99 Days To Go!

Today is a milestone in our engagement: we finally reached double-digits in our countdown! Only 99 days to go until we are finally married!

Getting to this point has felt like an eternity, and I'm so happy we're so close to our wedding date. It's hard to believe that our countdown started at over 270 days when we got engaged way back in January. Do we really only have about three months left before the wedding?!

Through wedding planning, pre-marriage counseling, and just talking about our future together, I've learned a lot over the past 188 days. So to mark the momentous occasion of reaching less than 100 days until our wedding, here are some of the lessons I've learned along the way:

1. People really do care. I know, duh, right? Of course I have people in my life who care about me. But planning a wedding isn't something I could have or would have wanted to do alone. After all, like I've said before, this wedding isn't for me. It's for me and Drew, for us. 

Sure I've set up a lot of our appointments and have spent way more of my free time finding inspiration and such (and writing this blog), but Drew has been so tremendously helpful in planning our wedding. He has opinions and concerns about the decor, the invitations, and our vendors and shares his input and attends appointments with me. My future mother-in-law has served as a stand-in to appointments (like the wedding cake fiasco) that Drew wasn't able to attend and is helping plan my wedding shower. My mom and older sister drove eight hours to Michigan to help me find my wedding dress. 

The best part? I didn't even have to ask for most of the help I've received; my family (present and future) care about me enough to actually want to help out. (Thank you, by the way, to everyone who has helped us with wedding plans).

2. There's still time. Again, obvious. Especially after I just raved about our countdown reaching double digits. But this is a reminder I have given myself constantly throughout the entire wedding planning process, and it's been a huge help in maintaining my sanity and not stressing out. Yes, there's still a lot of planning to be done and contracts to sign and supplies to purchase. But we still have 99 days left to complete our to-do list. Thank goodness!

3. Engagement is wonderful. Oh, how I love this lesson. Drew and I are only going to be engaged once, so taking time to enjoy this period of our relationship and prepare ourselves for what lies ahead is important to us. The engagement isn't just a timeline for accomplishing the tasks of planning a wedding, although it certainly serves that purpose too. This is a time for us to learn more about each other and our relationship. We're going to be married, and that's huge.

I have a lot of other thoughts on being engaged, but this article from Relevant Magazine does a much better job of summarizing my feelings than I care to type right now.

4. Finances are tricky. Drew and I took the plunge and combined our finances a few months ago, way ahead of the wedding. Partly because Drew's internship pays peanuts, and partly so we have time to adjust to sharing a bank account before we feel like we have to share a bank account.

I'll admit I was hesitant about sharing funds at first, and instead I wanted to maintain separate accounts for at least minor purchases and "fun" money. Once we started talking about money more (thanks to our church's pre-marital counseling class) we realized my plan probably wasn't the best route for us to take. We're both pretty responsible with our spending habits and respect each other enough not to make any ridiculous purchases without discussing things first. With that in mind, we decided combining our finances will be best for us (although not necessarily the right path for everyone in every relationship to take).

Still, I'm caught off guard every now and then when I log in to my online banking and see expenses listed that I didn't make. And seeing twice as many gas purchases popping up sure takes some getting used to. But merging our finances during our engagement has worked out well for us so far, and now we have one less adjustment to get used to after we're married which is a nice feeling. 

5. I am so excited for marriage. Even though there's times that wedding planning has been a huge pain in the butt, I've never once felt nervous or hesitant about getting married. Drew and I are so right for each other and so in love that we constantly talk about how much fun we're going to have once we're married. And having spent most of our relationship long distance (whether 1 hour apart or 20), we're especially looking forward to living together and seeing each other every day instead of once a week.

I'm excited for what the future holds, and the lessons still waiting for me during the next 99 days.