Budget and Recap! 10/10/2020 West Point, NY downsized but glad we still had a celebration!
First of all Weddit thanks for all the input and help and ideas. It was great to have a place of sanity to go while we were planning this day for the last 2.5 years! Our wedding was incredible and while it wasn't the day we had originally wanted, it was perfect. I am so grateful that we were able to have our closest friends and closest family there. As we navigated our options with postponing we realized that it wasn't really an option for us. Due to my husband's job if we didn't have our celebration in October, it wasn't going to happen until at least fall 2022. We'd already been engaged for 2 years and we were both ready to move on. While postponing is the right option for some couples, we realized that there are a million reasons to celebrate so we wanted to do something this year and we can throw a huge party with everyone we love for an anniversary, birthday, big life celebration, or just because we want to. I know that having a wedding at all right now is a controversial topic. I really don't want to have the conversation with anyone about the precautions we took. Among other things, every single person that attended had to have a negative test within 24 hrs. We did not invite friends/family that would have to travel and the one bridesmaid (bff) that did travel came in with us 3 weeks early so that we could all quarantine and test multiple times. We also had ample mask wearing, sanitizer, distancing of all seating, and everything was outside. Post wedding everyone tested again and everyone was negative.I do not want to engage with anyone on if it was the right thing to do. THE BASICS Date: October 10, 2020 Guests: originally planning for 225, ended up with about 50 once we cut the list down. There were a lot of family and friends that weren't invited to our smaller celebration. Venue: The Historic Thayer Hotel at West Point Pictures:https://imgur.com/a/DpcLVeX What went not so right:
I super sprained my ankle on the way to the venue on Friday. We were picking up lunch in the town next to the hotel and I stepped of a curb wrong. I ended up with 2 grade 3 (the worst!) ankle sprains on the inside and outside of my ankle, with significant bone bruising. This was determined at my MRI the Tuesday after the wedding. Thanks to the hotel for having a wheelchair for the rehearsal, my physical therapist for being the best and facetiming me literally hours before the rehearsal, my aunt for getting multiple boots for me on her way up, and the most amazing friends I was able to walk down the aisle and overall have an amazing night.
The flowers. They were all kinds of wrong. No one else would know that but me, but instead of a bouquet with lots of flowers the greenery to flower ratio was completely wrong. The colors were wrong (way more white than burgundy) and overall the flowers were just not what I wanted. When we went for the final she didn't have a mock up done and if I were to do this again I would insist there was a mockup so that I'd know I was getting what I wanted. There were also no cake flowers provided. I would not recommend this florist (PM me if you need details)
the cake. While it tasted fine and none of our guests knew it was also all kinds of wrong. 4 days before the wedding the owner of the bakery called me and tried to completely change our cake. We were meant to have a full buttercream cake with the bottom tier burgundy ombre and flowers on the cake. This was what we got instead There was fondant and it looked like an episode of "nailed it". Our Maitre'd also said that the overall quality of the cake was terrible (this was their preferred vendor and apparently quality has been declining) and I honestly felt like we were scammed between the tasting and presentation and what we ended up with. I would never recommend anyone get a cake from Sweet Grace bakery in NJ.
Some key family members weren't able to be there. My husband's aunt and uncle, who was supposed to be our second officiant, couldn't be there due to a medical issue (unrelated to COVID) and he was very much missed. A dear friend was also unable to come be a bridesmaid in the wedding due to the pandemic. She moved abroad and was going to come back to the states, see family and quarantine, but given current restrictions, she was nervous about being able to get back to her home so she wasn't able to be there.
What went right:
literally everything else.
I walked down the aisle to "Storybook Love" from the princess bride. The ceremony made me cry. My husband's vows were the most romantic and I felt like our ceremony was a perfect blend of us. We are an interfaith couple and we wrote our ceremony with the help of our officiant, my aunt. We used both a reading from the bible and followed many cultural jewish traditions. More than one person told me that they loved how we did a modern secular reading of the seven blessings and we had descriptions of all of the rituals and traditions in our program. If anyone wants a link to the rituals and traditions in a jew-ish wedding i'm happy to pass along.
Streaming was amazing. We hired someone my mom found (PM for info, he was seriously great) to set up streaming for our ceremony. The stream was high quality, our website worked well, putting the program online and making a virtual guestbook were great touches. It was streamed through youtube live and it was so nice that it auto records so that we could see it right away! I'd recommend kudoboard for anyone that is doing a virtual ceremony. We loved reading all of the notes and I had the board printed to put with our untraditional guestbook
the food! Omg the food. We had a cocktail hour with individually plated apps, a 5 course dinner, dessert, and a farewell station. Our venue also wrapped up all of the food my husband and I couldn't eat and it was just delicious. Food, photo, and overall vibe were the top things for us and we definitely achieved it.
photo and video-- i'm obsessed with our photographer, PM me for the details because I didn't ask about posting. Our videographer was also amazing and he actually stuck around for like 20 min after his scheduled end time so he could see us attempt to cut the cake with a sword. I would highly recommend both
My veil and makeup! My veil was made by the incredible Morgan from Cicada bridal in Seattle and Makeup was perfect. Our makeup artist (PM for details) did a great job of keeping us on a schedule and overall made the morning vibe perfect. She stood up for me when I needed it the day of the wedding as well. Those two things really made me feel like my look came together and my bridesmaids all loved their looks.
