Ready, Set...PLAN. But Not Too Fast.

It's really hard to believe that Dustin and I have been engaged for almost a year. It feels like yesterday he surprised me with the ring o' my dreams, put it on to my freezing cold finger amid a Chicago ice storm, and then we kept the biggest secret ever from our family and friends for over 24 hours (yes, that was incredibly hard and I hated it).

And now that we've planned this long engagement so we could leisurely plan our shindig...we realized we have done NOTHING. OK, not really nothing. We booked a photographer, DJ and venue. And I got the dress.

But other than that, we've done NOTHING. I realized this when we went to dinner with some couple-friends who are getting married a mere month before us and have everything booked, done, and paid for. Dustin and I felt like failures.

Sure, I've spent hours melting my eyeballs out of my head looking at endless "wedding inspiration," which seriously seems to form one big meaningless mass in my brain at the end of the day, and we've talked about what kinds of stuff we want. But we've not acted on anything, and now that we're at the 7-month mark, it's time to get serious.

Ready, set...PLAN!

While my beloved was out deer hunting innocent Bambis all weekend (...don't get me started), I was a hunting widow. And you know what? Being a hunting widow for a weekend is not all bad: I went shopping. I ate food that Dustin hates and got the bed all to myself. I got uninterrupted snuggletime with both pets. And I watched the documentary Babies, which almost made me want to drop everything and have a baby. Almost.

But perhaps the most substantial thing I did all weekend was start the wedding planning ball on a slow roll. I took the collection of sloppy, vague notes Dustin and I have been scribbling for the last year, which included "ideas" that were nothing more than a song we liked or a color that makes us happy, and I expanded them.

And you know what? Wedding planning turned out to be kind-of-hard-but-not-so-much.

I had to have a starting point, and that starting point was Google Wedding Docs. Seriously, go on this site and make yourself a damn spreadsheet if you haven't already. And color-code it if you're feeling sassy or incredibly organized.

And now with just 7-months to go, we've compiled our guest list. Huge accomplishment! We're ready to take on the world! Look out, wedding planners of the world: Hollie and Dustin and taking 'yer jobs!

Unfortunately for us, blathering about our 150-person casual summertime wedding-fiesta turned out to be for naught...it's now an over-200-person casual summertime wedding-fiesta.

HolyOMG. More on this later, because we're too weirded out about the fact that we even know this many people, let alone inviting this many people to our, ahem, intimate affair.

So until I can muster up the cojones to write about how the guest list grew and refused to be wrangled, here are some other wedding decisions we've (I've?) made:

 

I went to this store in the mall called Icing for the first time (which is somehow related to Claire's but not quite as terrifying) because I'm on the hunt for a necklace to wear to a wedding this weekend. Anyhoodle, I got this feather hair flower and necklace for under $5... combined. Yes, I added a brooch in the center of the flower and made some adjustments to the necklace, but that price? Deeelish.

 

This necklace is also from Icing, and was a whopping $3. Maybe I'll force this stuff upon unsuspecting bridesmaids or wear it myself at the wedding or in engagement photos? Not sure yet. But I got it. And it was a deal.

 

And this is our wedding cake substitute, which will be covered in cupcakes abound on the big day. I was sort of thinking about DIYing a cupcake stand, and then for a hot second I wanted to just collect a lot of cake stands and have them stacked and spread out over an entire dessert table (clearly I stole this from the multitudes of wedding inspiration I've been mindlessly gazing at for the last year), but both of those ideas were scrapped.

I picked this up at some random home goods store for $15. Not only will it look fancy at the wedding, it will look downright delicious covered in cupcakes at our annual Christmas party next month.

 
More on the new-found planning next time. Anybody else out there slack during their first months--or year--of being engaged? Did it hurt or help you in the long run? Are you finding any good deals out there on wedding accessories? Yeah? Then spill your guts!

 

Stay Thrifty!
Hollie
  
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Comments

[JazzWhispers]

I am in FREAKING LOVE with your cupcake stand, for realz.

And I think you need to go shopping for me sometime and get me some mad deals on necklaces and stuff. I never buy pretty things and never have anything to wear with nice outfits. Fail.

And don't worry about the huge guest list!!! We invited around 350 (don't ask... Hahahaha) but due to it being harvest (we're a bunch of farmers lol) we had a mere 190 show up. It was the perfect amount!

[Nicole @NicheWhite]

Girrrrrl, I had no time to stall! We got married less than 10 months after we got engaged, and didn't even decide on that date until 8 months prior! (AND I was in Chicago...) Eeek. I DO NOT know what I was thinking. Anyway. I am DY-ing over that $3 necklace - I need to get this ass back into an Icing, stat! And your cupcake tower tier stand thingy is gorge.

Good luck with that guest list....

[Sarah]

Very thrifty and cute! Have you tried it out to make sure it will fit enough cupcakes for you?