And the planning begins...

So I wrote a while ago that I was going to mention wedding planning in some blogs and instead I just told you about the engagement.  Whoops.  Well, truth be told, we didn't do any planning for a while.  I think that violates all the rules because one of the first things people ask you after, "Can I see the ring?" is, "Do you have a date set yet?"  So there it was a month later, no date, no venues, etc.  We did make a list of people we wanted to invite.  And I did finally start looking at venues on-line and freaked out a bit when I saw the prices and multiplied that by the number of people we wanted to invite.  Seriously, why does a chicken dish cost $23 at say a conference, but you say wedding and that same piece of chicken triples in price?  Is it because of the nice table cloths?  The veggie stand?  The scallops and bacon they pass around?  I have no idea. So while I contemplated playing the lottery, switching to a higher paying career, and my fiance's somewhat joking/somewhat serious idea of getting married in Vegas (I don't really see myself as the getting married in Vegas type, but I know lots of people do it and it works for them, just not my thing) I finally started e-mailing people for information.  That too is a learning experience.  Some people are so nice, full of congratulations and information.  Other people, well, you wonder if they hate their jobs and should perhaps consider a career change.  It's like you're bothering them or something, when really you're going to be giving them a big chunk of your hard-earned $, the least they could do is respond in a timely  manner and be a little kinder.  Oh, and my fiance was working a lot of weekends at the time and I do the Mon-Fri thing so trying find time when we could both go look at these places was also a process.  It took us three or four months to get through them all because of our crazy schedules.  Also, during this time I splurged and bought one of those brides magazines and a friend of mine who was getting married a few months later gave me a bunch of her old magazines (if you are not yet married and ever get one of those magazines, skip the sections entitled the $40,000 wedding, the $68,000 wedding, etc if you do not want to have a mental breakdown).  I also went to a bridal show with my mom.  Mom and I have very different tastes when it comes to clothing, but neither one of us liked any of the wedding dresses at this show.  And can I just add, I am not into feathers, lots of ruffles, etc.   Is that really the in thing right now?  The show was fun and gave me some ideas and shortly afterwards we began looking at venues.  I'll have some stories about some of those experiences in a future blog.