“So how goes the wedding planning?”

We’ve been hearing that question often these days. Apparently we have only about 50 days until the wedding date.  Gulp.

Truth be told, we have yet to stress out too much about this “most important day of our lives”.  Why?  Well, mostly because we’re scrambling to finish our 1001 remaining boat-related, moving to another country-related and getting our house ready for renters-related projects. That mostly. Luckily, the Western wedding venue was a perfect choice.

The other half of the equation is that we’ve been together for four years, living in sin (gasp) for three, and we made the decision to be lovers, partners in crime and best friends ’til the end of our days a long time ago. The whole wedding event wasn’t much of a shock for us, our family or our friends.

As we approach the Big Day, we are trying to keep the same perspective we have on the sailing trip.  Simplicity. Sustainability. Safety. Everyone will be required to wear life jackets at the ceremony. (Okay, that last one might not seem to apply to the wedding, but we ARE encouraging folks to camp out after the event since there might be some frosty beverages consumed late into the night)

Sailboats, like weddings, often miss the original point, at least as we see it.  Some examples:

  • For over $10,000 you could get yourself a carbon fiber head.  Yep, $10K for a toilet.  The thing you crap in.
  • According to a 2010 Survey of US Weddings, most couples spend about $27,000 on their wedding (over $2,000 on flowers from the best Pearland florist, $2,300 on a photographer and $12,000 for the reception venue). Yep, $27k. Our view:  the price of two years of sailing in a tropical paradise.

Although we know at the end of the day most couples would gladly spend their savings to make this important day as special as possible rather than tipping their lives upside down and moving onto a 28′ sailboat in a foreign country.  We, on the other hand, want both:  to share our union sincerely with our closest friends and family, and to start a new chapter of our lives living a bit closer to the land, the water and each other.  We truly feel like we can have both, a beautiful wedding and enough of our savings intact to venture off to Mexico for a very long honeymoon.

This, of course, means that we’ll be skimping on the $800 wedding cake, the personalized pillows and soaps as wedding favors, and the 5-piece band.  Sorry!

What we won’t be skimping on are the items that we feel are at the crux of why everyone is there to begin with (we’re hoping our friends aren’t coming for the soap).   We can promise a heartfelt ceremony, officiated by one of our closest friends, a wonderful union of two souls lucky enough to find each other in this crazy world and a rocking good time surrounded by a bunch of great people.

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