Familiy Affair

At the beginning of my wedding planning I was dead set against family DOING anything at the wedding, i.e. I didn't want to have someone related to me in charge of anything that one usually hired a vendor to do. I wanted this for three different reasons, 1) I wanted my family to be guests at my wedding and not sitting through the ceremony stressing about some aspect of the reception, 2) when a vendor messes up it's o.k. to get mad, when a family member does you just have to grin and bare it, and 3) vendors WORK for you. Therefore you can easily tell them what you want and what you don't want. With a family member sometimes this gets a little tricky when they have a "good idea" or something that "they" would like to do.

But, after price checking different vendors it became quite obvious to me that I may need to relax this wedding desire and think about making it a "family affair".

Jacob has a small family. Himself, parents and a brother, who will be one of his groomsmen. I, on the other hand, have myself, my parents and three brothers (no sisters to be bridesmaids). So, we decided to incorporate my brothers into the wedding in a unique way. My media-arts brother is going to do the videography, my guitar-playing-cattle-rancher brother is going to play some ceremony music, and my baby brother just got ordained online and is going to be officiating the ceremony!

Additionally, Jacob's parents pulled some strings and reserved some cheap beach house accommodations for about half of our anticipated guests.

I know the wedding is still a year out... but I"ve always been one to plan ahead. I'm kinda super organized in that manner. lol Plus, after this summer I'll be doing the full-time school/work thing until next April... so, I gotta get it out of my system now! =)