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I’m still waiting for the official pictures to come back from our photographers (although they have given us a sneak peek!) so I thought I’d tell you all a little about our rehearsal “dinner”.

When it came to planning the rehearsal dinner, I was a bit stumped. I was trying to organize so many other details that it wasn’t a big priority for me. I thought I might like to have something outdoors (a BBQ maybe), since our wedding was going to be entirely indoors,  but when I looked into the details of renting a space and getting all the food out and our guests out to a park, plus plates and cups and napkins etc., I got overwhelmed and figured we’d just make a reservation at an interesting restaurant and be done with it.

Then we hired our wedding planner, Danielle, and once we told her that most of our guests were from out of town, she had a great idea. Why not take them on one of Boston’s famous Duck Tours? Since we hadn’t been on one either but had heard great things, we were all for it. She also thought of having a caterer set up in a public park and suggested Christopher Columbus Park on the waterfront, which is one of my favorite parks in Boston.

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First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for offering their beautiful portfolios and photography services to me the last week!

I cannot thank you enough for all of the kind emails and inquires. It was a very difficult decision and I wish I could’ve picked each and everyone of you to share in my Wedding Day.

We decided to go with someone from the Boston area and have them travel over with us. This will make the planning process that much easier and more fun!

Immediately, we fell in love with Lisa Rigby and her style of photos! Lisa is incredibly sweet and full of a great creative energy. I knew right from the beginning that she was our photographer.

image via Channing Johnson {source}

I am so excited to showcase some of my favorite photos that Lisa took from Nisa & Will’s Wedding at the Beehive in Boston.

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With our venue booked and our date secured, we needed to move quickly to lock in our other vendors. Reserving the Wang took a little longer than we thought, but luckily I had been researching and inquiring with other vendors all along, so within the span of a week after the Wang was done, we locked in our caterer, band, photographer, and officiant.

Wedding planning is a bit like trial by fire. You learn as you go, but you’ve got to be a quick study. Dilly-dallying on wedding decisions can cause you to stress out, lose money, or worse - miss out on booking a killer vendor.

Fortunately, my philosophy when it came to to finding and securing vendors rapidly became, “If we like what they do and it’s in budget, book it.” I wasn’t out to research every single photographer in the Boston area. That task alone would take months. We met with four and even that felt like a lot. Sure, you may find something out there that’s even better. But the precious time and effort it takes to get to them usually cancels out any added benefit.

So, ask yourself, “Do I like/trust this person/company?”

“Do their services fit into our budget?”

If the answer to both of these questions is yes, book them and be done.

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Hey everyone,

Hope you’re having very happy Saturdays. I’m currently off on a cake tasting with my Dad and Andreas! More on that to come.

Thanks again for the warm welcome last weekend. I have to say though, I’m glad we got the introductions out of the way! I’m ready to get you guys caught up on all my planning.

The very first thing we had to figure out after we got engaged was where the wedding would be. We knew we wanted to get married in the fall, and after having been together for almost seven years, we certainly weren’t going to wait until fall of 2010. That left us with just about nine months to plan the wedding, which is a perfectly suitable amount of time… but we did need to get moving.

I always knew I wanted to get married in Boston. Even though most of our family is in the D.C. area, Boston is the place we live and have come to call home. As Andreas said, it’s where we grew up together. I also wanted to be able to plan my wedding first hand. Plus, I’ve always felt that Boston is just such a classy and charming city - perfect for a wedding.

Photo from author’s collection

So Boston it was! But where in Boston?

Well, here’s what I knew:

-We wanted some place unique. I didn’t want a function hall or what I call “wedding factory.” One of those places that turns over two or three weddings per weekend and has a tidy package deal all tied up for you. Not that I haven’t seen amazing weddings at those types of places but to us it felt somewhat impersonal and unromantic. The same went for hotels (though I know there are some lovely hotel venues floating around out there). I couldn’t really get comfortable with the idea of getting married in the same place board meetings and conferences take place.

-We needed to be able to have the ceremony and reception at the same place, since we weren’t getting married in a church.

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Hello hello EAD world!

When Ami asked me a couple weeks ago if I wanted to become an EAD weekly columnist after I sent along our engagement photos, I couldn’t believe my luck. I’ve pretty much been reading this blog since I got engaged, so I’m THRILLED to be sharing my wedding planning journey with you all over the next few months. Many thanks to Ami for bringing me on board!

Today marks 112 days until our September wedding here in Boston (eeps!). Like most brides to be I’m feeling excited, frantic, emotional, nervous, overwhelmed, but mostly – happy and full of love.

With only three full months left until our wedding, I’m happy to say we have most of the major things checked off the list, but there’s still tons of little details to coordinate and decisions to make! Before I take you through our tireless search for the perfect venue, my newfound talent for negotiation, the ordeal that was outfitting my bridesmaids, our decision to finally hire a wedding planner and everything in between, from making our save the dates to choosing all our vendors and booking our honeymoon, I’ll tell you a bit about me.

Well, us.

Andreas and I met at a football game during our senior year of high school in Maryland (if you can bear the cliché). We were in the same psychology class together that year and I noticed him from across the room on the first day of class. I had heard nice things about him and wanted to meet him but didn’t have the chance until I noticed him standing nearby during the first football game of the year. That’s when I asked a mutual friend to introduce us and from that night on we’ve basically been inseparable.

Though we have crazy different interests and come from very different backgrounds (he was born on the other side of the world of Ethiopian and Russian descent and I’m an east coast American girl through and through), something about being together just made sense and always felt so natural to us.

After being together for almost seven years, it was hardly a surprise to our family and friends last Christmas when Andreas got down on one knee proposed in a parking lot. (“Can you not tell anyone how I did it?” Sorry, darlin’.) But as I wrote on my own blog after we got engaged, When you’ve been dating since high school, when you’ve grown up together in college, when you’ve seen each other through deaths and depression and semesters abroad and graduations and first jobs, it ceases to be a matter of “if” and becomes a matter of “when.”

As you’ll learn, the wedding planning process hasn’t always been the easiest for me. But I’ve learned a lot. I’m still learning.

And I can’t wait to share the journey with you.

Next week: finding the perfect place to tie the knot and the beginning of planning our “not-your-average” wedding.

Stay tuned!

What do you get when you cross an awesome EAD reader (Shelley and her husband-to-be Andreas) with a beloved-and-featured-on-EAD photographer (Allegro Photography)?  An awesome engagement session in a Massachusetts bowling alley AND a new EAD bride blogger, that’s what!

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