Let’s face it, wedding planning is a job.  Why else would there be a profession of wedding planners out there??  I LOVED picking out a wedding dress.  I LOVED our pre-marital counseling.  I LOVED planning our honeymoon.  I LOVED coming up with an idea for our reception, but let’s just say that I’m VERY thankful for my amazing friends who took those ideas and ran with them for the reception.  Otherwise, the reception would have been in a very boring airplane hangar.

As I was trying on wedding dresses and trying not to fall over in shock and excitement for actually getting to try them on, ideas were swarming in my head.  As I put on my dress and then tried it on again to make sure this was THE ONE, the lady assisting me put a birdcage veil on my head and it started to hit me… slowly, like a snowfall… We love to travel.  I (now we) love Paris.  I love Europe.  The dress along with the birdcage veil made me look vintage.  And that’s when it came.  With the help of my dear friend Lindsay, who is my marketing idea queen, Vintage European became the theme of our wedding!!  Yes, this all happened the day after we got engaged, but I was so excited and so relieved!!  If I had an idea, a theme, then the whole process wasn’t so overwhelming!  I could do this!!

So, I started scouring the internet for a globe logo that we could put everywhere.  I was looking at browns and ivories and trying to decide on an accent color.  Vintage suitcases and antique models of the Eiffel Tower started invading my dreams.  And before I knew it, I was overwhelmed.

Enter amazing friends.  You know the ones… they help you stay calm when you start to get too anxious.  They help you rein in your ideas that have started to get a little too extravagant.  They flat out pick out your flowers for you because it’s just easier that way :-)  And Pinterest?  Oh my… I love Pinterest, I do!  But, it can be a bottomless pit of good ideas that an engagement of four months just doesn’t have time for.  And trust me, I tried to make time.  But, I think I was a little too ambitious.  Just a few days before the wedding I had to admit to myself that some of these things, some of the details I was wanting to have weren’t going to happen because I just didn’t have time.  And you know what?  It was totally fine!  It was totally and completely fine.

It took me until after the wedding to realize how detail crazy I had gotten.  I’d been on too many wedding blogs and had spent too much time scouring Pinterest all for the sake of having beautiful spreads in our wedding album.  Now, don’t get me wrong, there is NOTHING wrong with details at a wedding.  I LOVE THEM!  Obviously :-)  And I love photographing them at weddings!  But, I just wasn’t realistic in thinking through what it would take to get those details at the wedding.  I was working at church, I was running a photography business, I was planning a wedding, and preparing for our marriage.  There just wasn’t time for a plethora of details.  But, there’s a bit of a stubborn streak inside of me that wanted to make it happen.  I wanted the wedding and reception to flow, I wanted people to arrive and have no doubt what the theme was, I wanted it to reflect us and who we were as a couple.  But, I think I let that last part get overshadowed a little :-)

Ok Sabrina, what’s your point?  My point is, make your wedding about YOU.  The two of you are the reason you’re having the wedding in the first place, so let it reflect who you guys are as a couple!  And, something that I’m sure my friends told me plenty of times but I only realized after the fact… it’s ok to go simple.  It’s ok to not have flowers at every table at the reception.  It’s ok if you don’t have details flowing over every table.  And it’s also ok, if you have the time and resources and a team of bridesmaids, to have details covering every inch of your venue!!  Regardless of what ends up happening… it’s going to be gorgeous.  Why?  Because it’s your wedding and you’re getting to marry your best friend.

One detail that was super easy for us to do was to have old fashioned Cherry Coke to toast with.
There was no way we could NOT have Cherry Coke at the wedding!
(Thanks to Kim for the awesome detail shots!)

Happy Wednesday, everyone!