T Minus 8 Weeks...

...and counting

Dress - check. Tux - check. Photographer - check. Caterer - check. Menu - check. Sound equipment - check. Rehearsal - check. Hotel - check. Honeymoon - check. Check ... check ... check!! Ahhh. With all my event planning experience, I really had anticipated planning a wedding to be a piece of cake (ha ha). But I realized a wedding a bit more than just a party. It's more like 5 or 6 events to plan. It's probably a good thing for a couple to go through the whole wedding planning, as it is a challenging thing that demonstrates how both people cope under stress and it's a great opportunity to work with family members as well. I'm happy to report that for we've been doing quite well in this area and we've agreed on pretty much all the details.

I have to say it's a good thing I'm self-employed, and my business partner is open to my extra curricular activities, as planning the details of this wedding has become a lot of work. Eric tells me the way he sees it, we've saved a ton of money on a wedding planner and getting lots of stuff at cost, so it's been worth it. I like his logic. The good news is, we have most of the major decisions made a many of the minor ones. Eric keeps thinking we're done, but I'm know there lots of little things will come up that I hadn't thought about. It's fun though.

I'm trying really hard not to be bridezilla and only talk about my wedding, but it seems like every spare moment we've had since we got engaged has been wedding-related, so there's not much else to talk about. Eric's taking a financial engineering class on Wednesday nights so we didn't get to have a very romantic Valentine's (I made him a cake - the cute cupcakes were from last year), but we were able to get up to Tahoe last weekend for one day of skiing which was a much-needed break. Thanks to Eric's coaching, I'm really getting much better.

Wedding preview
Anyone who's actually reading this blog will probably be interested in what we have planned. So for you, I thought I'd share one of the key elements of the wedding that you'll have to be an insider to appreciate. Since we both are passionate about music, one of the most delightful part of planning the wedding has been in the music selection arena. I figure no one other than Eric, myself, and perhaps one or two other people will notice any of the music selections we made, but trust me each and every piece of music you hear on April 21st has been lovingly selected by Eric (with my approval). We met with the music director at church last week and picked some very interesting selections for the processional and the recessional. Let's just say, don't expect to hear "Trumpet Voluntary". And be sure to warm up your pipes as we expect all our guests to sing their hearts out throughout the mass.

The reception should have some good tunes as well. Eric's going to be the DJ - or at least his iPod will - and he has spent hours and hours selecting great songs for each portion of the reception. Not only will you hear a leitmotif of sorts which will recur throughout the evening, but you'll also hear several other songs from Eric's jazz collection that are very meaningful to us. So when you hear songs (especially during cocktail hour), you'll know that it's there for a reason. And be sure to put on your dancing shoes because we're going through lots of iTunes gift cards Eric got for his birthday to make sure we have some great dancing tunes. If you have any requests, let us know as he has lots of credits left.

I guess there's still lots of time left - I'm getting very excited to see everyone. It will be really fun. Stay tuned for more.