One Year!

Today marks one year to our wedding! We get one more year of betrothal before the wedding, and then married life begins! Today we visited Solvang and Los Olivos to enjoy some wine tasting and quality time with Terry's mom, Sharron. The perfect weather and great company made for an awesome day.

So far, Terry and I have loved the engagement. Some people question the length of our engagement, since by the time next July 9th rolls around it will have been 23 months since Terry proposed, but we have no qualms about taking our time with the wedding. We only get to be fiance and fiancee once, so we like the idea of extending that time. Plus, two of our favorite couples are getting married this summer! Heidi and Edward will wed next Saturday, July 17, and Winnie and Brian will marry on August 7. Terry and I feel very lucky to be a part of these weddings, to hear all the planning details, and to receive their wedding and marriage advice in the coming year!

We feel so excited to share the next year together. Our roommate (my bridesmaid Jenn) is moving out to live with her boyfriend, and we are thrilled for them even though we'll miss their company. A half-hearted apartment search and a whole-hearted agreement later, Terry and I decided not to move when Jenn leaves. We love our location in Mar Vista, near Santa Monica, we have reasonable commutes to work, we feel safe, and we love the amount of space in the two bedroom apartment. Amazingly, we already grew out of a one bedroom, and we look forward to having both a bedroom and an office/spare room. We hope to stay in this apartment through our first year of marriage, and it provides plenty of space for us to grow a little more. More than anyone, I think Terry's dad is thrilled we aren't moving, because he was always the one burdened with the bulk of moving us over the last few years! Also, not moving was one of our goals from the beginning of the year, so we can check off another one!

As far as wedding planning, the one year mark means we can really get serious about our plans. With all my down time, I have been working on the wedding guest list, organizing my Excel sheets and collecting addresses. I love using my etiquette book (Emily Post's Etiquette, a gift from Terry) to determine how we should go about planning a formal wedding, and the book has been helpful in determining our budget for each aspect of the wedding, such as save the dates and invitations. We plan to send out save the dates within the next three months (many of our guests will be coming in from out of town), so Terry needs to finish up the designs. My mom and I found favors that we love and that work great with the wine theme of the wedding. We have seen so many incredible ideas for favors, including a candy bar with a cute box or bag, or a photo booth, which I hear is a blast. Looking for favors is easy online with websites like My Wedding Favors, Little Things Favors, and WeddingFavors.org. The tough thing is finding something unique and useful, as opposed to something everyone will simply throw away. I have also heard of couples making a donation in lieu of giving individual favors, which I love, but we haven't made a decision yet.

Centerpieces. Ugh. I am SO not looking forward to centerpieces. First of all, no flowers. Yes, I have seen the millions of pictures on The Knot and other sites that display gorgeous floral centerpieces, but Terry and I have agreed that we simply will not spend that kind of money on flowers. As beautiful as they look, we have decided that we want to focus our funds on other areas. So don't expect many (if any!) flowers at our wedding! Expect simple, elegant tablescapes with simple, elegant centerpieces. We want our guests to focus on each other, the food, the dancing, and, well, since it's our wedding, us! No need for all those flowers to distract everyone. I would love for the centerpieces to all be different, which should be a fun challenge for our 25+ tables. I haven't created any mockups yet, but I know we will use ivory candles, wine corks, and clear glass vases. The actual compilation is TBD.

We are so excited to be getting married in one year! Thankfully, the extended engagement has given us plenty of time to plan without stress, and we love every step of organizing our wedding. Meanwhile, we look forward to enjoying Heidi and Ed's wedding in a few days! Congratulations to a wonderful couple!