I HATE number crunching, but I LOVE number changing...

And today we tackled the infamous wedding budget.  Plugging in numbers and then figuring out could we make the numbers work the way we would like them to...  Do you know it's amazing how many costs you can cut when you start to think outside of the box.  I'll admit there were times it gave me headaches, but sitting down to figure out what is it that we can't give on and what is it that will just be an added expense that we'd prefer not to incur?  Bottom line I think the only thing we found we couldn't adjust expense on was our photographer.  That was the only number that remained unscathed as based on our original numbers I sat down quite determinedly with a pen and a copy of the first budget draft and started slashing items deciding that if it could end up determining the length of our engagement I was set on cutting out anything I deemed unnecessary!  It's amazing the things you find yourselves looking at each other and asking if it's really important in the scheme of things?  Does having a unity candle or unity sand matter to one or the other of you?  Because if neither of you really care, then why waste the expense?  One thing we discovered early on was that the wedding cake was something I cared nothing about while Dustin very much wanted to have it as a part of the day so... being the good little DIY bride that I'm planning to turn into I implemented rule #1 in the unwritten DIY bride handbook.  I delegated...  Yes, my fiance is picking the cake for the wedding (fortunately he has excellent taste and will probably pick something classier than I would have thought of.  No armadillo cakes at my wedding, thank you!)  I do have to confess that God has sent me quite the perfect man (no, I'm not blind to any faults with that statement).  He's willing to take an interest and help in my quest to make it our day.  While he insist very emphatically he will not break tradition and show up at any bridal showers that might be given, he is willing to give input and support in whatever way I need it.  So back to my budgeting crisis moment...  When I handed my idea of the next date based on the rough outline of the budget we had come up with he very lovingly told me if it took that long to put the wedding I wanted together we would wait until that date.  That was all it took to send me into slash mode.  The poor budget looked like an expendable extra in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre!  There were colored marks everywhere on the page as I started to dig determined to make the numbers look different.  After debating over the items that we would consider necessary and what was essential, I had determined a LOT of things could go.  So then my loving little brainiac crunched the numbers once more and we discovered something amazing!  Thanks to my little fit we had managed to slash a cool $1200 in evaluating necessities vs unnecessary tradition vs a desire that really didn't matter that much.  I'm discovering one thing on this journey to the alter.  My list of necessities grows much shorter when compared with the desire to marry the man I love.  The dreams I had of this perfect wedding with every tradition met has changed to an approach to a wedding that would make Dave Ramsey proud!  The realization that by slashing that much there were obviously a lot of extra unnecessary baggage we thought we'd cart along on that trip while it would appear we didn't really need most of it.  Part of me feels that maybe the lesson in this is that God is trying to show me that less is more.  Less of the extra unnecessary drama and baggage of life means more time invested in relationships.  A real life illustration of focusing on a few things well has a lot more impact than trying to spread myself in too many places.  The reality... the "extra" things we slashed were things that just added one more thing to my to do list... One more hour of my time that left me distracted by things that really didn't matter in the bigger picture.