Now where do I go from here?

The question was popped, the ring was gorgeous, and I managed to mumble out a meek "of course" I never knew the trials and tribulations that is wedding planning. i was about to find out and there was no telling how I would go from Newly engaged to newly wed in a mere 13 months.



Most little girls have their weddings planned from the time they get their first Barbie and Ken doll. Not this one. I went into wedding planning mode from the moment my fiances mother asked me what date we selected... This was ten minutes after he proposed. From that point on there was no turning back.



I quickly realized how much there was to do and how a time that once seemed so far away was no longer enough time to me. I had only 13 months to plan the perfect wedding... Or what I thought was everyone else's idea of perfect. It just didn't seem realistic.



Immediately (and I do mean immediately) I began looking for different options for wedding venues (thats another thing that threw me off but thats for a different post) We knew we didn't want your typical golf course wedding recpetion. We knew we weren't going for a hotel because we just didn't like that option(to this point I'm still not sure who didn't like it me or him??) So I set out for the right place with our date available.



Now with October 2009 being 13 months away I thought hey we have a little bit of time. Until I started calling around to different places to find out that October was apparently a popular month and everything books quicker... Ok fine then my planning process speeds up. Within 2 weeks of being engaged, I had dragged my poor fiance to what I thought was the "perfect" place. The Waterford in Springfield VA was exactly what we were looking for. It provided us a gorgeous ballroom, a top-shelf open bar, and amazing food. The price tag that came with this?? Perfect for what we were expecting to pay... We actually were blown away by the price comapred to what we had been told by other places. So we booked it... There we go got that out of the way.



Then came the dress... oh the freaking dress. First off I will warn anyone who is trying on a wedding dress for the first time... the dress sizes actually run smaller than normal sizes... Once again I repeat they run SMALLER! That means someone who normally wears a size 4 now can wear anything from a size to a size 8! I only warn you because well... I had a nervoud break down at first. I am sure the poor sales girl was ready to smack some reality into me after having to explain it to me three times that the dress was really in my size it was just a different number... Finally I calmed down long enough to try some dresses on... The first dress i tried on was one of my true favorites. It had everything I wanted but I've been told to continue looking "just in case" So after a few more gowns I still went back to the first one... I bought the dress and went home as happy as I thought I could be. One more task quickly out of the way...



All of this sounds all too easy right??? WRONG! As soon as I started thinking "Hey this wedding stuff really isn't that bad" is when someone from the wedding gods came blazing through and knocked me off my high horse. And that was the beginning of my crazy life that became wedding planning obsessed. I now find myself spending most of my time thinking about wedding things, little things that never mattered to me before are now driving me nuts, like a shade of red, the thought of my husband to be drinking the night before the wedding and coming to the ceremony hung over, and what type of candy should go into our candy buffet.



I have some how managed to tie into place everything that is necessary for the wedding such as, the florist, the dress, his ring, our cake, our photographer, our bridal party, the hotel we will be staying at. Our makeup artist. Our videographer. Our DJ and a few other odds and ends. Now my question is... Where do I go from here?