only half the problem is my lack of a clue

the party. gotta have one. it’s, like, the best part. (specially if you’re getting married somewhere that smells like pee, right?)

we thought about trying to get married in bretagne, cause it’s beautiful and wild and near the ocean (and therefore more near to the US than, say, australia). but we got more realistic quickly, mostly budget-wise: it’s a whole day drive from here, and we just don’t have the time or the money to be making that trip repeatedly to plan stuff. so that got scratched.

we wanted to find somewhere in france that could sorta serve as neutral territory, i.e., not frogboy’s mum’s backyard (god save us), and was also kinda uncitified (we live in the big city, in these parts; there are about 130,000 people!). in my internet research for big rental properties, amidst the 874 ruins of abbeys and castles and the like in bretagne (sigh), there was one a little closer to home. in a little midieval village about 2 and a half hours from us, it’s a “gite” (a rental property) that, before it was a gite was a hospice. round about the 11th century. it looked cool, extremely tastefully renovated, and it had a dining room that could fit 50 people, as well as room to sleep around 20. so we went to check it out, and frogboy LOVED it.

i dig it too; i’m just perhaps less imaginative than him. at that point, i still couldn’t imagine myself in a wedding dress (i’m getting closer on that one), let alone in a wedding dress surrounded by 50 people.

we knocked on the door, and the owner was home. he gave us the grand tour. turns out he’s got a bed & breakfast also in the village, even more classy than the old hospice. that’s where we’ll put the old folks. we sat down and chatted a bit with the owner, told him we’d be looking for something like a wednesday through monday deal, with the B&B for the weekend as well, and we were off!

keep in mind, at that point we (a) had no date set, (b) had no church picked out, and (c) basically had no clue. 6 months later, we’ve got (a), and we’re really quite close on (b). (c) i won’t talk about.