365...

We have made a decision-Hallelujah!  Actually are you ready for this??  We made 2 decisions.

So without further ado we have a date: 9/3/2011 exactly 1 year from today.

The other decision is we have picked a ceremony location.  Nick and I are both preachers kids and grew up in the church.  While I love looking at pictures of weddings in beautiful gardens, fields of flowers, or contemporary loft spaces I always saw my wedding in a church.  We did briefly discuss other options, but I think for both of us a church wedding was exactly what we wanted.

The problem was which church?  Because we both grew up in the church and our parents pastor in churches we had at least half a dozen churches to pick from.  This decision wasn't quite as easy for us. Do we get married in St. Louis? or maybe the Quad Cities at the church I grew up in, or Nick's Dad's church?  and if we get married in St. Louis which church?  Of all those decisions the decision to get married in St. Louis was a fairly easy one for us.  St. Louis is where Nick has lived for the last eight years and I have spent at least some of the last four years here so this really is our home.  I also was not thrilled with the idea of trying to plan a wedding long distance.  So St. Louis it is. 

Once we made that decision though, we still had to decide where in St. Louis.  We have been attending a wonderful church for the last several months where we love the service and the pastor so that was where we started.  They were originally booked for all of May (when we had originally planned on getting married) so we started exploring other options in St. Louis.  We called a few other Methodist churches in town but many of them were not willing to let Nick's dad officiate which was a deal breaker.  We also looked at the chapel on Wash U's campus which is a beautiful chapel and coincidentally where my graduate school graduation was held, but it was a little more expensive and a little less flexible in terms of ceremony times.  At this point we decided May wasn't really the best month after all, for lots of reasons I won't bore you with and decided to explore September.  So our first church was back on the table, but in the meantime we had kind of fallen in love with another option.  After lots of back and forth and conversations with both locations we made a decision...
 

We have decided to go with the beautiful Salem United Methodist Church. 

Salem UMC-Ladue outside

Salem UMC-Ladue Sanctuary

This isn't the church we have been attending or plan to join, but for a number of reasons this church just felt more right.  We love the church that we attend, but it is a huge church and the sanctuary is very large and a little less traditional feeling that this sanctuary.  Also because the church is so large all of their pre-marital counseling is done in small group class format which neither of were 100% thrilled with.  We didn't however, open the phone book and just point to a church and say this one- we have a very random connection to this church.  The associate pastor's parents live in the town that Nick lived in when he went to high school and attended Nick's dad's church so they know her family well.  I felt instantly comfortable with her when we met her last week and she is very open to letting Nick's dad officiate as much of the service as we want which was a definite bonus for us.

That was probably much more information than you really cared to have but I thought I would give you a little insight into why it took so long to make this decision.

Two big decisions now out of the way and we are close to making two more decisions soon so stay tuned!  I am also starting the hunt for a wedding dress this weekend so I am sure there will be lots of fun details on that trip early next week but for now I hope you all have a fabulous holiday weekend.