Where to start on planning my wedding?

Start attending some of the bridal expos, bridal events, bridal hows and trunk shows in your area. the link below is a great resource for show listings in the united states. Congratulations on your engagement.

First of all, your wedding is *real* -- not a show, or an event, or a role-play. You're going to really engage in a legal transaction and (assuming that you are a spiritual person) you are going to really take part in a spiritual union with your spouse-to-be. Everything else -- "themes", "traditions", chair-covers, wedding-parties, DJ's, you name it, is *optional*.

Second, don't rely on Brides.com or the knot. These sites are funded by the wedding industry -- people who want to subvert the special emotional nature of your wedding and use it to make money. They'll try to convince you that all sorts of artificial, obscure extras are absolutely essential. Don't even rely on Yahoo Answers -- remember that this site is full of young aswerers with very limited life experience who have gotten most of their ideas about weddings from those same wedding-industry magazines and websites or -- worse -- from popular press coverage of celebrity magazines.

So, to get started and to get "what you want", start with deciding what you actually want.

1) Who should this wedding have the biggest emotional impact on: you and your spouse? your peers in your age-group? your immediate family or your extended families?

2) What matters most to you in terms of the ceremony: the legal dimension, the spiritual dimension, or the social dimension?

3) What matters more to you: the ceremony or the party afterward (usually called the "wedding reception" although that's an inaccurate term in most cases).

If the spiritual dimension of the wedding matters most and you want to take your family into consideration, then start by calling up their priest/minister/rabbi/imam/religious leader. If the social aspect of the party matters most and you're considering your peers, start by calling up the party venue of your choice. After you make the first tenative arrangements regarding what matters most, start to build a budget and arrange other aspects of the wedding around the part that's most important to you.

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If your fiance is serious about Native American spirituality, then the first thing you need to realize is that there is no such thing -- it's like talking about "European spirituality"; when Europe includes the ancient Wiccan faith, Catholics, Evangelicals, atheists, Druids, Olympian renactors, Quakers and you name it. North America was occupied by hundreds of different distinct cultures, nations and language-groups. Which one is your fiance associated with? Because a Haida potlatch is as different from a Seminole Green Corn Dance as a Quaker prayer meeting is from a Swedish Maypole festival. You are IN Florida -- is that where your fiance is FROM? If so, there are some Seminole links at the bottom of this post. The wedding ceremony is simple and does not require a Seminole "medicine man" (that's more a Cree concept anyway). Consider ceremoniously delivering your fiance a wedding shirt incorporating Seminole patchwork which you made yourself (or if you're not a seamstress, get some help to make a small portion of patchwork and have a seamstress incorporate it in a shirt), and have him present you with a wedding blanket at your ceremony. If he has Native ancestors, he should ask his eldest female relatives for advice on incorporating their traditions.

Go to Offbeatbrides.com. It will give you loads of information, and they've had many sci fi weddings and such posted on there. Good luck!

http://offbeatbride.com/2008/04/kats-ottawa-weddin... [has some sci fi elements]

http://offbeatbride.com/2008/05/karen-pjs-nerdy-ga... [has gamer elements. Not sure what kind of gaming you do though]

http://offbeatbride.com/2008/01/annalises-big-fat-... [native american elements]

Get yourself a wedding planner book. You can but them basically anywhere. Maybe checking to see if they have any theme wedding website using your live search.