I have heard many a traumatic story about brides who suffer from Post Wedding Planning Stress Disorder. Symptoms of this disorder includes reading wedding magazines long after the wedding is over, trying to plan other people’s weddings, and attempting to turn everything into a DIY project. This all stems from the loss that is felt when there is no longer a wedding to plan.

Honestly, I thought I was clear of this disease. Don’t get me wrong, I loved planning my wedding. Sure, I wish I had more time and more money, but I really loved planning the wedding and seeing it all put together. But when it was over, I was SO GLAD that it was over. And I never wanted to plan another wedding again. So, as you can see, I thought I was one of the lucky ones. I had managed to avoid PWPSD. That is, until this morning.

This morning I went to the grocery store. As I was standing in the checkout line with my arms full of rice pudding, cereal, milk, and crackers, I saw it. It was a brand new issue of my favorite Canadian wedding magazine. One of the best things about being engaged was buying wedding magazines. Prior to being engaged, I made myself a promise that I was not allowed to buy a wedding magazine until I was engaged. I didn’t want to go insane planning a wedding before a wedding was even in the works! But, one of the first things that Hubby bought me once we were engaged (other than the ring, of course), was a wedding magazine! Since then, I have selected a couple favorite magazines, and I have bought every new issue. But now I’m married. I can’t buy a new wedding magazine. Or can I?

Believe me, it was hard to walk away from that magazine. I wanted it so bad. But, I’m not planning a wedding anymore. And I don’t want to plan a wedding anymore. And, I don’t want to want to plan a wedding again! Maybe I can convince my sister to get engaged. Then I can start to buy wedding magazines again.

So apparently I am exhibiting some PWPSD symptoms. Unfortunately, I know about the disorder, but not the remedy. Hopefully it will just go away on its own.

Hi there. How are you? It’s been a while since we have chatted, hasn’t it? Sorry about that. I’ve just been really busy. Really really busy! What? You want to know what was keeping me so busy? You mean you don’t remember? Oh dear. I guess I have been lousy at keeping you in the loop.

Okay. Let me start at the beginning. Introductions.

Hi there. My name is Laura. Laura O’Rourke.

Sorry? That name doesn’t sound familiar? Something is different? Well, that’s why I’ve been so busy! I got married! Two weeks ago tomorrow to be exact. That means tomorrow is our two week anniversary!

I absolutely love being a wife. I love sharing my life with someone. I love waking up with Dan and kissing him goodnight at night. I love knowing that we’re a team, that our lives have merged. And it does feel different. It feels wonderful.

I intend to go over different parts of the wedding individually and show pictures and describe what I did to make it unique. Until then, here are some teaser pictures.

**All pictures courtesy of our wonderful photographer, Nicole McEachern**

Today is the first of the series entitled Meet my… In this series of blogs, I’ll be introducing the world to the people involved in the wedding. I’ll be adding these introductions to the wedding website (www.bestdarnwedding.com).

My maid of honour (MOH) is the person I’ve shared pretty much everything with. We have shared a couple of houses, we share parents, we share clothes (sometimes not willingly), we’ve shared laughter, and we’ve certainly had our fair share of fights. Out of everyone in the entire world, a sister will be with you for your entire life, because she has to be. This is why I have chosen her to be my Maid of Honour, although it was a tough decision to not make her my flower girl. Maybe she’ll still get to toss some petals.

Maid of Honour
~Always a Maid of Honour, Never a Flower Girl~

Name: Amy Jones
Age: 19
Relationship: Sister of the Bride
Years we’ve known each other: Since I was 2 and a half years old. Fortunately for Amy, she’s known me for her entire life.
Bio: Amy is the middle kid in our family. (This explains a lot). She’s never been a flower girl, so we asked her to be our flower girl first, which was kind of funny. Amy is finishing her second year at Atlantic Baptist University taking a General Business Administration and Communications degree (I think!). She enjoys candlelit dinners and sweeping the library. She also has a thing for long walks on the beach and getting her family to search for cell phones in the snow in the middle of the night. Sorry folks. She’s in a relationship.
Dislikes: Sex, Sex, Sex.
Favourite Words: “Dingbat”, “Dadundadun” (guess what that second word is. Props to whoever gets it right. If you’ve heard it explained before, you can’t answer).

Today was the last day that we will be in the triple digits.  As of tomorrow (or today by the time this posts), it will be 99 days until the wedding.  According to Fiancé, this is a good thing.  Maybe I just need exams to be over before I can be excited about this.  At the moment, it just seems stressful!

Please come to me invitations!  They were supposed to be sent last week, but they still haven’t.   I need to get them started and sent out!

That’s all for now, folks!  I’ll be back once exams are over: or at least once essays are over.

