Pros and Cons of a Short Engagement

Nathan and I will have been engaged for about seven months by the time we get married. Whether or not you consider that a short engagement (I actually think it's more like mid-length), it's definitely shorter than the average of about 15 months—apparently 40% of couples have a 13–18 month engagement. Nathan and I fall in the 27% of people who are engaged 7–12 months, but there's another 30% of people who have an engagement longer than a year and a half!

Before I go all statistics crazy on you guys (it's tempting), let's bring it back to what I actually want to talk about. Ahem.

Personal photo / Hiking in Utah with Nathan & his younger brother—a beautiful state!

No, I don't regret a short engagement! But there are definitely pros and cons.

Pros

• You'll experience less wedding burnout. Even though I've only been planning for five months, I already feel a good bit of "wow, can we just get this over with already?" I can't imagine how I would feel fifteen months into an engagement. 
• There's a greater focus on what really matters. Sometimes I look at other projects and think "if I had more time, maybe I would attempt that..." Then I come back to my senses and realize that it's not only unnecessary, it doesn't even fit our personalities! Having a shorter engagement makes me prioritize what is really important. 
• You don't have to wait (duh)! For those of you who are impatient (*cough* me), a short engagement means you get to move on past this stage in life to the next. I'm excited to no longer be in a long distance relationship and to actually live in the same city as Nathan.

Personal photo / I get bored of just words—so how about a mildly related family picture?

Cons

• It can be really, really hard to find vendors. Do you guys remember my original venue post? I had a number of venues I really loved but were booked seven months in advance. I ended up with a venue that I love, but I do wish I would have had more time to choose. 
• You'll have less time to do the important things. No, I don't mean doing calligraphy on 350 escort cards. I mean the really important things. For those who don't currently live with their significant others like me, this means finding an apartment, finishing school, hunting for a job, and oh—a gazillion other life decisions. 
• There's more time to save. Whether you're paying for your wedding yourself or your family is helping you out, you'll have more time to set away money for your wedding. This might also mean you spend more, but that depends on the family!

Did I miss anything?

Wedding Apps

This post is somewhat of a continuation on having a plugged-in wedding. I already noted that I wanted to encourage the use of cell phones and cameras during our wedding—especially during the reception. To try to get more people to take pictures, I created the I Spy cards I told you about earlier. But then of course there's the issue of actually getting the pictures.

Many of our friends and relatives have smartphones, so we looked into paid apps like Wedding Snap or Snap the Wedding. In the end, we just didn't want to allot any amount of money towards this when 1. We were already paying a professional photographer and 2. We weren't sure how many people would actually download the app and take pictures with it. We also weren't sure about those who had cameras—why pay for a service when only half of the guests at the wedding could use it?

We moved on from this idea and set about creating a wedding website. We decided on mywedding.com (more on how we chose a wedding website later). While setting up our free website, we noticed that they had a wedding app available for download and integration, at no extra cost. Thinking it probably wasn't all that great, I downloaded it to test it anyway.

Kind of a cute icon! Once you open up the app and join our wedding, you see a screen like this.

I really love the look of the app. I think it's streamlined and cute without being overpowering. There's also the option to post pictures or add a note by both the app creator or the guests. Here you can see a picture that I posted with the options to add a photo or a note at the bottom of the page.

Guests can like or comment on pictures—similar to Facebook. In fact, there's optional Facebook integration throughout the app. Furthermore, as the app creator, I have the option on each post to delete, share on Facebook, save the photo, or tag people in the photo.

I invited a people to test drive the app with me—so I have a few "guests" on my guest page.

So far I am loving it! I am really excited about being able to use this for our wedding. The tricky part will be encouraging guests to download the app (it's a free download available both in the App Store and Google Play) and encouraging them to take pictures through the app or use the app to upload photos. The current plan is to hand out small cards with app information, and it's on our website too of course.

For our guests don't have smartphones, I want to encourage them to still take and share pictures—but we're still working out that aspect! So far all I have is manually uploading them to Facebook and tagging us, using a hashtag, or emailing them to our wedding address. Any other suggestions?

Pictures can be viewed "timeline" style on the app, or on our website as a photostream. Hypothetically, we could invite people who weren't able to be at the wedding to view pictures in live time on their smartphones or online. I'm thinking about asking a few people to be especially diligent about snapping pictures! Of course, we'll try to upload pictures to Facebook as well.