Our Wedding: 9 Months to Go!

This month (two days late, but who's counting?) will probably be the biggest update we'll have for the rest of the year - we feel like we pretty much planned our whole wedding in September, and it has been amazing!

As you know, we went home to Idaho three weeks ago, and most of the trip, besides the awesome adventures we had and excessive food we ate, was wedding, wedding wedding.

We had a plan made with Brandi, our wedding planner, to see our venue in Garden Valley two days after we arrived (as we'd only previously seen it covered in snow). Our plans were dramatically thwarted as Southern Idaho had a huge thunderstorm, which caused floods, hit a few trees, and caused a large mudslide that cut off the road to access Garden Valley for two days! When we eventually got up to see the venue almost a week later, they were still clearing mud from the road. No matter, the venue was still gorgeous - actually better than we'd even hoped, so green, beautiful and quiet. We planned with Brandi where we'd have the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception, and found a few lovely places for photos and our first look.

We met with our florist, who is so wonderful - he's going to get us peonies, which are my favourite flower, and we sorted out everything from centrepieces to bouquets, ceremony flowers, boutonnieres, and we are so excited to see them!

We had a menu tasting, where we sampled mini yorkshires with a sliver of steak on them - we were really excited to try this one, as we don't have yorkshire puddings in the USA, so we were curious what they'd come up with. Luckily, our caterer did her research, as they were delicious - slightly more muffin-y than usual, but simply wonderful. And the chicken we had - well let's just put it this way - we're told most brides don't eat much on their wedding day, but there is no way we are missing this meal!!

It was funny, I learned something about myself during these appointments that I already kind of knew, but not quite how... bad it was. I'm the worst mix of my parents in that I'm a perfectionist like my mother, with a short fuse like my father - that practically spells Bridezilla! I just don't have good immediate reactions when something I've been dreaming about isn't feasible, and I have the world's most transparent face. So when I was told that tall centrepieces may not be a good idea at an outdoor wedding because one gust of wind and they're gone, I just couldn't hide the disappointment on my face. And the thing is, apparently it's the kind of face that people just want to make go away, because I had three people trying to come up with every suggestion under the sun to fix it. It wasn't working, so I said we should move on and come back to it, but then luckily, Will the florist had the most genius and unique idea which we loved! And so annoyingly, just like that, the face was gone. I've really got to work on that.

Anyway, back to the wedding stuff. We had our design meeting with Brandi, where we picked linens, worked on invitations with bridesmaid Julia, spoke about seating arrangements, and showed her our bridesmaid dresses. 

Speaking of which, we LOVE our bridesmaids dresses, and are so happy they came back into stock - they are richer in colour than we'd thought, which is perfect, and they have POCKETS! Which I have decided are the best feature in any dress ever.

And the bit you've all been waiting for - WE GOT OUR WEDDING DRESSES!!! We went to David's Bridal with my mum, with the idea to get the first experience out of the way in a place with lots of different styles and dresses - they were just absolutely fantastic. We were a tad nervous about the 'gay wedding' thing here, as it is Idaho after all, but aside from the initial 'Oh, you're getting married on the same day?' 'To each other? Oh, I thought it was like Bride Wars!' thing, they couldn't have been more helpful or excited for us. They pulled up our account on davidsbridal.com, where we had favourited dresses, and they brought those dresses out for us. I knew that the first dress I tried on was 'the one', but I tried on a few more to be sure. Sarah tried on two, with our associate asking what she did/didn't like about each one, and she said 'I have the perfect dress for you!' Came back with one that was just so Sarah, so perfect - so she bought the third dress she tried on! Two dresses in 1.5 hours - that wasn't bad at all!

When the dresses come in as they were ordered, they'll be shipped here to the UK - luckily, a David's Bridal is opening in London next week, as they've said they'll do our alterations 12 weeks before the wedding - then we'll bring them back with us! Perfect!

We weren't very traditional as we tried our dresses together, but this was just perfect for us - not only did we get the excitement of seeing our best friend and partner choose the dress of her dreams, and it made it so special to see Sarah's reaction, we will still get the surprise of seeing each other in them with the full hair, makeup, jewelry etc on the day, and we will barely remember seeing the dress 9 months ago then! :)

And finally, we had our makeup trial and engagement photos, which you've seen here and here. The makeup trial was so much fun, and we really feel she made us the best versions of ourselves, without over-doing our faces. Can't wait to have her do our makeup on the day! And we still can't believe how wonderful our engagement photos are. Just so happy about them!

So phew! Was that enough wedding update? We feel like we planned our whole wedding this month haha!

Isn't it weird to think that if we got preggo now, we'd have a baby AT our wedding?? Mind blown. Such a weird thing to say, Laura.