We’re engaged. We enjoy the rest of our vacation. We head home. All of our loved ones (who had a few days to get their wheels turning) and ready to talk wedding planning! (Honestly, I am too but I didn’t have the computer access I wanted to really start searching!)
Setting the date was, by far, the hardest part of the wedding planning. I think that was the only time during the wedding planning I had a panic attack and cried. Philip and I began talking about October. We both love the fall–the weather, the colors, the vibe–perfection. Far enough from the hot Texas summers and the pending Holiday madness. October was perfection.
We knew we were getting married at our church and their calendar was wide open, as well as our pastor’s, for the month of October. We started to look for venues. We looked in Hurst (where our church is), North Richland Hills, Colleyville, and Fort Worth–we decided on 809 at Vickery in Fort Worth (the selection of a reception venue will have to be it’s own post–that was probably the 2nd most difficult thing).
Most of this back on forth on booking the dates happened over the Holidays (not everyone is eager to reply to your manic emails over the holidays). I tried to book our October date on January 2nd. I didn’t hear anything back for 5 days until, after another email (and a phone call) that someone else had our date on hold.
I cannot describe the frustration I felt. I had coordinated with so many other vendors, 809 at Vickery knew we were interested in this date and had they read my manic email when I sent it, we would have been ahead of the people who held our date (I don’t know this to actually be true, this is how I felt at the time and this is one of the times in my life where my hatred/fear of making phone calls and preference for email did not serve me). We waited out a couple more days just to hear that it had been booked. Devastated. (Devastated in the realm of wedding planning–not truly devastating). I know they’re a small business and they had to treat everyone fairly, but damn, bride’s get sensitive.
I was set on our reception venue, even after all that–I had a vision and I was sticking to it! (an aesthetic vision, not a supernatural one) We looked at other MONTHS to potentially have our wedding. Philip’s birthday is in August, my birthday is in September, our good friends were having their wedding reception in July, and I was too fearful to book it before then because I wanted more time to plan, but not “one year+” to plan. Philip has a busy work month in September, so we looked at August. We don’t have kids or teachers in our immediately family (just some friends who were happy to have an end of summer celebration), so we don’t care about the school year (we’re evil). I contacted 809 at Vickery who had the date we wanted in August available–we had it on HOLD.
I contacted all of our other vital attendees and vendors–we’re good to go! We needed to check with our pastor… You know, he’s not usually in the office on Friday and Saturday (when all of this was going down). I did the unthinkable. I asked Philip if he had our pastor’s cell phone number. (What do you know, he did!) Philip…would you please call our pastor, on his day off, and ask him if he’s available for our date…please, because the pastor hasn’t responded to my two-day old email and your fiancé is insane now. Philip did it, because he loves me, our pastor was super nice about it, checked his schedule, and yes, THIS WAS HAPPENING. August 23, 2014.
Marie Durrett 
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