I loved planning our wedding! While yes, of course there were moments of stress. Moments of completely ridiculous, are we seriously arguing about this topic kind of moments – of course! But those moments were few and far between. The whole process was a blast. So I thought I’d share some pictures throughout the entire process and any tips I learned along the way.

Finding this shot on Pinterest was a blessing. It perfectly captured the look I was going for, for not only my bouquet but also for the wedding as whole. I didn’t want to just pick two colors. Or a certain theme. So this was my inspiration for the wedding while planning. Finding one piece of something to use as inspiration can be very helpful!

Remember- you don’t have to go with only 2 colors. You don’t have to go with a set theme. Mixing and matching textures, colors and ideas- when done well can work perfectly!

After we decided on a general location – for us, Gettysburg. There were a few more steps we followed before finding a venue.

1.Creating a draft guest list – how many people are we looking at inviting. This will let us know how big or small of a venue we could go with. If our guest list was 200 people, we couldn’t go with a venue that would only fit 80.

2. Create a budget. If you can’t afford more than $20,000. You need to know this before falling in love with a venue that costs $15,000 – which would mean you only have $5,000 left to book a DJ, photographer, florist, invitations, find a dress, find a suit, etc.

Once we had those two huge steps finished…we started googling venues in Gettysburg. A few different venues came up, we narrowed it down to two venues.

How many does the venue fit?
Do we like the look of the venue from the pictures?
Does the website provide any pricing information? If not, will they send us any information through email?

We set up some walk throughs. We first went to The Lodges – when we walked into the hall. My mouth dropped. That was where we were supposed to be married. There was no other option. We both felt the same way. We couldn’t wait to get married on this beautiful hill (unfortunately that wouldn’t happen but that’s ok).

Once we had our venue booked, everything else started to fall into place!

One of those being that now  I was able to ask my girls to be my bridesmaids! 🙂

I talk more about how I did this on a different post. Check that post out here.

Here’s the answer I got from my cousin! Isn’t she adorable!

My mom and I were on the ball when it came to planning. We had an 18 month engagement but all the vendors were selected & booked by August. We were engaged in May! I wanted certain vendors for certain things and so to get those vendors – you must book them early.

Kindly R.S.V.P was one of those vendors, that I didn’t realize I wanted haha. We actually found her at the Baltimore Wedding Expo in August. She’s awesome because you custom build your invitations. Which I know that just sounds completely and totally crazy expensive – well when we compared her pricing to the pricing of all the other invitations out there – they were even. And she put everything together and stamped it for us! One less thing to do.

We met with her in September and designed our invitations!

Even though all the vendors were booked, I didn’t want to miss out on the experience of going to wedding shows! So when a wedding show was being held in the Gettysburg area, we headed up there for the day to explore.

It was held at Beech Springs Farm. An absolutely stunning venue! (My grandparents are friends with the owner- a very very sweet lady!!)

Back in August when we went to the Baltimore Wedding Expo – I was speaking with some bridal store vendors. At that time I was thinking we would go wedding dress shopping in January. They informed me that I may want to go sooner. Apparently, since most wedding dresses are manufactured in China. The entire wedding dress factory business shuts down in January for the Chinese New Year (if someone has done research on this and discovered this isn’t true- please let me know!). Which means that everything is delayed by a few months.  So they suggested I go sooner. So we did. I wasn’t going to risk things!

While I was planning my wedding, one of my girlfriends was a few months ahead of me in planning hers. So she had been through the wedding dress shopping and knew of the best shops to head too. She pointed me to Columbia Bridal.

I had scheduled plans to go shopping with a whole group of us (Mom, sister, both Grandmothers, Nick’s mom & my aunt who only has boys). But when my friend told me that Columbia Bridal was having a sale, we thought why not go over and just try somethings on just the three of us (Me, Mom & sister). So thats what we did. I knew I wasn’t going to buy anything but at least this way, I could try things on with a smaller crowd. Less thoughts, opinions and such flying around.

And thats when I found the dress. I put it on and just knew. However, I couldn’t fully let myself love it until the day we all went shopping.

So in November, the group of us headed out one Saturday morning. We started at David’s. I must’ve tried on 20 or more dresses. Each time I put a new dress on, I compared it in my head to the dress at Columbia. Each time I put a new dress on, my mom and sister compared that dress to the one at Columbia Bridal. But I had to try them on. I had to be sure. I had to date the dresses!

We left Davids and headed to Columbia. I tried on a few more dresses and then we tried on that Maggie Sottero dress. There was no question.

I walked out to my girls and said, “this is it!” Fortunately, every single last one of them agreed.

