I Think I Need a Dummies Guide

So ... ummm ... how exactly does one go about planning a wedding? I sort of thought that once I was engaged, I'd just, ya know, know. Isn't that what happens when you become a parent for the first time? You're born with the parental instincts and they magically appear when you have a kid?

During my last semester of college, I did an internship at the National PTA headquarters in Chicago. I worked with their head event planner to plan the national conference. It was a very enlightening four months. I had thought that I wanted to have a career in event planning, but I learned quickly that I am not cut out to go anywhere near that field. It was the inattention to detail thing, I think. (Are any of you potential invitees getting nervous about what type of catastrophe may befall the big day?) :)

So a couple nights ago I Googled "how to plan a wedding" and 67,000,000,000,000 links came up, most of them having something to do with The Knot. (Incidentally, what the heck did people ever do before the internet? That's a serious question - I honestly can't remember life before the internet. I'd be lost, for sure. Kind of sad, actually, how dependent I am on it.) Anyway. Seems like The Knot web site completely dominates the world of wedding planning.

But you know what? I'm not going to create a wedding page on The Knot. It's the principle of the thing, really. (My contrarian fiance ought to appreciate that.) Besides the fact that I don't want to be lost among the thousands of other digital fairy tales being recorded there for all the world to read, I also don't want to deal with the loads of junk mail they will inevitably send me to try to tell me all the things I need to make my wedding successful.

Also, my brother's good at designing things. He's a little busy at the moment, but I'm sure he'll come up with some awesomely unique way to share our story. Until then, this blog'll do.

I'll try not to overwhelm you with too many posts about wedding stuff. I'm sure this topic gets old quickly for anyone not directly involved (read: anyone except me). But I've waited a long time to be here, so I'm not about to let it pass me by.

If any of you Marrieds out there has good advice for me, I'd love to hear it. Is there anything you did, that, if you did it again you'd make sure NOT to do? Or anything you wish you did differently? What was your favorite part?