I have been asked by a few people whether I’ll be posting my own wedding planning on the blog, or whether I’ll be doing a “how-to” series on how to plan a wedding. Sooo… I’ve decided to do a bit of both. I’m going to attempt to put together some instructional posts on how to plan a wedding, based on my experiences planning my own wedding (so far anyway… We’re still like 6+ months out.)
Anywho, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?
Step One: Get engaged.
Or not. I mean, you can certainly plan a wedding before you get engaged (it’s 2011, you can do whatever you want). But typically, and in my own experience, the “getting engaged” part of the wedding planning process is sorta crucial. HOWEVER, if you’re anything like me, you may have already looked at a wedding blog or two before the whole “Hey, so, you – me – forever?” thing actually happened. (Listen, KC and I dated for 6 years before he got down on one knee, so just zip it.)
Ok, but back to the point: begin at the beginning, aka get your a** engaged. So, you’re engaged. Whoop whoop! Maybe you knew it was coming, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you had your nails all perfectly manicured for that exact moment that your adorable boy popped open that ring box. Or maybe you were standing in the rain, wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt and a puffy green jacket, with your hands looking oh-so-less-than-perfect because you’d packed up your office at work two days before and scraped your left ring finger on your tape dispenser. Um yeah… Not that that was my experience or anything. Awkward. (Whatever, I was completely surprised and despite my jacked-up hands and slovenly attire, it was still amazing and super romantic.)
So, perhaps prior to your romantic whirlwind of an engagement, there’s a few things you and your fiancee-to-be can do to prepare for the big moment.
Girls: if you have any idea that your man might be proposing in the near or distant future, you may want to educate yourselves on the whole “diamond thing” (because, really, guys have it hard enough that they have to plan out the engagement, not to mention drop a couple paychecks worth of dough on a sparkly rock, without being COMPLETELY in the dark about what kind of ring you might just want sitting on your left hand for, oh, say, ALL OF ETERNITY. Am I right?)
So, diamonds 101 for the ladieeeeees: Here’s what you need to know (from my perspective, obviously). The most important thing is to get an idea of what style of ring you’d like. So, let’s start with cut (aka the shape of that white-ish sparkly thing):
Alrighty, onward and upwards. Now, obviously, if you’re the “whatever my man wants to get me” type, none of this really matters. If you’re the “don’t you dare show up with a [insert specific diamond shape here]” type, you might want to throw a little hint down before your man goes out and drops $15K on a [blank]-shaped diamond and you’re all like, OMG WTF Brian??? after he summons the courage to profess his undying love for you and ask you to have a dog, house and 2 1/2 kids with him.
Please don’t take this to mean that you need to go try on 5,000 rings at every jewelry store in the tri-state area until you’ve found THE ONE. If that’s your cup of tea, then by all means, don’t let me stop you. My approach to all this was to try on a few rings when out with friends (because, like me, I have some girlfriends who are also fans of absurdly long relationships), and figure out the general style I liked. KC said that when he went shopping for rings he knew three things about what I liked: antique-y looking, not too high-set off the hand (I don’t like my jewelry catching on stuff), and FOR GOD SAKES no princess cut! (I’m sorry, I have an unnatural thing against princess cut diamonds. I’m not sure where it stems from…)
Lucky for me, KC is weirdly good at gift-giving (it’s like a serious problem. He gives me an amazing DSLR camera for my birthday and I turn around and go, ummm, here’s a gift card to Best Buy… Happy birthday!… Luckily, for whatever reason, he still loves me.) So when he pulled that ring box out of his sock and in it sat a classic emerald-cut in an antique setting with diamond band, well, I can safely say that he freaking knocked it out of the park. (Not literally of course. We’re talking metaphors here, obv.)
Now, if you’re not the type who wants to go out an try on rings beforehand and have no clue what style of ring you’d like, your man has a couple options. (F2B’s – that’s fiancee’s to be for all you non-abbreve lovers – take note.) Your F2B can A. scour the jewelry store and find a ring he thinks you’ll like (this sounds stressful – thank goodness I didn’t have to propose to myself); B. Propose without a ring (remember that whole “in this box is a promise” thing from Knocked Up? Yeah, like that); or C. Buy a center stone (aka one of those shapes above) and have it put in a temporary setting (basically, a simple solitaire setting that is easily changed). With this option, you still get a ring, and you and your H2B (yeah, husband-to-be now, got it?) can go pick out a setting you like together. (Diamond shopping with the H2B? Be still my heart!)
Alrighty, so enough about the girls, let’s move on to the boys.
Boys: so you want to propose. Good for you! I’m sure that your lovely lady deserves a strapping young man like yourself. The whole “getting engaged” thing is likely to be the most stressful part of planning a wedding for you (aren’t you lucky). So be prepared, and be thoughtful. As far as how you propose; well, I’m sorry to say, that’s completely up to you. I’m not going to expound on the myriad of ways you can ask your F2B to be your W2B. (However, let me just say that it’s probably best not to set up some intense obstacle course with the ring at the end and yell, “You want to get married?? You’re gonna have to work for it!” before slapping a number on her back and firing a gun to signal the start of the race. Just sayin’.)
When you go to buy your lovely F2B a ring, the jeweler should fill you in on the ins and outs of buying a diamond (or whatever rock you’re purchasing. I mean, Kate Middleton has a sapphire engagement ring, so don’t think you’re boxed in by the whole “diamond or nothing” thing.) However, since diamonds are most traditional, let’s talk about those. Actually, we’ll save that for the next post where we’ll cover the whole “you’re engaged, now what?” thing. Bahahaha how cruel to just leave you hanging like that! Only kidding of course (well, not about the whole ending-the-post-here thing). It’s not like you’re going to be waiting by your computer constantly hitting the refresh button until I’ve posted next. (Or maybe you are; I don’t know your life.)
Well, until then, happy planning!