Legal wedding: July 21, 2009
Big, fluffy wedding: February 27, 2010, in Naples, Florida–6 months to go!
We’ve got a loose ‘Old Florida’ theme going because Lynn’s family has been living there for 6 generations (generally speaking, NO ONE has been in Florida for that long. Usually if you live there for more than 5 years people treat you like a native Floridian). So for her side it’s a celebration of their heritage, and for mine it’s a destination wedding. Gators, mermaids, and flamingoes will abound! Tastefully, of course…
Planning
I’m trying to stop overthinking the details for the wedding and instead to focus on actually making some of the things that have already been decided upon. Since we both love cheesy vintage Florida postcards (and we’ve used reproductions for the Save the Date and RSVP cards) our plan is to copy some of our favorites to make table numbers, and then to have a stack of blank postcards instead of a guest book. I bought a little mailbox for people to drop them into, and after the wedding we’ll put them into clear plastic photo sleeves so you can see both sides. We spent several hours last week sorting through our collections (and the ones I got off ebay) to get this all put together.
The next step is going to be actually planning the ceremony. I feel a little funny that so much time and energy has gone into choosing the food, and not really much at all into the most important part of the day. So the next few weeks will be all about readings (or not) and invocations and benedictions and everything we need to do to get everyone good and emotional before we break out the liquor and croquet sets*!
Vendors
The on-going vendor search hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it would be (long distance doesn’t help, though!). The hardest part was choosing the location—the churches we were comfortable with doctrinally were housed in really ugly buildings; hotels and golf courses in Naples are little wedding factories (beautiful, expensive wedding factories), and the only public options were on the beach (not our style) or in public parks that just didn’t have the space we needed. But luckily we found Etudes de Ballet! It’s a dance studio right near Lynn’s mother’s house—the two main studios are light and elegant and airy, and the larger one has French doors that lead out onto a brick patio that overlooks the immaculate lawn, with a gazebo and aisle running right through the center of it. The building and gardens are set between a plant nursery and a little plot of jungle, so it feels nice and secluded. And there’s a speaker system! So our plan to load up the ipod and rock out doesn’t require renting any sound equipment, which is fabulous. The owner didn’t seem too fazed by having two brides show up (although he did ask innocently if we would EACH be having 100+ guests—I think he thought it was a double wedding) and has been very pleasant to work with.
Our other vendors are few and far between:
Officiant: Pastor Rick Sosbe of the Metropolitan Community Church
Catering: Wynn’s Market
We’re getting lots of help from our family in the form of the cake, our dresses, hair, makeup, and landscaping (Lynn’s uncle is lending us plants from his nursery to dress up the already lovely garden), which is wonderful! It has it’s own kind of stress since we don’t know exactly what everything will look like, but in the end we trust them and it’s really touching that there have been so many offers to help! There are still a few other people we have to hire, but it’s still kind of far from the date, so we have time.
So far everything is coming along pretty well and just about on budget! The best thing for me is that we’re totally remodeling our house right now, so whenever I start freaking out about the wedding planning I can switch over to freaking out over the electricity and finishing the drywall. And vice versa. It’s multitasking…just with really big life events instead of the usual solitaire/tv/email round.
*according to the website, the kind of croquet game they recommend form for beginners using their professional courts is called “Six-Ball Guerilla Croquet.” Bring it on.
Everything sounds so nice. I love the postcards idea — so awesome. And I can’t even imagine renovating a house while planning your weddings. We bought a house in March and are just having trouble maintaining it with all the wedding planning!
Do you have pictures of the gardens? It sounds beautiful.