keeping it casual

Welcome to my blog! After spending the last 8 months since our engagement reading wedding blogs, I was inspired to start my own. Okay, when I say 8 months, what I really mean is 7 months because it took me about 4 weeks to get my act together when it come to a realistic vision for our wedding. He proposed on Christmas Eve and by New Years I had 90% of the wedding planned with a small price tag of almost $20,000. Influenced by websites like The Knot and Martha Stewart, my brain was overrun with ideas about giant centerpieces, jazz bands, and a $5,000 budget for the dress which the Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) told me I had to have. While I think people should spend however much they want on their wedding, that kind of money wasn't going to just automatically appear. I'm in university and Mr. FP is working to support us both so we're relying on savings and parents for the wedding. I am ashamed to say that I quickly joined the large group of people who lose total sight of the fact that a wedding is about love, not stuff.

As Oprah says, I eventually had one of those "Ah Ha" moments in which I realized that I didn't want to have a 200+ guest wedding with a reception in a giant ballroom which was dripping with flowers and decor. I didn't want to stride through my party in a giant, beaded cupcake toward my $800 wedding cake. And Mr. FB certainly didn't want any of this either. Thankfully, I was still over a year away from the day of our wedding when I had this moment so I was quickly able to switch gears. One of my greatest inspirations (which I highly recommend to fellow brides) is Sara at http://2000dollarwedding.com who's blog reminded me that it was our wedding, it was about our love and it should be done the way we both wanted it.

So it's been almost a year since our engagement, almost that long since I snapped into reality and we're now 8 months away from our wedding day. Now our wedding no longer looks like something you'd find in a bridal magazine... and what a relief that is. My family is hosting the wedding at our summer cottage outside the city and the guest list is at a moderate 80 people and still lowering (more on that later). The ceremony will be held outside under a bunch of trees and the reception is tented with about a thousand of my favorite white christmas lights (because I'm totally obsessed with them). My mother, grandmother, friends and I are doing the flowers including the bouquets and the centerpieces (once again, more on that later) and most of the decor will be handled by yours truly. I've become much more resourceful in the past months and while DIY is challenging and difficult at times, I find it much more relaxing than the alternative of giving the jobs to strangers. Plus, Mr. FB isn't curled into a small corner crunching the numbers with a panicked look on his face. Everybody wins!