Location, Location, Location

I feel that the location of a wedding really sets the tone of the ceremony. It describes the couple as a whole and gives guest a hint of what is to come for the rest of the wedding and reception. My idea of a location was somewhere here in our hometown of Hendersonville. Wanting the traditional Southern Wedding, I had picked out Spring Haven a southern plantation home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. This location had everything I thought we would need tucked away in a wooded area it had a beautiful place for an outdoor ceremony. Then in the back of the property where the reception would take place there was a patio that was fully covered with plenty of space for tables and dancing. Also, there was plenty of green grass to play some yard games that I had found to entertain guest while we took pictures.

Here are a couple of pictures to give an idea of my vision :

My future mother in law had really found exactly what I wanted and we were really excited to show my fiance the next day. That night at dinner after hearing the build up my fiance says I thought we were getting married at the movie theater and just having our reception somewhere else. I know what you are thinking the movie theater. In all actuality it makes total sense for us to be married at a movie theater because that is where our church meets. We attend Grace Church of Hendersonville and currently sense we do not have a building for our Hendersonville location we meet every Sunday morning in the Regal Theater at the Streets of Indian Lake. My fiance wanted us to be married at our church, which is very sentimental and sweet. However, he also wanted Star Wars movie posters everywhere and for our ceremony to look like the guest were going to the movies. This is a picture of more of his vision of what our ceremony would look like: 

I knew we were going to have to compromise on this but I also knew that once the fiancé saw the venue I had chosen in real life he would be all for it. And of course sure enough he did the next day. I'm sure you are wondering where the compromise comes into play. Well, my first compromise was that the ushers would be in full storm trooper attire. Thank goodness their are only two ushers. Also, we will be having a light saber duel after our first dance. I think we will both be happy with those additions. 

Let Them Eat Cake

When I say I absolutely love cake, I feel like those words do not truly express my true feelings of how much I love to eat cake. Needless to say, the cake is something I have considered as top priority on the wedding budget. I'm so new to the wedding cake world that I had no idea that you could make appointments to literally go taste cake all day. My future mother in law to the rescue! She set up for herself, myself, and the fiance to go to three bakeries in one day. I think that was the best day of my life, just being able to eat multiple flavors and types of cake. However, I discovered that this would of course be another area of compromise that would enter into my wedding plans.

The first thing bakeries will ask you is how many guest they will be serving. Well, I'm kind of glad when I say that at least 175 confirmed guest and we have not even sent out official invitations which our invite list is now currently at 366. The bakery immediately shows me this chart :

As mentioned above I love cake I have budgeted according to this cake I understand that based on the amount of people I am having that a 5 tier cake is pretty much a given. That means I can have five different flavors! Well, the fiance is big on cake but obviously not to the degree as myself so I thought he would be sweet and just let me pick out every single detail that I wanted for the big cake and then of course he could choose any cake he wanted for his groom's cake. Boy, I was totally wrong. 

The first thing we had to compromise was the flavor choices. I of course wanted traditional white cake on the bottom which he agreed and then all over white icing. When I chose a chocolate with a chocolate filling for the next tier he asked why and I said so guest could choose chocolate or vanilla and the two primary layers. He agreed that was probably a good idea. The next two layers I wanted to do a throw back to our parent's wedding cakes one layer being red velvet because that is what my parents had at their wedding and then orange creamsicle because that was his parents. Everyone loved that idea and I felt that was an easy way to knock out the four layers. Now came the fifth layer, our layer , or what I thought was my layer. I immediately blurt out that the top would be vanilla almond and just as soon as the words had left my mouth I heard the rebuttal coming from my fiance. 

Of course I get defensive and have a mini bridezilla moment about that this is my cake and my layer that I will be eating form now and I want that flavor because it is this bakery's specialty. Well, of course the fiance wants marble cake as the top tier because that is his favorite and it is a mix of vanilla and chocolate. Absolutely not. I love cake but marble is not exactly my favorite. We go back and forth a dew moments and the baker helping us obviously sensing the tension between us, so she decides to hopefully better the situation by changing our focus to the decoration of the cake. Wow, did she really go wrong on trying to relieve tension. 

We all know that the fiance wanted a Star Wars themed cake, which I loved as an idea for a groom's cake. However, not the huge wedding cake that I had beed dreaming about. Here are our two ideas of what the main cake was to look like...

Fiance:

Me: 

How in the world were we going to compromise these two extreme ideas?

When I say that I was not budging I really was not planning on it. If it meant I had to be bridezilla and cry right here in this bakery I was not budging on what I wanted. Well, I just have to say my fiance is an amazing negotiator and should have been a lawyer of some type because he did get me to budge on some things. We decided the to have the flavor for the top that I wanted which meant we had to compromise on the decorating. This is a picture of our compromise:

My elegant cake with light sabers added 

Of course it would not be complete without Darth Vader sticking his head out of the bottom:

(i know this is spider man but you get the idea)

I think the cake so far had been the hardest for me I just knew though if we could compromise on this compromise for the rest of our lives would be a piece of cake. 

I'm Wearing What???