I couldn’t have picked a better group of women to be with me to pick out my dress. They were supportive, helpful and 100% completely in my corner. No one tried to push me into something I didn’t like. It was such an awesome experience and a special memory.

Our venue offered that included in the per person price, was a cake. At first how awesome is that!? Right! So we explore the two bakeries that we had the option to work with. They were good. But honestly, I just kept second guessing them. (Trust your gut people!) So I started to explore other options – I spoke with my venue and asked if we were allowed to have another bakery come in and provide our cakes and if we did that, how would that affect the pricing?

The Lodges came back and said that it was totally fine for us to hire an outside baker and that if we forwent their baker – we’d save $4/person! By doing this and hiring the incredible, Brittany at Once Upon a Crumb – we saved over $1,000! Just because of the cake!!

Brittany, asked what flavors we were interested in and then brought the samples to our house. We sampled the cakes, along with our friends who were also getting married – we decided to do a “double cake testing”. And of course, my family had to get some tastes.

Oh the rings! Who knew that picking out a ring could be so difficult. I must’ve tried on a million different wedding bands at a ton of different jewelers and nothing worked for me. Fortunately we have a family friend whose an appraiser and he works with some of the best in the business. So we met with him at our house and discussed options. But still, I just couldn’t find something I loved.

Then Nick’s mom, found. Yes she just found laying around the house enough diamonds for me to have 10 and for Nicks younger brother to have 10. (Seriously the life of a jewelry maker-even though she doesn’t deal with diamonds.) So combining her diamonds and the skills of Gary’s jewelers, we were able to build a custom ring that is better than my wildest dreams!

Onto finding the MOB’s dress! Fortunately it only took a Saturday and about 10 stores – but we finally found the perfect dress at Macy’s! It was quite a fun day with my momma & sister!

Isn’t she beautiful in that dress!!

So we never actually took pictures of the dress shopping when it was time to dress shop with the bridesmaids! The day was one of those awesome days but also stressful. Trying to organize 5 girls, and three mothers is quite the adventure. My goal was for each girl to wear a completely different dress but in the same general color family. It wasn’t working. The one thing that we learned from our adventure…

Everyone has to either go completely and totally different like you see in all those awesome Pinterest pictures. Where the girls just buy a dress and you hope it works. Or you as the bride need to organize a little bit more.

So next time, I would’ve picked a certain dress designer from the start that they could pick from. Then from there they could pick the dress. That way the colors and hues would coordinate. But we figured it out and their dresses were STUNNING! I was/am completely in love with them! Each of my girls was gorgeous!!

Here’s Kayleigh, my sister & MOH in her dress!

Things start to feel very real when you pick up the invitations to be sent out!! They were perfection!

At the Bridal shop for my last fitting!!

Gotta love all the DIY stuff! Punch out hundreds or little leaves.

The mail quickly became my favorite thing of the day!

The biggest thing I can recommend to everyone – stay organized! Surprising – this is organized! We pulled everything up from the basement when we had been storing it all for the past year and now it was time to check each item off the “To Pack” check list and put it in the correct boxes.

Poor Murphy got stuck in all the stuff and was very confused. Should’ve taken a video of it.

Don’t forget about the Marriage Certificate! So the most important thing to know about this – it doesn’t matter where you live. It matters where you’re getting married. You get the license from the County that you’re getting married in.

So Nick and I headed up to Adams County, PA about 6 weeks before the wedding, bright and early. We were on the road before the sun was even up to be at the Court House for when it opened.

Our last walkthrough of the venue & meeting with the day of coordinator!

Rent a venue that provides a day of coordinator, or hire one! They make the day wonderful!! You’re not the one making sure the florist is there and on time, or showing the photographer where to set up the photo booth. No you’re relaxing with your bridesmaid, listening to good ol’ 90’s music, drinking mimosas and getting your hair and make up done. There is no stress. There’s just relaxing and enjoying the day!

Time for the hair trial! 🙂

The dreaded seating chart!

So we actually had a breeze of a time with the seating chart. We created an excel spreadsheet (or I should say my mom created the excel spreadsheet), A column for each table. We put like friended people at each table. Once we moved people around and made sure the tables made the most sense. We then took to the floor plan. We then numbered the floor plan to make sense that the groupings of tables were again like minded groupings. Our families were near each other. Our church friends were near each other. Nick’s work buddies were near each other. Etc.

But the most important thing to remember during this entire crazy process – don’t stop dating!

Remember why you’re doing all this planning- to marry the love of your life!!

It is so so worth it, every last bit of sweat, tears, fights and dime. So completely worth it to hold onto memories of your wedding day. Best memory of my life.