Family vs. Friends

Dear Diary,

Now that we were officially engaged, we ( I mean I) could start planning the wedding of our dreams! It had only been two weeks of engaged bliss before I was ready to start all of the planning. (Let's face it. I had been ready my enitre life and was just waiting for the go signal!) hahaha But where to start?

J and I sat down and had "The Talk". Who do we invite and where do we draw the line? Both of us come from big Italian families so we knew it was going to be a large wedding. When we finished counting just family we were at the ripe, round number of oh say 240! This was without children, stopping at second cousins and no friends! We went back and forth for what seemed like the millionth time putting people on and taking people off the list when we, at the same time, just smiled to each other and both had the same thought. We said that we get one day to make into anything we want and we couldn't imagine that day without everyone we love and care about there to share it with us.

After we had this talk my parents had invited us over for dinner to discuss what they had planned to contribute to our day. I am their only daughter so I knew they wanted to make sure we had a special and unforgettable wedding. I just wasn't expecting the amount. They were very generous to us and J couldn't believe it either. We then had the same discussion with his parents and we had the same reaction.
We said to each other that we are truly blessed to have such caring, wonderful and loving families and hope that one day we can do the same for our children.

Once we finally had a better picture of what our budget was going to be between what my parents gave us, his parents gave us and what we had saved, things came into a new and concrete light. We decided that we wanted everyone, including our friends there to share our special day. I'm big on inclusion and so is J. I know what's it like to be left out and we both agreed that we would include as much as we possibly could and that's how we ended up with the grand total of 340 people!  God help us!

But like J says, "It's not a wedding, it's an event!" He is right. It's the biggest event of our lives. So now where do we hold this gigantic event?

Stay tuned!

~The Blushing Bride To Be