Rumor Has It: Wedding Edition

Apparently half of Chattanooga thinks we called off the wedding… which is news to me. 🙃 The truth? We just hit pause and picked a new date that actually makes sense for our lives (and my Tennessee football schedule, obviously). In this episode of Lex Appeal, I’m catching you up on how we got here, what it’s really like to reschedule a destination wedding, and why I’ve never felt more at peace with the decision. Wedding planning in your 30s? Yeah, it’s a trip.

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Transcript

 If I want my daddy to walk me down the aisle, and honestly, if I want to be present to walk down that aisle, all of the bur months are off the table. Man, did you see that? Girl? Stop it, man. I saw it first.

Hey, hey. Welcome back to Lex Appeal. I'm your host, Lex White, but my friends call me Lex and you can too. This week I wanted to tell you guys some really big news. We canceled our wedding, or at least that's what the rumor mill has been saying. In all seriousness, we decided to reschedule and people immediately started talking.

We shared our plan with a very small handful of people, and the next thing you know, all of Chattanooga was in on it. And I gotta be honest, we had some really good reasons and ever since the decision, we've been nothing but relieved and really grateful for us trusting our gut and making this decision.

So let me give y'all a rundown of our original plan because at this point we're on plan C or D or E, I really can't keep track. But what I do know is that we are running out of letters in the alphabet. For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to get married in the islands, and when we first started discussing our future and getting married, I shared that with August and he did not hate the idea at all.

So shortly after we got engaged, we officially decided that we wanted to do. A small intimate destination wedding, and then follow it up with a larger reception in Chattanooga the week after we returned. And on top of that, we needed to legally get married in the States to avoid international red tape.

So not only had we planned these two huge events a week apart, we were also going to have a tiny legal ceremony and a small celebration with our immediate family. So in total, we were planning three events. I wanna break it down by starting with Plan A. So Plan A was for us to get married in Turks and Caicos.

That was the dream for me. Turks and Caicos is hands down, one of my. Favorite places in the entire world. So within a month of being engaged, we had secured our planner. Hi Felicia. I love you so much. Our venue, our photographer, our videographer, a hair and makeup artist, and had even been in contact with decor and floral companies, like the ball was not just rolling, it was in a full on Olympic speed sprint.

I really wanted to have most everything planned. Very quickly, just so we could enjoy being engaged and spend time celebrating and just enjoying this chapter. But just as we thought everything was booked and we were excited to get started on the fun details, everything fell apart. The biggest being where we wanted the ceremony to take place at the venue was not an option as there would be construction taking place.

Not only there, but also on the other side of where the reception would be held, leaving the potential for some of our photos to have a construction site in the background. So that was conveniently left out when putting down a deposit, but. On top of that, our photographer bailed claiming they couldn't find flights and the hair and makeup artist had a request that just felt like was taking advantage of the situation and it really just didn't sit right with us.

So all of that, along with a few other details that were crumbling, left us headed for plan B, C, and D, and all of that could be its own episode. And don't worry, it will be I. After a brief panic on my end, we came up with a new plan and had the wheels in motion. However, time was flying by a lot faster than we could have ever imagined.

Between all of our travels, whether for pleasure or work, having the kids every other weekend, Tennessee sports, the kids sports, which obviously occurred even on the weekends that they were with their mom that we attended unexpectedly. Moving our busy seasons with work that just happens to occur at the exact same time for us.

And the holidays, we got to a point where we were both thinking, should we reschedule and give ourselves more time? But neither one of us wanted to say it out loud, and I think we both were just thinking to ourselves, no, we can make this work. Just, just push through it. Like we'll get there. We'll, we'll make this happen.

Until it all caught up with us and we had no choice but to face it. Things finally came unintentionally to a head because of my dad, which looking back I need to thank him for. We were at Pink, which is an annual breast cancer benefit gala in Chattanooga. We were out on the dance floor with our family and friends in the middle of a song, having a great time.

