The Theme of My Wedding is a Wedding...

Throughout my engagement, many of my friends and family members have asked me what the theme of my wedding will be, and I'm never quite sure how to answer the question. My initial thought was, "The theme of my wedding is a wedding...," but I've learned that their are many different directions that you can take your wedding. Choosing a theme can be daunting because there are so many different options, but sites like Pinterest make finding a specific theme a lot easier.

If you're inspired by the past or a certain time period, a vintage wedding may be the best choice for you. Elements you may want to include in your vintage wedding are family heirloom dishes, an old suitcase for your guest to drop their cards in and a typewriter on the table with your guest book. If you're going for a 20's theme, a flapper inspired wedding dress or bridesmaid dresses would be fitting. Many bridal dress shops have vintage-inspired dresses, or you may want to wear your mother or grandmother's wedding dress to keep inline with the vintage theme. You can ask your hairdresser for a retro hairstyle, and can wear long strands of pearls. A great touch would be to have a table with pictures of your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents on their wedding day.

Rustic and country weddings are very popular right now. For a rustic wedding, you can find everything from invitations, wedding cakes and table numbers in burlap. (I found great prices for burlap on this website, http://www.craftcatalog.com/Burlap-C24848.aspx). Mason jars are great for drinking glasses, favors or candle holders at a rustic or country wedding. Instead of traditional seating, guests can sit on covered hay bales. Country brides can ditch the high heels and opt for cowboy boots. There are a lot of great country-inspired engagement photo ideas on Pinterest.

Sometimes your ceremony or reception venue may help you decide your theme. If you're getting married on the beach, beach-themed decor is an obvious choice. Sand, seashells, sand dollars and starfish make great seating cards and centerpiece fillers. There are some really intricate beach wedding cakes that include edible sand and seashells. Florists can use shells to accent flowers in the bride's bouquet. Brides getting married on the beach can wear flip flops or ditch shoes altogether.

Avoiding the Big Day Stress

Your wedding day is supposed to be the happiest day of your life, but anyone who has planned a wedding knows, it's not all roses and butterflies! Whether you're trying to downsize your guest list, searching for a florist who understands your centerpiece vision or dealing with an unruly bridesmaid, planning the best wedding in the history of weddings can be stressful. Based off of what I've learned thus far, and what other people have told me, I've created a list of six tips to help brides deal with the stresses of planning the day.

1. Plan Early

If you're getting married in a year, don't wait until three months out to try and find a photographer or a dj. I have a friend who took this laid-back approach to wedding planning, and in the end, it was much more stressful for her. I'm not implying that the first person you should call right after your fiance gets up from bended knee is a florist, but the sooner you find your vendors and sign contracts, the less you have to worry about come crunch time. There are several wedding planning trackers online that offer guidelines about what you should have accomplished from 12 months out, up to the day of the wedding. 

2. Make a List

Most couples know to create a budget for the wedding, but many don't create lists of specific things they have to have for the day. It can be helpful if you and your fiance comprise a list of what is important to you about the wedding day, followed by a list of what you're willing to compromise on. Carry the list with you (mentally or physically) when you're meeting with vendors, that way there is something set in stone and you won't have to stress out about whether or not you should splurge on designer table linens.

Finding a Ceremony Venue

Before looking for any venues, I thought that once I found the reception venue, finding a ceremony venue would be easy....wrong! After visiting a couple of nearby reception venues, I found the one and had no doubts about it. I've searched for a ceremony venue for a couple months now, and the process has been frustrating to say the least!

Mifflin Presbyterian Church

Although my reception venue (Winding Hollow Golf Club) offers a nice ceremony space on their golf course, my dad requested that we get married indoors in air conditioning so he "wouldn't sweat through the ceremony and look like he had jumped in a swimming pool for the pictures." I couldn't really argue with his logic, especially since he's shelling out a lot of money to make my day perfect! With a late May wedding in Ohio, you never know what weather will be like. It could be 90 degrees, or there could be a monsoon! I didn't want to add anymore stress to the wedding day by trying predict the weather, being wrong and then having to make a lot of adjustments to the ceremony. 

Not only did we have to find a ceremony space indoors, we had the added complication of finding a place that would allow my pastor to officiate the ceremony. Not every church allows another minister to come into the church to conduct the ceremony, so I looked at Presbyterian churches within a short drive of Winding Hollow. I found one that I really, really liked and I thought it would be a done deal...and then they told me they only allowed members of the church to get married there. So the search continued. 

Choosing a Reception Venue

Once you and your fiance have established a wedding budget, one of the first things you will probably look at is venues. Choosing both the ceremony and reception venue is a crucial part of every wedding. The ceremony venue is where you'll say your vows and actually get married, so you'll want it to be sentimental or inline with your wedding day vision. The reception venue is where you and your guests will spend most of your time, and it is usually the biggest expense in a wedding budget, so you'll want to choose a place where your guests will be comfortable, and that you'll feel comfortable paying for. If you're lucky, you may find a venue that will work for both your ceremony and reception.

Winding Hollow Golf Club was the perfect
place for our reception venue!

