Gathering our peeps!

One of the things that's really important to both Boy and I are our friends. We are lucky to share an awesome group of friends gathered through high school, college, and our current lives. So when we were building our wedding party... it was a little bit of a challenge.

While we knew full well that the question is really "who do we include" it felt so much more like "who do we exclude." And that made both of us squidgy and upset. There were a couple of shoe-ins for both of us: brothers and sister, our married friends (now in two sets! Congrats again!!); there were also those single and mostly male awesome friends who are all equally important to us.

Our solution? Gigantor wedding party. That's how we roll.

We played around with how it would work, and finally settled on this arrangement. I like it. It rocks.

Once our peeps were in place, we wanted a way for everyone to bond. Since we have what feels like an uber-long engagement (I just want to do this ish already!), we really felt like we had time to plan lots of events and space things out. While I met with most of my bridesmaids for lunch a few months ago, our bridal party social will be our first big event!

I'm so stoked!

It'll be half college party style with contests and prizes. We are soooo lucky to have awesome bridesmaids, groomsmen, and ninjas (ushers) who are willing to gather and play games with us!

The next day, we'll be heading over to my parents' house (about half an hour from our place) and gathering for a lunch on the patio with key family members like my parents, Boy's parents, and our grandparents. While neither Boy and I are fans of formal engagement parties (for us, I'm sure yours was awesome if you had one!) we still wanted all of our "people" to meet and know each other. There will be food, fun, and lots of meeting.

Which means.... planning. Time to get the boxes together for the games, make up nametags, craft prizes and favors (maybe)....