People take pictures of each other

Our latest wedding-related mission has been to find a photographer. This has been kind of a big endeavor for us; we wanted to find a professional whose style meshes with the vision we have for the wedding. And who fit our budget. So, after looking at a few things that showed up in google searches, we decided to look into the internet underworld that is craigslist.

Now, you never really know what you might find when you go to craigslist. We went over all of the information we wanted to put into our post: where the wedding was, the style of photography we were interested in, size of the wedding, our budget. And just like that, within 24 hours we had about 30 responses from people who wanted to shoot our wedding.

Of course, this is where the real work begins. Have you ever looked at a photographer's website? They seem to be universally filled with Flash nightmares, menus that disappear when you want to use them, and auto-playing wedding music. Now imagine looking over 30 of those cluttered, lumbering behemoths. Of course, some of them were easy to rule out. The wedding photography trend seems to be overexposed, washed out pictures, as if that somehow romanticizes the whole affair. Then there were the people who had never shot a wedding, who were actually videographers, or were happy to shoot our wedding for 3 times our budget (seriously, read our post before you respond).

After a lot of hard work, we have a few photographers who do great work, are in the area, and willing to shoot within our budget. It feels good to be able to find what we were looking for.

Brides Are Insane*

In the last month or so as I've been browsing wedding-related sites, I've learned many things. I haven't been to many weddings (three, including my own, which was a go-to-Reno-and-stand-in-front-of-an-officiant-and-say-the-words affair), so it's been very informative.

Some things I've learned:

• In California, you can have someone deputized for the day to officiate at your wedding.
• Those flag-type things that hang on a string or whatever are called "bunting."

This may make you think "used car lot,"
but it should make you think "wedding."
(photo from  Blue Moon Studios on Etsy)

• A lot of people do theme weddings (for a moment, I started to worry that we didn't have a theme. I'm over it now.)
• To some people, the Chicken Dance is considered traditional.
• Brides are insane.

The last item isn't on the list because of stories of throwing a tantrum about bridesmaids' dresses or needing to have M&Ms in the wedding colors, oddly enough. No, it comes from reading many pleas for advice and rants about family members/friends/coworkers/people who live on the same block/that one check-out girl at the grocery store planning weddings for the same day/week/month/season/year as the bride's wedding.

I get the idea that it's a big day in your life, but it doesn't exactly preclude anyone else having big days of their own. If someone else has a wedding in the same month, it doesn't mean there's less happiness to go around. I would be annoyed if they were holding it the same day and invited all the same people, but the odds of that are pretty low.  So hey, anyone out there who might decide to get married near my wedding day: more power to you.


*Except me, of course. 

Getting to the fun stuff

We have been making a lot of good progress with the planning. We have a baker lined up for our cake, a girl I know who does some awesome stuff. We have a few really good ideas for what we want it to look like, but are still looking at pictures online to try and refine our vision.

Although this is almost perfect.

We also getting close to having a photographer figured out. We put a post up on craigslist and got about 30 responses in 12 hours, about 15 of which looked good and fit in our budget. We are now in the process of going through all of those to figure out which best fits our style. So things are really exciting; many of the most stressful details seem to be sorting themselves out, leaving the fun details for us to work on. And we are happy about that.

The Proposal

I suppose something everyone is probably curious about is how the proposal actually happened.

It wasn't a total surprise. Morgan's mom had offered him his grandmother's ring just in case he was thinking about proposing. When the package containing the ring arrived, though, he didn't open it in my presence, and he hid the ring. So then it just became like when I was a kid and I lived with my cousin who loved to hide around corners and jump out and scare me because it cracked her up the way I screamed and waved my hands around - I knew it was going to happen sometime soon, I just didn't know when.

September 12 was a day like any other, pretty much. The weather was nice, and we'd decided that after dinner we would walk down to Sweet Action Ice Cream with Penny. I think I had their Red Velvet ice cream, which was delicious. (I love red velvet - how would you all feel about a red velvet wedding cake? ... I'm kidding. Probably.)

When we got home, I sat down on the couch with my computer and Morgan disappeared off in the other room for a minute. The next thing I knew, he was on one knee in front of me with the ring. He asked, I said yes (I actually think I said "of course" first, and then corrected myself to "yes"), and that was that.



So, it doesn't include a Jumbotron, a path of rose petals, or a 28 carat diamond. But it suits us very well - low key, private, meaningful.

Planning Like Crazy

Well the wedding plans are underway; I have to say, it is simultaneously exciting and overwhelming. We are hoping our early Spring wedding will have some nice weather for us, but it is hard to know what to expect. Since the event will be happening rain or shine, the best we can do is keep our fingers crossed that we will be able to do most of it outdoors.

So far, we have been playing with ideas for the invitations, looking into honeymoon locations, researching dresses, suits, and shoes, cakes, photographers, and a million other things. It is sort of a challenge doing this 1200 miles from where we'll be having the wedding, but we have still been having fun so far. It will be great to have some of the basics figured out so we can start focusing on the little details.

-Morgan

And so it begins

There's one thing checked off our to-do list!

Welcome!  Morgan and I are thrilled, and busy. We're looking forward to sharing some of the highlights of the next few months with everyone.

Among other things, we're hoping this blog will be useful for people who are coming, and let people who aren't coming follow along. You can ask questions, and we'll do our best to answer them (reserving the right to keep some things to ourselves!).

-Ursula