Officially Officiating

Because we are already legally married, we don't have any of those pesky legal requirements to meet when we have our wedding ceremony. The most glaring of those requirements is the person that marries you. (There actually are some wording requirements as well as that piece of paper.) Now we don't have to have a complete stranger marry us, anyone can! As soon as we realized this we put our heads together to identify the perfect person. We wanted someone that has known both of us for as long as possible (obviously) and was married. We wanted someone who has gone through this and knows how it feels to commit to someone else for life.

First, we thought of our parents - they've known one of us since birth and the other from very early on in our relationship. However, we thought this may be unfair. Only one parent can have that privilege of marrying us. So we decided we could honor and highlight our parents in other ways (another post for another day).

With our parents out of the running we looked to our guest list to our married friends. There actually aren't that many of them (we are the first of our group of college friends - except him - to get married) so it became quite clear. Our dearest friend Kevin!

Kevin and I in Feb 2009

Kevin at his rehearsal dinner June 2011

Kevin, Rachel (his wifey), and his family at his rehearsal dinner June 2011

Now comes the fun part of writing our own ceremony. I've found some elements that I do like, for example a ring warming ceremony & a wine box ceremony, but for the most part I have no idea what this is going to look like. Luckily, we have a while to work together to create the perfect ceremony for us.

Congrats Erin & Jon!

Somewhere in San Francisco, my best friend got engaged last night! They have been together as long as Ben and I have and he is a great man! Erin and I have known each other since freshman year of high school and I'm not going to embarrass us both by posting pictures of our friendship but here's the beautiful couple during their trip to NYC last summer. Congrats you guys I love you both!

Photographer Peril

Once we had a venue, next on my list was to book our other big vendors - photography & videography. Tensing Pen requires that we use their preferred vendors and the coordinator quickly sent me 2. After checking out both of their websites, I had a favorite but decided to e-mail both for information. The runner-up was unavailable and sent me the information for one of their associates that was and I was NOT impressed with his photography. So my decision should be easy right?!? WRONG!

When I first contacted our favorite photographer they were available, had reasonable prices, and mentioned that they were shooting 2 weddings at Tensing Pen in the coming weeks and would send me a link to the photos when they were done. GREAT! This was back in June. Come July, still nothing so I e-mailed to check-in. A little while later I get a reply that they are still being edited but should be up soon. A couple of weeks go by and still nothing. This time I'm told that the couples didn't want their photos posted on the blog but some of them would be posted on a private site and a password would be sent to me by the end of the week. Well it is now September and I haven't seen any photos from Tensing Pen like I was told I would.

At this point I decided to e-mail Tensing Pen's coordinator about our situation. She immediately followed up with both photographers. Runner-up claimed to have never heard from us and the favorites just told her to remind me that not all couples want to share their photos but they were still working on photos done at Tensing Pen. I thanked the coordinator and set her straight about our runner-up contacting us and giving us an associate that we were NOT thrilled with. I e-mailed the favorite for more detailed information about the packages to see if they can accomplish what we (I) want.

It costs $500 to book a vendor outside of Tensing Pen. If I start doing research now and contacting new photographers on Jamaica I'l run into plenty that aren't available on our date. Flying in photographers from elsewhere is out of the question because of budget. I'm close to booking the favorite because I'm afraid I'll end up without a photographer if I don't book soon. Their work on their website and blog is beautiful and they offer a trash the dress session. So what would you do?

My Cousin's Wedding

We just returned from a quick trip to Arkansas during the long weekend to attend my cousin's beautiful wedding. They planned a beautiful wedding at the Stables on the Hill and definitely took advantage of the beauty of Northwest Arkansas. Here's a few of our photos from the evening!

The Stables at Sunset

The couple during their vows

Husband & Wife!

Seasonal flowers were on the tables, in the bouquets, and boutonnieres

The sun was setting and the party was starting

Destination Details

So now that I've started really planning this shindig called a wedding I wanted to share some details that we needed to consider before we could get the ball rolling.

