The best wedding planning advice I ever received.

A few weeks after Jake and I returned from our big engagement trip in Italy questions started flying around... Where will you get married? Who will perform the ceremony? Have you picked a date? What is your theme? Have you gone dress shopping? etc...

At first the questions were welcomed and I was excited to babble on about my thoughts and inspiration and dreams, but quickly those first few weeks turned into a month and it became obvious that those questions needed real answers.

I started to feel... overwhelmed.

I had been planning my wedding since I was a little girl. The only problem was my "dream wedding" changed as quickly as the seasons. I imagined various scenarios - white dress and a small chapel, on the beach in Fiji, in my hometown, on a plantation in the south (during my Gone With the Wind phase), and the list goes on. I had dreamed about autumn weddings with apple cider and the changing leaves to summer weddings with paper lanterns strung from the trees and a cotton candy machine near-by. I had dreamt of eloping to a romantic Italian town with just our families around us.
You name it and I had thought of it.

I started to feel even more... overwhelmed.

I paged through the dozens of wedding magazines I had collected over the years for guidance and I only became more confused. I started to panic. I couldn't decide! What kind of bride am I?!

Then one afternoon while on the phone with my dearest friend Emily, she asked me one simple question that changed everything...

 "What do you want people to leave your wedding knowing about you and Jake as a couple?" 

So I paused and I thought, for just a moment, and I said "That we are passionate musicians. I want them to leave our wedding thinking they've never heard music like that before!" And with that one simple answer everything fell into place.

Hundreds of sheets of vintage music, a New York City venue and a 20-piece orchestra later, we had us a damn fine wedding. SO - to all my future brides out there, take this question to heart, think about it and go with your gut! Oh, and good luck!