First of all, thank you for being so, so very excited for us – we can feel your love from wherever you are! However, please bear with us over the next several weeks. Though we have sent our Save-the-Dates, there are many, many details that are still to be determined…one of which is travel arrangements. We completely understand that since this wonderful occasion will require travel and time on your behalf, you would likely prefer to make those plans sooner rather than later – and trust me when I say that we are fervently working to figure out all of the travel specifics as soon as possible. Our main priority was to announce the date and location so that ya’ll (that’s Charleston for you!) could literally save the date and begin to consider what arrangements would have to be made. Our next focus was to sort through caterers and bakers in order to get those booked ASAP…with October being such a busy wedding time in Charleston, it was necessary that we chose our main vendors immediately. And, now that that’s done as well, we can turn our attention back to all of you, as we continue to flesh out what our wedding weekend will look like.

For now, here are the basic need-to-knows:

• Charleston is the closest airport, and is about a 30 minute drive from Folly Beach
• Please do not yet book any type of lodging – more details regarding overnight accommodations will be provided in the formal invitations
• The ceremony will begin sometime Saturday afternoon
• Guests should plan to arrive no later than noon on Saturday, but are welcome to arrive as early as Friday afternoon
• The first official Wedding event will be a Welcome Dinner on Friday evening – there will be no rehearsal ceremony, and the Welcome Dinner will be for any guests who have arrived in the Charleston area
• Guests are welcome to leave any time between noon on Sunday and 9:00am Monday
• Please feel free to make this trip as short or long as you would like.

For anyone who has received our Save-the-Dates, you read correctly…we’re getting married on Folly Beach, South Carolina! Why, you ask? Well, the first reason is that we wanted an outdoor wedding in the Fall, so it makes sense to go a little further south than either of our “home” states. Secondly, since so much of our identity and experience as a couple is about the constant adventures we are fortunate enough to have together, a wedding weekend that was like a mini-vacation seemed like a perfect fit. We also like the idea of a destination because the wedding we see in our minds is a very small and intimate occasion, where our two families and our absolute bestest of friends can really spend time with one another, get to know one another, and share our unique and meaningful experience together with us. We firmly believe that our wedding is not simply about us committing to one another, but also about the joining of those closest to us, beginning a new familial bond that will last the rest of our lives.

So why South Carolina? An out-of-the-country destination was completely out of the question…we didn’t want anyone to have to spend that kind of time or money. For some reason, the Carolina coast just spoke to us as being a simple, yet beautiful setting, that is relatively accessible for our families from the Midwest and East Coast. After exploring a few options throughout North and South Carolina, Folly Beach (and Charleston itself) stood out as the quaint, unique, and cozy place we were looking for.

We understand that our guests may have to travel a bit more than they were expecting, but we hope that you are all looking forward to our little wedding adventure as much as we are – there is truly a lot of love and soul going into the planning of this most joyous occasion! (btw – the pictures you see here are from the 2 oceanfront properties we have rented)

Can’t wait for everyone to see this place in person,
Brett and Kate

We knew pretty quickly that we wanted our wedding to be in the fall, because the summer was too soon and next winter was too far away…but actually pinning down a date required hours and hours of pouring through possible venues and jumping through the correspondence hoops to check their availability (more about our venue/location choice in the next post). After flip-flopping between the first three weeks in October, we finally settled on October 6 (2012, of course). Since this date is a Saturday, the ceremony will likely be in the afternoon or early evening, with a reception to follow, and a brunch the morning after. More details will continue to show up here…Brett and I are in full-on planning mode!

Enjoying the planning process so far,
Brett and Kate

Leave it to Groupon to sell us something we didn’t realize we needed until it landed in our email inbox.  Just 5 days after we got engaged, there was a Groupon offer for $70 worth of printing services from Vistaprint for just $17…so we got two of them! Though we plan on creating a lot of our own home/handmade items for both the ceremony and reception, we figured this great bargain might come in handy for return address labels (with our new last name, of course), personalized thank you notes (for the plethora of them that we will eventually be sending out), and maybe some simple save-the-dates (for the sake of convenience).

We then began a somewhat lengthy conversation about how possible it would be to plan the entire wedding using Groupon offers. While the idea obviously sounds fun, and incredibly cheap, we soon realized that this planning model probably won’t work with the type of event we’re sure to have. Since the primary purpose of Groupon is to offer deals on local services, we would basically plan to have the wedding in a Groupon city…which we’re not. We may not be able to plan using 100% Groupon, but you can bet your budget-conscious behinds we will still be scouring those daily deals for anything that might make our special day be a little lighter on our wallets.

Getting started on this whole planning thing,
Brett and Kate