Planning..Planning..and more Planning

When Mr. S and I first got engaged, we had completely different ideas about what we wanted our wedding to be. His idea of the wedding would be me, him, an officiant, and a beach...that's it. My ideal plan would be to have the BIG wedding with all of our family and friends in our hometown (well, Omaha since there's beautiful venues all over). At the very least, I wanted our kids and our immediate family there. I excluded my whole family the first time I got married when I just went and eloped, it hurt them very much that they were not a part of this very important day. My daughters are the main reason I got through the whole divorce and landed on my feet to be in the emotional position to meet Mr. S, I really wanted them to share in this celebration of this next phase of OUR life.

Since Mr. S let me include the kids, family and friends, I compromised by not having a hometown wedding because he didn't want all of the additional people that might come if it was close and "the fuss". We had many, many options, but we narrowed it down to a few. We thought about still doing a Destination Mexico wedding, but then that would require getting 5 children's passports. Then we thought about San Diego: nice weather and beaches. But, having a wedding there would make it hard for planning because of the distance and our un-familiarity with the region. We considered Keystone or Breckenridge since we enjoy skiing and the mountains, plus it's special because that's where we got engaged, but I didn't want to have a two-year engagement and I was worried that the high-altitude may affect some of our guests health.

Our final option was to do a wedding at Lake Okoboji in Iowa. It's a beautiful blue-water lake and has a special significance to Mr. S because he spent summers there fishing with his dad and grandfather. Although I had never been there, it sounded beautiful so I started researching where we could have the wedding and started planning a scouting trip. We decided to go the weekend after Memorial Day last year. The weather was gorgeous, but the water was still really cold!

Again, we had many options for where to hold the wedding and reception and even got to see a few in action at the venues we considered because they were holding weddings there at the time. I won't bore you with all of the places we visited and the venues we talked to. At the end of our trip, we decided to hold the wedding ceremony at The Inn at Okoboji on the lakefront and the reception in their room overlooking the resort. We also decided to book a state park lodge on the lakefront on the other side of the lake in case of bad weather. Mr. S really wanted to get married on the lakefront and the Inn did not have a facility on the lake that could accommodate that.

But the planning didn't end there.

After many months of trying to get the contract from the coordinator at the Inn and her telling me that they'd get to it after all of the 2008 weddings were over and coordinated, I began to get frustrated. I understood that these brides needed their deserved attention to detail and etc., but I wanted my contract and deposit paid so that I did not have to stress about losing "my spot". Call it being a bride-zilla or whatever, but this lady and I just couldn't work together on MY wedding, so Mr. S and I started exploring the possibilities of our "back-up plan".

We decided the state park did fit our idea of a classy-yet-fun wedding and canceled with the Inn. So, we're getting married lakeside at the Lodge and still have our back-up plan to get married inside there should the weather not cooperate.


Did you have to go with a back-up plan for your wedding ceremony/reception site?