Getting down to details

Since our engagement was after Valentine's Day, we knew we needed to start moving on some of our details in order to have the most options available.

There were a couple snags in our plans to get down to planning, though.



A) New kid
I had just started a new job less than 3 weeks before our engagement. It just was not feasible to take off a random weekday to go look at venues or make phone calls on my lunch break.

First day of school new job!
Yes, I'm a dork and made Chase take a picture of me before I left

B) Suitcase syndrome
I'm a planner. What comes with that is sometimes over-planning. And I had done that with our winter. We had a number of events and out of town trips planned for upcoming weeks / months, leaving us limited time to do "wedding stuff".

The living room pretty much went through waves of packed and unpacked bags for most of the season

Luckily, there were also several things IN our favor.

A) We're wedding PROS
Before our engagement, Chase and I had attended 20+ weddings together in the 2 1/2 years of our relationship. Although some might see this as a reason to buy a lot of dresses huge hit to our bank accounts, our frequent wedding attendance helped us immensely when it came to making decisions. We knew (with conviction) what we liked and what we didn't like.

Here we are at my cousin Julie's wedding last fall
It happened to be wedding #4 in a 5 week span

B) The IRS owns us
There are a number of accountants in our collective families, including both my father and my brother. This meant that if we wanted a 2012 wedding, it couldn't be until after April 15 to get them out of "busy season". Chase and I had ruled out a summer wedding (he's a squinter, I'm a sweaty Betty) and didn't want to wait until fall, so this narrowed our month options down to May*.

This was a legit Christmas gift one year
My Dad is on the right (I think - he looks  a lot like his brother)

C) I have the BEST Mom
My mom made plans to come down to visit us the weekend after the engagement for a few days, since it was her winter break from school. She knew about our time constraints and offered to do some of the legwork for us while we were at work. Added bonus - she'd get a chance to see whatever we picked, allowing her to provide a positive report back to the homefront.

Mom - being awesome.
In this case, it was waking up at the crack of dawn (in the freezing cold) to explore Harry Potter World with me

How soon after the engagement did you start planning?

*Ok, now that I read this, I realize this may be a con...