8: Save the Whales…I mean, the Date! Save the Date! (and Ferris)

So while it seems impossible that anything could be so amazing, there is even MORE to this story of the magical venue and the perfect wedding plans. "How can that be?", you ask? Read on dear reader, read on...

We viewed Venito Perfecto (not proper Italian) for the first time in October. This was a wedding planning faux pas (gasp!) because it was only 11 months out from the date we had originally wanted which was September 27th 2008. (interjection: this is another piece of wedding lingo to become accustomed to - someone will ask you "how far out are you?". The first time this happened to me, I thought they were rhetorically stating how cool I was by using 1950s lingo. They weren’t. It means, “how far away is your wedding in terms of months?” weddings, like babies, are measured by their months. The typical gestation period for a wedding is between 12 and 18 months)

So anyway, we were only 11 months out. This is dangerous, wedding-shark-infested-water to be in without a venue. The solution usually becomes: sacrifice your venue or sacrifice your date.

And that is the twist that our happy little fairy-tale took when Perfect Venue didn’t have our date.

Cue sad music and an agonizing decision, right? Nope! Wrong.

In all honesty, Ryan and I weren’t really feeling our date anyway. Ryan picked it because it corresponded with my lucky numbers and we needed an answer to give to the five hundred people asking us what the date was. Truthfully, we both had the nagging intuition all along that that day of next year was probably not going to belong to us.

I remember asking him recently, “do you think we’re really going to get married on September 27th?” In typical us fashion, we both kinda shrugged and moved on. With us, nothing is ever certain, even the answer to things like “Do you think you are going to keep your first name as Ryan your whole life?” or “Do you think I will decide not to quit my job without warning this week?”

At least we’re exciting.

So flashback story time: A week or two before the venue was discovered in the rough, we were up really late talking. This memory has dream-like qualities and is foggy in my mind. That leads me to wonder if I were drinking when the event took place but Ryan assures me that I was just tired. Either way, details are elusive but I remember us talking about how we wanted to get married on a different, specific date AND how much fun it would be to celebrate our wedding AND that date at the same time.

That night, in my late-night-exhausted-drunken state and Ryan’s whatever state, we jokingly decided to switch our whole plan and get married instead on the date we came up with. We were excited and fell asleep shortly thereafter.

The next morning, Ryan looked at me and said, “S0, did we change the date?” I guess all of the excitement had worn off by then because I said “I don’t know if we should or not…” and we let it go at that.

Until the Fates stepped in on the day we found The Venue .

That day, after touring the magical building and nearly crying of joy, we sat down to discuss availability. I kept my little fingers crossed hoping that somehow everything would work out and we would get Our Date (at this point, I thought Our Date was still Sept 27)

I got my wish and we did get Our Date. It just wasn’t the one I misguidedly thought was supposed to belong to us.

Why? Because they didn’t have the 27th of September. Oh no.

But they did have our other date, our magical, swirly, should-be-a-song-in-a-musical date.

The 31st of December.

That's right, my dears, New Years Eve!

So you’ve heard it now and you’ve heard it right. We have changed the date hallelujah!

And our wedding will be held on December 31, 2008.

How lucky are we that we get to begin our whole new lives with a whole new year!? So here’s to December 31st, 2008.

Love and confetti falling from the ceiling,

Rhian