Debated Decisions

Some decisions for the wedding were pretty easy for Cody and I to make.  We both talked through all of our options and pretty much knew what we wanted.  However, below are the couple of points that we heavily discussed and debated back and forth on what we wanted to do.

Hotel Wedding.  Cody and I knew that we had a lot of people coming to our wedding from out of town so at first we really thought that location/proximity to a hotel was going to be the biggest factor of where we decided to get married.  Honestly, we really thought that we were going to have our ceremony/reception at a hotel.  But once we started to look into it, a hotel really started to lose it's appeal.  First of all, no hotel had any real character or the look that I was going for.  Second, they charge over $100 a person just for food and additional $20 for a three hour open bar with very limited amounts of alcohol on the bar.  We really liked the convenience factor of having our reception at a hotel, but in the end it just didn't seem like the best move for us.

Church Ceremony.  It's no surprise that Cody and I aren't really church people.  When we first started planning our wedding I wasn't interested in getting married in a church at all.  We were looking into all kinds of different options to keep us from having to have our wedding in a church.  But most indoor locations were not pretty at all, and would have taken a HUGE effort to decorate.  There were a few outdoor locations that I liked, but I was really worried about it raining on our wedding day and ruining everything.  We even asked Carrie Cerino's if we could use one of their smaller rooms and then move into our reception rooms.  But they said that they couldn't block off a small room for us, but that we could just get married in the ballroom.  That sounded really bizarre to me.  I've never seen anyone get married like that, and I didn't want to be the first person to do it.  So we found a non-denominational church in Middleburg Heights that agreed to marry us.  I almost wish that we would have been able to get married at my grandma's church, St. Vitus, in Cleveland because it is absolutely stunning.  But it is located in a bad part of Cleveland, with limited parking options, and it's a catholic church and I'm not sure if they would have even agreed to let us get married there.  I also don't think that I could have standed having such a long catholic wedding.  So in the end, I'm ok with where we choose to have our ceremony.  They have a lot of added elements like a live pianist and a candle light procession and stuff...  soooo hopefully it works out well.

Hotel Room Block.  Cody and I were pretty convinced that we were going to do a hotel room block for all of our guests to stay at the same hotel.  However, the hotel we were going to pick was the same hotel we are staying at on our wedding night.  It was not a cheap hotel and there were a bunch of hotels in the area that were less expensive.  We didn't think that everyone would necessarily want to stay at our hotel, and we didn't want to get stuck with paying for extra rooms in the room block that weren't used.  So in the end we decided to not go with this option, and we sent a list of hotels for everyone to choose from instead.  Even now I think that this was the best idea for us!

Real or Fake Flowers.  I guess this decision wasn't debated too heavily, because I wasn't interested in real flowers at our wedding at all.  I wanted to have my bouquet that I could keep forever and that would last.  It was just difficult finding a place to find nice silk flowers from.  The part that we did debate on was whether or not we were going to buy the matching centerpieces for our tables or use the ones that Carrie Cerino's provided.  I knew all along that I wanted to use Carrie Cerino's mirrors and vases, but I wasn't sold on their flowers.  However, it was more than double our flower cost to buy centerpieces for our tables.  Cody and I talked about what we remembered from other weddings, and table decorations aren't really at the top of the list.  We have a general remembrance of how we felt at the wedding on whether or not the place looked nice, but what was actually on the tables wasn't something that we could recall from any wedding that we'd been to.  We decided to spend our money on the food and alcohol, which we thought people would care about and remember more.

Videographer.  A part of me really wanted to hire a professional viedographer to tape our wedding so that we would have it in the future.  I remember watching the tape from Matthew's wedding years ago and thinking that would be a cool thing to have.  But professional viedographers are $1,000 minimum and Cody felt strongly that it was a waste of money.  We went back and forth on this, and eventually settled on my Aunt Karen's friend using a personal video recorder to tape the wedding for us.  It's not professionally done, but it's not going to cost us much and we'll still have the video to watch if we want.

