Hijacked

First, thank you ALL for the congratulations and well wishes! I couldn’t respond to every message as they flooded in on text, Facebook, Twitter, blog, Instagram, email….but I tried my best. I’m still in foggy haze of bliss and glow from the engagement and haven’t given much else any thought!

Second, I have the best friends! Monday night after work and the gym Michael and I sat down and looked at some wedding venues online to make a list. Michael suggested a Star Wars themed wedding, which I veto-ed immediately and then went to Facebook to share with my friends this:

What followed was probably the most epic, awesome, gut-splitting hilarious thread I’ve ever had on Facebook. Everyone chimed in. Of course, a bunch of my friends and family are nerds and were totally on board with this idea, fully supporting Michael. It went downhill fast. There were suggestions of The Dark Crystal theme, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and The Mists of Avalon (which I can actually get behind) and then went into deep discussion about our reception being the scene in Tatooine (whatever that means), with me in a gold bikini, my dad dressed at Darth Vader with me on a leash (what?!) and a friend asked if he could dress as a Sand Person.

What is going on?

Is this what wedding planning is like?!!? I guess everyone wants to give their input…The Facebook thread went on for hours with so many people giving their hilarious two cents. But rest assured, we won’t be having a themed wedding. Sorry!

Seriously, though, Michael and I spent a good two hours looking at websites and narrowed our venue list down to 6 places to check out. The awesome thing is that we both agreed what our #1 place is! We’re going to look at that place last.

One of the first questions we both get from people who hear the news is “have you set a date”? In all honesty we haven’t set a date but we narrowed it down to a season. We didn’t really agree at first. I wanted a winter wedding (off season, cheaper, not as far away) and Michael wanted a summer wedding (nice weather, possibly outside). The more we talked about it, the more we both kind of compromised with September 2014. But that’s still up for debate!

So far everyone has been really awesome about our news and offering to help plan. I appreciate the enthusiasm and support! I signed up for The Knot website but immediately regretted it. The website was really overwhelming and felt like it was a vortex that creates bridezilla tendencies–something I am going to try my hardest to avoid! I think I’m skipping The Knot and going with an iPhone app and making my own lists. The problem is, where do you start? While Michael and I have talked about weddings for years and have planned little bits and pieces of the whole thing, knowing where to start is really overwhelming.

I got home from work yesterday to a mysterious package! Inside was a massive wedding planning book courtesy of my friend Rachel. It was awesome and such a sweet, thoughtful gift! I hadn’t even had time to think about that kind of stuff.

Lastly, I had a bunch of requests for better pictures of the ring. I know, Instagram doesn’t quite cut it. I used my nice camera and finally got to test out my micro lens. Here it is:

I’ve never seen a ring like this before and I love how unique it is. It’s white gold and it’s a tension setting, which means there aren’t any prongs (which is nice). It’s smooth and the diamond is flush with the band so it doesn’t get caught on anything.

This will probably be the last wedding post for awhile. The next step is setting a budget, finding a venue, picking an actual date and we’re going to take our time doing that. We also have some family trips and a vacation coming up so that will take up all of our weekends for awhile. I think I’ll do a post in about a month or so when we start looking at venues. If you’re in Portland and have a recommendation for a venue, please tell me!