As Matt and I began planning my our dream wedding, we decided that it was important for us to get married in a church. Since my church doesn't have a center aisle and wouldn't accommodate all of our guests, we had to look for two separate venues. I started out by looking for the reception venue because  that's where the majority of the money in our wedding budget would be spent, and I assumed it would be easier to find a ceremony site than a reception site.

As I began my initial search for a reception venue, I found TheKnot.com to be very helpful. If you go to their vendor category, not only do they give you a list of reception venues in your area, they also allow you to insert criteria specific to what you're looking for like the number of guests, amenities, style and price range. (They never give a specific amount in the price range, but the dollar signs are somewhat helpful when you're trying to decide what you can or can't afford). There are also pictures of each reception venue, along with its contact information.

Gotta' Shape Up!

Since getting engaged, I've started to think about getting in shape for the big day. I'm not focused on losing a certain number of pounds before the wedding, I just want to tone up and be in the best shape possible. Years after the wedding is over and I'm looking at my wedding pictures, I don't want to think, "I wish I had done a couple more crunches!"

Find ways to make working out fun like playing mud volleyball or working out with your fiance!

My wedding is still over a year away, so my efforts to get into shape thus far, have been pretty minimal. I've always been a fairly active person and I'm what some might consider a selective (ok, picky!) eater, so I've just been sticking with my normal routine and diet.

I try to run five days a week, but I am by no means a marathon runner! On an average day, I'll run 2.5 miles. If I'm having a rough run, sometimes I'll cut it down to two miles, and if I'm feeling great, I'll run up to five miles. I have no set schedule and I haven't been wearing a watch, so I can just go at a comfortable pace. Since we're in the midst of winter in Ohio, I've been sticking to running on the local high school track, or the roads of my neighborhood. On special occasions, my fiance and I have driven a little further to run at city parks. If the weather is too bad to be outside in, I'll settle for running on a treadmill, but that really is a last resort for me (I hate watching the clock as I run!).

You're Invited

Before you schedule any tours to look at potential venues, you and your fiancé should come up with an initial guest list. The list will evolve throughout the wedding planning process, but it's good to have an idea of how many people you will be inviting so you can choose a venue that will comfortably accommodate all of your guests. The average number of guests attending a wedding in 2011 was 138. Your guest list will most likely depend on your budget. Obviously, the more people you invite, the more expensive your wedding will be.

When Matt and I made our initial guest list, we agreed that we wanted to keep it under 200 guests. With that in mind, we each came up with an individual list. As tempting as it may be to tell your fiancé not to invite his friend who constantly tells him he should be single, or his great aunt that you've always suspected doesn't like you, it's important to remember it's his big day too, and he should decide who he wants there. The exception to that rule is exes. Unless your future husband or wife and your ex are the best of friends (not likely), save yourself a lot of arguments and cross your ex off your list. (No, it doesn't matter that the two of you are just friends!)

To insure that I wouldn't forget anyone, I made separate lists of family, friends from high school, friends from college, family friends and church friends. Initially, I only wrote down immediate family. My mom's family is large and I didn't want to invite  relatives who I had only met a couple of times at family reunions. If my cousins were married, I invited their spouse; If they were single, I didn't give them the option of inviting a date. (In a revised list, I allowed my cousins to invite dates.)

When choosing friends from high school and college to invite, I used the guideline that if the last time I saw them they were wearing a cap and gown, they were not making the list. When choosing whether or not to invite an old friend, it's important to think of your individual friendship with that person and how much of an impact that they've had on you. As I tried to whittle down my list, I realized that there were people on my list who hung out in the same group of friends that I did, but I never would have hung out with that person alone. If you're trying to cut down your guest list, that could be someone to cross off.

Choosing your Bridesmaids

Deciding who will stand beside you on your big day is an important decision. You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by not selecting them to be one of your bridesmaids, but you don't want to follow 20 people down the aisle either. If you're having a longer engagement and choose your bridesmaids too early, by the time the wedding roles around you may be closer to one of your friends that you didn't select. Choosing your maid of honor is also an important decision. You want someone who you can rely on to not reveal anything too embarrassing during the toast, tell you if you look fat while you're trying on wedding dresses and hold your dress while you pee!

I chose my sister Erin to be my maid of honor.

Choosing a maid of honor was an easy decision for me. I have one sister, Erin, and she has known me all 23 years of my life, so there is no one who knows me better. (It may be more difficult for brides with more than one sister to decide who gets the top job.) When I was little, I wanted to be just like her. As we have both grown up, she has been the one who has been brutally honest about the guys I have dated, and she was the one who I cried to when those relationships didn't work out. I knew I could rely on her to help me make all the important decisions, to take me down a notch when I'm turning into a bridezilla and to ensure that the day will run as smoothly as possible.

Picking the rest of my bridal party was a little bit more difficult, but not because I didn't have plenty of great friends; it was the complete opposite. I have so many great friends and as much as I wanted them all to be part of my big day, it seemed completely ridiculous to have more people in the wedding party than guests at the wedding! The average number of bridesmaids in a wedding party is five, but I've been to weddings where there were eight bridesmaids. Your number of bridesmaids honestly just depends on what you want.