Artisan Books sent me the Modern Wedding book to check out and partnered with me for a giveaway. I announced my winner today on Instagram and I’m so excited for her to receive it as she’s also engaged and planning her special day! I’ll be sharing where we are in our wedding planning process and more about the book in this post.
It’s been a while since I’ve shared an update on where we are in the wedding planning process. Just the other day I realized that we’re about 7 months out (205 days to be exact!), and it kind of freaked me out a bit. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still over the moon excited about our wedding and getting to marry my best friend. There’s just so much that we still have to do and so many decisions that need to be made, and it’s been pretty overwhelming lately. I’m trying to juggle the wedding planning with blogging, my full time job, keeping up with family and friends, etc. I’m not by any means complaining because I like my job, I love blogging, and I feel like I’m living a fairy tale when I plan our wedding, it’s just hard sometimes to manage it all at once.
When we first got engaged (read more about that in this post) we were totally on cloud nine, and then the holidays came, and next thing we knew we were in the new year and had yet to plan a thing! I don’t regret that because it was nice to soak it all in without diving headfirst into the planning, but once the New Year started we were happy to begin our wedding planning journey.
The first thing we did was go venue shopping. I had done a lot of research online with places in the area since I knew we wanted to get married in New York, especially since we have a lot of family in the tri-state area. I considered a destination wedding in Portugal since I still have family there and I’m 100% Portuguese, but I knew it would be a lot to ask of people to go on an international trip for our wedding, and I didn’t want to risk having many of the people we love not be there. Our wedding day is going to be one of the best days of our lives, so I want it to be filled with everything that represents Jonathan and I as a couple, and that includes every single person who has supported us throughout our journey and who has helped shape us into the people we are today, because that’s exactly why we fell in love in the first place.
When it came time to visit these venues we kept in mind how important of a decision it was because the venue is like the canvas for the wedding; it sets the tone and it’s the platform onto which we’ll build our day on. Jonathan and I have been together for about 8 years now, so we have a good idea on what our couple style is. For example, as much as I love rustic weddings and how romantic they look and feel, that’s not who we are. It wouldn’t feel like *us* if we rented a barn or other similar space. Instead we visited golf clubs and large reception halls. Long story short, we ended up going with the very first venue we visited. You can read more on that experience in this post.
After we secured our venue and had a date, the next thing on my list was booking the most important vendors. Creating memories is what makes life so beautiful and capturing them is extremely important to me. That’s why finding the perfect photographer and videographer was my number one priority. The food and music are also very important, but I had a pretty good feeling the food would be amazing based on the venue, so that was already taken care of. You can read more on my experience of booking our photographer and videographer in this post.
The only other big vendor we have yet to book is our DJ. That may come as a surprise to most because we booked everything else months ago, including our florist, but let me explain. Jonathan and I had met a DJ a few years ago during a vacation at Virgin Gorda. He was not only amazing as a DJ but also a really cool guy. He took us behind his table one night and showed us how he did everything; it was so much fun! We hung out with him quite a bit because there were only so many places on the island of Virgin Gorda to go to, so we kept returning to the restaurant/bar where he was a DJ. We had a great time with him and one night at dinner Jonathan and I looked at each other and knew we were thinking the exact same thing. We thought it would be so cool if he would someday DJ our wedding; it was an awesome idea we had in our head for years. Well, now we’re engaged, and we certainly didn’t forget about our friend. He travels all over the world to DJ at different events and lives a pretty crazy life. Jonathan reached out to him about being the DJ for our wedding and although he said yes it never turned into anything concrete. It was too risky to just go off of his word and not have a signed contract, so we eventually ditched the idea. It was upsetting because it would’ve been really cool to have him there, not only for how talented he is, but also because of how we met him. Needless to say, I’m now on a serious hunt for an awesome DJ, and time is ticking! That’s at the top of my priority list right now, but once I get that done I’ll feel really good about where we’re at in our planning process.
Next will come all the smaller things like hotel, transportation, décor details, etc. This is where the Modern Wedding book by Kelsey McKinnon will come in handy. It’s filled with pages of creative ideas and beautiful photographs that are bound to inspire. The book covers all aspects of a wedding you can think of with an emphasis on natural surroundings, modern styles, and minimalistic structures. I can’t wait to flip through every single page and get ideas on how to make our wedding day come to life. I want our guests to walk away from our wedding night filled with love, to be able to say that the day felt very authentic to who Jonathan and I are as a couple, and of course to have had the time of their lives! I hope our core values shine bright and are reflective in every aspect of the day. I’m not striving for perfection, I just want to stay true to who we are and make everyone feel the love that we share with each other, because there’s no better feeling in the entire world. I feel like a princess being able to plan this very special day where I’ll finally be able to call my best friend *my husband*!