A Bride's Diary: Katie & Mark

Hi all,

You will know by now that it has been longer than I intended since I last wrote. Between a hectic month or so at work and a couple of weekends away, I have not found any spare moments to dedicate to blogging. I think this means my original promise has technically been broken, but Victoria has forgiven me, so hopefully you can too. I shall endeavour to blog my little heart out from this point forward.

Since the last time I wrote, a few key pieces of the wedding planning cloth have been stitched together. So I thought I would chat a little bit about them here...

The big one - the date!

Well, wasn't this a toughie! We started thinking about the big date a few weeks after we got engaged. Our friends and family were not going to let us ponder on it for too long - it seemed they were becoming impatient.

We started out thinking of the obvious stuff - what will the weather and temperature be like? Particularly important aspects given the frequency with which I faint in temperatures over 30 degrees. So we were thinking September-ish or May-ish. Also, we didn't really want to wait a particularly long time, so we were hoping we could get May 2011 to work for us. That would be just over a year to get everything organised - an achievable goal we thought.

But with both family and very close friends currently resident many thousands of miles of ocean and earth away, this was always going to be a rather troublesome aspect of the planning process. Trying to schedule our wedding between an overseas trip for another family wedding, and the return of our closest friends to Australia, was proving difficult and rather emotional at times. So I decided to bow out of the date choosing process altogether.

Now this might seem crazy, and at first I had only mentioned it in jest in a moment of frustration, but it turned out to be pure genius. I couldn't manage to keep my emotions out of it, so the best option was to keep me out of it all together. So my mother, sister and fiance sat down for a cuppa and picked a date. All I asked for was a 10 days cooling-off period, just to check there weren't going to be any crucial clashes. I suppose it might all seem very business-like, but it worked, so I'm backing my decision!

And 03 September 2011 it is.

The pros - plenty of time to plan and unless it is unseasonally hot there is unlikely to be any fainting. The cons - none really, we're getting married after all, and that's pretty awesome.

I should say though, that if I hadn't been so uncharacteristically irrational about the date for the first six months of the engagement, we might have been married by now! So a few top tips for you if I may:

1. Keep the practical aspects front and centre.

2. Make a list of people you absolutely can't live without on your wedding day - and make it SHORT - you can't possibly please everyone.

3. Know when to let go of an impractical date, or when to let someone else just decide for you.

Now onto the photographer, florist, stationer, venue...I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Until next time...

Katie