The Wedding Planning Commences...

Who knew that planning a wedding would be so complicated?! Obviously, being a girl, I have dreamt about the day the man who would become my husband would propose to me and the beautiful wedding that would follow. I have dreamt about it and formulated plans, colour schemes, ideas. Only I never had to think about practicality; how all the plans would fit together and more importantly, how much they would cost.

Yes, cost, the bug bear of my life and currently, the wedding. Add the word 'wedding' to anything and it seems to triple in price. Obviously on a Saturday in June there are limited reasons for wanting a marquee venue for 120 people. It doesn't take a genius to work out what is going on. What it might take though is a genius to work out how to incorporate all our plans and ideas into a budget that we, my parents and my future parents-in-law can afford.

Thankfully, M and I have pretty similiar ideas about what our wedding should be like. It took us about 10 minutes to agree on our ideal location followed by a week convincing the investors. We know what we would like in theory but finding the people to make it a reality is slower to come. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is finding out pricing - most companies wish to provide individual quotes which abstractly is fine but rather time consuming when you are looking for ideas. What we immediately want to know is roughly what their average quote is. Do they routinely charge over £1000 or is it more like £500. I don't really want to waste my time getting personalised quotes to find that it was never ever going to be within my budget at all.

Other observations regarding the wedding business this week relate to church weddings. I can see why people don't bother if they are happy with a civil/registry office wedding. Aside from the initial meeting with the vicar there are at least three wedding preparation sessions to attend (well intentioned I am sure, but after 6 and half years together we are already aware that people tend to like to give and receive affection in different ways...) and many many extra costs to pay. And that's after the realisation that you can marry in one of about 4 churches unless you have a 'special connection' and a licence from the Arch-Bishop, which is what we are relying on, a London wedding not been an attractive or affordable option. I know they don't want people entering into marriage thoughtlessly but surely the church as a whole should be making it easier not harder to have a church wedding.

Still, small rantings aside, I am so excited at being engaged and really looking forward to the wedding already. I keep looking at M seeing how much happier he looks and thinking this man is going to be my husband. He really will be with me forever. And after that, wedding budgets don't seem to matter that much after all.