When Trey walked up to us, grabbed our arms and began to speak. And mind you, when Trey has something on his mind, typically he needs to say it right then because my sweet, precious daddy is the most Type A, type A that's ever type A. Like I genuinely think if there was a scale, he would actually be considered more of a type A plus plus kind of person.

He began listing all the things we hadn't done yet. He talked about the legal ceremony, asking if we had found an officiant for that. He asked if we had planned for that evening to be catered while also throwing in there that he didn't care if we were gonna do hot dogs and hamburgers, but we just needed a plan.

He then mentioned room blocks and flights and people RSVPing for the destination wedding. Before moving on to the Chattanooga reception, talking about the details of that and what all we had left to do, which to his credit was pretty much everything because we had only secured the venue, the band, and the caterer.

It was a lot, but again, I shouldn't have expected anything different from Mr. Planner himself. The next morning, August, and I woke up and immediately started joking about how Dad had unintentionally overwhelmed us with everything. We hadn't checked off of our to-do list. We laughed about it and we were like, well, he's not wrong, but nothing more came of that conversation until the next day.

It was a Monday and with the start of a new week, one of us, and I honestly don't remember at this point, I've slept since then, made a comment about what if we rescheduled our wedding? And it started the conversation. So. We kind of talked about it, but we decided, let's sit on this for a few days to make sure that if we do make this decision, it wasn't out of heightened emotions of stress or anxiety from the conversation with dad.

And I remember calling my mom that day and telling her about the conversation, and I just remember bawling my eyes out because as someone who struggles with both A DHD and OCD, even the smallest change in plans throws me into like an anxiety induced spiral. It's, it's like I can't wrap my brain around the fact that this is not life or death.

It's simply a change, even if it's a big one. So I went through a range of emotions, and honestly, August did as well. So I don't wanna discount everything he felt because it was a massive decision. There were a lot of things to consider. Some of our family and friends had already reserved rooms and booked flights, so it felt like we were inconveniencing them.

We knew it was gonna be a lot of navigating changes to the vendors and it also felt like it was gonna leave things open-ended. I think it was a mixture of sadness after so much excitement because we weren't going to be getting married this year paired with a little bit of a rational what if thinking like.

Does rescheduling take away from the magic of it all? And then for a second there was concern about what everyone was gonna say. But thanks to years of therapy and work that I've put into myself, those last two concerns were very short-lived. After those couple of days of thinking and also just sitting down and going through our calendar and looking back on our year, we realized that we had had maybe three free weekends from May, 2024, which is when we got engaged to the end of this January, 2025.

At that point, we realized that the best thing that we could do for ourselves was to take the leap and reschedule, like let's give ourselves time to relax and actually enjoy the planning and have fun with it, versus being so stressed out that we are both miserable through this process. So we got on a call with our planner and she quite literally had the most unsurprised reaction and kind of laughed and said, quote, I can't believe it's taken this long for me to receive this call.

So having her not only understand and be like, don't worry, I'll handle everything, but having her actually be incredibly supportive and reminding us that this wasn't a setback. It was just us doing what was right for us, it made us feel instantly lighter. We realized that while we cared deeply about how it affected our guests who had already made arrangements, we didn't care about what other people were going to say.

We realized that by allowing us to have more time, we could plan everything out in exactly the way we wanted rather than having to compromise for the sake of just getting things done. The second we got off that call with Felicia, the relief was instant. Like weddings are supposed to be fun and joyful and exciting, not feel like a group project that you're barely surviving.

So let's chat about the inevitable small town Talk. Before we let our guests know. Like I mentioned, we shared with a handful of people about changing our plans. The majority of people were really understanding and excited for us, but we did have some that had more questions than support to give. It took very little time for word to spread and for people to begin reaching out to my mom, my dad, and even some of my best friends, like people who had no business Knowing this information.

