Welcome to Part 2 of our wedding journey! If you want to read more about how Dustin and I got engaged, HEAD TO PART ONE.

I’ll be honest with you and say it right now. I’m a girl, I’m TYPE A, and I love a well done event. So planning a wedding day was right up my alley. Not Dustin’s idea of fun unfortunately.

We couldn’t quite decide the best route for us: destination wedding or stay close to home. I quickly started looking into a couple of options in Mexico and contacted a travel agent. A destination wedding was high on the list since we love to travel, had all of our family healthy enough to travel, plus it hadn’t really happened in our group of friends so why not.

Well guess what, I’m fussy. Some might say I have champagne taste, I’d prefer to say I know what I like and wanted to create a kick ass atmosphere. A lot of the go to resorts were just not my cup of tea and I quickly fell in love with The Fives Azul Beach Resort.

Pricing quickly reached $2700+ per guest and I just couldn’t fathom having each person pay that knowing they have paid less than that for their own personal holiday, or have gotten a lot more trip for the same cost. Once I set my heart on this resort nothing else could compare so we quickly scratched the Mexico destination.

Still undecided on a location we knew that we needed a date. If we were staying within the country our choices were Spring/early Summer or Fall. Since it was pushing in to May 2018 at this point, and with the fact that we didn’t want to wait an entire year, Fall 2018 was our choice.

And by basic process of elimination (Dustin’s work, my work, family schedule, vendor’s available), September 22nd, 2018 became our date.

March 4th 2018 was our engagement and now September 22nd, 2018 became our date. I’m sure you’re doing the math. Planning a wedding in 3-6 months is completely reasonable. A wedding can be anything you dream it to be. The wedding industry has put such an image out there of how your day should go that it can be overwhelming. I’ve been lucky enough to shoot close to 75 weddings, so you could say that I’ve seen some amazing options.

Here are three of what I think are the most important things to be considered when planning no matter what type of celebration you have:

1. WHAT AND WHO DO YOU LOVE AS A COUPLE . So many opinions will come flying your way once you’re engaged. Slow down. Breathe. Communicate. Choose a celebration that sets your soul on fire.
2. BUDGET. Holy balls the wedding industry is expensive. Marriage is not. Decide what you can afford and what you want to spend. Communicate. Choose a celebration that sets your soul on fire.
3. FOOD AND MUSIC. I don’t care if you are a 5 person wedding or a 500 person wedding, you need to eat, you need to dance. Whether it’s a Big Mac from the drive through our a 5 course meal, a Spotify playlist or a 10 piece brass band. Communicate. Choose a celebration that sets your soul on fire.

Onward and upward!

I asked my dear friends and sister to be bridesmaids and scheduled a dress shopping date. (Side note: Dustin didn’t ask his groomsmen until end of July and they planned his bachelor party for two weeks later. Nothing better than an indecisive groom!)

Ahhh, the dress. I can honestly tell you I would pick my dress over and over again. Let me start at the beginning. Of course I had my secret Pinterest board over the last decade of what I thought I would wear and had spent many nights glued to ‘Say Yes to the Dress’, but now here I was, doing it for real.

I made an appointment in Regina, SK, with NWL Dresses. I had been watching the bridal stores on social media for awhile now and felt that Regina had more to offer my taste than Saskatoon. So here I was in my first ever wedding dress (again, a wedding dress can be whatever the hell you want, it doesn’t have to come from a ‘wedding dress store’).

I’m all about the mood and the setting of a wedding and was going back and forth between an elegant simplistic look and a woodsy, whimsical feel. I learned quickly that because I’m really teeny tiny on my top half a lot of the dresses were too much fabric for me and ate up my chest/torso quite quickly. The most important thing was that I could move freely in a dress and that the fabric was perfection against my skin.

Nothing gave me that ‘ahhh’ moment so we moved on to Sweet Pea & Noelle. I told you how I’m all about a well done atmosphere, right? Well holy Pete, this place does it. If you want an ‘experience’ to pick out your dress, then I highly recommend.

Okay, okay, we are getting there. Britt pulled dresses for me, I didn’t select any off the racks at first. There were about 5-6 dresses in my room and the one I ended up choosing jumped out at me immediately. I saved it for last, tried on a few more, then went back to it.

The best thing about Sweet Pea & Noelle is that they only carry Canadian designers. So I fell in love with ‘KIM’ by Truvelle Bridal. My dress was hand made in Vancouver, how cool is that??

So here we are, dress in hand and a date in place! Everything else came in to fruition about 3 months out, including our location, photographer, DJ, florals and food. All those details to come!

For now I’ll leave you with my amazing BOHO BASH Stagette that the girls planned for me. It included wine tasting at North 53 Collective and an amazing meal at The Spot Restaurant 😉