One month to go - looking back..

When I got engaged my already married sister gave me some great advice, choose three things you care about, focus on those and let the rest go.  And I took it to heart. My number #1-  location, we chose the Commanders Mansion in Watertown, a Civil War era mansion tucked way on a few acres of meticulous landscape in the heart of an urban area. We fell in love with it the moment we stepped inside and in the month long search following – we felt like we HAD to look elsewhere – nothing lived up to the gold standard of our Mansion. I was a Commander’s Bride and we knew it was the place.

Unfortunately, it necessitated the DIYing of my #2, invitations and my #3 decorations and everything else in the wedding.  Because we were trying for a $10,000 wedding, we also had to increase our budget. But it was also a gift to me. Choice #1 gave me the chance to become intimately connected with every aspect of our wedding celebration, making each element uniquely our own, special touches of personality added throughout, completely us and not someone else’s version of us.  It allowed for my Type A, need for control personality to be put to good use, I only had to worry specifically about three things.

Well three things are never really just three things. But I have also been very lucky as all the "things" of my wedding fall in place.  My wedding cake is a gift from a baker friend with whom I work….I get to try out all the tests he does. My bridal necklace, a gift from a jeweler friend, we designed it together one rainy Saturday afternoon in the midst of tea and chatting.  My invitations, a labor of love, designed, cut, glued, folded, reglued sitting on the couch in my living room AFTER an all day round one of putting them together with my maids and mom. My cats love to bat around the scraps of paper strewn hither and yon and I keep finding snippets of ribbon stashed in their secret hiding places. 

I don’t care about bacon wrapped scallops or specifically designed centerpieces that will die on three days.

But more about later.....