I'm going to say that I feel that "the dress" is the girl's most favorite part of wedding planning. It is also one of the first decisions you make since in today's dress making world it takes six to eight months to order your dress and get it in stock. This did not bother me so much since I have plenty of time. But of course I cannot wait to start trying on dresses. Sadly, my mother is not very involved in my life so I do not get to experience that whole mother daughter dress moment with my mom. I do, however, have the best future mother in law that has been more than a mom to me that I get to go dress shopping with. Let me tell you she is more than excited about it.

At dinner one night we open the table discussion to where we are going to look. My fiance piped up after hearing all those places and said well none of those places sound like they are going to have a Star Wars wedding dress. My heart stopped and I think his mother choked on her food. These are the three options that my fiance thought I was going to be wearing down the aisle:

I could not tell whose face was more priceless mine, my future mother in law's, or my future father in law's. We all come from very conservative back grounds nothing about these options said conservative or traditional. Well if he wanted me to wear this, that made me think about what he was planning on wearing. I will just show a picture of his answer:

I know all of our family would have gotten a kick out of this wedding attire but I could just not do this.  If I started to walk down the aisle and I saw Darth Vader waiting on me, I would be laughing the whole way down the aisle. When I say laughing I would be on the ground. I just think a wedding is a serious moment and I would not be able to take anything seriously dressed like any of these options. If we were going to Comic Con or any other fan gathering I would be all over this but our wedding? 

Needless to say I needed back up on this compromise. My fiance's mom and dad were great with this one. They really helped me to where now I can wear something like this :

And he will be wearing a traditional tux with some Star Wars enhancements like: 

Although I feel like I got the better half of the compromise I feel that the fiance is going to be happy at the end of the day looking back at the pictures. Or, he could totally surprise me and be Darth Vader at the end of the aisle either way I get my dress. 

The Thing With Star Wars is...

The thing with Star Wars is that it has been my fiance's favorite movie collection all of his life. Funny thing about our story was this is how we started dating. I made it known to him that I had never seen Star Wars except for Episode I which my dad took me to see in theaters. I had no idea who Luke Skywalker was, I had no idea that it was Darth Vader instead of Dark Vader, and I had no idea that Princess Leia was Luke Skywalker's sister. I did know who Princess Leia was and loved her hair. After I guess my fiance realized that the love of his life had no clue about his favorite movie he decided to introduce the two of us. 

Let me just say we watched from Episode IV all the way to Episode III, starting from the classics up to the most recent. The best quality time I think either of us could have asked for. I fell in love with Star Wars: the characters, the plot twist, and the amazing story of good always triumphing over evil. I think that was the night my fiance realized I was the catch of a lifetime. 

With all of this being said and it being made clear our mutual love of Star Wars you would think that I would be all for a Star Wars wedding. However, this is just not the case. I am totally fine with hints of a Star Wars like theme but at the end of the day I am not dressing up as Princess Leia to walk down the aisle. Let me just say this crushed my fiance's wedding dreams. And it opened my eyes to the fact that my groom was going to be least to say very involved in wedding planning. 

We eventually had to come to the agreement of compromising on certain things. The first one being the date we would actually have our ceremony. 

It has been a personal preference of mine to have graduated college before I got married, I do not graduate school until December 2014. That put us at having a two year engagement, which the fiance was not into. So, the first compromise I offered was to get married right after I graduated we could have a Christmas wedding since both of us love Christmas all our families would be in town it would just be perfect. That was shot down when he said he wanted to be married by May 4, 2014 so we could go to Star Wars week at Disney World for our honeymoon.

In my mind I'm thinking is May the fourth such an important day? He had to break it down to me the week of May 4 & 5 is Star Wars week all around the world. On May fourth it is known to Star Wars fans as "May the fourth be with you" a play on of "May the force be with you".  May the fifth is know as "revenge of the fifth" being a play on "Revenge of the Sith". The compromise we finally made after several days and a new Star Wars movie announcement.  Our date will be May 4, 2015. This was reached because I will have graduated from school and it is on Star Wars week. Also, the new Star Wars movie is set to release that year which helped me out. The thing is we will have 2 years to plan this wedding and it is just a really long engagement according to my fiance. First compromise done!

We are getting Married!

Hey There,

Pretty much in today's society you tell someone you are getting married and people just have three questions for you at that point. When is the date? Followed by, What type of wedding is it going to be? And the last question being : How does the groom feel about all the planning? So, to get those three questions out of the way I will be answering them right now.

When is the date?  - Our date is May 4, 2015.
What type of wedding ? -It's complicated,we will be having a Southern Classic Star Wars Wedding.
How does the groom feel? -Let's just say I think he was planning this when he was five.

So, I'm sure everyone is wondering how I am going to pull off a Southern Classic Star Wars Wedding, when I have a fiance that strictly wants Star Wars and then myself and the rest of the family involved would just like a Traditional Southern Classic Wedding. Welcome to the world of compromise meeting wedding planning. In this blog I will be laying out our wonderful compromises for all the world to see.

But just so everyone understands the length of the compromise here are a couple of pictures of the style of wedding we will be blending into one wedding.

The Fiance's Idea:

My Idea:

Welcome to our journey, May the fourth be with you and us!!