What Did You Say Your Budget Was?: finagling something nice out of nothing

It is lucky for Josh The Fiance and I that we're not big on the idea of having a fancypants wedding, because if we did the wedding industry would be HAHA SUCKERSing all the way to the bank. And back. And to the bank again. And Josh The Fiance and I... well, we just don't have very much money to put in the Wedding Industry's bank account. (And if we did I'd like to think we'd put it into the Graduate School bank account. Or maybe the House Ownership bank account. Or *hinthint* the Getting Grace A Puppy bank account.)

But again... not that much cash that we'd like to blow. (Do you know the kinds of germs that are on money these days? It's just DIS- what, you didn't mean that kind of blow? Er, carry on.) But the V Word started to rear its ugly head.

A venue wouldn't be that big of a deal if we wanted, say, a small ceremony and afternoon reception with 50, maybe 70 people. You can fit that sort of crowd cozily into a handy backyard, or under a small shelter in a nice garden-type park. But just my close extended family is about that, and Josh The Fiance is in a similar situation. If we cut out all but the most beloved of friends our guestlist is bumping up merrily against the side of the Good Ship 150. Small garden ceremony? Ha! Ha!

So we had to find a place that a) was not ludicrously priced; b) could accommodate our exorbitant families; d) fit our short laundrylist of aesthetic requirements. (And preferably not presided over by a crazy person.)

First we discovered that "not ludicrously priced" in Wedding Speak is $2k. Second we realized that if it was "reasonably priced", could fit our families, and was outside and pretty, it was not only often presided over by crazy people but usually we would have to pay to get it catered unless we wanted our guests to eat grass in the manner of cows. And reasonably priced catering typically starts at $10 a head for a light appetizer buffet. Which, with a guestlist of 150 people (each with their own personal head) is about $1500. That, on top of our reasonably priced venue, came to around $3,500. Which is not really a reasonable price when you realize we have already gone over our budget by 16.6% and we have not even purchased the dress yet.

I am beginning to see the appeal of eloping.

Figuring Out What We Want: a journey of self-discovery, whining, and bees

When it comes to planning a wedding, I'm beginning to discover that while most people do it in a year or less, there are things that can (and will) occupy your time no matter how long your engagement. Especially if you, like me, never spent any time as a younger person thinking about what sort of spectacle you want your wedding to become. So when Josh and I gleefully, nervously, blindly stepped into the world of Almost Grown Up People we had rather a large job set up for us already, despite our carefully planned (massive) engagement period.

Before you can plan all of the little wiggly bits of a wedding (centerpieces, pennies in your shoe, cufflinks, etc) you need to have some kind of idea of what on earth you'd like to do. And this is where the venue comes in.

Before wedding planning I rarely, if ever, thought about the word "venue." My mother used to be employed at a rather large tourist attraction with a splendidly overpriced event space, and our discussions about her job in that very specific category was perhaps the only time in living memory I have ever uttered the word. Until now. The venue is so important, so central, so all-encompassing in the course of wedding planning that you apparently cannot make one single bloody decision until you figure out where to throw the damn thing. Will it be outside? If it's inside, can we have candles? If it's outside, will we have to rent porta-potties? Will we need to rent a tent? Where will the chairs be coming from? Do they allow outside caterers? Wait, did we even budget for catering?

Et freaking cetera.

One thing we did know is that we wouldn't be having our wedding in a church. Neither Josh The Fiance nor I have a home church, for one. Additionally, the ceremony will be (if it includes faith at all) alarmingly inter-faith. I came from a hippie presbyterian background and am now, with the help of college courses in Comparative Religion and an unfortunate bout of religious relativism, mired in floundering agnosticism. Josh The Fiance was raised Jewish/Native American Pagan, and now generally enjoys the idea of God but mostly thinks about cooking and computers. Our best church option would probably to be married in some kind of Unitarian commune, the kind where everybody wears hemp and brings a set of miniature set of bongos for the round singalong.

Another obstacle in our wedding planning is our debilitating lack of cash. Do you have any bloody idea how bloody expensive every bloody venue is out there in the world? Apparently the average cost for American weddings these days is something like $27,000. HOLY MACKEREL. ON A STICK. AND OTHER VARIOUS EXCLAMATIONS. That is more money than my dream car costs. Our budget cuts out most private estates, most hotel ballrooms, pretty much anywhere that requires that you hire their in-house catering service, and... that's pretty much that.

But we needed to figure out what sort of setting we wanted for our wedding, and we wanted it to be outside, in a pretty place, preferably somewhere that was close to most of our relatives, especially the ones who found travelling long distances difficult. That meant somewhere in Oregon or close to the Washington-Oregon border. (Josh and I live in the Seattle area, for those of you following along at home.)

And so the adventure began. Working from our computers, poking around in areas we were at best unfamiliar with, we started the Great Venue Search.