We Have a Target Date for the Wedding

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Henry Morgan through our wedding planning.

After much discussion, Girl Scout Fiancée and I have decided upon a target date for our Disney World wedding: April 8, 2014. Now, obviously, since we can't book our wedding until 8 months before that date (August 8th of this year), we can't say for certain that it will be our date, but it does give us something to shoot for.

It should be pretty obvious, since we got engaged back in November, that this is going to be a pretty long engagement, over 18 months. That's long by almost any couple's standards, but since we've been together for over six years at this point, I don't think we'll have any problems making it that far. There are two main reasons we want to have the wedding that far out, and both involve the cold, hard realities of the cost of a wedding.

You see, neither of our families are in a position to pay for any wedding, much less a Disney wedding. That means that Girl Scout Fiancée and I will be saving up to pay for the wedding, and, since I don't like the idea of starting our married life in the hole financially, we want to save up and pay for the wedding ourselves.

Not pictured: our financial situation.

Of course, making a trip to Disney World is no small feat for many families, and since it's likely that both of our immediate families are going to need to shoulder some of the financial burden of attending for their respective sides of the family, we wanted to give them a chance to save up as well. Now, my parents are old hands at the Disney World vacation, but even with that experience they'll need time to plan and save, since they'll likely be bringing my brother, sister-in-law, and two grandmothers with them. Girl Scout Fiancée's family likewise has to plan and save, but even more so, since she has a larger group of family that is likely to come to the wedding.

I've started crunching the numbers on the wedding (more on that in a later post), and this looks to be the only way to pull it off without sacrificing either our financial future or our ability to have the best wedding and honeymoon we want. Just like I don't want to go into debt for the wedding, I don't want to sacrifice options or cut corners on the honeymoon; I want Girl Scout Fiancée's first Disney World experience to b amazing, and I want her to get to experience all of the great things that the resort has to offer. If that means we wait a little longer, well, so be it.