I'm backin' up, backin' up...

I've been trying to figure out how to describe this wedding-shindig to people. The farther I go down the rabbit hole of planning, the more ground I have to cover when it comes to talking wedding with curious inquirers. Like my in-laws/outlaws, who I'll be playing Donkey Kong with this weekend, or my bosslady, or one of my favorite kooky old-lady patrons who always asks for books with sex in them.
Knowing that I'll probably end up talking planning a little bit this weekend, I've been backin' up, backin' up, backin' up in my thought process to try to put words around what I envision this wedding to be like. (I say "I" specifically because J's vision is "We get married. Yay! The End!" and I'm the one who does all the crazy details.)

• Familiar things with history and family have a big presence. Johnny's family church will be our ceremony and reception site, both our families plan to contribute with help, food, and decor, and we've envisioned this to be more like two big family reunions happening at once from the start. That's why we're not capping our guest list - there's always room for family, and we wouldn't feel right turning any of our relatives away who wanted to come. Our list of friends who could come isn't so big that we'll have to cut there.
• We both see God as a "third partner" in our marriage and see marriage as a spiritual commitment as well as a legal one, and the ceremony will be a Protestant one, in a Protestant church. This is a journey we're taking that's intimately connected to that part of our lives, maybe more than to any other part of our lives.
• My approach to coordinating things like attire and decor is like my Dad's approach to projects: "I know what I like, what I think looks good. How can I think outside the box to do something like this without going broke?" Oddly enough, it seems like this isn't as easy to understand for some folks I know as I would have expected -- I've had people seem to think I'm crazy for a) getting inspired by ideas that would probably be out of my price range to begin with (mostly family members) and b) trying to replicate those ideas in any way other than the Wedding Industrial Complex professional vendor way (a friend who is not too fond of anything DIY). Learning how to talk about planning with both these types of people has been a challenge, but I would say it's been a fun one, too.
• The look I'm going for in the design elements of wedding-stuff has warm tones and neutrals and is casual. I like using the word "rustic" - it combines the country/homemade/casual elements together in a way I like, and when I use it with other wedding-brain people, they know what I mean. I'm looking for ways to use color, texture, and materials to make people feel warm, welcome, at home -- that's more the feel we want than trying to set a tone of "let's party" or "we're celebrating high-life style." (I also purposefully chose the colors I chose so they'd go with the church, not clash with it, and that was a hard decision to make, as someone who adores purple.).
• This "warm and welcoming" feeling is something I want to bring in for everybody involved in the wedding -- I'm doing everything I can to take effort and stress off the other people involved, including our families and our wedding party. What we want is to celebrate with the people we love - that's the important part, and what they wear and how they can contribute (with projects, with money on their attire, etc) takes a backseat to just having them there with us.
• I like incorporating handmade elements as much as possible because I like making them! All "DIY saves money" debates aside, I choose my DIY projects based on what I think the effort I put in will add to the time leading up to the day, the day itself, and our memories of it. There are various arguments for each handmade piece I'm making, but that one applies across the board.
• Most of our guests are local and related to half of the other guests, and while we don't want people to go 'round hungry, we're planning a "snack and mingle" reception so we can have more flexibility with the guest list numbers, space, and seating (along with most of the foods we plan on making being less expensive and easier to prepare!).

That's all I can think of at the moment... being able to sum up where I'm coming from makes talking about the details a lot easier and puts them in context that helps other folks understand where my crazy bride-brain is. (My daddy taught me good!)