To me, that sounds like an appropriate timeline to conduct research for buying a new car, or perhaps to re-learn algebra.

June 23, 2012, however, is the date my future husband and I will share our commitment to each other in the presence of our friends and family. Given the challenge at hand, I’d almost prefer taking algebra again.

Plenty of time? Piece of cake, you say? Perhaps it might be for the average American in love, but Fiance and I take type B to a whole new level. Consider:

Exhibit A: Fiance and I have actually been dating for quite some time; by the time we get married next June, we will have been together for 10 years and two weeks.

Exhibit B: We have been engaged for 1,041 days:  just a little under three years. Wedding planning certainly took a back seat to important life events such as finding permanent employment (we each had temporary jobs at the time), relocating to be closer to family, and buying our first home.

Now that I have the chance to sit back and analyze how we’ve let three years pass with no more than a wedding website to support our claims of engagement, I think the real challenge we have to overcome in the next few months is the tendency for our personality types to prefer not to actually make any decisions. (On our wedding website, we originally had a poll for all visitors to select our wedding location for us. That might have worked, except we could tell my mother was the only one voting since Florida was in the lead and nobody else we know lives down there.) As you can tell, neither of us enjoy being rushed. I believed that  the fact that we had finally set a date and booked a location at this point put us ahead of the game; but dialog with a few of my closest friends makes me question my actual level of preparedness:

“Band or DJ?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you doing for invitations?”

“E-vites?”

“Who’s your photographer?”

“I have to have one of those?”

“Wedding attendants?”

“What’s that?”

Clearly, if wedding planning were offered as a class in school much like algebra, I’d need the Remedial level; the only difference is, if I failed at algebra, at least I would get to take it over again.

I only get one shot at making this day perfect.

Therefore, I’m committing to checking in here at least two to three times per week to keep me accountable for squaring away the details. I’m asking you, friends and followers, to help me with this, as I particularly need encouragement around making (and standing by) decisions.

Quite frankly, it is tempting to put the “Band or DJ” question up for a vote here…