I planned my wedding in a week. Yes, you read that right, a week. October 8th my boyfriend of almost seven years dropped to one knee and proposed. I, of course, said yes. About a day later we started planning. We knew we wanted a fall wedding so we decided maybe Fall 2018. That was the easy part. We picked a rough date, October 9th, 2018, and went from there.

Next, we talked about location. We started with New Orleans because how fun does that sound, right?! Shortly after we nixed NOLA. Too many logistical issues such as how do we visit locations before picking or do we just send a relative? What about meeting with a caterer and doing a tasting? Too hard. Then we contemplated Albuquerque. It’s five hours from where we live now so it’d be easy to get to for a weekend of meeting and touring and it’s beautiful. Nixed it. Why? Because it involved a lot of travel for a lot of people and it just didn’t make sense.

We finally settled on Virginia. I was born there, we met there, and a lot of our friends are on the east coast. Added bonus, my mom is there to help with the planning. Easy peasy. After we picked a state I designed the Save the Dates, the invitations, and we picked the wedding colors.

A little more than two months later I arrived in Virginia for Christmas and wedding planning. Every day I was there except for one, Christmas day, my mom and I had at least one meeting for something wedding related. Day one was the photographer. Day two started with finding not only my dress but all three dresses for my bridesmaids.

After that, we met with the pastor. Day three we drove an hour south to visit with the hairdresser who happens to be the woman who gave me my first ever haircut. Day four we went to the country club that my family is members of. We picked this location because they could do literally everything I wanted. An outdoor ceremony with an indoor weather location, a waffle bar, a place to get ready day-of, and we get to go in the night before to set up the decoration.

Perfection.

What I haven’t mentioned is that almost every night my mom and I sat in her room, in a pile of flowers (fake of course), putting together my bouquet, the boutonnieres, corsages, bundles for the table centerpieces, and lastly, bows with a flower for the aisle.

I feel very lucky that I have such an awesome maid of honor and an awesome mom to help us with everything. It may be a little over 200 days away but it feels amazing to have everything practically done.