Table Cloths.  I can't believe how stressed out I got over table cloths for the reception!!  It ended up being pretty expensive to just rent a table cloth for the wedding.  For a plain white table cloth it was $20 to rent it.  For a colored one it was anywhere from $25 to $40.  I thought that I could probably just buy some and then just have them for that price.  So I started looking around, and at first I thought I would find something at Bed Bath and Beyond.  But after hours of stressing and searching I found white table cloths on Ebay for like $11 a piece and then I found a pretty cornflower blue overlay for $5 to go over top of it.  Plus if I ever have to plan a baby shower for a baby boy I will be set.  :)


Honeymoon.  I think this was the most debated and undecided topic that we had during our planning process.  Cody and I are avid travelers, and that is probably our favorite thing to do.  So we really wanted our honeymoon to be special and to be something that would remember.  First were going to go to Sandals at an all-inclusive resort... next we were going to Hawaii, then we were going on an adventure to Alaska, until we finally decided on our Caribbean cruise.

At first we were all about an all-inclusive luxory resort.  I think we got excited about this idea when we used to watch Jeopardy every night together.  We thought that we would get an amazing room and really enjoy the atmosphere.  And we researched probably 20 different all inclusive resort destinations and properties.  But as we talked we kind of realized that we aren't really go and sit on the beach type of people.  These resorts really didn't seem like they had enough activities to keep us interested and we thought that we'd probably get bored.  So we decided.... okay... next idea.

Which led us going to Hawaii.  We really really liked the idea of going to Maui, and we probably will actually go next Christmas if all works out right.  However, Cody really wanted to make a statement on our honeymoon.  He really wanted to have a nice property and not skimp on a cheap place during our honeymoon.  The places that we would have been satisfied with for our honeymoon were way more than what we wanted to pay right now.  So we decided that Hawaii was not going to be our ideal honeymoon location, and that we would go there a different time when we weren't as worried about how nice the hotel is.

Cody and I have been talking for a while about going to Alaska.  We are thinking that this trip would be a once in a lifetime trip and that it would have been a completely unique way to spend our honeymoon.  It definitely had a big appeal to us just because of how unusual and different it would have been.  But after more discussion and plans we decided that we didn't want to do this trip right now.  It's been a hard winter and we don't want to leave Ohio right as the weather gets perfect to go to Alaska where it would probably be colder.

After evaluating our traveling plans for the next couple of years, and what we would like to do/where we would like to go, we realized that another cruise was pretty high on our list.  We thoroughly enjoyed the cruise that we went on a few years ago, and we've been itching to go on another one soon.  Also, a cruise was a lot cheaper than our other ideas, and with being on second shift and us not getting to see each other that often, we both wanted to go on more than one vacation this year.  If we would have choose one of the other options, we probably would have only been able to afford that one trip.

So we continued to debate the cruise line we wanted to go with, and we decided to give Norwegian a try.  It seemed like they got great reviews and they had good food.  We bought an aft balcony room... which I am EXTREMELY excited about!  We also got lucky because there was a promotion going on where we got the unlimited drinking package for free.  We also bought the unlimited dining plan so that we can eat in all of the specialty restaurants on the ship.  We are also going to buy passes to The Vibe, an adults only lounging area.  I'm pretty happy with our choice, and I hope that it's everything we're hoping for!  Don't worry... you'll see more blog about this in the future!

Drinking.  I think that the only topic that Cody and I have talked about more than our honeymoon, and have really argued about is how drunk he is going to get at our wedding.  Towards the end of April, we went to the Reverse Raffle at the VFW and there was an open bar there.  Cody got ridiculously drunk, and we had to leave at 8:15pm.  I was super mad at him.  For the past year and a half... honestly ever since we started planning our wedding...  I've been telling him that I don't want him to get too drunk at our wedding, and he has always pushed back and said that he wants to be able to drink at his own wedding.  Well... after the Reverse Raffle incident, I feel like I'm finally making some headway on this particular topic.  I asked him the day after the Reverse Raffle how long it would have taken him to live this down, had his drunkenness happened on our wedding night.  He said that he didn't think that he could have lived long enough.  I told him that he was right, because I would have still been talking about it at his funeral.  I don't care if he drink a little bit....  I just don't want him to get stupid drunk. I don't feel like that is too much to ask for. Even when we went to Carrie Cerino's were were debating whether or not shots would be allowed at the wedding.  I believe that we are allowing shots to happen in the beginning of the wedding but after either 9pm or 10pm they are getting cut off.  We also aren't providing heavy liquor for the shots to be done with.  I feel somewhat pleased about that.


Those are the big points that I can really think about that have given us a hard time during our planning process.