 Hello and official welcome to the first video in my wedding series. My name is Megan. I got engaged on October 27th and I can't wait to share with you guys my wedding vision and everything like that. And I am just so excited to be starting this series and starting the next chapter in my life. So I hope you guys enjoy. Alright so let's get started. Let's do a little backtracking here. So I got engaged on October 27th like I mentioned in the intro and I knew it was going to happen. I had been planning this wedding. I already knew the guest list and a lot of these things. Actually before we got engaged I just have known that he was the one for me. His name is Weston Hansen and he's amazing. I love him so much. But I just knew he was the guy that I was going to marry. So I've been planning like we went to a couple weddings over the last year or so. And from those events I was just writing down names and getting them into the app I'll share with you guys in just a minute. So I knew it was going to happen. I wanted it to be a planned engagement. I didn't want it to be but that's how it ended up turning out because I wanted to give him a ring as well. So we ended up planning that on our 5th anniversary of being together we would get engaged. We went to the same spot that we had gone every single year that was our tradition and that's where each of us popped the question. So he went first because he thought it was really important for him to have that still have that tradition of being able to propose and pick out the spot and have it be a little bit of a surprise but then I had my ring and I did it as well. But honestly the whole time we were just laughing number one because we were so awkward and number two because we were just so happy and it was just a fun moment to be together and have this experience and all of that. So I'll insert a couple of pictures for you guys to see what it looked like when this was happening but I was really, really happy so take a look. Through the present time we've actually looked at a few different venues but I want to include that in its own video just because I have video from each of the venues and I want to put that all together and show you guys and kind of talk about the different pros and cons of each place and just kind of the budget and different things like that. So today we're going to be talking about just the wedding vision and kind of the logistics of some of the things just to give you guys some background as we kind of get into this wedding series. So the number one thing is I use an app called the knot. You might be familiar with it. It's just kind of the home page and it is a great app. I found it. I don't even know like months ago. A long, long time ago I found this app and I really love it. It's been such a great thing to have while I'm planning for finding vendors and venues and just all different things. So I've really loved it. One of the biggest things that I've used it for is the guest list. Now obviously I can't really like show you my whole guest list. But currently we have 104 people or four guests that are coming or that we are planning to invite. I guess I should say not. I don't know that all of them are coming. I actually know that some may not be coming. Pretty much all of my family lives in California and will be flying in for the wedding. So I know for some of them it's going to be very difficult but I guess it is what it is. So anyways that part's kind of stinks but a small portion actually of this guest list is my family members and then a small portion is my friends which are pretty much just going to be my in my bridal party anyways. So I have a small part. Weston's family is quite large and a good healthy portion of the guest list is his family. We plan to get married in a year and a half, a little bit more than that actually. And the reason for that is mostly financial. It just doesn't make sense right now financially to say yep in May or June or July we want to get married. It just doesn't make sense financially for us. I mean if you watch any of my teacher videos I'll have to talk about how much I make as a tutor because I don't make very much and while Weston does make a healthy chunk of change he's still going to school so that takes a lot of his money too. So it just doesn't financially make sense for us right now but if we have time to save up for some of these things then yeah in a year and a half it will be much better. So I know you might be calculating in your head what month that is it's actually over a year and a half but it's just easier to say that. So the other things are I want this to be very elegant. I want it to feel like an important event and I just want people to have a really good time but I want it to be like a formal event. I know some people they say like okay come in jeans like we want it to be super casual like I'm not like that I want everybody to be dressed up I want them to be looking good and to put on their best for this event because I mean if you're coming all this way like I want you to be looking good feeling good and have the whole event just be awesome. This is my wedding vision board you can see that my pictures are just very white and beautiful there is a lot of elegance to it also some of that light pink and some of that gray and I just really want it to be beautiful and by have some kind of water nearby and just be very pretty so you can see down there those are my wedding colors I just kind of talked about those some pinks blues grays and a lot of white and then my style is romantic with a bit of formal and a touch of elegance and then the setting is like a garden hotel or tree. So one of the must-haves that I really really want that we had at a relatives wedding is these grilled cheese or derbs so it's just a little square of grilled cheese and you put it on the shot glass of tomato soup and it is delicious I loved it and I just want some good Minnesota food as well like I really want walleye to be on the menu I love walleye I've had some really really good walleye and I think that just like in a way represents Minnesota and just different things like that you know being able to be on a farm and like with all the trees and I just really want something that's going to represent Minnesota especially for those relatives who are coming in from somewhere else oh the budget so that's one of the most important things I think when it comes to a wedding that a lot of people I feel like don't really talk about and that's what makes it really tough to know how much is normal so when I looked it up on Google because you know we Google everything they said it was about twenty five thousand seven hundred sixty four dollars now you'll see a very big difference in some of the venues when I talk about those and it's kind of difficult because as you're looking at all the different things like photographer videographer photo booth the food the reception venue and just all the prices and they add up it gets expensive very quickly and I think that's one of the hardest things and talking about financially especially with relative like parents and stuff it's very difficult and it's hard to imagine that in some way I'm gonna be paying like nine thousand dollars plus for this event it just blows my mind and I'm like how am I gonna afford that it's just crazy so knowing that stuff and here's the thing yes I could save way more money I could have a wedding that's a thousand dollars but I want to be able to have a moment that I'm gonna remember forever and I just wanted to be really magical and special and if that costs a little bit extra then I think it's worth it to put in that extra cost to make it a really amazing event so obviously we're going to try to save wherever we can but at the same time we're not gonna cut corners on some things just because we want to save a quick buck like I think my most important thing is the reception venue I think that's what you're gonna remember for years to come the food and I mean I don't really remember my food that often I know guests really care about food but to me that's not the super important thing so I don't know but to me I think if you have a really nice reception venue everything else is gonna fall into place and it's gonna be really easy to get nice pictures nice video to have a good experience and all of that stuff so that's kind of what I'm mainly focused on obviously being so far out from the date like the venue is really the biggest part right now but as we do get closer those other things will start to kind of fall into place and be important as well so yeah I have some ideas for other things but it's just too far out right now to really make any other ideas concrete or solidified so that's where I'm going to stop for today because I want to get into the venues because it's so important and it's one of the things that they're like as soon as you get engaged find your venue so alright now that I talked your ear off and the time is getting up there I'm gonna let you guys go and I hope you join me for the next one because I can't wait to show you all the amazing beautiful venues that we've got to see and just kind of talking about budget and pros and cons of each place I also didn't really show you my ring but there it is I know so sparkly and beautiful so yeah I'll catch you guys in the next one I hope you enjoyed and I'm so excited that you're joining me on this journey thank you so so so much and I'll catch you guys in the next one about venues bye