It's Really Happening!

We've set a date for the wedding, more or less. I give that qualification only because we are waiting to confirm with the church, but given that I am on the board of trustees at the church and saw the schedule just over a week ago, and the fact that we chose a Friday night, I'm not worried about that.

Yeah, Friday.

Wayyyy back when we first started talking about this in concrete terms, we tossed around the idea of having the reception at the neighborhood club down the street from Ash's place. It's a cute little building and I'd heard good things about holding a reception there. When I called for a price, I was disappointed to learn that it costs about a third more than I budgeted for the hall rental. But after calling around to a million and twelve places, plus researching on the interwebs, the price suddenly seemed downright reasonable, in fact, a bargain. I made an appointment for us to take a look at the inside Saturday morning. I figured that maybe that would make up our minds for us: either it would be dismal and utterly not worth it, or it would be breathtakingly gorgeous and I would fall so in love that I couldn't imagine having the reception anywhere else.

Of course, neither of these happened to be the case.

Luckily, though, it's much closer to the former than the latter, and we like it quite a lot. It's actually very in keeping with my tastes and I love the idea of getting married and celebrating the marriage in the neighborhood where we met, and fell in love, and decided to spend the rest of our lives together. This is a wonderful neighborhood with a close, friendly feel. People say hello to each other, and you get to know your neighbors. During the summer, I would be out jogging and one person after another would call out greetings, and once a man offered me a drink from the garden hose he was using to water the flowers in his front yard, making me laugh. I love it here, and it feels so right to get married in that kind of surroundings.

Unluckily for us, the place is booked. solid. If we wanted to get married there on a Saturday night, we'd have to push it back to the end of November or December. Neither of us wants to wait any longer-- in fact, October seems too far away-- and I especially don't want to get married around the holidays. There's plenty of other stuff going on at that time for everyone, who wants to plan a wedding while shopping and decorating and doing year end stuff at work and all the usual things that make Christmastime so hectic? Also, all of the books and such say that you can expect things to be more expensive around that time, what with competition for halls and caterers and such. Moreover, one of the reasons that we wanted to get married on the date that we originally picked was that we love Fall. We hoped to land in that sweet spot when the leaves are all brilliant colors and the weather is still mild.

The woman from the club went through the book very patiently with us and as it turns out, the date that we wanted had a notation in it as though it had been booked, but without the usual information that accompanies a booking. She advised us to call back on Monday and talk to the club manager and find out for sure. As it turns out, the couple that we passed coming in as we were leaving were on their way in to drop off the deposit for the booking. So close! So far away!

So now we've hit on the idea of moving it back a day and holding it on the Friday before our original date. And in 277 days, I will be Mrs. Ash.