One of the biggest considerations was the time of the year. The first question after we announced our engagement was when. The first thing that comes to mind when you mention the tropics, at least for me and my family, is hurricane season. Hurricane season runs from the beginning of June to the end of November. We are actually entering the height of the season right now.

photo courtesy of Hurricane Science

Throughout the season there is a fairly predictable pattern of where storms form and move. Adding to that is the heat, while I'm from Florida and have been to the Caribbean in August with no problem, our guests may not appreciate that so that eliminated all of the summer between these two factors. I HATE the fall and winter now because I HATE cold weather. While fall does have some beautiful days, I find it hard to enjoy them because I know they are coming to an end.

Photo from Sodahead.com

So obviously, we wanted to have a spring wedding. Done right? WRONG!

The spring in the Caribbean screams SPRING BREAK!

Photo from beachbelievers.com

The last thing I want around my wedding a bunch of drunk college kids. (Not that we're all going to be totally sober the entire weekend or anything, but that's different). Fortunately, after spring break season (after Easter-ish) it becomes the 'low season' for most of the resorts. Low season = cheaper prices. Our resort is almost half the price of the high season in the low season. We also wanted to avoid May because Ben's little sister is a senior in high school and needs to be home for AP tests, prom, and graduation. We were quickly running out of weekends!

Image from just allcalendar.org

I narrowed it down to the last 3 weeks of April. When we found our resorts the last 2 happened to fall in the low season so we picked April 21 and sent in our request. I received a prompt reply that it was booked as well as the following weekend but the previous weekend was open. Only hitch - Sunday April 15 was the beginning of low season. I was deadset on getting married on the weekend to minimize the time I was asking our family and friends to miss work to be with us so I went out on a limb and asked if we could secure low season pricing for our guests. After a few days of waiting (it felt like an eternity because I was busy showing off the resort to anyone who would listen), the manager agreed! YAY! We quickly sent them our deposit and had our wedding date of April 14, 2012. We were required by contract to have our guests stay for 3 nights so we will all be in Jamaica together April 13-16!

For most couples planning a wedding transportation includes limos, buses, etc to transport themselves from to and from the venues and maybe their guests if need be. We didn't have to worry about that but we were asking our guests to travel over 1500 miles to join us. I have the ladies of weddingbee to thank for explaining the process of getting flight discounts for their guests at their destination weddings. I quickly e-mailed the 3 major carriers that we fly when we visit family - American, United, and Delta - about securing a discount. Delta never e-mailed me back (SHAME!), United required everyone to purchase their tickets as a group, way ahead of time and NO cheaper than the searches I was turning up in Orbitz, but American happily supplied us with a code for our guests flying from ANY city to Jamaica. It's only 5% but its something. So far my parents are the only ones who have booked flights and didn't use it but hopefully someone will be able to take advantage of it.

We now also have several days to fill with our guests. We're not only planning our wedding and reception but events on Friday, Sunday, and Monday for them as well. Luckily, we're pretty much taking over this boutique resort so it will be easy for us to just relax together around the property. We're also working with our resort to plan an excursion off the property for Sunday. Even if it's just to the beach, where we can explore, it will be something to do that our guests don't have to think about. My goal is to give our guests as little to think about and plenty of things to do once they land in Jamaica.

Grown up things (the good and the bad)

We survived Irene! NYC actually was spared from the brunt of it. Just lots of rain, very little wind. I got an e-mail from Saja today reassuring me that my dress was fine.

We will end up having an engagement of just of 20 months. Unfortunately, life doesn't get put on hold during this blissful time and good and bad things happen.

One major life change was the death of my maternal grandmother. Her death was not unexpected but the ramifications in the family were. I'm not going to go into any details but it has been hard. We have it easier than my parents for sure. We're a few states away but that also makes it more difficult. Flying out after the funeral was so very hard for me and Ben not being there didn't help very much either. We're looking onwards and upwards and trying to stay optimistic about the situation and supportive of my parents.

