Real Life Bride: Week 11

I always thought that when I got engaged it would be a crazy year of planning, planning and even more planning. We're only three months in, and I'm already starting to realize that 12 months is a long time! Definitely more than enough time to plan pretty much any wedding (as long as you can get the venue you want). I already had an idea of where I wanted to get married and the time of year, so there wasn't too much "research" needing to be done following the immediate excitement of getting engaged, and now we are in a period of down time that I had never thought would happen! We have the basic components - venue, photographer, dress - and have started looking into the next set of vendors - DJ, ceremony musicians, florist, caterer - but really there is nothing pressing. With so much time, we are more than on track!

The engagement party is next weekend, and Laura and Beth are putting together a fabulous soiree (I'm so lucky to have them!!) full of adorable details that I never would have thought of on my own - I can't wait to share pictures (or have them both share pictures).

Ryan will have weekends off of work again in March or April, so we're holding off until then for our tasting with the caterer and winery. In the meantime, we've started researching for our honeymoon in Los Cabos. We've found a couple of really nice resorts and most have package deals that would be perfect for our trip. We decided to take a shorter honeymoon since Ryan will still be in training and I will only have so much vacation time accrued at my new job, so the plan is to take a longer European vacation for our one-year anniversary. We love to lounge around and relax, so four nights in Mexico will be just right for us. The two resorts we are considering are Esperanza and Cabo Azul - leaning towards Esperanza at the very tip of Mexico because we've heard the beaches near Azul are not good for swimming.

{Cabo Azul}

{Esperanza}