4 months left. Four Months Left! ONLY FOUR MONTHS! I’m freaking out a whole lot right now. The last thing I want is for this blog to turn into a series of rants, but I just can’t help being super stressed. Nothing is done. We don’t have any money, we don’t have invitations made yet, we don’t have a reception place booked and…

The next month is pretty stressful for me with school. I need to put aside wedding things for now and just try to get through this last semester of my undergraduate. The only thing I’m really going to work on during this next month is invitations (and nailing down that reception place). I know I need to get the invites out within the next month. At the moment, I’ve ordered a sample pocket fold along with some colour swatches from Cards and Pockets Store, as well as a super cute peacock stamp set from Paper Source (oh, how I wish we had a Paper Source here!) I’m really excited about these stamps as it goes so nicely with the motif I’ve chosen, and will help to tie everything together. Stay tuned to see how it will look on the invitations!

I’m turning into the bride who checks the mail every couple of minutes. I can’t wait to get the swatches in the mail and finalize my colour choice. I can’t wait to try out my stamps. Today, I got home and there was a UPS Service Notice stuck to my door. Someone came, but I don’t know what was supposed to be delivered because I can’t read the guy’s hand writing. I wish there was a box to open today.

In the meantime, I just want to stop stressing. I was so excited for this wedding planning time, but right now I just can’t wait for it to be over. I know that everyone stresses about wedding budgets. I know that couples get into lots of kerfuffles over wedding issues. I know we’re not alone. But, I also know that other couples have more money to work with. And I know that people get things done so much quicker than I. (Its so hard to find something nice and cheap!).

With four months to go, I just have to remember that things will get done. I know at the end of the day, we will be married. I just have to enjoy this time. The last thing I want is to regret this. So, I have four months to start enjoy this!

Well, now I’m going to go enjoy cleaning my room so I can start on my wedding workout. I figured I should start working out again now that the wedding is so soon.  But before I do that, I think I need some cookies.

This evening, Fiancé and I sat down together and watched ABC’s new reality show, Here Come The Newlyweds. I’ve been getting really excited about getting married and spent most of today updating our website (check it out!) while watching anything I could that had a wedding in it, such as Rumor Has It. As I was browsing through the TV listings I saw the title to Here Come The Newlyweds and I quickly looked it up online to see what it was all about. I thought about asking Fiancé to sit down and watch it with me, but figured he probably wouldn’t want to watch something so girly. Little did I know we would both enjoy it.

The show takes seven newly married couples including one couple who knew each other for only 6 months before getting married, one arranged marriage, one couple who each had three previous marriages, one couple who had been dating for over 10 years and got married “for the insurance”. The couples compete against each other for a “nest egg” of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like all (most) reality TV, couples must vote other couples out of the house until only one couple remains.

Fiancé (who sat down to watch it without me asking) and I laughed throughout the entire show. The couples are hilarious. The competitions are equally as funny. First, the husbands had to be blindfolded while each woman kissed each man on the cheek. The man then had to guess which kiss belonged to his wife. The second challenge consisted of the wife giving her husband directions while he drove blindfolded.

I would certainly recommend this show. I particularly enjoyed the time it gave Fiancé and I to sit together while making little comments about our relationship. “Do you think you’d know my kiss?”

Part 2 of Thematically Speaking

On one of our very first dates, I saw a black and white artsy photograph on a wall in Boyfriend’s house. Being the total emo noob that I was, I desperately loved and wanted to do photography.

 ”Who took that picture?” I asked

At this moment I became the girlfriend of a photographer. I was so pumped and proud. On one of our following dates, Boyfriend grabbed his Ricoh and me and we walked around Halifax as he taught me how to take photographs (see picture on the right). So, from day one, photography became central to our combined interests. I was eventually given the Ricoh as Boyfriend bought a Nikon D50 and a Nikon D2H. We started going out and doing more photography together, and we started giving gifts of photographs to each other. Eventually we started doing some wedding photography together, which is a great opportunity to be a part of and to capture love.

Ever since I saw Mrs. Eggplant’s awesome table numbering idea, I knew that we had to do the same thing for our reception. Prior to this discovery, I was having a hard time deciding what to do for the table numbers. I wanted it to be unique, but I didn’t want it to be hard for people to find their table, so I had thrown out the idea of table naming. I wanted something that really described who Fiancé and I are as a couple while still making it interesting to our guests. This was a perfect idea, but I didn’t realize it would eventually lead to a wedding theme.

Yesterday, while discussing Fiancé’s camera theme idea, I realized that we have been about photography since the very beginning. This idea could tie the entire wedding together and give it a really unique touch while still being classy. We can place photographs of ourselves and our adventures around the reception hall in a way that tells the story about our relationship so far.

