The first step to forever

During my little blog hiatus, the mister and I made some interesting progress on the planning front. Aside from the revelation about our lack of an engagement, we have begun talking about our wedding in CONCRETE DETAILS.

As in, this is what I want. This is what I don’t want. Hey babe, what do you think about having this? Here, check out this blog post I saw in my reader today on ways to keep your wedding on budget [guess who sent THAT one].

And it is so exciting.

While we have always casually discussed what we wanted to do for our wedding, we’re really sitting down and discussing this thing for real, like it is actually happening soon. But honestly, it’s a lot different now that the mister has taken an active interest in my plans and the general feel for the wedding. He took it upon himself to upload a wedding planning budget to our Google Docs and he’s brought it up in conversation as well. Even though we’ve known for a while that we would be getting married, it’s really nice to have him initiate the conversation. It’s just more proof that marriage is on his mind more and more. I never really felt like I was pressuring him into discussing weddings before but I do feel a lot better knowing that he’s bringing it up on his own.

So far he’s ok’d my idea for the overall tone for our wedding and the “theme” for our reception [more on that soon!] and has already asked me to not spend too much on my dress [I shared a picture of one of my forerunners - of course it's way out of budget. Sigh] and has requested some items. It’s been fun introducing him to the crazy world of weddings but the most glaring difference I’ve noticed during these conversations is how traditional he is.

He has a general idea on how weddings should be and while he’s not holding hard and fast to those ideas, it’s been interesting trying to convince him that I’m not crazy. Reading through numerous blogs has opened my mind to the possibilities and joys of thinking outside the wedding box. I’m more unconventional because of this exposure and don’t think twice when I see a new idea. Photobooth? Must have [for me, at least]. Soda bar? Definitely [though, I am happy to report that he really likes the idea!]. Mixed gender bridal party? Why the heck not?! Him? Not so much.

I’ve tried convincing him that it is okay to have people of the other sex stand for us though he is not convinced like I am. I might discuss this a little later but let’s just say he totally vetoed my idea. And being stubborn, I tried again and while I may have inched him over a teeny tiny bit, I knew I had to back off and let it go.

For now. Hey, I’m stubborn.

Since we have the added fun of finding work and a place to stay, we’re not sure when the engagement will happen but I did plant the idea of gambling and picking a date and planning before getting formally engaged, mainly because if we’re going to be waiting anyway, we might as well use this time to our advantage. That and I really want Eddie to photograph our wedding and he books up fast. The mister was receptive of the idea but still no real answer as of yet, so we’ll have to wait and see. At least he gave me a year to plan, that’s up from 8 months which was up from 3 months.

So now I need to get back on my game and really update all my planning documents and continue to fine-tune the elements for our wedding. Now, where to start?