My Wedding - Planning Part 1

Continuing the countdown to my anniversary today :)
See the first post of the series, My Wedding - Engagement here!


It's plain and simple people, I like to plan things!

While I can't say I was one of those girls that planned out every detail of their wedding as a child, I did know the exact dress I wanted.

Like most girls do, I immediately started coming up with ideas for the wedding.

What time of year did we want to get married?

What would our wedding colors be?

What friends and family would we ask to be in our wedding party?

Where would the wedding/reception take place?

Thankfully Mic let me take the reigns when planning our big day :)
Yes, I asked for his input from time to time,

but mostly this was my big party to plan :)

And boy did I plan!

I honestly had at least 3 gigantic binders full of ideas, venues we visited,

churches to check out, etc.

When Mic and I agree on things, we really agree on things!

We both love the Fall so it was kind of no brainer on when we would get married.

Since we just got engaged in the Spring,

we decided to give ourselves time to plan things instead of rush.

We set our date to be October 7, 2006 :)

Our next big hurdle was to decide where we were going to get married.

We both grew up in different towns (about 1 1/2 hours a part),

so we made the decision to get married near my hometown.

Getting married near Lake Erie and having my pictures taken at the lake was something I had always dreamed about.

There wasn't even a discussion when it came to the wedding colors!

I wanted red, black & white!

And that is what we had, with some orange for the Fall :)

The date, basic location, and colors were set within a week or so.

Now the hard part starts!

Where were we going to get married?

I had always pictured an outdoor wedding, but when it came down to actually

planning the ceremony I never even thought of another spot besides a church.

The church I went to as a child, and the occasional Christmas & Easter services was

a bit too small for the wedding ceremony.

Shallow moment: I wanted the church we got married in to match my wedding colors!

So after visiting quite a few churches in the area with my parents,

I made the decision to get married at St. Peters UCC.

It was small, but had a cute upper balcony.

It was old brick on the outside, and it had red carpeting down the aisle.

The minister there was a great man, and played a big part in why I picked it :)

One of the best & hardest parts of the wedding to plan was the reception!

That will be a post in itself!

I had checked out quite a few different options for the reception...

some were absolutely beautiful but small,

some were nice with odd layouts,

some were huge but super basic,

and some were just insanely expensive!

In the end I chose the huge, but super basic hall called

Lorain Party Center.

I really didn't care about how fancy the tables & chairs were, or if they had some

world renowned chef, or that it was or wasn't a country club.

I just wanted everyone to have a good time and hopefully not have it cost a fortune!

Oh, and I wanted a huge dance floor!

I got all 3 of the above with Lorain Party Center :)

Tune in next week for Part 2 of planning our big day!
Talking dress shopping, bridesmaids, and more!