Wedding Planning: An Update

It’s been quite a while since I posted anything wedding-y. Unfortunately exams got in the way, I don’t think either of us had room in our brains for churches-and-white-dresses alongside toaster projects and engineering drawings (W) and mortality, mean variance portfolio theory and financial derivatives (me). Then university was over and the planning could start!

It kicked off with me ordering my dress. Yep, the first thing we did was order the wedding dress, despite having not set a date (other than in our heads), despite not having a church, not having a venue, not having a clue what kind of day we were really having. Ooops. I’m obviously not saying too much about the dress, mainly to keep it from W, but also because I want it to be a surprise to virtually everyone. In fact, only my mom will be coming to fittings from now on, so my lips are sealed! I will be doing a few ‘Dress Shopping’ posts though, so there may well be a few sneaky details slip out there…

Then we had a serious week of wed-min (that’s wedding admin, according to the numerous bridal Facebook groups I’m part of). We picked a week where both sets of parents were away, not because we don’t want to include them, but because we wanted to make sure the big decisions were made just by us. And then we got on with it. We booked up a busy week; three venues and a meeting with the vicar.

It was all surprisingly easy!

We have a strong connection to the church we wanted to get married in through W, so it really was just a case of chatting with the vicar briefly, picking our date, popping it in the diary and filing in a quick form. The most difficult part was me signing it – as a left-hander a fountain pen is pretty alien to me! Apparently that’s something I have to practice before the big day…

I’ll be talking more about the venues we visited in a few weeks, as essentially we visited three very different venues, at very different price-points. I was originally worried that we wouldn’t be able to choose between the three, but there was one which was clearly our favorite. The venue we picked is stunning, but perhaps even more importantly the service we received was fabulous. From quick email replies to genuine interest in ourselves as a couple, we were completely sold.

So, now we have a dress, a church ceremony and a reception venue. And a date of course! The next step will be to look at caterers and photographers (any Midlands-based recommendations would be hugely appreciated!), but with over 25 months to go, we’re lucky we don’t have to rush into any decision making. I’m making the most of all the excitement! We celebrated with an engagement party at the beginning of the month where we announced our date – so the countdown is on until 6 October 2018 – eek!

Oh, and our countdown sign? It makes me cry everytime I look at it – for some reason seeing it in “real life” makes it all the more real. We’re actually getting married!

Do you have anything exciting to look forward to? Any recommendations for wedding planning?