Normally I don't repost pictures of weddings, but I'm making an exception this time. Many of you have probably read all about Kimi & Paul's wedding and Kimi's stunning handmade dress on A $10,000 wedding, and if you haven't go look. Now. I'll wait.

I'm reposting pictures of this wedding, because it set me free. Wedding planning has been awful and scary for us of late. Well, more precisely, life has been awful and scary for us of late, as we've been thrown emotional curve ball after emotional curve ball, and having the wedding on top of everything else has felt like too much some days.

The hardest part over the past few weeks has been dealing with, well, money. As the economic uncertainty around us has gotten more and more intense, the idea of spending money on a wedding has gotten scarier and scarier to me. I'm a money hoarder by nature, and I hate any kind of spending, so spending money on the wedding was always going to be tough. On top of all, lets just say that I have a very clear and data driven perspective on exactly what is going on in this economy, and frankly, its terrifying.

So, after a budget put together with much thoughtful consideration and discussion, we're now looking and finding more ways to simplify. We still have a very large family that we want to include, and we have a venue booked, and lots of things that we can't change much, but we've been trying to evaluate and re-evaluate things. And I was getting absolutely frozen with fear. How do you change course mid-stream, especially when you'd thoughtfully and lovingly picked the course you were on? How do you find new creative ways to make things work for you? Add to that the fact that as much as I write and think about new and interesting ways of planning a wedding, sometimes I feel trapped inside this crazy box of "how things are done" and I feel like I'm fighting for my life trying to get out.
Continue reading On Economic Uncertainty, Fear, And Changing