Cheap.

When I first started planning the wedding our budget was $20,000. Twenty grand starts to feel like a drop in the bucket when the average cost of weddings in your area is over $30,000. But having never spent even close to $20,000 on anything in my life (except college), I started to feel kind of crazy with the whole budgeting process.

Since, we've decided to do other things with some of the money we were given (honeymoon, pay off debt, etc). Our new $10,000 budget is actually a lot more enjoyable. Maybe I'm cheap, but digging around the thrift store for the on-sale color-of-the-day tag dishes instead of renting them at 50cents a pop, has been enjoyable.

My dress was found via craigs list in a strange, but amazing story (to be posted later) for less than half of what I would have paid retail. We are doing almost everything ourselves (some of the food food, the cake, flowers, decorations, linens, etc). The location went from a $5000 barn to my parent's pecan orchard/backyard.

And while diy can be challenging and a lot of work, so far it's actually been more relaxing than all the stress of spending.

Us, Continued...

A few days later I received what I thought was a random friend request on Myspace. I make a point to not "friend" people I don't know in real life, but this guy was kind of cute so I sent him back something along the lines of "I don't know you, but I might want to." He, having been told by our mutual friend, that I'd raved about how cute he is after our meeting in the thrift store, was confused but responded to my message with a polite reminder that I had met him, and maybe he should work on making himself more memorable.

Later that week, my friend and I were at a local bar grabbing a drink when she decided that we should call P and invite him. I was totally in the dark about her desire to set us up until that point, but I did think he was cute and he'd just moved to town, so at worst I figured he could use some new people to hang out with.

When he arrived it was clear there was chemistry. We talked for a long time that night (I'm not even sure how long). And I left the bar with my friend practically, no actually, skipping. And blabbing about how I thought I might be in love, and she knew I'd wanted to stay single, and why did she have to go on introducing me to someone so perfect.

Turns out P felt exactly the same way. And we've basically been inseparable since. We started talking about weddings after about a month of being together. Started talking about specific possible wedding dates soon after that, and in October he proposed.

Not exactly the normal relationship trajectory or what either of us was looking for, but everything about it has felt exactly right.

Us Part One.

My relationship with my finance has been far from traditional. Both of us are in our mid/early twenties and have spent much of the last decade in a series of not so great long term relationships. When we met, both of us were single and determined, for the first time in our lives, to stay that way for as long as possible. Apparently, for us, that wasn't very long.

The day I met P, we actually met twice. It was a Saturday, a day I regularly carved out time with my house mates to garage sale and thrift store shop. Our first stop of the day was a friend's garage sale. Another close friend was there with her boyfriend and a friend of theirs (P). Though I don't remember it, I've been told that he tried to introduce himself then. Later that day I was digging through fabric at my favorite thrift shop when my friend from the garage sale appeared (still with her boyfriend and P). My memory of this is really vague, but I do recall P introducing himself then.