I am engaged. That's right, folks. Off the market. Spoken for. Betrothed.

I guess technically I should be saying we are engaged. After all, it's no longer all about me (a darn shame).

We have actually been engaged since October, but due to unforseen circumstances, have only just begun to plan for what we hope will be a July 2008 wedding.

Now, before you gasp and start to prepare a speech on about how it takes a year to plan a proper wedding, let me tell you that I don't subscribe to that. If I had a year to plan a wedding, I would agonize over details and overthink everything for a year - 12 months - 365 days. Then, when all was said and done and the marriage license signed and gifts collected, I would become one of those brides with nothing interesting to say or do because I no longer have a wedding to obsess over. As it is, six months will be more than enough time to stress.

Some of the stresses have been relieved in recent weeks. A wedding dress was purchased. Bridesmaid dresses were ordered. The officiant was secured. Checking things off the list feels oh so good.

In the coming weeks, we hope to pick a venue which will allow us to officially give notice to those we'd like to 'save the date.'

Since we aren't especially religious people and there won't be a church involved, we're hoping to find an interesting place in the metro area that would serve as both the ceremony and reception venue. Oh, and did I mention it has to be affordable? Details, details.

We have a handful of places available for the date we want that we'll be checking out soon, but what venues would you suggest? Have you been to a particularly unique venue? Or have you seen a place magically transformed from blah to wow? We're still open to ideas to make our wedding as memorable as possible without resorting to dangling crystals from every protuberance (like they tend to do on every wedding show I see).