Saying Our Vows: The Planning Begins

Well, here it is- the second post in my wedding planning series.  If you are a new reader and you want to catch up, you can read my engagement post here and the first part of Saying Our Vows here to get to know us a bit better.  Ok, all caught up?  We've now been engaged just over a month.  In a perfect world we'd still be wandering around grinning at each other with a vague idea of how we want our wedding to go in our heads.  In reality, we live in Pittsburgh.  Since we wanted to get married next year, we had to get the big things out of the way so that they weren't all booked up!

We have decided to have our wedding in Pittsburgh because this is what we consider home, this is where our heart is, and this is the place that makes us happiest.  We've built our life here together.  We want people to come to Pittsburgh for our wedding and see why we've fallen in love with the town.  Most of our family lives in Toledo, OH, and a portion of mine also lives in Cleveland, OH.  So this means that we're asking EVERYONE to travel to Pittsburgh (about a 4 hour trip for most).  Other than the actual wedding we're planning on making everything else as easy as possible.  Our bachelor/bachelorette parties will be in Cleveland or Toledo and my bridal shower will be in Toledo.

(Sorry, this will be a content heavy post just so I can catch you up on what we've been up to... in the future there will much more visual posts so you can see my real inspirations!  Bear with me!)

So since we're only a month into this, we have just a few things booked:

1- Our reception site will be in a hotel ballroom.  Since everyone is coming from out of town they'll be able to drink and walk upstairs to bed.  We won't have to worry about people driving and getting lost.

2- We booked our ceremony site this week.  It will be held at a Unitarian Church in Pittsburgh with beautiful architecture. (Check back tomorrow for what I wore to this appointment.)

3- Tonight we have an appointment with our (potential) photographers.  We're looking into using Limelight-Images Photography.  You can check out their Facebook page by clicking on the name.  They take beautiful pictures and know the area.  Plus, they're super nice! We will most likely book them tonight.  (Check back tomorrow for what I wore to this appointment.)

via Limelight-Images Photography

In addition, these are the other things that we have decided on:
1- Our bridal party.  Check out this link for how I asked my bridesmaids to be in the wedding. Hint: it involved paper dolls!  (Brandon didn't do anything quite so cool to ask his groomsmen.)

2- Our colors are black and white.  (My two favorite "colors" and it fits with our desire for this to be a classic wedding.)

3- A few of the songs that we'll be incorporating (check back later in the series for a post on the music).

4- Our wedding will be small.  Close friends and family.  We both really want a small intimate wedding and getting married in Pittsburgh will lead to that.  (Anyone have any tips on dealing with those that we may offend by not inviting them?)

5- Our honeymoon will be in ITALY!  We wanted to have something memorable, something that we might not get the opportunity to do again, and something romantic.  I think we found it :)

Now that all of the big things are done, I'm going to be a bit of a lazy bride.  I haven't started dress shopping (for me or my bridesmaids) which I'm a bit shocked by.  I really want to be able to enjoy this engagement and revel in the fact that Brandon asked me to spend the rest of my life with him.  So I plan on leaving the rest of the details until after the holidays.  

What do you think of our plans so far?  Do you have any advice on keeping the planning as easy and fun as possible?  Are you still interested in reading about our wedding plans?