The Engagement and the Family

On November 25th Brian and I got engaged, and we are both very excited. We have not set a date for the wedding due to Brian getting a new job and will be gone for 6 weeks training. We will probably take the big leap in September or October of 2006. More than likely the reception will be held at the Thornspring Golf Club in Pulaski. We have to wait for the ACC to release the Tech 2006 schedule! Can't have a wedding on a home game! I have already begun my search for a wedding dress and I have my appointed wedding coordinator Velvet on hand to help me with making the right choices. It is great to have a friend like her! I am glad you are so honest with me. I have begun to read up on the do's and don’ts of planning wedding. Gosh there is a whole lot to do!! In one article I was reading on theknot.com and it stated "you can't please everyone at your wedding", well if you know me I am a people pleaser so how does some one like me not do that? This is what brings me to my issue with families and weddings.

At some point I do believe people become closer to their friends then their own families, at least I am. I have been living in Southwestern, VA since August of 1998 when I started at Radford University. Since moving down here in 1998 there has never been a moment where I have ever considered moving back to McLean, VA where I am originally from. My father’s family on the other hand would love to have me up there living their type of lifestyle. Yeah I can say up until I came to RU I was that type of person everything had to big and expensive. I dreamed of having a huge wedding with tons of people at some famous place, now I just dream of having a wedding surrounded by the people who matter most to me. My family still believes that I need to have some upscale wedding with all the bells and whistles, especially my 23 year old brother. I never really knew how much he cared about where I had our wedding till yesterday.

I was chatting with him on AIM when he lashed out and got very mad when I told him that we would be getting married down here. He wanted us to have our wedding at my Uncle Victor’s farm house in Charlottesville, VA. Velvet has been there and it is a beautiful place, but it isn’t where we want it to be. There 4 reasons why I will not have the wedding there.
1. Almost 95% of guest that will be invited are from down here or south of here and I do not want people to have to drive 2.5 hours to the farm
2. The closest hotel to the farm is 30 miles away.
3. We would like to get married in September or October which means it will be rather chilly in the evenings and if at the farm it would have to outside, I am not taking chances with the weather.
3. The most important reason is that Brian and I want to plan our own wedding and make it as easy as possible and having it out of town would just be too hard.

So if anyone out there has advice on how to solve the thousand year old problem about weddings and families, I would love to hear them. I am just grateful to have friends like Velvet and Teresa who I can vent to on this problem. They think my family is nuts. I hope Velvet is ready to go to battle with them J!!