We also want our guests to get involved in the fun. As I was looking for a photographer, my mother told me that we need to make sure that there are lots of pictures of the guests because this is something she regrets not having. What a better way to do this than to get the guests to take pictures of themselves. I hope to encourage as many people as possible to bring their digital cameras while providing a couple of disposable cameras on the tables for guests without their own. We will encourage the guests to take pictures of themselves having a great time, and afterwards make sure the photos fall into our hands. Maybe we’ll try to make a really fun competition out of it.

The current trend in weddings is to not clink the glasses. In order to make the newlyweds kiss, I’ve seen people have to sing a song with the word love in it, do trivia related to the bride and groom, or find someone to kiss themselves. I even was present at a wedding where a dead fish was required to be kissed before the bride and groom would do it (it’s an East Coast thing). We’re still working out the logistics, but we think it will be fun for the guests to become the photographer in order to get us to kiss. We’ll place the Nikon D50 somewhere in front of the head table and invite guests to use it to take our picture. We’ll even invite them to suggest how to pose us!

One of the final ideas that I’ve been toying with is for Fiancé and I to carry around cameras with us on the day of the wedding. I think it would be so cool to create a photo-essay from the bride and groom’s perspective. I worry this may be a little too much though. The last thing I will want is to have an assignment at my own wedding.

So there you have it: our photography theme. If my heart wasn’t already set on our aqua and apple colour scheme, black and white would have really fit in. Yes, I’m still super jealous of Miss. Petunia and Mrs. Gummi Bear and Miss. Hummingbird’s ability to pull off a ridiculously fun and unique but still classy wedding, but our photography theme seems to hit the mark as well. It will be totally Dan and Laura, while being inclusive to our guests whom we love. Our guests will be able to get involved. And hopefully Fiancé can get more excited about the planning process as he thinks up more ways to incorporate our theme.

I’m an avid WeddingBee reader. WeddingBee is a collective blog of brides-to-be and brides and wives all sharing their wedding related experience. Through this blog, I have been able to read about all of the wedding planning and DIY projects that I should be doing myself. This site provides some great ideas for brides to be. Some weddingbee brides are trying to make their days entirely unique by having themed weddings. Unfortunately, Fiancé is jealous of some of their very amusing wedding themes:

Miss Petunia is doing a Monopoly inspired wedding.

Mrs. Gummi Bear managed to pull off a completely gorgeous wedding that replaced dancing with board games, lawn games, card games, and video games .

The couple that really gets Fiancé’s engines rarring are the Hummingbirds who are planning a complete geek wedding, including a StarWars cake, video game inspired tables and World of Warcraft place cards (okay, the place cards seem to correspond to the video game theme at each table, but the WOW name cards are pretty ingenious).

All of these sound super awesome, and I wish I could attend these weddings, but I just can’t see how we could pull anything like this off. How am I going to keep my wedding classy and my family happy if I create everyone a Lord of the Rings Online character and hook up 150 computers around the reception hall and get everyone to complete a custom made wedding quest as hobbits, elves, and wizards? Both Fiancé and I admit we would love to pass up a DJ for a live Rock Band or Guitar Hero competition. How fun would it be to get your groove on to friends and family trying to rock out? But you can only dance to Ziggy Stardust and More than a Feeling so many times before you start looking for a good Michael Jackson ditty.

Although these options fit into my “fun” and “unique” buzzwords that I hope will describe my wedding, they miss the mark for “romantic” and “classic”.

But today, right before we met with our photographer (more on that later), I read Mr. Write’s blog (what a GREAT name for a blog! This blogger is actually the main character of CBC’s hit new drama jPod). Mr. Write chatted about how much fun he was having planning a wedding that was themed. He discussed games that would be played at the wedding and ways to make the newly married couple kiss that is unique and fun ways to name tables. While reading this, I really wanted to have a wedding theme, something that both Fiancé and I can get excited about but I was still worried it would be a little chintzy. Fiancé suggested we name our tables after famous guitar players, or even famous guitars, but that has nothing to do with us as a couple. Then he suggested that we name tables after cameras. I thought this was stupid, especially since we already decided on how we would distinguish tables.  Luckily, his camera suggestion gave me an idea…

(Don’t worry. I’ll tell you what my idea is in my next blog. I know no one wants to read a novel in blog form, so I’m leaving you all in a state of suspense.)

Have any of you thought about themed weddings? What are your opinions on them? Have you been to one or are you planning one, or would you just rather see them tossed in the trash?

