Wedding Diaries: The One with A Million and One Questions

The moment this ring slipped on to my finger a million and one questions have been running through my mind. What dress should I wear, who should I invite, where should it be, should we elope instead, who’s going to pay for it, who will my photographer be, what flowers should we use, what if I don’t want to pick colors…. and on and on and on. I know the amazing brides I get to meet and work with on a daily basis have all of these thoughts on their mind too, so I’ve decided to blog about my wedding planning experience. The highs, the lows and everything in between. Let’s do this!

Now that I’m engaged, conversations with old friends normally lead to three questions:

1. Can I see the ring?
2. Have you picked a date?
3. So I’m sure you have every detail already planned, right?!

Let’s just go straight to number three… NO I have hardly anything planned. Just because I’m a wedding photographer doesn’t mean I’m a wedding magician. If anything it has been a bit harder as a wedding industry vendor to focus and narrow in on exactly what I want for my wedding. Sure I have been “pinning” pretty wedding things for years but now this is reality. And reality can’t be copied and pasted from the internet.

We got engaged on October 22nd and picked our venue and date in late November. I cannot tell you how long that month of nothingness felt. Everyone wanted to know details of our planning and I had nothing to tell them. The time of pre-wedding date selection is STRESSFUL, so to the newly engaged ladies out there know that you are not alone and that is gets easier- promise!!

When picking our date I knew two things: I did not want to wait a year to marry Sam & I wanted a weekend-long camping wedding. Ideally I wanted to get married in May; a 6 month engagement sounded perfect. But that dream was crushed when the venue I had secretly “booked” in my mind years ago did not have any dates until 2016. NO STINKIN’ WAY. So we moved forward with a google search “Southern California camping wedding venues” and ended up finding the perfect place with ONE DATE AVAILABLE. August 30, 2015. Booked, done, signed sealed delivered.  (More on that perfect venue coming with next week’s post!)

So a summer wedding. That means dahlias, strapless dresses, and long nights under cafe lights. We started looking a photos online and in magazines to figure out the feel we wanted for our wedding. If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to start an inspiration board in the early stages of your planning. Pick a theme/ vision and stick with it. It actually is a process very similar to branding a photography business… so think of it all as your wedding’s “brand” and do your research before buying (or signing) anything. I really wanted a barefoot beach wedding so something in the woods was a compromise for Sam and I, but bringing in a beach vibe isn’t against the rules. Our vision is something elegant with boho touches and we are embracing the natural elements of our venue while avoiding the word “rustic.” Here are some of my inspiration pages that are going in my planning binder (I’ll blog about that too!):

And print things out! Everything changes when you get photos off of a screen and on to paper… 😉

With those million questions, a few have finally been answered. And there are still plenty left for next week. Feel free to comment with any questions or topics you’d like to read about!