Yes! I DO!

The advantage of taking your time with wedding planning is the low amount of stress. Our wedding is a fairly compless project. Of course everyone thinks that of their own wedding, so I might be biased, but with 2 different faiths, or at least one faith and one more-or-less-faith-in-an-unorganized-way, families form 4 different countries and three different languages I think our wedding holds a fair amount of challenge.

I like challenge, so that is not a problem, but I don't particuarly enjoy stress. I like a challenge I can plan out, and have time to play with, rather than rushing down a hill to finish first and discovering midway that the brakes are missing. Of course I have friends that would say, that marriage itself is like that, but I try to ignore them. Anyway, when I asked my Marie to marry me, we decided on the day the very next day, and realized that we had 17 months to plan the wedding. As opposed to most couples we know, that is a very generous time.

Nonetheless we quickly found out that for some things, 17 months is not as long as it looks. 5 months went by in a hurry and in that we already had to book church, city hall, and party locations (the most difficult). Trust me when I say that when you are on the hunt for a party location, four months is nothing. Most of it will be spend reviewing price offers, visiting locations and deciding whether it fits the theme, talking to the staff and reviewing options. The location which finally became our choice we visited three times to talk to the staff and walk through the options. That doesn't look much but if you can visit them only in the weekends and one week is busy, a month is gone. Try that for a few locations and you will realize that planning ahead is important.

Now we have a little break. The biggest and most important actions have been taken; Locations and the wedding cake. The next big round will be in the fall, choosing invitations, sending out invitations, preparing the actual ceremonies and such and the last between February and April. That leaves us now with a few months with low priorities, but that doesn't mean there is nothing to consider. Color schemes (is Fuchsia a real color?), flowers, music, interviews with the priest, and talks with the Master of Ceremonies. But for that we have all summer. It's good to be relaxed.