Our Wedding Countdown is officially on!! We have a little over one month left before the big day and we are feeling very accomplished and excited to see how everything comes together. I will try to keep this entry pretty concise and just bring you guys up to speed on where we are in the process now that we are down to the wire and also briefly share learnings/advice we’ve picked up along the way.
Vendor Research
One major accomplishment of ours so far is that ALL of our vendors have been booked! And we even have at least one special vendor that we think our guests will really enjoy! I feel like the key in our vendor selection process was not rushing it. We literally talked to dozens upon dozens of vendors and waited until the relationship felt just right before we signed any contracts. I would recommend this to anyone- take your time, interview your vendors and negotiate when possible so that you and the vendor are both happy and excited to work with one another. Now we are just working on scheduling out our final vendor payments so that we aren’t worrying about any last minute payments in the last few days leading up to the wedding. That way we can focus on relaxing and any final touches, gifts we need to purchase, finalizing our vows, etc.
Wedding Stationery
Another accomplishment is that our formal invitations have been mailed and we have already received over half of our RSVPs back (woo-hoo!). This is important for us as we still have a small wait list so if there are any guests that are unable to make it, we will then be able to extend invites to others. So we are just playing the waiting game for now until the RSVP deadline passes and we can finalize our guest count.
I feel like I will also make another journal entry at a later date to further discuss the whole wedding invitation selection process and give my thoughts/opinion. I’ve heard so many perspectives and opinions regarding what you should spend and how they should look – but honestly being the independent thinker that I am, I just didn’t want to go with the status quo. I also wanted our invites to be unique, simple and to-the-point. Let’s be real –yeah I guess the formal invite should give guests a small preview of what to expect on your “wedding day” but it should also be practical and a reflection of whatever you and your partner decide. And most importantly it should fit within your budget. To me, it’s another more formal announcement of details guests needs to know for our wedding day and I feel that most people will likely throw it away once the wedding day passes if not before. So I really couldn’t justify spending too much on them. Again this is just my personal opinion, and since we opted for electronic RSVP’s I especially didn’t want the formal invites to be overdone only to send guests to our wedding website to get the same information. But enough about that, maybe I’ll go into more detail regarding the research we did and how we landed on the perfect invite for us in a later entry (and even share a picture of it) but all-in-all, we loved the finished product and have gotten lots of compliments on them from guests! Also, I’m the coupon-queen so I definitely utilized coupons/promos for a handful of things that saved us a fairly significant amount of money.
Wedding To Do List
The only other open items we have on our to-do list are: getting our wedding certificate, picking up our wedding bands and selecting the location for our rehearsal dinner and post-wedding brunch. Sounds like a lot but honestly this is nothing compared to the original to-do list and we still have a few weeks to go so plenty of time it seems.
Last Minute Wedding Jitters?
My bridal shower is also coming up this weekend and the bachelorette party will be the weekend right after – so lots more fun on the horizon with the ladies! I’m looking forward to seeing lots of my family and friends at the shower and am excited to have an opportunity to engage in a more personal way prior to the wedding day, as I am sure that day will be a blur that I may not remember the next day. Haha, which is why we have hired amazing photographers and videographers to capture those special moments forever.
Upcoming Wedding Related Events
I will end this journal entry with a question Darryl and I have been asked a lot lately… ”Are you nervous?” I want to say people ask that question because they don’t know what else to ask or expect that you will be nervous. I know it’s a harmless question but we laughed about it recently. I guess some people genuinely do get nervous just before their wedding but I would like to believe it’s more of a individual personality trait to get nervous before any big event rather than being actually nervous to marry your soon-to-be spouse, right? I feel like nerves (thinking you shouldn’t go through with it) probably wouldn’t be a good sign! Lol Darryl and I aren’t nervous at all. We honestly don’t feel that too much will change with our day-to-day aside from the titles we’ll share and of course the big to-do with changing my last name. I will say the only area of nervousness/anxiety I occasionally feel has to do with everyone being where they should be on the day of the wedding and everything running smoothly with vendors, etc. However, that’s just my OCD activating! I’m not really worried about anything going wrong as things will be in the very capable hands of our wedding coordinator Kia! She is handling all of the décor elements and will also be our day-of coordinator so that Darryl and I can sit back and enjoy the big event and trust that everything will go off without a hitch! And sounds like she has some exciting things in store – I can’t wait to see the venue decorated! So we aren’t nervous at all, mostly excited and anticipating how much fun it will be for us and everyone attending.
We cannot wait until the big day and of course can’t wait to share all the details with our TCB family after the shower, bachelorette and wedding! Congratulations and happy planning to all of the brides and grooms getting married in 2019!
Xoxo, Phylicia
