From long distance relationship to long distance wedding planning

I filled you all in on how Mr. Castle and I met and started our romance. I also told you the story of our proposal, but I haven't said anything about the time in-between. And how it is relates to our wedding planning.

As you've probably guessed from the title of this post Mr. Castle and I had a long distance relationship. We started dating the year I graduated from college and Mr. Castle had one more year of school to complete. My plan was always to move to New York after graduating. I went to school for musical theater and if you want to do theater you move to New York! But I didn't know I was going to fall in love with the man of my dreams months before leaving!!!

Mr. Castle brought me to the airport when I left and it was the saddest thing I have experienced to date! We took forever to say goodbye, and when we finally did he told me that he put a special playlist on my IPod for me to listen to on the plane... Ugh my heart aches just thinking about it! He had put recordings of him singing songs from shows we had done together. The last song on the playlist was a song he wrote for me! The person next to me must have thought I was dying because I was uncontrollably sobbing. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me.

Mr. Castle and I kept our relationship going strong. We talked everyday we were apart and saw each other about once a month. Being actors we both ended up traveling in touring shows and performing in different parts of the country. We would try and visit each other in the places we were performing. The timing was never right for Mr. Castle to come join me in New York, which at times was very frustrating. But he still had opportunities and things to accomplish in California before making his way east.

Personal Photo / Visiting Mr. Castle in Aspen, Colorado while he was there performing for the summer.

Personal Photo / The Castle's at DisneyWorld. I was in Florida on tour and he came and met me for a mini Disney vacation.

Finally after two years and eight months, (oh yeah I counted it) he finally moved out to NYC. We moved in together, adopted two kitties, bought furniture and made our home. We co habituated as if we had never been apart. And he's been the best roommate I've ever had.

Personal Photo / I made him a sign :) 

Mr. Castle has said to me that after moving in together and seeing how amazing it was, really finalized his decision that he was going to propose. So here we are living our dream in New York City in our one bedroom apartment with our kitties, engaged, happy as can be. Everything should be perfect shouldn't it?

Oh but now let's plan our perfect wedding to take place in California from New York... Should be easy right? People do it everyday...right?...right?

Well so far for me it's been really hard. Booking our venue, for example, my Mom had to go and sign our contract. I stupidly took the deposit check my Dad had written us back to New York, just to then have to overnight it back to my Mom. Finding a florist was difficult because most florists in the area we are getting married don't have websites. I use my iPad for most of my research, but every vendor uses flash and the iPad can't use flash! OK that last one was not really a distance related problem but it still frustrates me!

The distance brings a lot of complications. We won't be able to do a food tastings with our venue because they do group tastings twice a year and we couldn't go to either. I have to figure out how I am going to travel with my wedding dress from New York to LA. I'm still trying to decide if I should do my DIY projects here or in California. When we make trips out they are super busy and jam packed with wedding planning. We don't end up getting to spend much time with family and friends. We also have to figure out how to get any wedding gifts back to New York. The list goes on and on...

I find it very ironic that we came from being in a long distance relationship, CA to NY, to planning our wedding long distance, NY to CA.

In the end I have faith that everything WILL work out. I'm not the first bride to plan a wedding from across the country. So I guess I just need to take a deep breath and have faith. 

Anyone else planning their wedding long distance? Any tips that have helped you?