It's in the Name

Well folks, the title says it all- welcome to my modern twist on happily ever after! In the ramblings to pour out over the course of, well, goodness knows how many months, you won't really find anything revolutionary. Or earth shattering. Or rebellious in terms of tradition (okay, maybe a few hand gestures towards proper etiquette and form). You'll simply find the story leading up to and the journey throughout my happy days of wedding (and life with the boy) planning.

This past Monday was a memorable day for me. The reality behind Justin and I truly starting to plan the festivities surrounding our legal binding finally set in as I confirmed the bookings for our ceremony and reception sites. Although we'd been googling and touring and scheming for a few weeks leading up to then, writing that first check definitely made my heart do a happy dance. And therein lies rebellion numero uno: we're not officially engaged yet.

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Wait, what? Yep, I said it. For all intensive purposes, we are not tangibly engaged. And by tangibly, I mean that Justin has not yet proposed marriage to me with an actual ring. Emotionally, we've been engaged for longer than I can remember now, as the "when we get married" conversations have been happening for quite some time. And to me, that's all that matters. Although there will be naysayers, I can from the heart, truthfully proclaim (and to him on multiple occassions I have) that I don't care if he doesn't slip a ring on my finger until the day we say "I do", we know we want to vow forever to one another and that's that.

So why is it that we decided to buck tradition and start planning before it's seemingly appropriate to? One, because we don't really care about following tradition (although most of Justin's knowledge base about weddings comes from tradition) and two, both of us are, by nature, planner aheaders. Not to mention the fact that anything related to weddings that needs to be booked for the event usually fills up fast once the "season" starts. For example, upon contacting our reception venue, the entire months of May and June of next year were already spoken for. And it was only the middle of April of this year. Geesh. Thank goodness we weren't really working from the "we want to get married on this date so let's see what's available angle" and more from a "let's see when the place we want is free and work around that".

Anyone else out there raise the finger to tradition and start blazing your own wedding planning trail?