…our wedding vision…

Ok. So. Before I get to our personalized budget ideas, I suppose I should let you in on some of our plans.  DG and I started talking seriously about what we wanted our wedding to be like back in March.  At that point, we were just dreaming, but some very concrete ideas were born out of that conversation.  We knew we were faced with a bit of a challenge.  Neither of our families drink and we knew that the presence of alcohol at our reception would make most of our loved ones feel offended and uncomfortable. At the same time, we wanted our reception to have a fun and interactive type of atmosphere, so we knew we had to get creative.  Sadly many of the dry wedding receptions we've been to have been sort of ho-hum.  Everyone stands around waiting for the bride and groom to cut the cake, and once they have, the guests have a slice and peace out. The whole shebang lasts about an hour. That scenario is pretty much the opposite of what we're going for. His family is from Florida. Mine is from Missouri. If our guests are going to travel all that way, we'd really like to be able to hang out for a minute. I mean, how often are all of the people you care about in the same place at the same time? Thus…we started talking about how to creatively encourage our guests to cut loose and have a good time…without the liquid courage. We want people to be engaged and relaxed, not bored.

Our first real conversation about the wedding took place over coffee at a Dunkin Donuts while I was in town visiting DG. (Up until about three months ago, DG and I were playing the long distance game. You'll learn more about that later.) We were contemplating what kind of reception we wanted to have when DG spoke up and said, "What if we do it like a tailgate?" Interestingly, DG has a bit of a man-crush on Jimmy Buffett…and thus, tailgating is a bit of a vice for him. (I know. Who knew?) As a beach bum wannabe, this type of atmosphere for our reception would make him a very happy groom come wedding day. At first, the whole idea seemed absolutely ludicrous to me. I enjoy a classy affair. But after further discussion, I started to get it. The more we talked about it, the more excited I became. We'd tame it down a bit. Yard games, barbeque, a kids table, sweet tea and lemonade, dancing…and lots of sunshine. We'd encourage our guests to bring a change of clothes and plan to stay a while.

We knew we'd have to do it all the way to pull it off, but I loved the quirky charm of the whole idea. I've always pictured a very formal, reverent, and sentimental kind of ceremony in a beautiful church. So we decided the ceremony and reception would be like opposite sides of the same coin. We'd find a way to pull it all together thematically.

First priority? Venue. We knew we'd have to find the perfect space for the perfect price in order to bring our imagined celebration a reality. This proved to be more a challenge than I'd expected. We'll get into that tomorrow…

(to be continued)