Photo: Oh, Darling! Photography
What do real brides have to say about the wedding planning experience? Well, it's not all happy tears at the bridal boutique and indulgent cake tastings. Over the next three weeks, guest blogger Anna Maltby will share the ins and outs of narrowing down your bridal style, snagging your dream wedding location, taking the perfect engagement photo, and more.
One of the first questions I was asked by a recently-married friend when I got engaged was, "What kid of bride are you?" You know, am I elegant, DIY, classic, modern, offbeat, rustic, etc.? It should be a pretty simple question to answer. Don't all girls start mentally planning their wedding the second they finish watching Cinderella at age five?
But it wasn't simple for me. To be honest, I felt pretty overwhelmed once I got past the smiley haze of our first month of engagement. I had no idea when or where or how it would look or who would come or anything. The only thing I can remember from my little girl wedding dreams back in the day is that I thought I wanted to get married in the rain and wear red galoshes. (Really? With this frizzy hair? No way.)
Luckily, over the course of our engagement (one year so far, three months to go!) I've figured it out: I'm kind of, well, just a normal bride. I want to keep my wedding to a reasonable budget, but I don't want to be over-analyzing every expense to the point of utter exhaustion. I want our big day to be full of personality, but I'm not a fan of soirees so quirky that they distract from the main event. (Um, we're getting married—not entering a Zooey Deschanel contest.) I hope our wedding is personal, but I've never met a DIY project that didn't make me want to run the other way.
That's why I'm so excited to be blogging for Brides—an incredible resource for any kind of bride, including middle-of-the-road ladies like myself. (You'll know you're in this category if you're kind of feeling like a bridal Goldilocks—everything is too expensive or too shoestring, too fancy or too glue-gun loving.)
I hope that reading about my inspiration, my process and, yes, my challenges will help get you a little more organized and empowered to take your wedding by the proverbial horns and make it the party of your dreams.
A little about me: I'm a magazine editor (I edit health and sex stories, as well as oversee books content, for SELF—we're actually just a few floors down from the Brides offices!), and I live in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with my fiancé, Akshay, and our cute kittens, Max and Rocky. We got engaged in May 2011, and we're getting hitched on September 29 of this year at the beautiful Bronx Zoo. (Unfortunately, no. The kittens are not involved.)
Thanks in advance for reading. I can't wait to do this with all of you!
—Anna Maltby
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