With Ben's birthday this summer, he aged out of his family's health care coverage. I get coverage through work but Ben is an independent contractor. This means health insurance is VERY expensive. Even if he joins the freelancers union, it isn't a very cheap option. So we decided it made sense for us to become legally married in the State of New York so I could add him to my coverage at work. We had tossed around the idea for a few months before we came to the decision that this would be the best for us. We talked about when we would celebrate our anniversary (wedding date), when I would change my name (after honeymoon), and a few other things. I also wanted to be very sure my parents were comfortable with this decision and supportive of it. It took a few conversations before they understood and fully supported us.

On July 28, 2012, we were legally wed by a city clerk. (On a side note, this was the first week of gay marriage and it was very exciting to see gay couples there too!) Our recently married friends were our witnesses and within 20 minutes we were married and on our way to dinner to celebrate. Everyone once and awhile we call each other husband and wife and remind each other that we're married but we still introduce each other as fiance/e. Most of our friends and extended families don't even know (until now...). We're not keeping it secret (obviously) but it is a grey area but the more people that know the grayer it gets.

With our new legal status came an avalanche of paperwork. We first worked on all the insurance papers and are now consulting with our CPA (Ben's mom) about taxes. Because Ben is an independent contractor and his own business our taxes are confusing (to say the least) so she's analyzing whether if we should file together or keep it separate.

We also are starting to combine our finances. We've opened new accounts closed others and are still getting our new cards, checks, etc. Totally boring and not fun, especially when you add in budgeting with our new combined finances (I'll write a whole post on that in the next month as we are working with said budget).

Wedding Website

I've mentioned our wedding website a few times now but haven't talked about the process. We didn't have to use one of the usual ways to get a wedding website (theknot.com, ourwedding.com, etc) because Ben already owned a domain. We picked our own url, layout, content, etc.

First, we had to pick our url. Should be pretty straight forward right? We wanted to be cute and witty (because we could) so it was much more difficult than it should have been. We had to include benlindell.com because that's the domain he owns but we could add before and after it. The most obvious way we could include my name was before his so we started with amandawagy.and.benlindell.com. We probably could have stopped there but then we wouldn't have accomplished being witty or cute so we need /something. So we listed (and googled) phrases for getting married. Long list short - we decided on 'take the plunge' because that's cute and fits with the destination theme and our invitations with the cliff.

Wedding url = amandawagy.and.benlindell.com/taketheplunge

Now, I have NO idea how to build a website. I use consider myself to be pretty technologically savvy but websites don't include that. I showed Ben other websites and an outline and it was up to him on how to make it happen. Turns out a lot of people use wordpress to build websites so we worked together to pick one of there templates and then spent an hour making it the proper colors. I wish I could tell you how we did that but I have NO idea what Ben was doing so I played on Facebook. After that we started adding content. This included a photo for the banner, pages, a guestbook, and the usual components.

We let it sit like this for a couple of weeks and switched focus to the invitations. However, we were directing our guests to the website in our invitation package so we once again had to work on the website. I spent time after work expanding the outline with specific content. Finally, Ben and I had another night at home and we worked together to add the content to the pages. And by work together I mean, Ben did the fancy and confusing website stuff and I played on Facebook until he asked me to check his work in the (almost until I said so) finished form.

At this point, our guests have complete travel information (airport, airline discount, hotel, & passport), an idea of our schedule of events for the weekend, some websites to learn about Jamaica (fordor's and the travel ministry), pictures of us (through the years & engagement), and a guestbook. We still need to fill in the information about the schedule (probably will happen in January/February) and our registry information (when we start making plans for our honeymoon), but I'm happy with what we have so far.

My favorite part of the process was definitely going through both of our computers for the photos. It was a nice trip down memory lane of all the places and concerts we've gone in the past 5.5 years. You could see the many different lengths of hair I've gone through and Ben's beard has gone through as well as how much weight my awesome man has lost. Ben also made it look really awesome when you click through them (go ahead, go do it).

Our guests have started signing the guestbook and sending back RSVPs! I jump for joy every time I get a notice that someone signed the guestbook or there is an RSVP postcard waiting for me at home.