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I got engaged to my fiance at the end of September 2013. We took a couple of weeks to a month off of anything wedding, just so that we could enjoy being engaged. It was great and the best decision we have made yet. Now, we are trying to get things rolling! Our initial thought was to have a Fall 2015 wedding. This is because at the time of our engagement, five of my VERY good friends also got engaged. All of their weddings are going to be spread out through the summer/fall of 2014. I am going to be in 3 of the five weddings... and one of them is in California while I live in Oregon. 2014 is looking to be an expensive year without throwing my own wedding into the mix. He really wants a small wedding. Heck, he would be satisfied if we went to the court house and Skyped the "ceremony". I may be the only female to have this experience, but I literally never pictured myself getting married. I never dreamed about the dress I would wear or the type of event I would have. So I literally had no idea what I wanted. I could picture a small wedding, but I have a lot of people in my life who have made a big impact that I would want to be there. I don't have much of an extended family beyond that. He has big extended family and less friends to invite. I really loathe the idea of being the center of attention for, like, 20 minutes with everyone staring at me. That actually sounds like my worst nightmare. The roller coaster started when we started to explore venues. Every place I found online, I loved and could picture our day there. But they were CRAZY expensive. I could always pick them apart as to why they were imperfect. I had finally given up on that idea and we heavily researched a cruise wedding. This was the first idea that he LOVED and was excited about. The more I researched, the less I loved the idea of a cruise wedding. They were still a lot of money and they just seemed chincey to me. No one wants to spend money and have your special day look like it's cheap, because it wasn't cheap. Also, I didn't want my guests to have to take a week off of work just for us. I looked into smaller cruises, but a majority of them were going to Ensenada, MX. After research, I discovered that the town is kinda gross. It has a lot of crime and children begging. That was not the experience I wanted for my guests. I want my guests to feel relaxed, not on edge because they have to watch for pick-pocketers. My girlfriend and I had a heart to heart. She told me that I just need to try some non-traditional routes to find my venue and other vendors. She was right. I modified "the way" I was looking for a venue. Instead of using The Knot, I tried using Craigslist. Low and behold... it worked. I saw an ad for a small vineyard about 15 minutes away from my house. I went and checked it out. This place was a DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH. It was way less expensive, GORGEOUS, could handle a large quantity of people and had very few requirements of us. I was hooked. We both loved the entire feel of the venue. We were back on track for a larger in town wedding. I called upon my mom to ask her connections to hook us up for our wedding. We were on track to spend more than we had initially planned for, but way less than the big name venues in town. We were so excited and started saving for our down payment on the venue. We both knew that we were going to have to pay for a majority of the wedding on our own, and we were ok with that. We were going to wait to have our wedding in the summer of 2015 and save up every penny for the perfect day! That is until... we did our taxes. I just graduated school recently and got a first "real job". Well taxes weren't so kind to me. I entered a new tax bracket without the golden school tuition right off any longer. I basically have to take the entire down payment for our venue that we saved up and use it for taxes... Whomp, whomp, whomp!! I was so DEPRESSED. It seemed like saving for a wedding would be impossible. Something would always come up and we would have to spend wedding money to take care of it. After an evening of whining about it, I jumped back online. I found this website and looked more strongly into a destination wedding. Needless to say that we both fell and in love with the simplicity and the savings. We finally decided to get married in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in February 2015. It's a little sooner than our summer 2015 plans, which is great! We would love to do it next month, but we have to save up for the trip. When we asked/announced it to our families, it turns out that they were all more willing to help with the cost of this idea than the traditional route... hmmmmm. But we will take it! We are now planning to spend about half of the money that we were originally planning on. I could not be happier with this decision. Now the planning and saving begins! Hopefully more saving than planning... That is the point of a destination wedding! Stress free, baby!

