The Wedding Blog

You don’t have to be rich to have a wedding, but it sure helps!

It’s all very exciting to say you’re getting married, but it’s quite another thing to begin to plan the actual event. I was fortunate enough to select and order both my dress and the bridesmaid dresses the very day after Darren asked me to marry him, so that’s out of the way. But I’m beginning to think that was the best part and it’s all downhill planning-wise from here.

We’ve had to negotiate a number of things. The first is where to get married. Living in different cities and being unsure of where we will reside after the wedding, this wasn’t a cut-and-dried decision to make. We’re leaning toward the most convenient choice, which is Hamilton, but there are still a lot of factors that could potentially change that verdict.

There has also been much discussion about what type of reception to have. Since we’re looking at having the wedding on a long weekend, we’d prefer not to break up the weekend for our guests. Monday would work except that we don’t want people to have to worry about getting up early for work the next morning, so we’ve pretty much decided on a Friday evening wedding.

So we have been spending what limited time we have in the same city visiting various banquet halls and what limited free time we have at home checking out others on the Internet. All this searching has led me to the aforementioned conclusion: You don’t have to be rich to have a wedding, but it sure helps!

I’d like to think that we don’t have extravagant taste (you’d know that if you saw the basement apartments we each live in), but tasty food in a clean and pretty atmosphere is not negotiable.

We are lucky, though – by choosing a day other than Saturday, we can take advantage of the discounted price for the less-than-prime days that many halls/caterers offer. Even so, it still seems like a lot of money for a party.

I was almost at the point of deciding that it wasn’t worth it and that we should elope. I knew I’d come to this point, but I thought it would be much, much further into the process. However, an incredible thing happened this evening. As I was reading the package details from one of the halls’ websites, it all of a sudden hit me: I’m getting married. That girl in the big fancy dress dancing…that’s me! That room for the bride and groom to relax in while they wait for their guests to arrive…that’s for Darren and me!

It was some much-needed perspective. I had been thinking so much about the logistics of our life post-wedding (Where are we going to live? What are we going to do? Will we keep our jobs? etc.) that I’d forgotten to revel in the fact that I’ve found “him,” the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Now that deserves a party!

While I’m still not willing to break the bank over this single event, I’ve decided to be more optimistic about finding the perfect place and enjoy each step along the way. After all, I’m only going to have to do this once!