Step Two: Find the Place

After you get engaged, you need to find a place to get married.  In our case, our venue was a really big deal. In fact, it seemed like the biggest deal to my overwhelmed brain, because the venue would determine our date. And the date is the first thing people ask you about when you tell them you're engaged. We weren't even down the mountain after I told Brady I would marry him and people were asking us the date. We didn't have a date in mind, but we had talked about what we envisioned for our wedding a lot. So the first thing for us was the venue. A lot of things go into what makes the "ideal" place, such as: the number of guests, the style of wedding you want, and other things I try not to think about, like your budget. Listen, I'm not here to tell you how to plan a wedding, because I am far from the expert on that. Fortunately, that's okay in my case because I have a future mother in law who is all about wedding planning, plus an official wedding planner. My job is basically done for me.

Here's the story of how we eventually, with much crying, found our venue.

After Brady and I got engaged, we went out for a celebratory lunch at a pub. My mind was already panicking about the venue, because I had done some pre-engagement investigating and had discovered that there was a shocking lack of barns that would let you get married in them in Oregon. I wanted to start the search right away, but Brady told me that we knew we would have at least a year, and there wasn't any rush. I disagreed, but it's hard to drive to venues when the guy who's supposed to go with you is not totally on board with spending a weekend driving all over. Over the course of a few weeks, I narrowed the search down to three options and we started calling for date availability. By mid-July and after some nudging from me and his mother, Brady was on board and we started the serious search.

My first choice was a cool place at the base of Mt. Hood. It was close to a lot of activities and seemed really unique. Unfortunately, they didn't return our calls, and there were questions about lodgings for guests anyway. We scheduled a viewing of my second choice. As soon as we pulled up, I fell in love.

Right? Perfect. And I would look a lot better next to those horses, who live on the property. One is a QH, there's an ASB, and a mustang. Perfect!

Oh, yeah, and the place barn, for the whole wedding thing. 

Before we left, we reserved a date in June. I felt like the weight of the world was finally off my shoulders. No more Fewer anxiety dreams! 

A few days later, we found out our wedding planner wasn't available on that date.

Que bridal breakdown number one. I declared I was already failing at planning a wedding and the whole thing was as good as a disaster, I never got anything I wanted, etc. Messy. Not cool.

It was, however, very eye opening. I had issues with even having a wedding in the first place, and I already knew this wedding was going to be much larger than I had ever thought my wedding would be, so the falling through of our venue felt like the first of many ways in which this wedding would be nothing like what we wanted. And we were basically out of barn venues. I wanted to cry forever.

Even though I didn't even want to have a wedding in the first place, I knew that if I were going to, I wanted it to be perfect, like everything else I do. The idea of a barn was really appealing to me for a number of reasons. It just seemed perfect for us - a little unkempt, a little imperfect, smelling like horses, but comfortable and casual and low-key. A barn had seemed like the perfect place for us to get married from the first day we had started talking about "our day." Eventually, barn = perfect. Then, no barn = disaster. I had to seriously reconsider my attitude if I were going to get through this. This whole time I had been telling myself I had not been a girl who dreamed about her wedding, and that was true. But I knew Brady wanted a wedding, and I had started envisioning that wedding to the point where I was committed to our vision.

As important as I thought the venue, the barn, was, it wasn't the most important. The most important thing of this whole ordeal was the marriage. One day, even though it should be a special day, pales in comparison to the importance of what we were about to embark on. If that one day didn't happen in a barn, it wouldn't affect the rest of our lives. If it weren't in a barn, it would just be... somewhere else. I know, I'm a genius. 

So I stopped caring. We went to another venue, knew immediately it was all wrong, and went home, only a little disheartened. But we were a lot more open to other ideas. Breweries, vineyards, atriums, whatever, we knew we could make it work with out casual, comfortable, slightly imperfect wedding visions.

Eventually we found The New Perfect Place. It had none of the questions or issues Long Farm Barn presented (like... bathrooms). It's a little, um nicer?, than we had envisioned, but it's going to be wonderful and perfect and us. 

Now I can start hassling our poor wedding planner over other thing, like the DJ. 

Step One: Get Engaged

It was never that I didn't want to get married. I just didn't think I would. Not out of some kind of anti-patriarchy or staunch feminist reasons - although, if I ended my life without having ever wed, those are definite reasons I would mutter with my last dying breath - it just didn't seem like something I would ever do.

For one thing, I was never one to play House with my friends. Actually, scratch that. I played House. Except I was the Dad, or the Dog. I was very good at being the Dog - lying under the tiny plastic table in the tiny plastic house, quietly observing everyone else reenacting the roles of Mom, Dad, Baby, etc. I feel like I still play the role of the Dog, in fact. But I was never eager to grow up and be "the Mom." Cooking dinner, cleaning, nagging Baby to do his homework. No, marriage, and the traditional gender role it seemed to presume, definitely wasn't for me.

Another handicap to the likelihood of my ever marrying is the fact that I'm not an easy person to be around. Most people don't like be shaken awake on Saturday morning to be told, "It's time to CLEAN!"
I prefer to function with no lights on, I have a strong preference for surrounding myself with weird quirky things, and I come with a large number of animals and have grand plans on acquiring more. I'm also not very social and I frequently speak to my dog through the magic and fun of song. Wherever I go, I leave a trail of bobby pins and chapstick in my wake. I like to come home from work and not talk. I like to rearrange the furniture when I can't sleep and/or when left to my own devices. I am prone to binging on CW shows when I am tired, upset, very cold, or slightly warm. There are other, more organized, nicer girls who do not spend Wednesdays nights lint-rolling dog hair off the couch.

Statistically speaking, as a more highly educated woman, I was more likely to wait longer to get married anyway. But not getting married at all did not seem like a stretch from that delay. I don't imagine a lot of people I knew in my early or mid 20s would have been surprised to run into me 20 years later to find out I had become the crazy lady with all the dogs and horses.

But when I hiked up Multnomah Falls and stood on the ledge, looking on while Brady rummaged around his Camelpak and pulled out a tiny box with the perfect ring in it and got down on one knee, it seemed like the most natural thing in the entire world to say yes.