How to plan a wedding in 80 days - the decision

When we chose to not have a big wedding, we weren’t even engaged yet. I don’t love planning, I didn’t want to spend a huge load of money on one day, nor did I think it was necessary and neither Steve nor I like being the centre of attention.

 

After we got engaged, I opened pinterest a few times and each time, within 10 minutes I had closed it again. I just wasn’t interested. I didn’t care about table arrangements, I didn’t care about flowers, I didn’t want to pick cars. None of it mattered. All I wanted to do was marry Steve.

We thought about eloping, we thought about having an intimate wedding with just immediate family...basically, we thought about all the options that would require little effort to plan. Time went on and none of those options felt right. How could we exclude our parents from this day? To me, marriage is a really romantic and personal thing and whilst I didn’t want to get married in front of hundreds of people, I did want my parents there at the very least.

A couple of weeks in to the engagement, it was clear there would be no wedding soon. We wanted to buy a house and travel and paying for a wedding didn’t factor in to that. Steve and I decided we would have an engagement party in a few months’ time so we could include all our friends and family with the intention that most wouldn’t be invited to the wedding. This was our party for everyone to celebrate us. It was simple, it was easy to plan and I didn’t even need to decorate the venue. We booked it in and went and had a meeting with the events planner at the venue who went through a list of things we hadn’t even thought of. Will you have a photobooth? Will you have a cake? Will you need balloons? I didn’t care for any of that. I just wanted some good food, a bar tab and some furniture to be re-arranged. The room we picked was beautiful and even if we chose to bring anything else, it would be lost in the décor.

Later on we decided to stay for dinner and as we ate I pondered out loud how it would be nice to have a low fuss wedding reception in a place like this. Steve thought for a bit and said ‘well, we can’. Huh, how? He then suggested that we just get married the morning of the engagement party and then let everyone know afterwards at our party. At that moment, a weight lifted off our shoulders. THIS was right and it felt right. It felt like us.

And so, we planned our small intimate, immediate family only wedding for just 106 days after we got engaged and about 80 days after we made the decision.