So, I have finally gotten out of my long planning slump. I think it is because I don’t have to worry about school for this week and this week only. I have all my hours of all my days just to sit at home and go online and e*mail photographers and check out bridesmaids dresses and contemplate making invitations (I didn’t actually get around to making them yet).

Last week Fiancé and I met with our projected caterer. Although we believe we’re getting the best price available, we’re going to have to rent so many things that we’re thinking its going to be about as expensive as having a reception in a hotel. Oh well. We’re into it this far already. And stuffed chicken or salmon sounds like delicious main course choices. (Don’t get your heart set on these dishes however. We may need to revise once we get the budget).

Tomorrow we’re meeting with a possible photographer. So things are GETTING done!

I even looked at bridesmaid dresses today with my bridesmaid Alicia. I had one in mind that I L-O-V-E-D, but unfortunately, it only comes in yellow. So I had to face another dissappointment. That’s okay. In the next couple of weeks I’ll choose a bridesmaid dress and show pictures to the world. For now, there are just too many options to choose from.

I picked up a “Journal” today. I realized I needed something to keep in my purse to write down everything I do for this wedding. I can no longer keep everything in my head. I will write appointments, costs, spendings, and thoughts in it. Hopefully at the end of this process, I will have a great keepsake to remember this engagement.

Can you believe it? We don’t have a photographer yet! People have been contacting Fiancé more than a year prior to their wedding. Yup. We have five and a half months left, and we don’t have a photographer. This is not my fault. No - I gave Fiancé - the photographer in the relationship, the job of finding our photographer. Instead of doing this, he put it off. So, I took to the daunting task of finding a photographer.

Having some photographing experience ourselves, we are looking for a few things:

• Preferably 8, but we will settle for 7 hours of coverage
• A disk of hi-resolution images afterwards that we can use to print ourselves.
• Preferably, someone who can take good pictures.
• Someone who can fit in our budget

We haven’t made a complete decision just yet. I’m hoping to hear from one or two more photographers who I have contacted. I have a front runner in mind, but until we make the final decision, I will keep my lips tight. Until then, here are a list of some of my favorite photographers in the maritimes with some information found on their websites. Any photographs I can manage to get from the sites are small to protect the photographers. Please go to their sites for more.

DJO Photography

• Coverage starting at $1200
• All packages includes a free engagement shoot
• Great photography and personable photographers

Unfortunately, I cannot use this photographer, because you can’t have the groom taking the pictures at the wedding.

Gallant Photography

• Photojournalist style
• Absolutely incredible photography!!
• Associate coverage starting at $1500
• Photography by Chris Gallant starting at $2000

Alex Macaulay Photographers

(go to the site to check out the wonderful pictures. I can’t get any onto my site)

• Absolutely incredibly beautiful photographs
• “Where art meets real life”
• Much too expensive for me. The lowest coverage starts at $2,700
• They seem to put a lot of emphasis on your wedding and their relationship with the Bride and Groom.

Shooterbug Photography

• Associate coverage ranging from $1300 - $2000
• Main photographers ranging from $2000 - $5000+
• Beautiful photography (the picture above is not my favorite. Go check out some more at the web site)

Kate Hayter Reid Photographics

• Probably one of the best photographers I’ve seen for the price.
• Wedding package priced at $1175 + available add-ons (such as $300 for hi resolution photos)
• Lists her availability on web site. This makes things extremely easy for someone like me.

Shari Tucker Photography and Design

• Packages include a certain number of hi-resolution digital images
• Package prices range from $650 - $1995
• She is a very skilled photographer with great, unique pictures. I feel like she will reflect the couple’s personality.
• Great response time. Responded to me on the same day as I e*mailed her.

Schooner Cove Photography

(Again, I can’t take photos from the site. You should click the link just to see how beautiful the pictures are)

• Package prices range from $925 - $2250, although the first package is not available during peak seasons (and the only package that offers more than 6 hours of photography is the highest priced package).
• Gorgeous photography
• Some packages include some hi-res images

Lynn Doy Photography & Design

• Stunning photographs.
• Coverage starting at $1825

Trevor Allen Photography

• Uses a style called Portrait Journalism, a style that uses both posed and candid shots
• Fabulously beautiful and stunning photographs
• An option to put together a custom photography package right on the website
• Free hi-res disk
• Good response time

Tarrah Mills Photography

• Amazingly personable.
• Great response time.
• Available through Facebook as well.
• Package prices range from $850 - $2300
• Disk of all hi-resolution photos
• Engagement session included in all but the cheapest packages

So, there we have it. Check out some of NS’s great photographers. I also contacted one from Moncton as well by accident. If you’d like their info, let me know.

I want to explain my absence from blogging. We had a loss in the family last week, and over the past month, I’ve been back and forth between provinces to visit and help out.