So as of now........we got most of our invites out!!! Only a few more to go and it's 100% final!! Today was one of many days of shopping for the HONEYMOON, I can't believe how close its all becoming....... :) This whole experience to me feels a lot easier then it really is...... we still have the menu and decorations to go over, also the whole seating arrangement. (Some of this is just for the birds)......... I'm sure I will be back on here later or tomorrow, we are having a ton of fun talking to the people on these other chat sites for cruisers!!

                                                HAVE A WONDERFUL SEPTEMBER!!!!!

                                                                 Daniel M. Place >;-)

   So, I think most of you know that the amount of planning that goes into a wedding is pretty insane! "Traditional" couples at least have a time tested way that things are done. A "Wedding Template" seems a fitting way to describe it after the past few hours(more on that in a minute). As a "non-traditional" couple though, Daniel and I have no template to follow. lol We're starting from scratch and building our own tradition as we go. From the Save the Date Cards, to the Invites, to fitting both a Ceremony and a Celebration into the same venue and making it work for us, not to mention the smaller details like what we're going to wear or the cake(yes, I know this is usually a bigger deal, it's just kind of not to us. lol) and what music to play. I very much like the idea of making this our own, of celebrating our love in the exactly the way we want. To me, it feels like we've disected the "normal" wedding into the many different parts and are trying to fit it back together, and decide which parts to keep or discard, to create something new. It's fun, but at the same time it's really stressful wondering if the vision we have for it will be realised. I'll be continuing to talk about this process as we go forward so that it will give everyone a "behind the scenes" view of what exactly could go into a "gay" wedding. Weather you're just an interested friend or family member or another "non-traditional" couple trying to plan you're own wedding, hopefully this Blog will be of some help. I know a lot of you reading this may have some curiosity about the Ceremony itself and I'll be addressing that in a later, seperate post. 

     For now, I'd like to talk about the Invitations. Most of us probably know these can generally be a fairly pricey part of the planning. There's about a billion different kinds of varrying "fanciness" and price. Some people even opt to print out their own invites(Which can have the hidden cost of ink and may or may not be cheaper depending on your circumstances. And can have varied results or extra time designing it yourself.) We knew from doing some shopping around that even just the Save the Date Cards weren't what I'd call frugal for a couple on our tight budget. We know from our friends and families that having a company design and print and ship your invites can be quite costly also. So we split the difference in a way. We ordered our Save the Date Cards through VistaPrint, and I don't think we could have been happier with the results or the price. It makes sense that VistaPrint was the first place we turned for the Invitations. Of course they had the matching items that we needed to finish up this part. We both sighed in relief that it was "just that easy". Unfortunetly, there was one detail we missed when we first glanced. The top of the invitations had the words "Together With Their Parents", which seems to imply that our parents are paying for or planning our wedding. That might work for some people, but just doesn't in our case. Our mothers will be attending the wedding, but we're doing this on our own. Daniel is working as many hours as he can at 2 different jobs, plus going to school 3 mornings a week. On top of that, I'm not ashamed to say that we also took out a small loan to help with the expenses of the wedding and honeymoon. It wasn't a large amount, but it was needed.

   Anyway, I felt as though having that wording at the top somehow took away from all of Daniel's hard work in making this happen. VistaPrint allows you to customize most everything but that was part of thier "template". Daniel tried for a while earlier in the day to work around it, but there was nothing to do on our end. So he spent the time calling VistaPrint, explaining the situation and trying to gey them to help edit the template. They were very helpful, but were unable to remove it without changing the full design. What they ended up doing for us was to basically give us a completely blank template in the same style. It removed the border and everything we liked about the original. Daniel did his best to make the blank slate into something special but neither of us knew much about how to customize using a program like they provide. I was unhappy with the results, not because Daniel didn't make it look great, but for me it felt empty and too basic. I got frustrated because it lacked the character or feel of the original design. He went to bed and I spent the next 3-4 hours figuring the program out and customizing(no joke) every individual word, the exact place it needed to go on the blank background and digging around the internet for Clip Art to spruce up the design. Yes, Clip Art! I haven't thought about Clip Art for probably a decade. Once I understood what I was doing(I actually have done this kind of thing many times, but it just wasn't any time lately and it took a while to actually click in my head that this was really similar) it was much easier and I, for the second time in one night, breathed a sigh of relief. It was quite time consuming for me, but it's pretty awesome that VistaPrint allows for sooo much customization, if you just have a little know how. I think I'm pretty proud of it, but I can't share it until they've gone out and Daniel hasn't even really had the time to see the different options I created. Yup, not only did I create 1 invite, I tweaked the design and created 3 versions. lol Pretty neat huh? So then I came to Blog. And here we are. lol 

