I have a love/hate thing going on with holidays in the middle of the week. On one side...it sucks that I don't get an extended weekend and have to go to work today and tomorrow. But on the other side...it's kind of awesome that 1. Nobody is here in the office and 2. I get a break from work in the middle of the week.
Anyway did everyone have a good weekend? I feel like FI and I got some major things accomplished.
Friday night we met with my BFF and her family for dinner to celebrate our engagement. They gave us a bottle of wine and we had a wonderful time catching up on everyone's holiday doings.
Saturday was venue searching day. Our first stop was a historic home in downtown Roswell where @southernpeach89 had her rehearsal dinner. This was also the first venue FI finally went to with me. Last weekend he was sick and wasn't able to go. Both he and my parents really liked the venue and were ready to sign a contract right then and there but the coordinator/owner encouraged us to sleep on the decision and then get back to her and she'd reserve the date (October 18th) for us in the meantime.
After that we had lunch and took a break because our next appointment wasn't until 3. The next place was about 20 minutes in the opposite direction from my parent's house in historic downtown Duluth. The venue itself was really nice...it offered some unique amenities like a separate small house for the groom and his party to hang out in. The house itself was very pretty and spacious and was much much cheaper to rent than any other venue we had looked at. I think this was because of the location and also because there were train tracks right across the street.
Sunday morning I woke up about 4 am because I was coughing and couldn't fall back asleep. I also couldn't stop going over the two venues in my head. I really liked the first venue but the other one seemed so much cheaper and I was having a hard time coming to a decision. I finally just sat my butt down in my home office and played with spreadsheets until I was able to budget all of the different things out. In the end the difference in cost between the two venues came out to about $1100 after stuff like dress, decor, floral, photographer, everything. I decided that $1100 wasn't huge in the grand scheme of things...especially when I already liked the first venue that much more. So yay! We have a date and a venue! Now we've got something like...9 months and 20 days to plan a wedding! I might be freaking out a little bit.