Dandie Wedding: 365 Days to Go!
Hello my loyal readers! Happy June! Can you believe we are basically halfway through this calendar year already? Like so many others I absolutely love the summer season. One of the things I absolutely love about the month of June is how it is wedding season.
Like I mentioned in my “Three Questions for the Newly Engaged” post, I have always wanted to be a June Bride. This came from my love of the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which I constantly watched while growing up.
“On this day next year, June 11th of 2022, I will finally get to fulfill my life long dream of being a June Bride.”
I always knew growing up that I wanted to get married and become a wife someday. Loving every Disney Princess film, I thought love was all about having a handsome prince rescue you and living happily ever after. However, what I have found true about love thus far is that it is about being your 100% true self, and being loved and accepted completely no matter what.
I am one of the lucky ones who found a prince like that. Somebody who loves and accepts me no matter what, the person who brings stability and safety to my everyday world, and who inspires me to love my true self more as well as others.
To celebrate the countdown to our “Dandie Wedding” over this next year of life, I thought it would be fun to capture things on a monthly basis along the way and reflect on this major change in life. Most of the posts may be about what we have or will be planning, and some may be more of how I am feeling about it all. Even though we have lived together for almost two years, and I am basically a wife already in many ways, something is so different when you know you are going to be legally binding yourself to someone.
“That is what marriage is. It is a contract, agreement, commitment, and a promise at the end of the day.”
Where we at with planning?
When we first got engaged back in November of 2020, we tried to really enjoy the moment as much as possible before fully diving into wedding planning.
I created an account with The Knot, and downloaded the app to my Iphone. It has been such a life changer with laying out everything you need to do from start to finish, and giving you so many resources at your fingertips with staying organized.
Earlier in 2020 when we initially tried on engagement rings I started researching wedding venues in the area that I was interested in, and wanted more information regarding price and all once wedding planning time came.
The initial list got smaller fairly quick when we found out just how expensive weddings can be. Some places had a starting price of $7,000.00 and that wasn’t counting food. Our overall budget that we knew we could save for in a year was around $15,000.00, so we knew our venue didn’t need to be that expensive.
We aren’t religious, though I personally identify as spiritual, so we knew we didn’t want to have our wedding at a church. I had always imagined an outdoor ceremony and having an inside reception. Being a simple gal, and couple, we knew we would want a place that had rustic and simple feel to it.
Thankfully one of the venues I had on my initial list fit everything we had wanted in a venue, and then some. It is around 15 minutes from where we live, has beautiful rolling green hills, and has a rustic and romantic feel to it. I can’t wait to map out how we will transform it for our day, and to start thinking of all the little details regarding it!
We solidified our date at the end of January 2021, and I immediately reached out to the photographer in the area that I have been a fan of for many years. She books out a year in advance usually, and has captured the beautiful moments of so many people we know, so she was at the top of our list when it came to who we wanted to capture our big day.
Photography is something my fiancé and I both highly valued in regards to the cost of the overall day, so we knew we would allocate more to that category than what was maybe typical.
We booked our photographer in February 2021, and we scheduled her for both our engagement and wedding day photographs. We had our engagement photos done last week and look at just how gorgeous they are?!?
Other than our venue and photographer, we haven’t solidified any other major vendors yet. We are in the process of figuring out our catering and beverage, and hope to have something set in stone by the end of the summer.
In the meantime we have made our initial guest list, been working on our wedding website, and have been figuring out who are wedding party will be. I even have our paper goods mostly picked out.
Even though there are parts of me that would have loved to have gotten married this year, I am so glad we decided to wait until 2022 so I can enjoy the wedding planning process and this season of life we are in.
“I have been dreaming of this big day since I was a little girl, and I want to savor the journey towards it 100%.”
Until next time,
