Weddingbee Blog

When you dip your toes into the world of wedding planning, there are so many things to do, options to choose from, ways to spend your hard-earned dollars, opinions that need placating. The list goes on, and it can be seriously overwhelming—especially if you’re not good with making decisions, like yours truly.

Since I’m still in the early stages of planning, I’m not feeling buried under the pressure of it all…yet. Having a long engagement is a blessing in that respect. But what I’ve quickly discovered for myself is that sometimes having too much time to gather information can very quickly lead to a severe case of the crazies.

I was never the kind of girl who had her whole wedding planned out for her. No scrapbooks lovingly filled with cut-out wedding photos, no dreams of twirly dresses, no epic floral arrangements. I knew I wanted to get married one day, but that was it. Of course, then I met Mr. Jaguar and things changed slightly, especially after our first few years together. But we were young, I was impatient, and we had more important things happening that kept me busy and a little less fixated on the whole Ring Watch thing.

Because of this, I was a bit of a failure at all things wedding when we finally got engaged. To be fair, there wasn’t a great deal I could do at the beginning; we knew we were having a long engagement, we had no date set, and we were thousands of miles away from friends, family, and vendors back home.

We decided to start with one of the most important things: setting a date. Mr. Jaguar and I originally liked the idea of May—it would leave us enough time to get back to Sydney and plan the nitty-gritty details out while being there in person, rather than organising it all destination-style from afar. Keep in mind, we chose all of this in August 2009—I personally think he chose this date because it was far enough away that he didn’t have to worry about all things wedding for a while.

While I was searching for venues, though, I noticed most places held off-season discounts in the winter months—and in Sydney, those months are June, July, and August. We’re both pretty frugal by nature, so we liked the sound of a price cut, and what was another month to wait in the grand scheme of a long engagement anyway? As a bonus, I love fancy handwriting, and June looks lovely in script fonts. Oh! And add the extra fact that June 11th is a long weekend in Australia, and we were sold. The date was set. One decision down—so many more to go!

How did you choose your date?