People I hadn't talked to since high school, like parents of people I know. It was just wild. Some asked, is Lexi okay? I heard they canceled the wedding. And then others were like, what's really going on with them? Like, are they good? Are they breaking up? What's what's happening? And then there were a few that were like, well, they should just hire a planner instead of rescheduling it.

And then my mom even had some people asking like. Well, Bonnie, can't you just help? And those are just a few that I'm aware of and I think we can all agree that there is always more whispering happening that you're never going to hear, which honestly, I'm semi disappointed by because I'm sure there were some very interesting comments being made.

If I had had a place in those conversations, I would've shared that yes, I am absolutely more than okay, because we have not canceled the wedding and there's also nothing really going on with us. And I would also inform them that not only has my mom offered to do anything we needed to her to, but that it's not her job to plan our wedding because we do have a planner.

However, a planner is not a magic fix, like. Felicia has been nothing but incredible and honestly, she's not just a planner, she's a friend at this point. We text constantly and anytime we get on the phone it ends up being a couple hour conversation and half the time we're texting has nothing to do with the wedding.

We just have built that friendship, which has been so much fun. I told her from the very beginning that I wanted to be as involved as possible in the planning of our wedding. But between our original plan falling apart, our Plan B taking so long to establish, and the insane schedule that August and I have had since we got engaged, we blinked and we were less than six months out with a list, a mile long for all three of our events.

And because Felicia was waiting on me to make a lot of these decisions. I think the pressure I put on myself piled up way faster than I expected. So once we decided to reschedule, we had to pick a new date, and that actually took more work than we thought because we realized our schedule wasn't actually ever going to slow down.

Yeah, we considered the fall, but one, it only gave us about four extra months and that just didn't feel like enough time. And two, on a much bigger note, let's be so freaking for real. In my family, fall is reserved for football. My family and I are diehard Tennessee Balls fans. Like I was literally three and a half months old at my very first Tennessee game, and I've never missed a home opener since.

My daddy became obsessed with Tennessee when he was only about 10 years old, so I never had a chance to love any other team. It was ingrained in me from the womb. There are actual videos of my dad talking to my mom's belly and doing Tennessee cheers or play calls. And even then I would just kick and my mom was like, okay, enough.

Like she's kicking the crap outta me. She's too excited. But it just set the tone for my entire life. Our blood runs orange. It's not just fun for us. It's a way of life, and it brings us all together every Saturday and win or lose. We owe so much to Tennessee sports, especially Tennessee football, because they have just given us so many memories that.

Fill my entire childhood, my teens, my adulthood. They've just given us a lifetime of fun and passion and just time together that nothing else in this world could have given us. So all of that to say if I want my daddy to walk me down the aisle, and honestly, if I want to be present to walk down that aisle, all of the bur months are off the table.

We don't do weddings on Saturdays. During football season. So that led us looking into January or March, but that's busy season in the islands and there were not gonna be enough rooms available, even at that point a year away to do a room block. So then we said, okay, let's just go with our original date.

July 11th. Yeah, it's a year and a half out and that forever away. But we knew that time was also gonna go by pretty quickly, just based off how it had already. So we got excited. Then our venue came back and told us that that weekend was already booked a year and a half out, which really shocked us, but it kind of was what it was.

It honestly just all felt so overwhelming. We were then told that while our ceremony site was all good, we learned that our cocktail hour and reception venue would be going under construction this August. So August of 2025 and would no longer be a wedding venue, which threw me for a loop almost as much as rescheduling the wedding itself.

This venue was exactly what I had dreamed of. Like I actually liked it better than our original venue in Turks and Caicos. This venue was what I had searched for so long after our original plan fell through. I had spent hours and hours and had inquired with so many resorts on so many different islands to find this place.

So it had me back to the drawing board for a few weeks thinking. Okay, maybe we need to find an entirely new island. I was honestly kind of spiraling at this point, but ultimately August and I decided that before we made any other big decisions, whether it was sticking with this resort and trying to find another venue on property or move islands and resorts entirely to fly down and explore the other venue options that the resort had to offer.

