“Before my Wedding” By Sara Sturzinger

FYI -Sara wrote this blog entry two weeks ago – before her own fun and crazy wedding buzz flew into full swing! ‘;) Ashley D.

Come this December, I’ll have been together with my fiancée, James, for 6 years. He and I have shared many wonderful experiences; we’ve traveled to many new countries, made great memories and also had our son (I know-we did things a bit out of order).

We’ve been engaged for two years and in 2 weeks, we are getting married (!!). I started actively planning our wedding last December and I can’t believe the wedding is right around the corner. Seriously, when I think of all that hard work, bloodshed (okay, there was no blood) and tears (there might’ve been a few tears) I’ve put into our wedding and we’re almost at the end. What am I going to do? No more going back and forth with my mother about which font looks better on the place cards. Weekly emails with the event manager at our venue about menu changes or the room set up? Nope! Emailing our photographer funny picture ideas that we saw on Pinterest? Not anymore! I feel like it all just started!

Remember before when I said that I was “actively planning” since last December? Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve actually been planning my wedding since the 7th grade. I think I even annoyed James with wedding ideas long before we were engaged. Funny enough, when the moment finally arrived and we were officially engaged, we weren’t even ready to start planning a wedding yet. We were simply happy with being more than boyfriend and girlfriend.

About a year after we got engaged, one of James’s best friends got engaged as well as one of my very best friends. We started questioning whether or not we should start planning our wedding. “We’ve been engaged far longer than they have and they already have a date set,” James told me more than once when the wedding talk came up. I’ve seen it many times before when a couple gets engaged and immediately, people want to know when the wedding is. Sometimes it’s nice to just enjoy the time together and take in the calm before the planning storm!

There is a lot of planning that goes into a wedding and in some regards, I was totally glad that I had an idea of what I wanted. I felt that there were many little pieces of the big wedding planning puzzle that we had to put together before we could really start finalizing things. How many guests did we want to have? Which month did we want to get married in? WHERE did we want to get married? All of these larger details would set the path to smaller details of our wedding. It’s no wonder that some women get totally overwhelmed during the wedding planning process, especially if they are doing it all on their own in addition to all the other responsibilities of their lives. Many bride’s are in the prime of their careers or in Grad school, heck I am a mother to a toddler planning a wedding AND I work!

Being in the shoes of a bride myself, when I see brides go a little crazy it is completely understandable. Also, when you are a lay person, perhaps even watching a cheesy TV-Show, you do not see where all the emotion comes from. Two families coming together, some people you already know, some are strangers from a foreign land like Idaho, some you like, some you are not so sure of, there are hierarchies, people that are competitive, jealous, you name it, the human condition goes on and on and on and all of it comes out when a wedding is on the calendar. Not to mention that planning a wedding is a financial investment and everyone has a different perception of that as well.

While I have been involved in event planning for years, I only began being a part of wedding planning after I became engaged. I never came to it to learn things about my own wedding. In fact, I did not associate the two at all, thinking of myself as a laid back, easy-to-please person. However, seeing wedding after wedding play out all spring and summer long, I have observed and learned so much and it has given this next month more significance. The gravity of this special day is all the more alive in my heart and the message to “go with the flow and enjoy the day” is all the more learned. I know it is going to be a blast!

Of course being in the home stretch is super exciting and sure, a little part of me is glad that I’ll no longer have to worry about scheduling appointments and harassing the groomsmen about their tuxedos. I know it’s going to be so rewarding on my wedding day to see all the hard work I’ve done in action. But most of all, I’m so thrilled to marry my best friend and enjoy the first day of the rest of our lives…
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Sara and James will be enjoying their Honeymoon at some point this Winter. (Sara is on board for our wedding next weekend in Sag Harbor after all! #Trooper)
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Ashley Douglass Events is a boutique events company, planning weddings, mitzvahs, social and corporate events throughout Connecticut, New York and beyond. Years of experience in both design & coordination, ADE is the right event planner / wedding planner for detailed oriented couples. We are your project managers with a heaping dose of creativity thrown in the mix. We plan social gatherings, corporate events and weddings all over the eastern seaboard. We have offices in both Greenwich, CT and Huntington, NY. We are also members of the North Shore Wedding Collective. Learn more by contacting us today at 917.748.6281 or click here for our short form.