The first decisions

Soon after getting engaged we started talking about the first decision we would have to make -  when did we want to get married?!

Since I don't graduate until May 4, 2013 from the MBA program I was looking to do it sometime after that. I didn't want to worry about missing class for a wedding and honeymoon. But I also didn't want to do it too much later than that because that already meant a 14+ month engagement. My mom pointed out early on that their anniversary, May 25th, fell on a Saturday next year. I loved the idea - Andrew was not so fond. We debated whether a holiday weekend is nice to guests or mean to guests and ultimately decided that the 25th was not the date for us. We agreed to keep in mind the 11th and 18th as we searched for venues (even though we didn't think they would be booked already we wanted options... imagine my surprise when some venues told us they already had a couple weekends in May booked).

The second decision to make was - where do we want to get married?!

Since both of us are from Palm Bay, that is where the majority of our families live. It made the most sense to both of us to try and find a place over there to have the wedding. Boom, two decisions down - this wedding planning is going to be a piece of cake!

Finally it was time for the great venue search. The search for a venue is not some wonderful story of how I always pictured where I would get married, or some gorgeous place that I fell in love with instantly. It is more like me: realistic, logical, functional. I started online like any person in this century would do. There was an excel spreadsheet made with a list of all the potential venues surrounding Palm Bay, listing their maximum occupancies, whether they allowed off-site catering, and other important details (looking at you, open bar!). We knew we were going to have 100-150 people and I didn't want to be limited with the guest list due to the venue we picked so I immediately knocked off a couple of the smaller options. Another important feature to us was to have the ceremony and reception indoors. It gets HOT in Florida, especially in May, and we didn't want to endure that, let alone make the guests endure that. Little did I know that finding a place with two large areas, indoors, was tough so I knew we would have to check out other options along the way. I also moved all of the hotel options to the bottom of the excel list because I tend to dislike the food I've had at hotel weddings (I am extremely picky) and they are notoriously expensive, very expensive.

Next up, I tell you where we looked!