Unless you have a ridiculous amount of money and a creepily well-behaved and accommodating family, your plans will be dashed several times before you reach the ultimate, official plan. You will go through The Little-Girl’s-Dream Plan, The Budget-Reality Plan, The Trying-to-Please-Everyone Plan, The There’s-No-Pleasing-Them- Let’s-Just-Do-What-We-Want plan, The This-is-The-Final-Plan Plan and finally The Official Plan, which is the one you actually see come to life on that certain day. My Fiancé and I have at last, come to that last plan and there is no turning back.

We thought our previous plan was our conclusive plan, but we have made one calamitous mistake; we had depended on cooperation from family members. Our new plan, commonly referred to as, Plan B – The New Plan A, includes minimal reliance on and responsibilities for family members. We do love them and we want to include them in our wedding and resulting marriage, we just don’t want to put ourselves in a position where we could be left high and dry at a pivotal moment.

Our new plan is to have a pseudo-elopement. We will be having our wedding ceremony and reception in the city we are currently residing in, which is a two hour drive from our hometown and our families. The ceremony will take place in an outdoor theatre that looks like it belongs in movie about a European aristocracy and the reception will be held in a lovely nearby restaurant. The plan has changed, but the budget has not, so we now have to reduce our number of guests by 75 percent, creating a more intimate atmosphere, which is, serendipitously, what we wanted all along.

Changing plans less than a year away from the wedding was an inconceivable stress, but once we realized we were now free to put together any concoction of ideas we wanted, things really started to come together. Now instead of us struggling to contact our parents and failing to get straight answers out of them, they call us and offer more help than we can handle.