For those of you who are new to the page, or missed my wedding posts during the planning process, this post is for you. I am highlighting everything from my engagement up until right before my bridal shower.  This may be a little lengthy, but please bare with me! I wanted to make sure I get everything linked for your reading pleasure.

Here we go..


We were engaged on August 12, 2015 (My moms birthday!)  and quickly started looking into places to hold our wedding (I even blogged about first impressions of being engaged here). We live in the Finger Lake region of New York, AKA wine country. We knew we wanted to have a wedding that everyone would enjoy, but without breaking the bank.

We looked at a number of barns (You can see one of them here!), but none of them seemed to fit what we were looking for. We were having a small wedding, so a place fit for hundreds of people, just was not our style. I had booked marked a list of wineries in the area that hosted weddings.

A winery seemed like a great idea. We love wine. Our friends love wine. So why not. We looked at 2 places that responded to our request. R really wanted a wedding with a lake view. One of the wineries fulfilled that want, but the rest of the place was not working for us.

We decided on Knapp Winery. They had 2 dates left in the time frame we were looking for. Labor Day weekend or September 24th. We wanted Fall, so the 24th seemed like a no brainer. We booked and were set.

October came and I had an appointment with David's Bridal and a local boutique. My mom came into town and we had at it. You may remember I wrote about my experience with both here. I bought my dress a lot quicker than I anticipated, but it was love for sure.

Once the dress was bought and the venue was picked, I kind of stopped planning. We had engagement photos taken and I sent out cards to the ladies I wanted in my bridal party and everything kind of stood still til the Spring.

When March hit, I jumped into full on panic mode. So much to plan, so little time. I am a pretty thrifty person, so keeping costs down was very important to me. Our location was very pretty on it's own, so not much went into decor. I booked a photographer and a DJ and we chose our bakery. Everything was set.

We had planned to get married in front of a famous waterfall in the Ithaca area, however due to an extreme draught, there was no water. In August I changed the location of the ceremony. It was pretty risky, so close to the date, but I made it work and we had a plan.  

The first weekend of August was my bridal shower. I will be sharing that with you all next week on the 12th.

September 10th was my Bachelorette Party. That will be posted on 10/19.

You can expect the post on my wedding day on 10/26.

I can't wait to get into this mini series, sharing with you my wedding festivities.