    I'd highly reccomend VistaPrint to anyone on a budget trying to have some beautiful and unique options at a great price. I know we're having a small wedding but I think the value is high and so is the quality of what you can create. Daniel is awake now, so I'm going to let him take a look at things. I'll talk to you all soon! Lots of love, very tired! :p 

Well we did it!!!! We got the "Save the Date" cards out!!! Next thing shall be our invitations. One of many things we need to get figured out now is a DJ, then most things will almost be complete!!! Ohh......almost forgot, a cake too!!! I should have been a wedding planner in my other life.... But on a better note, things are moving along pretty easily. Most things seem to fall into place. Can't wait for for the beginning of 2015 to get here. And can't wait to see all of our friends and family together, and meet some new folks on Drews side of life! Until then.......WISH YOU ALL THE BEST!!!!!

    So we meant to have this up a little sooner but since our cards weren't going out until this coming week, it still works out ok. I have to admit that I didn't think the actual planning of a simple/non-traditional wedding would be so intense. lol I didn't think about all the little things that go into having a wedding and reception, especially a relatively small one. Having a non-traditional wedding is stressful, because you're just winging it....making it up as you go along. Starting from scratch and trying to make it your own, while still wanting it to represent something special and serious has taken a lot of talking to each other. A lot of "What do you think about this?" or "Well, how are we going to do this part?" questions come up. Most of those we still haven't figured out just yet. lol So yeah,this is all fun and exciting but difficult at the same time. We want it to be a day that we, and hopefully you, will remember as a nice event. 

    As I type this, Daniel is downstairs writing out all the addresses on envelopes for our Save the Date cards. That was the first decision we actually made about the wedding. We shopped around for different prices and styles for a few days. We threw around different theme ideas which ranged from beach type things to two grooms holding hands to full on rainbows(admittedly, that one gained bery little traction with either of us. lol). Did we want magnets? How simple or fancy should they be? Is this lady really showing me expensive Save the Date designs from a huge book filled with them?

    I wondered then, and at every step of this so far, if we were being treated any different because we were 2 guys. Afterall, although it's legal now that doesn't mean people will be open and receptive. I'm looking at all of it through some really interesting eyes. We haven't been met with any kind of predjudice at all yet, but I think there are some assumptions being made. I think that so far the people we've dealt with have assumed that since we're gay, we must have a lot of money to spend. lol I bet a lot of gay couples are facing the same, or will be soon. Some people expect that it's going to be a huge, over the top, expensive affair, with added flamboyance. :-p That's just not the case for us though. We're on a budget, a really tight one. We're paying for these things ourselves, with only one real income. Daniel is working two jobs to make the money for our wedding and the honeymoon. It's going to be a great day, no matter what's spent on it, but this is the issue so far that's been most prevalent. 

    Anyway, we turned to the internet for the Save the Date cards and fairly quickly agreed on a very nice design that we were both happy with and fit into our price range. As promised, here's a sneak peek. lol We'll post up the full images once we're sure most of the guests have recieved them. We're both going to be posting blogs as often as we can, and updating the full website as the information becomes available. We had our second meeting with the venue today, so I might write about that next and talk about the menue a little. Thanks for tuning in and joining our journey! Much Love! Talk to you again soon! We appreciate all of you out there, weather you're coming to our day or just following along with warm wishes! :)