preliminary "plans" part 1

(read on to find out why these are hardly plans)

Sometimes people have a short engagement and a small party, sometimes a short engagement and a big party, sometimes a long engagement and a big party.... but rarely do people have a long engagement and a small party. I'm afraid it's going to feel so anti-climactic.

The thing is, Chris hopefully will be booked until December 2009. If people continue to like him and want to hire him as long as he wants he will only have two week-long breaks (at different times) between now and then (one this December and one next April). So, it's hard to have an exact date yet... two tentative ones I've thought about (while entering contests to win things) are December 14, 2009 and January 11, 2010. To me the January date seems better because Christmas will be over and everyone knows everything is more expensive at Christmas. January has the least amount of weddings for the year which would knock prices down AND we're going to get married on a Monday which will be better still.

I hate that, though. I really want to get married outside and that's pretty much impossible for Ohio in winter. I just feel like outside weddings make more sense... but even if we got married in April (right before prime wedding season) you can never trust Ohio weather. It could be 80 degrees or 20 degrees in April.

So, indoor winter wedding it is. For now. I mean, we can't plan anything this far in advance. If I had to chose RIGHT NOW I would get married in this butterfly dress that I saw and loved on "American Idol." But I don't know if I will still want to do that in 18-19 months! I might think that's a horrible idea then. Plus, this dress is $400. That's.... a lot. For me.

And there, perhaps, is the good thing to come out of our long engagement. We have absolutely no disposable money. My parents have no money and although my sister and Chris's parents have all offered to help it's not like they're rolling in dough. We HAVE to save some money in this period of time otherwise there will be NOTHING. I did some preliminary math and figured that if we could save $250 for 17 months we could make $4000, which could cover a small wedding and a honeymoon to Disney World. Unfortunately, we'd have to pay for things BEFORE the wedding and there is no way on earth we'd be able to save $250 a month working as ACTORS. So, I have no idea what is going to happen and how we are going to make this work. But oh.... we're gonna get married. I have no idea how, but we MUST.

Another crazy problem is the fact that BOTH of our mother's have baked wedding cakes professionally. A long time ago, before we were engaged (the date of our engagement is the new zero to me... so this would be, like, 8 months B.E.), we were talking about how it would be hard to get married because we're both so poor. I said, "Well... at least the cake is covered. My mom can do that."
"MY mom can do that too."
"Oh yeah. But... My mom would really WANT to do it!! She'd be really upset if she couldn't!!"
"So would my mom."
It was then that I decided that if we got married, there would have to be two cakes and maybe nothing else except coffee. We're still toying with the idea of having hors d'oeuvres (frozen chicken fingers that someone microwaved? crackers and cheese?) but I don't know. It might make more sense only having cake.

At the end of this post, here's the list:

• Indoor, winter wedding in Ohio
• December 2009 or January 2010
  
• Two wedding cakes
• Possible Tyson chicken fingers and miniature meatballs with toothpicks in them

Next up: Music and the one wedding-related idea I had before I was ever thinking about a wedding.