Wedding planning in July

So back again!
First and foremost I should mention that my fiance and I have been together for almost 8 and a half years and yes we are just now getting married.  It's a long time, I know.  I think alot of the delay is timing.  For whatever reason we were just never able to be on the same page at the same time cause honestly if we had gotten married 7 years ago we would have totally divorced by now.
Well anyway, I have been engaged since the beginning of April and I have yet to officially find a venue.  I have visited 20 locations... yes.. 20... and my parents have been to I think 5 or 6 on their own.  The big issue here was I found a perfect place and perfect church and I was super excited but then my wedding budget went from $15,000-$20,000 to $8,000-$12,000.  Yea, that was fun to hear. So pretty much since about May I just gave up planning this wedding.  I was considering just having my fiance, Paul, my maid of honor, Tanya, and his best Man, Rivera (I call him by his last name and it's weird to call him by his first) just going to Vegas and eloping.
I have looked at locations in Key West, Naples FL, and even Italy on top of the 20 locations here in Atlanta.
So then my maid of honor comes into town last week and she's like 'We're going to get it together.  Find your dress, our dress, and your venue.'  I have to admit that she was right.

Dress Shopping:
We were supposed to go to about 10 different dress shops :) I have a hard time making decisions.  However, we went to the first place - J. Andrew's  in Peachtree City - and I tried on about 8 dresses.  And I totally fell in love with my bridal consultant! Felicia! SHE IS AWESOME!!! I totally want to adopt her!  Last but not least I found my dress!!!! I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to try on more dresses cause I was actually having fun.  But I was talked out of going to try on more dresses because I get serious cases of "buyer's remorse." I am sooo bad at it and then I just stress myself out because I really wanted one dress or I couldn't afford that dress the one I super wanted and blah blah etc. So it's just better that I didn't. :)
Then we went to their upstairs area just to see what other dresses they had because Felicia said they had some Eve's available...while we were up there I FOUND the MOST AMAZING bridesmaid dress ever!!!!!!! It was the one I had been looking for for a few months now and I was SOOOOO excited!!!!! So we're getting that dress!!! yAY!!! and we're getting it hemmed to be knee length to change it up a lil.  I'm sooo excited!!!!!

So we finished dress shopping and went to Phipps just to look around and see the kind of shoes that would go well with our dresses.  We went to Sacks and met another most amazing person!!!  She was soooo sweet and me and Tanya are adopting her too!!! :) Super sweet lady and me and her are somehow gonna be besties!  :)

So that was my day of dress shopping... it was actually tons of fun and totally worth it.  :)