Wedding Planning: Trial by Fire

Just to be clear, I was never the girl who had her entire wedding planned out before hitting puberty. I didn’t dress up as a bride for Halloween. I had no idea why a princess-cut diamond was superior to any other or why I should care. I never held weddings for my Barbie dolls (though I did try to create Mattel’s first transgender couple by switching Ken and Barbie’s heads…. Note: Barbie’s head does not fit on Ken’s football-player neck without help from duct tape).

Fast-forward a few years… I’m 24, engaged and still totally confused as to how this whole “wedding” thing works. I mean, I’m a pretty darn good party planner, but that usually just involves making sure someone has a keg tap and cutting up a thrift-store skirt for my pirate costume. This is different. Flower arrangements, guest lists, catering contracts. Apparently, I missed this class while I was getting my MRS degree. I equate theknot.com with the seventh circle of hell, so it’s hard to find wedding resources that are not intended for “That Girl” (read: that don’t make me physically ill).

Brian and I are now navigating the strange and expensive waters of wedding planning, trying to figure out how to throw an amazing party on our terms and on our budget. I just about had a heart attack when I read the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is close to $30,000. I checked out this site where you can calculate the average cost by zip code, and it’s $24,480 in New Orleans, where we’re getting married. That’s close to a year of grad school, people! We’re going to try to do it for $15-17,000, which still seems like an insane amount of money when we’re trying to pay for a lot of it ourselves (hence the name “No Dowry”).

The big day is in January 2009, so for the next nine months, I’ll be sharing the pearls of wisdom I pick up as I figure out how to plan a wedding without selling my soul to Modern Bride or selling any organs on the black market.

Creative Commons image courtesy of sparktography’s Flickr page