So it was yet another roadblock, but we did find another route, and I'll add all those details into another wedding episode. However, and most importantly, we officially decided and booked July 17th, 2026. Yay. While we are on that trip looking at other venue options for our reception, we decided to announce our new date.

We talked about different ways to do it, but we landed on. Being on the beach with like those party horns, with the like streamers on the ends of 'em, and a poster saying, save our new date. We made a really cute reel. It was simple, but it was just exciting for us because we were officially rescheduled. We officially had a plan.

The wheels were back in motion. So I'm sure that those who were gossiping about something being wrong between us when words started going around that we were rescheduling probably were shocked when they saw that. So I can just go ahead and assure. All of them. All of you people, if you're listening, that we are great, have never been better, and we are so freaking excited.

Like I, oh, I cannot wait. Since making this decision and officially getting rescheduled, I've lost track of how many times we have said, thank God we pushed this off. Or, man, I'm so relieved. About two months after we decided to reschedule. August's dad was actually admitted to the hospital and it was very touch and go for several months.

It was very scary and it required our full attention. Thankfully, he's home now and he's doing better, so we're very grateful for that. And on top of his dad being sick, August has been drinking from a fire hose since the tariffs dropped in April. The man already works so incredibly hard. But adding on all of this has just taken it to a whole other level, and he has had to put all of his focus and energy and efforts into his companies.

I am just so beyond proud of him, and again, every single day we are so thankful we decided to push out our wedding. We had absolutely no idea what was coming, but thank God we made that decision when we did. Ultimately, this decision has reminded me that life is crazy and it's gonna throw you curve balls and that sometimes you just have to go with the flow, even if you need to swim against the current for a minute to get your bearings.

This summer was a season of my bonus kids trying a lot of new things, think, jumping off the dock by themselves or tubing, or starting tackle football. And there have been times that they tell me that they're scared or nervous. And when they do, I remind them. And don't worry, like I know subconsciously, I'm reminding myself.

I remind them that it's okay to be scared and at the same time, sometimes we have to do things scared in order to accomplish something big and to get past the fear. I've shared with them that that's what I'm doing with this podcast. I've been so nervous. To relaunch this, but here I am doing it scared because I know that that is the only way for me to be successful is to try.

I've realized in situations like this that everything happens for a reason. While this whole rescheduling thing wasn't necessarily scary per se, it definitely came with a lot of unknowns. And Lord knows I hate to not have a plan, even if it's a loose figure out specific details later kind of plan I need something.

But it's reminded me as life has shown me many, many times before that everything works out exactly how it needs to. We're also so excited, obviously, on top of having our new game plan because this extra time will allow us to fully celebrate being engaged with our family and friends because our schedule up to our former wedding date was not going to allow time for an engagement party or a bridal shower or any of the before celebrations, which upon realizing this just added to the list of positive things that were going to come from the change.

So, no, we're not calling off the wedding. We're just calling off the stress. We're allowing ourselves to step back, take some deep breaths, and just enjoy the planning, like to have fun with it, and use it as time to make memories together that we would've missed out on had we rushed into our original date.

Please let this serve as a reminder that when plans change or when things don't go the way you thought they would, that it's okay to be disappointed and sad or even a little panicked like I was. Because at the end of it all, you'll most likely look back and see that everything worked out exactly as it was supposed to.

And before I wrap up, make sure you're following me on Instagram because I'm gonna be putting a question box on my story this week. And I would love it if former brides or even currently engaged brides share some of your crazy wedding planning gone wrong stories, because I would love to do an episode sharing some of them so that current or future brides don't feel alone in this process because it's a lot.

Thank you all so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe to Lexi Appeal so you never miss an episode. I can't wait to fill you all in on more wedding details and drama. That'll be coming soon. I'll see y'all next week.