn't actually think I would ever really get engaged or married.
Brian and I aren't the planning type of couple. I met his brothers on our second date; we said I love you a month into the relationship. When we decided we wanted a cat, we found two we fell in love with within two weeks online. When we decided we wanted to build a house, we were under contract within a month. Recently we bought a puppy. I agreed on the night of the 11th of May that we could get one, we found and put a deposit down on our boy six days later. We tend to get great ideas, and do them immediately.
For that reason I was pretty surprised when he actually did propose. We'd been together for almost three years, and I just didn't think it was going to happen. A proposal involves planning, takes time. That's not how we roll.
So when he finally did take me to a park overlooking downtown Cincinnati and Kentucky, I was pretty damn surprised. But in our typical fashion, it stopped there. We were engaged. Step done. The fact that an entire wedding needed to be planned, and paid for, seemed just beyond our abilities.
We decided to not get married right away. I was not budging on dates. I wanted mid April or mid June; Brian could get married on a Thursday in February and not care. We were so focused on building and finishing our house, I knew that we would have no time in the summer that followed our engagement to plan. So we picked a date two years away, June 15, 2013 and I threw the idea of our wedding out of my mind.
But now May 2012 is coming to a close and my BFF's wedding is next month, and pretty soon it will be within a year of my wedding and all I have is a date and a guy.
I think I'm supposed to have more; I think I'm supposed to do more.
This is probably a good spot to point out that I am not close with my mother nor will my parents be able to help us out financially with the wedding. This is also probably a good spot to point out that I am horrible with money, and have college debt, credit debt, and well, debt.
So here we are, a little over a year out, with very little money, lost in a wedding Bermuda Triangle.
We did a little "texting" today and decided on a budget goal of $3,000.00. Will most likely be updating that in the next couple weeks as we take a more realistic look at our finances and sit down face to face, but I think that is a realistic, tight but doable and affordable number. Doing some brief internet searching today, I'm starting to realize how big of an undertaking it will be to attempt a $3000 wedding. Food and booze are just killers to budgets, so are big families and lots of friends. :) But I'm hoping that this blog will be my (our) record of how we planned our wedding, and did so without breaking the bank or my sanity.
Stay tuned....
