Location, Location, Location

I think I can say this with some authority: planning a wedding in a town you’ve lived in kinda sucks.  We decided to get married in Nashville because it is a midpoint between Michigan, Texas, and Florida.  We did this that way people can come to the wedding regardless of where they are from.  However, it also means that we are in a town with relatively few connections.  When you and your family has lived in a place for generations, there are ties and contacts that are developed that can be really helpful in planning a wedding.  For example, I’ve had people tell me about how they had an aunt in town who worked in the wedding industry, or how much easier it is to find a place for a reception when you have entrenched parents. 

When Diana and I started planning for our wedding, we had been living in Nashville for all of two years and four months, hardly the generations that people often had to work with.  I was lucky enough to have been attending the same church for most of that time, but it has been very difficult to make the connections to a lot of local businesses and vendors.  Unfortunately our parents have more pressing stuff to do than to move down to Nashville for a few months to plan a wedding.

So that is my advice for would-be wedding planners.  Although it would have been great to have the wedding in Detroit or Jacksonville, it was unfortunately infeasible.  But now that I think about it, I’m glad that we are in the town in which we are doing the wedding; traveling back and forth to check on things does not seem fun…