The Five-Month Engagement

We are several steps closer to having A Plan for the Hebard-Milburn wedding. I was up the river (short for Monte Rio-Guerneville-Rio Nido-Jenner on the Russian River) for my friend's bachelorette weekend and we had some Bellini-fueled wedding planning conversations in the back of a limo en route to some Sonoma wineries that kind of solidified my priorities and filled out some areas that were just kind of fuzzy and blank before. We're definitely set on our venue and we're meeting sometime next week to go over the menu and logistics. The restaurant is a great deal for a brunch buy-out and our wedding budget spreadsheet is now pleasingly full of small numbers.

After some back and forth on design input from various parental figures, we've settled on an invitation design that pleases everybody.

It has the bold pop of color that Lane wanted and an understated font and layout that our mothers preferred. And I got to keep the red lettering. This is just an online mock up, so the alignment is all wonky. I'll share once we get the final proof from the printer. I really wanted our full names on the invitation, but they're just too long. Oh well.

My mom and I have been communicating via Pinterest on the dress design. I was really not enjoying the dress part of this whole thing because I had no idea what I would want to wear and our plans kept changing.  I started gathering pictures of dresses with short sleeves, high boatnecks and tailored bodices. I still haven't decided on the length, but I'll go with either midi or full. You can check out our dress inspiration here. I'm hoping we can squeeze in a brunch and Britex date this Saturday to look at fabrics and patterns. I also think I'd like a sparkly gold belt to wear at my waist.

I really can't say enough about how having a short engagement has helped keep things focused in our planning. I'm the kind of person that gets seriously overwhelmed by variety and choices, so not having time to dwell on possibilities has saved me at least one panic attack. The short engagement is also helping us stick to a small budget ($5,000). If we pushed the date into next spring, we would have saved more money and probably spent it on useless crap and then I would have felt guilty on my honeymoon. Irish guilt is so much fun, you guys.

(image of the invitation mock-up from Paper Source)