We Set a Date!!!

Yup. We've settled on the date: November 11, 2011. I am so happy! It's like this huge weight has been lifted, I finally have an end point to focus on. That being said, we have 515 days until the date.

Don't fret, I'm not completely psycho, I only know this because of this awesome website I'm using: Wedding Wire. They have a neat little counter on my "dashboard". And I just found a Blogger Widget that does the same thing!

Wedding Wire is great site because it organizes everything you can possibly imagine for your wedding. It's like a free wedding planner - I love it. Especially the "budget manager". It does that spiffy thing where it auto-calculates how much you can spend on what based off of the total you want to spend. Then, it produces pie charts that you can adjust based on what you want to spend for each item. PIE CHARTS. How can you not love that?

Yeah, so we are kinda keeping this *a little* quiet at the moment. I mean, it's no secret or anything but I'm not shouting it from the mountain tops just yet. It's still 18 months away, so I'm in no huge rush to shoot out the "save the date" notifications. Our dear friend Arvin will be taking the photo for the magnets sometime in the next few weeks (and I am happy to announce that he will be our wedding photographer too!). That's probably when we'll go more public with the date - and possibly have a little summer soiree to celebrate.

Then we'll get the magnets made (hello Vist Print!) which will only be $17 for 100! I scoured the net for a better deal and couldn't find one. Then after we get 'em, we have to mail them out.

Which leads me to my next task / dilemma. The dreaded INVITE LIST. I really hadn't thought much about it until I began investigating the save-the-date magnets. Thankfully, I am a huge dork and already have my address book in an Excel database for handy mass mailing. So it's a matter of sorting and sifting through that. Then next step will be getting addresses that I don't have...which ties into the "should I even invite that person?" thought process.

It's probably an easy thing for some people, but for me, I tend to overthink things sometimes. I second guess and ruminate. But I have to create some parameters. I suppose I should start with the total amount of people we want to celebrate with. Hmm...75? 100? 150? How many will actually come? What is the seating capacity of the chapel?

By chapel, I mean the chapel at my Mom's nursing facility. It's not ideal, but that will be our ceremony site. My Mom still can't leave the facility as she can't sit upright for more than an hour and needs a nurse nearby. Some people may be horrified / saddened by the concept of getting married in a nursing facility. But for me, I can't imagine it any other way. I love my Mom more than anyone else on earth and it is impossible for me to think of excluding her from my wedding. I should think most people will understand that.

Plus the chapel is actually quite beautiful. It's a decent size and is surrounded by carved oak, stained glass and the non-denominational pastor has become a close friend of our family in the 3 years that my Mom has lived there. She is happy and honoured to officiate.

Well, I think that's enough for now. I have more ideas, thoughts and plans floating around my head but I'll save those for another post. I am very excited that this whole process will be finally picking up speed. Stay tuned!