We're planning on getting married in October....seems iffy right now. I'm hoping for an interview before September. We DO NOT want to get married by a J.O.P.
I won't be moving until at least mid Sept and that only gives me a few weeks to get everything together. I can't expect much help from him because he's trying to build a house for us and he's already killing himself between that and his fulltime, overtime job I know he can get the church though.
I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice.
He's in Arkansas.

Hmmm think I have done everything I can with the K1, now I have to find something else to stress about

It is very hard to do any wedding planning when you aren't where the wedding will take place.

I was very fortunate in that we only lived 3 hours from each other, so I spent a lot of weekends before our wedding in Seattle, where the wedding took place.

You could always do a civil ceremony once you arrive in the U.S. and then plan the big wedding while you are in the U.S.

Good luck.

My wife and I tried to get as much done in advance as we could. That didn't work like we were hoping. She did a lot of looking online as far as caterers/photographers went. She would ask how far things were and we went from there. Once we had the interview set, we booked things. My church was the most flexible out of anything as we changed the date a few times. As we got prices for the caterer, I would go and visit. A lot of things were me taking pictures and her deciding if a place looked nice enough.

We have been looking at Eureka Springs as a possibility. My understanding is there are packaged deals or you can rent the sites and plan your own.

I guess you need to give us some more information, like is this your "dream" wedding and you want things to be just so, and have a lot of ideas already what you would like etc. Or are you hoping to keep it simple, and want just to have your friends there.

You mentioned you didn't want a JOP, but does that just mean you don't want to get married in a court house? our JOP came to our apartment and married us there! I've heard of others who had a garden party and he just showed up there too.. Or do you want a full out wedding service!!

I just think a few more details could help us try to brainstorm together

Eureka Springs would be really nice in the fall

I guess I need to get him a digital camera, lol. One good thing is there's Micheals here and there.

Oh just seen emancipation's post. Small church wedding, I don't want too formal, but something nice. OKAY, on the dreamy side Both of our previous marriages were by a J.O.P. at the urging of both of our ex's. We both want something different. thinking maybe not getting married in a church jinxed us The church is just down the road from the house, so I suppose if the house has the septic system in by then....lol. I have to get him to try and figure out if there's a hall he wants to use.


I just got overwhelmed when I went to look at wedding things at Micheals and realized how much is actually running around and putting things on.

I know my family won't be coming down for it, so the wedding invitations going out once I ,hopefully, get the visa isn't a problem. Most of his family live in state. They're not going to be much help though.

I guess I'm just wondering, do I pick out everything we want now, and buy it when I get down there. I can't see trying to bring it all when I move.

OH, I've also seen alot of people get married by a JP, and never get around to the "Wedding" and we're afraid we'll get too caught up in the house and the AOS and everything else, it will get put off.

Okay.. small church wedding.. I'm a delegator and that's what we did. We had a small celebration before we came down to CT but some of what you said rang true with me.

Michael's 40% off coupons. I had EVERYONE and their dogs saving those for me and I went there 4-5 times a week to buy things. The coupons that you get in the flyer REALLY helped in lowering the costs. Plus if you don't get them where you live (the flyer), then you can tell the cashier that, and she will write down your postal code and STILL give you the 40% off one item - sweet deal! I dunno if you can get them here in the US so it might save you to buy the stuff in Canada.

I had a budget for decorating, colors picked out (with swatches of color for a guague), said "I love twinkle lights", gave my teens at my church the $$ for decorating and it was their gift to me. Perhaps there are cousins, friends relations of your hubby that you could propose a similar thing to? that way you don't have to worry about that. If the decorating isn't something that you really care about.

We didn't do formal invitations. I did e-invites (evite.com) and that way I could update things as i needed and it would be sent to everyone's e-mail (you can print them off the site as well).

My suggestion is to pick a few things that you are ABSOLUTELY wanting - no questions asked, and the rest.. well either cut or delegate. We did an open house also before we left which was a really nice way of saying goodbye and replaced a "reception", everyone just stopped by and said hello and brought prezzies, then after the service you could just leave on your honeymoon! I love just heading out to a restaurant as well, or having the ladies of the church (missionary society whatever) cater. They often love to do that and will often do it quite cheaply.

It can be beautiful and simple.

Hi.......... I arrived last month in March here in the US and we drove from Tulsa to Eureka Springs to get married. In Arkansas you can not get married by a JP. The are all ordained ministers. We chose to go there as we are older, second marriage for both of us and we didn't want a fuss. You don't need to have any blood tests, any witnesses and there is no waiting time once you buy your licence. We bought our licence and headed right over to the chapel, got married, took the paperwork back to the courthouse and we had our certified marriage certifcate within minutes. There are many many chapels etc. that will cater to all kinds of needs...... just do a search on google for Eureka Springs weddings. The lady at the courthouse told us that Eureka Springs is 2nd in the US after Vegas for doing weddings so I would start looking into things if that's where you think you want to get married. It was pretty quiet in March but I guess it is a happening place in the summer and the weather in September would still be really nice so will probably still be busy. I thought it was a beautiful little town. Good luck and best wishes.

Susan

Try http://www.weddingsolutions.com/

Hi, okay, that sounded nice and easy, but HE says, well if everyone is going there, we're not.

