Thursday, May 22, 2008

wedding planning 101


i feel that i am pretty experienced in the party planning department, especially themed parties. and what's a wedding if not a huge theme party? since i don't plan on doing this again, here's my lessons learned so far in the fine art of planning a wedding.

1. Secure a venue/Pick a date. i have learned that these are the first things you should do when planning any event and tend to go hand in hand. i was floating around in a newly engaged haze and propably would have remained there if it hadn't been for my event planning friend. his second remark after "Shut up!" was "You need to get a venue." turns out he was right. this was February 15 and my original date of October 4 was already taken.

i could have kept the date and gone sonewhere else, but it wasn't the date so much for me as the venue.


my original date was going to be when we met, August 2o or our first date August 27, but those fell in the middle of the week and the middle of the Democratic National Convention. make sure there are no huge community events going on that will make travel and accomodations difficult for guests.

after much checking of schedules, we settled on October 3. yeah it's a Friday, but the groom figured that gives folks 2 days of party recovery. he's so thoughful.

so back to the venue, this required a lot of hemming and hawing on my part. the garden offered many sites individually or a wedding package. i was emailing back and forth with the venue coordinator then running down to my 'wedding planner' then back to the groom in my attempts to stay off of Mt. Spendy. it took about a week of this before i finally settled on the wedding package including the polly steel house from 5-11p. the final decision was to have 2 hours for set up and have the farmhouse for the entire time as dressing room/storage/additional bad weather seating.
so now that this part is locked and loaded, it was on to the theme.