Let the planning begin!…well eventually anyways

Before the proposal, Lance and I had discussed some things we wanted to do before getting married.  At the top of our list was moving closer to the midwest in order to be near friends and family.  Of course this is easier said than done.  Our career field isn’t exactly one where you can pick a city, move, and get a job…you pretty much have to get a job and then move to that city.  So in my mind I figured we would move and THEN get engaged and plan the wedding…once we knew where we would be and our job situation.  Well apparently Lance just couldn’t wait to get that ring on my finger…haha!…and as it turned out, shortly after we got engaged Lance landed a great job in where else but Salt Lake City…the place we met!

(No its not the midwest but with the economy the way it was job offers weren’t exactly easy to come by…and we really liked SLC so we decided to go for it!)

With the move set for January we decided to hold off on setting a “for sure” date and any planning until after we moved and had a better picture of what our income would be and what we would be able to save (we’re paying for pretty much the entire wedding ourselves) .  Of course the first question everyone asked once we spread the word of our engagement was, “so whens the BIG DAY huh?”…to which we simply replied, “most likely sometime in the summer of 2010.”  Now for some reason this was not what our families wanted to hear…I guess they thought any engagement past a year was just soooooooo looooonnngggg.  Well here’s our reasoning:

1) moving cross country isn’t cheap

2) paying for a wedding isn’t cheap

3) waiting till the following summer would give us ample time to save up (not going into cc debt!), plentiful options for booking venues/vendors, and overall less stress and tears (hopefully!).

The following months seemed to fly by…I got a job, we celebrated the holidays, we moved, we settled, we had fun with friends…and then all of a sudden it was February and I had done ZERO planning.  My “ample” planning time wasn’t so ample anymore….I kept saying “oh we have PLENTY of time…why rush!?!”…well then we found out that someone that JUST got engaged set their date for one that we were tentatively planning…the first weekend in June!  What?!…Seriously?!… CRAP…this means tons of other newly-engaged chicks are probably out there right now sucking up all the good venues and vendors for OUR “date” too!

Well this must have been the kicker I needed because by President’s Day I had our ceremony & reception location/food booked, our photographer booked, my first dress shopping outing….and….get ready for this….our rehearsal dinner location booked.  HECK YES!  Stay tuned to find out how it all came together and how our vision of a country-rustic wedding came to be!

(*sorry for the picture-less post…I promise lots of lovely eye-candy to come!)

So did anyone else have what you thought was “ample” planning time only to find yourself rushing to get the goods??  How about a long engagement due to other things happening in your life?