Welcome!

Once upon a time (August of 2008), whilst sitting at this very desk and typing upon this very computer, my boyfriend of 8 years came into my office and hovered behind me for moments.

While looking anywhere but at me, he mumbled quietly "souhyoustillwannagetmarried?"

Being the wonderful person that I am, naturally I asked him to repeat himself and could he do so just a little bit louder?

And so with that monumental question asked, began our journey toward putting a wedding together without bankrupting us. I'd heard of horror stories of how people had put themselves in large amounts of debt for their wedding and I had no desire to end up in a similar situation.

My first step was to pick up Wedding Planning For Dummies, Second Edition
and The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner: Worksheets, Checklists, Etiquette, Calendars, and Answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

Both books give a wealth of information, but made my head swim!

The number one thing they and every wedding planning book or website stress is know your budget and to stick with it!

Only this was a bit of a problem for someone like me. I didn't want to set one without knowing a general idea of how much things. While I knew the budget would be small, I also did not want it to be unrealistic.

One of the first things I did was to sign up for The Knot website. Once you sign up they have very nice tools to help you out, including a checklist and a budget calculator.

At first glance the budget list looks huge! First thing I did was eliminated all the things that, while they would have been nice, I did not need. You must decide what is critical to your big day and what is not, otherwise it will be all too easy for the event to get out of hand.

Some of the things I eliminated from this list:

Videographer
Hotel Suite
Musicians
Limo service
Coordinator
Flower girl stuff

I was still no where close to figuring out what my budget would be, but I was starting to have a clearer idea of what I wanted.

Next Chapter: The Dress