To tell you the truth, planning The Wedding is a lot more complicated than what I am choosing to believe. The main points I see are the following:

• Attire (the gown, tuxedo, bridesmaids’ dresses and groomsmen tuxes)
• Food (reception, cake and drinks. Can’t celebrate without an open bar. Whoo!)
• Ambience (venue, flowers, silly things like chairs, tables, table clothes and colors)
• Guest List (dependent on the next topic in this list)
• Money/Budget (enough said)

Let’s not worry about small details like invitations, wedding favors, registry, photography, rings or thank you notes. Actually, scratch that. Thank-you notes are immensely important. My mom taught me to always say please and thank you.

To let you in on another aspect of the situation, it’s safe to say that I’m venturing into something that my family can’t really help me with since they have not held weddings really. My parents were married legally but didn’t have a wedding with the the gown and garter and glamor. They’ve attended a couple of other people’s weddings, but attending and planning are worlds-apart different things to do. So with that, they are supporting us in our decisions of the event’s direction, but they are in for a ride when I start talking about crazy little things like table tents and guest books.

Another wrench thrown into the workings is related to overall format of the ceremony. What faith will it mostly lean towards? Christian or Jewish? Priest or Rabbi? Church or temple? Well, to clear the air, the venue has been currently defined as: Outside. Yes, we are planning to get married somewhere outside to avoid some of these issues. Other than, it is something that we will take care of closer to the date. As in, on July 12th, we’ll make a call to see if we can have such-and-such religious figure present to get us hitched.

So that’s it for now. I’m still trying to build a little background with you before I get into full Bridezilla mode and start referring to myself in the third person whilst demanding iced water with one lemon wedge squeezed into it and one lime wedge hanging on the rim of the glass. Claudia gets what Claudia wants.

With that, any ideas on which of The Wedding points to attack first? It’s like trying to tackle a big animal, but you don’t know if you should try going for a bear hug approach and get as much as you can all at once or if you should strategically start by grabbing one toe and working your way from there.