Giveaways

The wedding blog world is full of giveaways! I don't enter too many yet because we don't have any wedding details we need to fill yet but there are some that I always find to enter. The photo album sweepstakes are always entered. Even if we get an album from a photographer we could always use more to give away to family and such. I also just entered one from the Knotty Bride here. It's $100 to spend on WHATEVER at Lulu's. That's one I could always find a use for!

New Inspiration

one of our possible ceremony locations

My Christmas present from the Lindells started arriving this week. I received magazine subscriptions! My Islands & Caribbean Travel+Life are providing MANY leads in venues after our first pick fell through. Martha Stewart Weddings blog also just published a post about affordable boutique hotels. I've already heard back from one which we could possibly book out the WHOLE thing for a weekend! It MAY even fit into our budget as well! SHOCK! The problem is we may not actually have enough guests to fill it. So far I've contacted resorts all over the Caribbean but there are several on the list in Jamaica. We want to make things not only affordable for us but also for our guests. We're definitely going to get married in the early off-season so rooms & flights will be cheaper. We would also love to include a couple of meals for our guests beyond the reception.

Now I'm swimming in numbers. Every time I hear back from a venue I get a slew of prices. Each venue includes different things in their packages as well. It'll take a lot of time to wade through the options with each place!

Getting Started!

Wow! I finally contacted our dream venue today. I heard back VERY quickly (definitely before I was mentally prepared) and it is expensive, even with the friend discount. :(. I'm refusing to call it quits on this venue though. After spending my entire afternoon in turmoil over the disappointing information I finally got home and had time to do some research. I contacted a few caterers and photographers to get some pricing information. I chose these because they are our top priorities. (well the food is for both of us. Not sure how Ben feels about the photos). If we can get some reasonable prices out of them, maybe we can make it work. Here's hoping anyway...

In other news, before Christmas Ben and I had lunch with a friend of mine from high school who was visiting the city with her boyfriend. I hadn't seen her in years and really enjoyed catching up a bit and meeting her boyfriend and giving them some advice about the city. We didn't get a chance to see them again during their short visit. (By now you're probably wondering why I'm talking about this - the point is coming!) On the last day of their visit THEY GOT ENGAGED! They didn't share the news with the world (aka FaceBook) until after they returned to Florida. CONGRATS LYNN AND CHI!

They are not the only couple to get engaged since we have. One we know has already set a date before ours. No, it doesn't bother us. It kinda bothered me when people who started dating after us got engaged and married before us but now that we're engaged I could care less what other people's timelines are.

In reality it isn't happeneing all that fast. I have plenty of time to gather information and make smart decisions. Decisions that we can be happy about. Decisions that suit our needs and our budget.

If you made it this far - THANKS! I'm sure there will be plenty more rambling posts in the future but I promise I will try to balance them out with pretty things as well. I'll leave you with this:

(personal photo taken from our dream venue)