Wedding Planning Blues; or: Is it too Late to Elope?

Can I just tell you that planning a wedding is really hard? What were we thinking?! It's taken on a life of it's own, it's actually taking over our lives. The new year has brought a new reality: we are getting married in T-minus 114 days and, Dude, we're not ready.

As with anything, complications have come up, both personal and not. Shifting roles, lost friends, etc. Our florist cancelled last week. Wow. That's huge. I booked her back in June so that it would be taken care of before we lived 600 miles away. We had a lot of trouble finding a hotel for everyone to stay at (did I have to have my wedding 1/2 across the country from my entire family?! Yes, because I couldn't bear the thought of having the reception at the Bessemer VFW. At first I thought of it as a good opportunity for everyone to take a vacation, but now I'm realizing that a lot of people actually hate going on vacation). Just a note to those of you who are invited/in the wedding outside of the Boston Area: book now. Book now, book now, book now.

And there are like 500 other things that need to be taken care of.
I know, "boo hoo, I'm getting married and it's so hard," cry me a river. But we've been having a rough couple of weeks. It seems like I get one thing squared away, and then 5 more pop up. This whole "wedding" thing is just crazy, anyway, when you think about it. Why did we fall into this mire of societal norms and expectations? We just wanted it to be nice for us and for everyone else.

On a brighter note: we're working on finalizing the invitations, and they're beautiful. I strongly recommend hiring a small business when you can, because the quality and price can't be beat. We're working with DWRI Letterpress out of Providence, RI and for about 2/3 of the price we would have paid to any stationary store, we are getting hand designed/pressed invitations on beautifully lush papers and were also able to hire an artist to draw a picture that will be incorporated into the design. It's really pretty.
I knew of DWRI from the good old days when good old Amber worked in the literary journal circle. My hay-day, I like to call it (early last year). Well, those days are long-gone now. But Tuesday Journal hired Dan Wood and DWRI to print the journal, so I had gone to his place of business for meetings (which is his garage, converted into a letterpress factory/office) and had seen him at work. And I love knowing that my money is going to him, rather than a huge chain.
The invitations are important to me simply because of spending so much time working with papers/printing/fonts, etc for different jobs. Paper is a huge part of my life, I think. Everything I see in print, I think of in terms of font and paper choice. So even though they are such a minor part of the whole wedding, loving my invitations is a huge deal to me. I'd rather remember my beautiful invitations than a veritable garden of very specific imported flowers from the florist (though I do still need some flowers!).