Let's Start at the Beginning...

Well, after the proposal, I mean. 

Kevin and I became engaged on August 16, 2010, and then again (with a ring) on August 20, 2010, but we'll stick with the 16th to avoid confusion. Looking at the calendar has made me realize that we've been engaged for over a year now! To me, that's a pretty long engagement! 

The first few steps in the planning process were a little difficult, because I couldn't decide if I wanted a church wedding or not. Unlike many other brides, I had never pre-planned a fairy tale wedding. I didn't know what colors I wanted or what date I wanted. I didn't even know how to begin the actual planning process. 

Luckily, my sister had gotten married in December 2009, so she still had what I call "wedding brain." She was able to sit me down and say "Hey, get in gear, this is what you gotta do." So in one night, a couple of months into our engagement, we sat down and pinned down the time, place, setting, theme, and all those other important bits and pieces of the wedding. 

So, we first figured out the color palette. We decided on using a dark purple as the base color, with lilac accents. To fill in places and to serve as undertones, we are using white and silver. Those are pretty safe colors, right? After choosing the color palette, we started thinking about possible dates. For some reason, I thought it would be cute to be married on 11-11-11, which falls on a Friday in the fall. After a little bit of discussion, we decided on this date and also agreed that the colors we chose would work for a fall wedding. We are not doing any sort of fall theme, like leaves or pine cones or pumpkins, but it does make sense to have colors that won't clash with the time of the year. I wouldn't use apple green and baby pink in the dead of winter, for example. Common sense here! 

Picture this (with a little less blue) as the main color scheme. I'm talking chair sashes, linen napkins, decorations, the whole nine yards.

Next, we had to figure out the style, time, and all that jazz. We decided that since it starts to get dark earlier during this part of the year, we chose a 6:00 in the evening wedding. This will also work because it falls on a Friday and hopefully, people will have enough time to get home from work and make it to the wedding by this time. This gives me a little bit of worry because we decided on a very small wedding, like 65 people because we are BROKE. So, if people don't think they will be able to make it on a Friday at 6:00 pm, I fear that our guest list will just begin to dwindle.

Oh well; if people can't make it, that's less mouths to feed and less to pay. But I can't look at it from a money stand point because that will put a black cloud over all my planning.