Cherri, yeah well....that's the kind of sites I was looking at today and got all fuddled up

Emacipation, I get the 40% off coupons, I didn't even clue in to use them on anything useful!! I was reading all the great replies I've gotten to him and he says "What colours?" and I'm sitting here wondering colours? That's all good, something I didn't even think of! Great advice! I think you hit it on the head there.

Thanks for the great input guys

This is what we did. Our wedding was in the garden of a very close friend. She is an ordained minister as well. The minister of the church we attend occasionally was a part of it too. It was small....we did everything ourselves and as for planning, there wasn't that much to plan. We talked about what we wanted for months before he actually arrived in the States. With me being Native American we had a two part ceremony...the traditional vows and the Native American Blanket Ceremony. We had friends helping us along the way as I have no family left (all passed away). The only family he had at the wedding were his mom and stepdad. Very simple, yet it was quite elegant. We only had about 20 people in attendance and that was with the wedding party. BTW, our wedding was just under 1K. Dress, tux, and reception.

As Mr. Ripley says...."Believe it, or not!"

I live in Missouri, and we had to have a "minister" perform the marriage or go to the court house. There was a local site on the internet that provided names of ministers that perform non-denominational ceremonies anywhere you want. We found a great guy through there. We had our ceremony in our garden.

Two things that really helped us in planning our wedding was to do a lot of things yourself, like make things...remember... Michael's is your friend! haha Seriously, between Michael's, and the internet, within a few weeks at most, I had most things done, or had ordered things on the internet and they had arrived.

I also made my own programs and placecards for the reception. We commissioned three people to take pictures. My mother-in-law made our wedding cake. Not professional, but very pretty and it tasted fantastic!

The day goes SO fast. Remember to enjoy it. Whatever is not done the day of the wedding, isn't going to get done! You're publically committing to marriage and celebrating that committment in front of family and friends. That circle is what matters.

Carla

I assume the USA citizen is the "guy" I would just leave it in his trusty hands!! What could go wrong?

Hey now. I'm actually looking at the wedding planning stuff more than my fiancee it seems, some times. We are pretty much in the same boat as you are, and we found a site that we loved (although quite expensive) and usually booked a good two years in advance, but we got it for this September 1st. So, we are getting "married" that day whether we have the visa or not (more than likely not, but I still have my fingers crossed). We found a minister online that will perform a non legally binding wedding and for another $25 he will even perform a very small (us and two witnesses) second legally binding cermony at a later time. He said that he's done actually done that before for other K1 visa applicants.

Jeremy

I loved the Crescent Hotel and Spa in Eureka Springs.

Beautiful hotel.

Oh, and I've heard other people touting Michael's and their 40% coupons and such, I don't have a Michael's close to where I live, but we do have a Hobby Lobby, and they are great, too. My fiancee and I stopped in there a week and a half ago, just looking for ideas for centerpieces, well, they were having a sale for 50% off everything we needed to create our centerpieces; glass bowls, vase rocks, mirrored plates, ribbon, and floating candles. So, instead of just looking, we bought, and all told each centerpiece cost us only $3.70.

That's awesome! And exactly what I was talking about. Another name I forgot was Garden Ridge. I went there to get items so as to make table centerpieces...I wanted small watering cans and I was going to paint them white, then put in flowers. I ended up seeing them already made up there! The flowers were in my spring "purple" colours, with fake spanish moss, ribbon....very pretty. AND only $4.99 each. I couldn't have made them for that price!

Carla

LMAO @ Flames, yeah......OK

I've already asked some people to collect those 40% off coupons, even had some offer to come with me and help. I'm trying to get the one woman to have a wedding as well up here though. This might help her, lol. (help me too )

You are all making this sound alot easier than I thought....and if I can't get everything just right, it won't matter because like you said, it's the people celebrating the day with us anyway.

HA,almost put Y'all......yikes...

I bought my husbands ring while still in Canada, picked out my dress (and ordered it online and had it delivered to my sis-in-laws house), got my fiance to talk to people in town about good/reasonable photographers and booked one when I saw her work online. Browsed around for invitation ideas online (my sis-in-law is a graphic designer so she whipped them up for me in advance and just put in the date when we knew it was going to be for sure). I did some marriage prep from Canada (we got married in the Catholic church). Word of mouth is the way to go so talk to your future in-laws, they will be able to ask around for good caterers, etc. I arrived 2 months before our scheduled wedding date, and good thing i couldn't work at the time because planning a wedding for the 120 guests that we had (small town ) was definetly my full time job for the 2 months before!

Good luck!

This whole thread cracks me up for a number of reasons...

we used Hobby Lobby like crazy too.... and keep your eyes peeled for their 40% off coupons too......
we had our honeymoon weekend in the Beaver Lake/Eureka Springs area...
and I left the choosing over our wedding site to my hubby...

and starting to say y'allllllll sneaks up on you real quick

'tis a small, small world!


We had the wedding that we really really wanted to have 6 days after I entered the US with my K-1 visa.....trust me, you CAN do it!

Oh Cheryl! You should hear Joel now...he's a right natural Southerner now.

Yes, you CAN have a very nice wedding in such a short time...the key is flexibility.