First comes love, ...

Holy Crap, I'm engaged!

That was fun. Now to get to work.
I have been engaged for exactly four and a half days now and have already been broken hearted many times over by the exorbitant cost of having a wedding in Los Angeles!
First, some facts: I have lived with my future husband for a touch over two years. When we began dating it was pretty serious right away. When one of my best friends was married just six months after we got together I admit before Google and everyone that I started fantasizing about what our wedding would look like. I'll even cop to lazily looking at wedding blogs on a semi-regular basis for the sheer thrill of it, noting the gauzy tinted trends as they drifted thru the blogosphere like so many coral colored weather balloons or rolling across my browser like cephalaphora seed. When I envisioned my wedding to my amazing loving creative smart handsome caring FH I imagined languidly copying and pasting my favorite engagment photos and table runner ideas and cozy crafting parties with girlfriends and my guests ooohing and aaahing at our creative and unique handmade favors.
What I did not imagine was Martha Stewart's budget calculator laughing at me when I plugged in what I thought was a reasonable number that we do not yet have any of, I did not imagine the awesome DJ that has all the cool kid's wedding guests dancing all night's fee to be over half that imaginary number, I never dreamed that an Offbeat Bride's super kickass but quirky wedding venue could cost twice what my love paid for his car!
So far the publications and the blogs and the wedding calculators of the world are desperately trying to convince me that no couple has ever been married in front of 100 well fed guests for under $20,000 and gotten away with it.
Well goddammit, I won't take this lying down!
I'm a creative person, my tastes are not exorbitant, I live in Crenshaw for gosh sake! I am determined to win in the battle of money vs. fun and I fully intend to enjoy my engagement in the process because I have no intention of ever having another one. I am using this blog to vent my frustrations and trumpet my triumphs because I'm pretty sure I'm going to get pretty boring over the next ten months.
Thanks for reading.