Not so official.

As of early September, we still didn't have an officiant. I know I should have gotten on this sooner, but with all the time I've had to plan, I got so used to putting things on the back burner wedding-wise that I just kind of.. let it go.

A little back story, first:

Both of my parents and my paternal grandfather are Lutheran pastors. One of the many questions I frequently get asked regarding the wedding is if I'm going to have my mom and/or dad officiate our wedding ceremony. From the get-go, my answer has always been a resounding HECK NO.

First off, the parentals are divorced and asking both of them do it would be dumb. Second, the parentals are divorced and asking just one of them to do it would be dumb. Third, and most importantly, I want my parents to actually enjoy the wedding, not work during it!

That being said, I still had a plethora of options. Having two pastor parents leads to a lot of pastor friends. Foxy Mama suggested a while back that we contact my godparents (also pastors) to do the ceremony, which was a good idea initially. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that I don't really know my godparents (I've met them but have no recollection of it, to be honest), and I don't know if they'd be ok with the kind of ceremony Mr. Foxy and I would like to have. I also think just one pastor would be fine. Seeing as I currently consider myself more spiritual than religious and Foxy is an atheist, we cannot and will not have a fully religious ceremony. Ideally, we will have a Lutheran pastor (for me) who will allow us to write most of the ceremony ourselves and be ok with keeping the God-speak on the light side (for Foxy and I both).

Enter long time family friend, Pastor Tom. My family and Tom's family have been friends since before I was born, and I grew up playing with his two kids, one of whom is just 6 months younger than I am. Tom happened to help officiate and preside over my mom's recent second wedding and did a fantastic job of keeping the homily both personal and lighthearted - two things high on my priority list for a wedding ceremony.

Pastor Tom is on the right

So the decision was to ask Tom if he would like to officiate for Foxy and I as well. I emailed him about two months ago and never heard back; I got concerned initially because all those silly wedding checklists are telling me I should have this one in the bag already. I sent a follow-up email a few weeks later and learned that he never got the original email, and also that he would love to do the wedding.

Super cool, right? So I was all excited, relayed my excitement to Foxy, and went to check this one off the list when I get a sweet but apologetic email from Tom saying that he didn't realize that he already has a wedding that day for a couple very active in his church.

Nothing says sad quite like an LOLcat.

Naturally, I did not have a second option at the time. Hive, you probably already know this but please listen up: lesson number 22 in wedding planning? Maybe get an officiant before you set everything else in stone, especially if you have a particular person in mind.

And so, the search continued!

On having a spring wedding.

Pros: warmth, sunshine (hopefully), it can be outdoors, bright and pretty colors, etc.

This is pretty much exactly what I imagine.

Image via Lovely Little Details.

Cons: everyone and their mother gets married then.

That's a loooot of brides.

Image via Team Wedding

Honestly, I should have seen this coming when we decided on a June wedding. In the 26 months that we will have been engaged, loads of friends have also gotten (and will be getting) engaged. And they also have their eye on getting married around the same time that we will.

Which, on one hand, is awesome! I have more and more people to share wedding stories and inspirations with, and we're in this fun lovey-dovey "I'm engaged!" mentality where it's all rainbows and butterflies (most of the time). Huzzah!

However, things are starting to overlap, and I am not a fan.

It's not just because we'll be busy with planning our own wedding and such, but I also really want my friends to be able to attend ours, and I want to be able to attend theirs.

I already knew my friend/brideslady M would be getting married a few weeks before us. I've mentioned before that we kind of scheduled our wedding around hers, so that's no biggie. But I've also learned that a friend of a friend, who has become an acquaintance of mine as well (confused yet?), scheduled her wedding for literally the day after ours. So not only can't her and her fiancé come to our wedding, as I had hoped.. there's a strong possibility a few mutual friends will have to choose one or the other. Especially the friend I met her through, seeing as she will be a bridesmaid of the other girl. So there's that.

Image via I Can Has Cheezburger

Also, a good friend from my old job recently got engaged (last weekend!), and they were originally thinking a fall wedding.. but since this fall is here and next fall is so far away, they are currently opting for early June. So that's.. four weddings in three weeks-ish?

I really don't mean for this to come of as though I'm big snot ball and everyone should drop everything for our wedding. Because I don't think that at all. I really just want to have our friends celebrate our marriage with us and be able to do the same for them. I've made so many wonderful friends here in DC - something I really didn't know would happen when I first moved down - and I want to include them in our big day as much as possible.

I suppose it's true what they say - we're at that age where many of our friends are getting married, and it goes in cycles. We had 5 weddings to go to in the spring and summer of 2010, none in 2011, and now an undetermined (but greater than 4) weddings already planned for next spring and summer. Nuts.

Have you or are you experiencing any kind of wedding overlap and overload around your date??

Exclamation! (aka photographer reveal)

So I ever-so-meanly left you with a bit of cliffhanger on my photographer search. Won't do it again, promise! At least not this time.


So you all should know by now that Weddingbee is a great resource for finding vendors; they have a specific vendor section, but I actually like searching through the boards to see who recommends certain vendors, and what their relatively uncensored opinions are.

My key word search was along the lines of "inexpensive DC/MD/VA photographer". Of course, I could have written my own post and asked the boards myself, but why not use the resources that were already there first?

I found several threads where upwards of 20 people left helpful suggestions of photographers in the area, but I learned one key thing: "inexpensive" and "cheap" are relative terms. What is low cost for one person may not necessarily be low cost for another. As I mentioned, some photogs go up to $6000+ for a few hours of service, so some people may think that $3500 for a full day is a good deal. And it very well could be for some folks.

However, we are working with a $2000 budget at the absolute most. It used to be even less than that when I was hell bent on having a videographer. Since we nixed that idea, we expanded the photography budget a bit.

News flash: you can't really get a good, photojournalist photographer, with assistant/second shooter, for all day coverage in the DMV area for under $2000. It's virtually impossible.

Unlike Mr. Lolcat's mission, which is actually impossible.

I say virtually because.. well.. we of course found someone. I don't even remember how exactly I stumbled upon Exclamation Imagery, but I did. I heard good things and that they had "reasonable" pricing, so I emailed to find out price points, packages, etc.

A few days later, I get a call from Laura, the lead photographer. We talked about mine and Scot's wedding, what we were looking for, and what she had to offer. I heard her say something along the lines of "packages around $1700" and immediately asked her to email me a copy of as much information as possible.

We met with her the following week, and I have to tell you, I have no freaking idea how she can only charge what she does for full day coverage, two photographers, retouched images, and a photo album. She could (and should) seriously be charging way more - the photog gods must have been looking down on me when I found her.

Want proof? Check out some of her work:

All photos and more can be found on their Facebook page. Can you tell I love the faded look?!

The best part is that Laura, the lead photographer and one of the ones that will be at our wedding, is seriously the coolest person ever. She's fun, spunky, personable... and short. So she told us that she'll bring one of her tallest assistants (think 6'+) to shoot with her, so they get all sorts of different and fun angles. I literally cracked up when she told us that, but it's something I never would have thought of, and am so glad that she did! She also waived the travel fee (she's based out of Virginia and we're getting married in NE Maryland) since we booked quickly, and so far in advance.

Bonus: She just won one of the 2011 Brides Choice Awards on WeddingWire!

So all in all.. we're getting two amazing photographers for an entire day for under $2000. It's a steal, if you ask me. And I couldn't be more excited!!