T minus 8 months

I know I've been slacking with regard to journaling my wedding planning. However, I must admit, I haven't been doing anything constructive. My time has been utilized by doing a whole hell of alot of nothing!!! I need to get cracking though because it's only 8 MONTHS before our wedding day! Which means it's actually less than that before we leave for our cruise!!!!!

This is what I've got to do, and soon I might add, for the ceremony still:

1) Determine whether or not we're going to have an arch. Brian is of the mind that we WILL. And if so, we need to figure out how we're going to do that. ie: do we purchase one from Michaels, carry it on board and the morning of, we put it together on the beach.

2) Assuming that we do have the arch, we're going to decide on how we're going to decorate it.

3) We need to determine how we're going to have the ceremony music played during the ceremony. Some suggested an IPOD. Sounds good, but do we hook it up to portable speakers? Does it require any electricity? How or what do we plug it into if so?

4) Chairs.... Chairs are the hum dinger!!! Do we pay the $200 to rent 20 chairs from a local vendor? That is the minimum..... 20 chairs.... $200....... $10 per chair. I can't justify spending $200 for 20 chairs when in all honesty only 8 at the most are going to be used..... AND, just for a 15 minute ceremony... on the beach..... okay... 20 minutes tops!

5) Aisle runner or not? If so, just a plain white runner? If not, how do we decorate the aisle? Flower garlands?????

THEN, we have the AHR's to think of. Thank goodness the venues for both states have been secured.

Here's the priority for the California reception (which by the way is first):

1) Food!!! I want to do heavy appetizers / finger foods and cocktails. HOWEVER, we're planning on having a 2:00 reception...... so......... will people be expecting some kind of dinner around 5 or so?????? Not if I specify on the AHR invite that it's "Cocktails and Hors 'de voure" right? Or in the alternative, just serve hors 'de voures early on, and the heavier ones later? Hmmmmm.

Yikes....... HELP!!!!!!