Will You Marry Us?

My last highlight of wedding planning for the night, while we may have a lot of things pending, we have found an officiant!  Yes, we found someone who would be willing to perform the ceremony.

A few names came up, but our officiant will be my former Youth Minister from Sunny Hills Church of Christ, Donnie Goodwin.

Oddly enough, the first person to know about this other than Dana and I was Donnie's seven year old daughter, Abigail.  Abbie has been a really good friend to me since she was two, and one day while waiting for church to start, she said she was excited that I was going to get married.

I offered to let her in on a secret, but did the usual "promise not to tell" thing.  I figured she would probably spill the beans anyway, but it would at least make her feel special that she was in on a secret.  I told her that I was going to ask her dad to do the ceremony.

She did spill the beans, but not to Donnie.  She told her mom because she was way to excited.  You can imagine my surprise when I heard from her mom one evening at rehearsal, "I know your secret!"

I told her, "Abbie wasn't supposed to tell!"

Abbie did tell though.  She was way too excited.

Thankfully, Michelle (Donnie's wife) assured me that Abbie just told her, and had not broken her promise not to tell Donnie.

I told Michelle that Dana and I were planning to ask Donnie to do the ceremony sometime soon, but we were going to wait until we had set a date.  I also went ahead and told Michelle that I was intending to ask Abbie and her older sister, Ellie to be my flower girls.  In the meantime, Michelle promised she would keep it a secret.  I'm almost sure she will keep that a secret until I ask them.

Donnie has officiated five of my cousins weddings (four of which, I've attended).  And everytime he has officiated, he seems to have a way to make his message fit with the couple's personalities and quirks.

So when I finally made up my mind that we ought to go ahead and approach Donnie, I tried to come up with a way to ask him that didn't make it sound brother husband esque.  And when we both approached him, I said exactly what I had intended not to say.

"Donnie, will you marry us?"

Donnie's response?  "I'm sorry, I'm already married.  Thanks though."

After Dana and I had a good laugh, I asked him if he would perform the ceremony for our wedding in a year.  To which Donnie said, "Oh sure!  Of course!"

We're going to be meeting a couple times with Donnie as the date draws closer so we can discuss what we want, but for now, I'm just glad to check that off my list!

We're Dry

Okay, ladies and gentlemen.  Sit down for a moment with me while we discuss something that is of great importance.

That is, alcohol.

Look at all the pretty bottles and cans.

When Dana and I first met, we discussed the subject of alcohol and both discovered we had pretty similar beliefs about it.  We had both noted on our profiles for eharmony that we preferred no alcohol.  While neither one of us is against the consumption of alcohol, neither one of us really enjoys the taste of it and seem to prefer soft drinks or teas in its place.

This was never really an issue, until we began talking of getting married.  Both of us have guests who we know are fans of alcohol.  And in fact, Dana originally offered up that we do a "wine only" deal.  But that just seemed odd to me.

Here, our wedding is supposed to be about us.  Call me selfish, but if I'm spending money to have a ceremony where we're the center of attention, how is it not about us?    Guests should be celebrating us.  Celebrating our relationship.  Celebrating the things we like and people that we are as we become one.  Seeing how our relationship originally was established with similar beliefs that we're not that fond of alcohol, why would we all of a sudden decide to have it at our wedding?  It just makes no sense in that respect.

This also seems to be a good way to moderate behavior as well.  I have been to weddings where the guests got a little wild after having consumed alcohol.  And knowing how strong willed I am, that is not something I would tolerate in the slightest bit.  Come now, no one wants to see Melinda angry.  Let's all get along, shall we?

You probably wouldn't be lucky enough to just get a finger pointed at you.  I would probably just get right up in your face.  I'm assertive like that.

This has been a source of moderate stress as we go about breaking the news to those who do enjoy alcohol, but our hope is that for this day in particular, you would show your love for us by respecting our choice not to have it.

I Have a Binder Full of....Scribbles.

Since Dana and I have originally started setting to plan things out, we've had several great ideas between the two of us.  The only problem is, our memories are just plain not big enough to fit them all. Over the weekend, I asked Dana to go out and get me a binder so that we could have some form of organization and keep track of things we've already decided.

As such, Target was just wonderful!  We found a binder and we were on our merry way.

Right now, we're looking at the sixteenth of August 2014, for our date.  Since nothing has been booked yet though, we're hesitant to announce the date itself.  I've been treating it as if we're going to do that day though.  Finding the reception venue has really been the most difficult so far.

Reason?  Our guest list is pretty substantial.  We numbered out everyone we wanted to invite and even some plus ones, and came to a solid two hundred and twenty five if you factor in Dana and my stomachs to feed.  Almost half of it alone was my family.  And you just can't plain not invite family, that's just bad form.

This is where the binder seems to at least solve all my problems.  I have a list of venues we would like to look at and consider and once we've made our decision, we can either cross it off our list or keep it as a possibility.  It's still cutting it close though.  Some websites have said book the venue at least a year in advance, but then that leads one to think, how on earth do people not have trouble booking venues when they have an engagement period that is shorter than a year.  Silly internet.

Another struggle has been ironing out who to invite and not to invite, and who to give a plus one to and who to withhold the plus one.  I suspect that time will just have to wait and see on this one.