After getting engaged all I wanted to do was dive into wedding planning and explore all of the possibilities. After crunching some numbers and doing some soul searching we decided that a Cuban Destination wedding was for us. We are dead set on it! The next thing was to pick a date. Now, I don't know about you, but I really hate the "When's the big day" question. People have been asking since the day I got engaged. I know it probably comes from a good place, but it does grate on you after a while, especially when people continue to badger you about it. Being extremely organized and on top of everything I decided to dive into finding a suitable date. My fiancee and I knew that our engagement would be longer than a traditional engagement. From my understanding most traditional engagements are about a year. Being students who are trying to set the foundation of getting a career and moving in together we knew that was not realistic for us. However, on the other end of the spectrum, we don't want to wait too long before we get married. I know a couple that's been engaged for 10 years (yikes!), but it's whatever they want and feel comfortable with. My fiancee is really hesitant about setting a date because all of the unknowns, and I understand that. However, with a destination wedding we NEED to come up with a date to let everyone know what's going on. Most of our friends and family have to save money and request vacation time off. Personally, the first thing I wanted to do was to set a date. I originally picked May, 2015 since it seemed not so away, but not so close either. Shortly after the new year my fiancee and I got into a small disagreement with the wedding. This led to me compromising that we move our wedding about 6 months. We compromised on the first week of October, October 4 is our anniversary and it was important for us to be married on or around that date. After doing some research I discovered that our ideal date is really close to Thanksgiving (we're Canadian, so thanksgiving is usually the second weekend in October) and I didn't want to make anyone sacrifice their holiday weekend. Furthermore, it is in the middle of hurricane season meaning lots of rain and humidity (What bride wants that?). The only plus seemed to be that trips to Cuba are really cheap around then. After thinking it over and doing some more thinking and discussing we agreed that we want to be married on November 24, 2015 at the Melia Cayo Santa Maria. November 24 was the day he proposed to me so our wedding will still be special. November is a "shoulder month" meaning that it's in between seasons. After doing some weather research we determined that the weather would probably be better in late November than early October. I've spent the last few weeks clearing that date with our family and friends. It seems to be okay for most people; however, it is exam time for those who are in University. This is a downer since two members in our wedding party may still be in school. It feels like whatever I do or choose someone out there isn't happy or there is some problem with it. It becomes discouraging after a while and grates on you. I just don't want to make my wedding about other people or what they want. We really want our wedding to be about the love we share for each other. I'm also a little frustrated at my fiancee's lack of commitment when it comes to setting a date. I know that there are things that arise that we can't plan for, but I feel like that doesn't mean that we can't do any planning. I want to send my save the dates out a little more than a year in advance to give everyone the time they need to save and book the time off. Is anyone else in a similar position or can relate to what I'm going through? How did you guys decide on a date? Happy Planning, - Dia

A beautiful Bride, trashing the dress!

This past weekend me and the FI went to the National Bride Show downtown. It was a bit of letdown (I got it mixed up with the BIG bridal show that happens at the MTCC) but some good inspiration definitely came out of it. Anyway, at one point we were walking around the perimeter and passed a booth for a photography company and I was taking everything in without much interest, when one particular mounted photo caught my eye... bride and groom next to each other with their backs to the photographer, standing still in a grassy green field, holding hands under a stormy grey sky... she with a green lightsaber and he with a red lightsaber as AT-ATs bear down on them. Sort of like this: I might have squealed rather loudly and feverently asked my dude if we could do that for engagement photos. Of course, I knew what his reaction would be, big-time no! But I'm not the giving up type. "I want to do photos where I'm force-choking you!" "No." "How about photos where I have Princess Leia buns?" "No." I laughed and gave up after that. He likes his science fiction and fantasy as much as I do, but to him a wedding = classy, not off the wall. The next day, I was over at his house with his family. His sister makes cakes as a hobby and I always knew she'd make one for our wedding, so we hopped on Pinterest looking for inspiration. First we looked at classic wedding cakes, then Indian-inspired wedding cakes, then she decided that since the cake at our destination wedding was the "real" wedding cake, she would be making a "fun" cake for our at home reception. She thought to herself "hmm, what do my brother and mysticjade both like... GAME OF THRONES!" and she immediately found a blood-spattered cake with the Iron Throne at the top that we cracked up over. Of course we immediately showed it to my FI, got the classic reaction: no thanks. Is it normal for the bride to out-geek the groom? If it's wrong, I don't want to be right.

Let's get this blog rolling! I'll be posting weddings and daily favorites, here's one Underwater Trash the Dress picture, in the beautiful Riviera Maya, for starters: Thanks for stopping by! Hope you come back often

Hey everybody, Just posting this here so you can see what the new blog feature looks like. Feel free to start your own blog - it is a great place to journal your wedding process and experience. Enjoy.