It’s about time I give this audience an update on the wedding planning.

Zach and I got distracted. WAY distracted. Hunting for a house in Kansas City. It took nearly every free moment of ours over a nine-month period, WHOA.

But we found THE house. The house we found is wonderful. It’s beautiful and functional, and just perfect. You can hear all about our house-hunting adventures here.

Anywho – Once we solidified our house, we fell in LOVE with the idea of having a backyard “garden” wedding. Hosting ourselves. We could control the decor, music, space, timing, everything.

So we got to planning. We started laying out the budget and costs, and with everything laid out – and Zach and I being SUPER budget-friendly – it was running a little high for our taste, but we thought we could make it work.

We wanted grass in our backyard instead of the stone that the previous owner put in place, so we ripped up ALL the stones and ALL of the mystery plants. Everything had to GO. All that we left was the patio and a big giant mud pit, with plans to put sod in once the ground thaws in the spring. I saved the progress of the backyard on our Instagram Featured Stories @barshoppin.

I want to just pause right here for a second to say that Zach and I have PHENOMENAL friends and family. There are so many talented and loving people in our lives that have been willing to help us put together one of the biggest days of our life. We are forever grateful to these people, and we can’t wait to share our big day with them. 

Several months into planning I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep, and sleep just would not come. My heard was speed-racing. My mind was all over the place. Tears came to my eyes, and my body was tense. I couldn’t relax, there was just too much on my mind. This was the same day we researched port-a-potties. A port-a-potty for our one-day event was going to cost only around $125. Much less than I had anticipated, and I’d been thrilled. So why was I having an anxiety attack as I tried to go to sleep!?? And how many times can I type port-a-potty in this post!??

And then it hit me. It wasn’t about the port-a-potty. It was that we had just added one. more. thing. to an ever-growing list of detailed items that all cost money and were adding up FAST. And for a wedding that wasn’t in the courthouse, which was our original plan from the get-go. This thing is adding up to the amount of SEVERAL European vacations – and we’re doing it on. the. CHEAP.

Zach and I, at that moment in time, scrapped the wedding we were planning. See ya never, backyard garden wedding.

The next day, I made a call to our neighborhood dive-ish bar and found out they had availability to rent their event space on the date we’d already told people we were getting married. Score. Booked. The wedding is PLANNED. We’d have the pop-up wedding of our dreams in a local park, and then head over to the neighborhood bar and set up a bar tab for the reception.

And so, planning is basically done. I’m getting a few alterations made on a white bridesmaid dress I bought on-line, and we’ll need to finalize some details as we get closer, but for the most part – we’re done planning!!!

Thanks for following along on this crazy adventure.

I’ll go a little backward and talk about my dress-hunting experience next time 🙂 Talk to you then!