Wedding planning, yup still hate it.

So for those of you following the “Jill hates wedding planning and likes to complain about it” saga welllllllllll you are in LUCK!  For the rest of you who could care less, do yourself a favor and stop reading now.  Can’t say I did not warn you.

A couple of awesome things have happened, we found our caterer who we could not be more excited about.   We are going with a low key backyard BBQ theme, so it was only right to have Uncle Bub’s cater as they have “award winning BBQ”!  I don’t actually know what “award winning” means, but in my head it means “good enough to serve at a wedding”.  We are doing our tasting next week, yay!  I was also having the battle with Shain of whether or not to do glassware or disposable plates.  Rightfully so, he thought we should do glassware so that it made things a little fancier and not so “hillbilly”.   BUT it literally adds about $2,000 at least to a catering bill because of clean up, so it was worth it to look into other options.  Per our wonderful caterer, we discovered bamboo plates that you can RECYCLE and they look SO cool!  Environmentally friendly, affordable AND they look awesome.  Winner.

Thanks to my pal, Dave King (whom may sound familiar as I dedicated an entire post to making fun of him) we have a strong lead on a beer truck!  Fingers crossed!

We also found our photographer! She is actually one of my amazingly talented student workers who does family photos, wedding photos etc. on the side and is hoping to start it up as her own business once she graduates this spring.  So, since she is considered “amateur” she is charging us almost nothing (no really, I almost feel guilty about this) because she is still needing to build her portfolio.  I have so much confidence she is going to a great job and of course still keeps us on our lofty goal of keeping this wedding affordable.

Slowly but surely we are starting to ask our special close friends and family to be in the bridal party, be ushers, readers etc. We are both really lucky to have so many amazing people in our life, but it has been proven to be tricky to try and figure out how to involve everybody without having 15 attendants on each side and a million readers (longest ceremony ever anybody?).   So, we have been doing some research on other cool ways to involve people and adhere to their strengths.   This part in particular has been tough because I am pretty sure I have been upsetting some people by not involving them.  I am a people pleaser, which makes the whole wedding planning thing very difficult for me in general and when I know people are not happy with my decisions, it really upsets me.   At the end of the day, the people that matter, shouldn’t care as long as they are there witnessing and sharing this day with us.  At least, that is what supposed to be the case…

I keep saying to Shain, “I just wish this could be smaller”.  In my perfect world, I would love to go to the courthouse and either have a BBQ after or go out for a nice dinner with a small group of people.  Instead we are having a very large BBQ party for 250 people, kind of the same right? Keep in mind that number was after months and months of agonizing and having to cut over 150 people out, not fun at all.  Of course everybody says, “It’s about YOU, do what YOU want!”  But that’s not true and everybody knows it.  I get it, it is a big deal for our families to come together.  It is a day that our parents have dreamed about and waited for so they just want it to be perfect, I totally get it and I want to make them happy, I really truly seriously do.

But man am I struggling.  Everywhere I turn, somebody is not happy with the colors we are  picking,  food we are eating, people we had to cut out, etc.  And again, this is not to bring anybody in our family down at all.  Everybody has been so helpful and supportive, it is more so me just wanting to make everyone happy and being overwhelmed with all the opinions.  I need to get over it, I know.  This is a special day for everybody, not just Shain and I.  But if June 21st would get here already and normal life can resume, that would be great.

Finally, my ploy to convince Shain that we should hike the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu in Peru for our honeymoon has not gone over so well.  I mean come ON, how awesome would that be?  Sure…it is a 4 day hike up a mountain, but what a cool way to start a marriage!?  No?  Okay, maybe I am a little crazy.   As of right now we are leaning toward Costa Rica so that we can have the combination of relaxation and adventure all in one.  So anybody that has been there and has recommendations for things to do there, please send them our way 🙂

Stay blessed in the mess!