Alright, its time! A wedding planning post! I know… long overdue, but I promise we have been putting in work behind the scenes. We are not planning your average wedding. I am sure you have heard others say that in the passed, but I’ll break down the traditional chronological wedding planning timeline and show you we are putting our FInding Arizona spin on it!
Month 12
ANNOUNCE & SET A DATE: Our engagement was in Dec 2017 and you can read the post all about it here. We did not set a date right away as we wanted to enjoy the engagement and take out time. After buying a house / our venue we set the date for October because in Arizona you get Spring or Fall Weddings. So 12 months prior to the “I do’s” our friends and family had already heard the announcement.
CHOSE PRIORITIES & SET A BUDGET: We are fortunate to have the wedding venue taken care of because I have always dreamed of a backyard wedding and could never justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on one day when you can invest it into the rest of your lives! But, our backyard has a ways to go before it’s featured in Phoenix Home and Garden Magazine. We call our situation unique to our wedding planner because when she wants to talk budget, we want to talk home rennos! Our biggest purchase for the event will be the block wall we will be installing in the next few months!
PLANNER & THEMES: Our wedding planner is Paige of Front Paige Events and we couldn’t be more fortunate. She is detail oriented, determined and of course a Finding Arizona Podcast Alumni! You can listen to our episode with Paige here. She is sending us emails to keep us on track and when we have meetings with vendors she has questions prepared for us. She is amazing! Speaking of questions, one thing we are figuring out is how to word our theme on our invites! No children - I love them, but this is an adult ONLY party and Black and White Attire ONLY- we want everyone part of the wedding party!
Month 11
CREATE AN INSPO BOARD: I already shared that I was never the type who had this day already planned out. I don’t dream of a fairy tale wedding and when I switched my mind from planning a wedding to planning the best party ever, things became fun! I am constantly adding pins to my board which you can follow here. But, after meeting with a medium she said I need to see what I want everyday to manifest it! So I printed out my pins and took it old school with a vision board- constantly adding things!
DRAFT A GUEST LIST: I feel like I should do an entire post about this because WOW! Between asking for lists from the parents and us figuring out how many we can fit in our backyard without ordering a port a john we solidified on 75 including ourselves and the vendors! We know we will break hearts sending out the invites!
Month 10
BOOK A PHOTOGRAPHER: With the unbelievable support from this community and this beautiful group called the Honey Book we found Matt Vivanco of MVivanco Photography! We met over brunch getting to know him and sharing our story! We know for sure he will be more than our photog, but a true friend!
HAVE ENGAGEMENT PHOTOS TAKEN: We have done so many great shoots with photographers from the podcast that we have sessions of engagement photos to choose from. Starting with a couples boudoir shoot we did before we were even engaged With Katrina Call and from an engagement shoot with a photographer who flew out from Ohio to shoot a wedding and needed some real life models! But on of my favorites are the photos featured in this post are from Jen Jenkins. You can hear the entire episode here.
Month 9
START SHOPPING FOR THE WEDDING DRESS: Okay, I promise this will be my next post because let me just say I WON IT & it is everything I could never imagine!
BUILD YOUR GIFT REGISTRY: Being homeowners has allowed us to start filling up our gift registry from day 1. Power tools, kitchen gadgets, even furniture! We have an amazon list going and everytime we think of something we need we add it to the registry!
Weekdays are spent sending emails and prepping for weekends. Weekends are spent pulling weeds and scheduling meet up with vendors. We are enjoying the journey and I love being able to share it with you all. Looking forward to months 8-5 !
XoXo
Britt