Mismatched bridesmaid dressed. Honestly I'm just obsessed with the burgundy to blush look and i'd do this again in a heartbeat. I am so glad that everyone picked their own dresses. I gave all bridesmaids $100 to get a dress.
the band! everyone had a great time and they did a really good job reading the room on when it was time to eat vs when some people wanted to dance. They never called everyone to the dance floor and we had an amazing night. Even my aunt who had been beyond a hermit for the last 8 months felt safe during some of the slow songs to dance with my uncle, away from everyone.
BUDGET BREAKDOWN I am doing my best to break down the budget as detailed as possible. We got married in a HCOL area and our original budget reflects the plan for a more traditional Jewish wedding, where parents were allowed to invite friends. It was important to us that everyone was there with us, our whole proverbial community and we knew there would be a premium paid for that. Once we downsized and added streaming I know there were ways to do it for less, but the quality of the virtual experience was important to us. I don't regret for one second what we spent on things, and we could've easily spent more. I am putting this budget breakdown in because the two in my budget range that I saw when I was planning made me feel more sane. I really do not appreciate the budget shaming that often happens on this sub. It was hard planning in such a HCOL area where the national averages are not representative, so I do hope this can help anyone who is looking for what things really cost for a wedding of this size in and around NYC One thing to note is that we got engaged in June 2018 and while we spent a lot of money, a lot of it was spread out over nearly 2.5 years. Day to day, the amount spent on the wedding didn't impact our budget and we did not go into any debt. My parents contributed a set amount to the wedding and my fiancé's parents covered the rehearsal dinner. I am not including my engagement ring or the honeymoon in this because I have a rough idea of how much my husband spent on my ring, but I've never asked for sure and our honeymoon is not going to happen until the world opens up. We are planning on taking 2 big trips to double celebrate our honeymoon (and because since we're waiting, why not?) to Japan and then to South Africa and Namibia. totals: all totals include gratuities initial budget: 80k planned budget pre-covid: 100k Total spent (including things that were not really in the budget) ~50k Breakdown: ****Ceremony and Reception: ****
Venue and Catering:$14,005.18 This included the fee for the ceremony ($1500), AV setup (hardwired internet), breakfast/lunch the day of, all wedding food, open bar, matire'd fee, gratuities/taxes, all linens, china, table setup, staff, cake, etc. this also includes the cost for the bride and groom's hotel room for 1 night as it was comped the other night.
Officiants:$600, we had my aunt officiate and did the legal bits in a count house months earlier so she did this for free but we paid for her hotel room (2 nights) as a thank you so
Ceremony Streaming:$750. This was a last minute cost and while we both think it was a bit high, the streaming was perfect and paying to not have that stress was incredible. I'd highly recommend the guy who did our streaming as he set everything up well and we got so many compliments on the stream.
Ceremony/Cocktail Hour Music:$700 this included a flute/violin duet for a prelude and ceremony and then a jazz trio for cocktail hour. They were great.
Flowers:$3,906.76 . We are in discussions with the florist that we did not get the things we asked for and are looking for a refund in some part of this. Our original estimate pre covid was aver $5,000 for flowers to give some context. we had 7 bridesmaids bouquets, 1 brides bouquet, 7 table centerpieces, chuppah rental and florals, and placecard table flowers.
Cocktail Hour Decor:~50. I am so glad I did this myself since our flowers generally sucked and they wanted to charge me $35 per bud vase. I thrifted bud vases and bought some from a bride on reddit, then I got 2 old atlases from half price books, some floral wire, and then tiny black rocks from amazon. Overall this DIY cost me like $50 and it was perfect. Also in this cost are some cool votive candles I bought from amazon.
Photography:$6,000. incredible would 100% recommend. PM me for the name. This included 10 hrs of shooting, over 800 photos, and an album
Videography:$2,000 incredible would 100% recommend. PM me for the name. This included a full day of shooting, all raw footage, a ~5 min highlight video and a full ceremony video.
Sabers for Saber Arch:$100 donation to the West Point Hostess Office
Photo Booth:$350 total.$250 deposit lost due to covid. Once we moved everything outside we didn't have a good place for the photo booth or to run electricity to it. So we cancelled that and instead spent $100 on a big cutout frame we hung from the ceiling. Originally the photobooth was going to be another $400 so I'm just counting it was coming out ahead.
Tents and dance floor rental:~$3,500 this was an additional cost that we took on as a covid precaution and it was perfect. This includes rentals (2 tents with walls that we ended up keeping up), having tent heaters on standby (they weren't needed), and the dance floor. My mom did a great job working with the venue and the rental organization to get a great setup and flow with the tents.
Party Entertainment:$8,500 this includes 10 musicians and live continuous music for the entire party. Also includes their travel fee and they MC'd our entire reception. They were wonderful!
****Appearances ****
Gown/Alterations:$1400 for the gown, $895 for alterations - I felt incredible and I hope some of the photos I posted help any bride who is size conscious to know that even at my heaviest I felt amazing and your size shouldn't stop you from having an amazing time.
Bridal Hair and Makeup:Hair $300, Makeup $325, bridesmaids/moms - hair $100-$150 depending on style, $125 for makeup. Both services were optional for bridesmaids and my mom decided the week of the wedding to help subsidize the cost for all bridesmaids who elected to have the services.
Bridal Accessories:$610 Veil ($500), party earrings ($45), ceremony earrings ($0), and party headpiece ($65). All other jewelry (hat, diamond necklace, diamond bracelet, other rings) were all family pieces
Bridesmaids Dresses:$600 - $100 per bridesmaid. Note: this wasn't necessary for groomsmen because they were all in uniforms, except my brother and my dad covered his tux
Groom's outfit:~80, $70 for a special uniform belt for his saber an then $10 on socks with our cat's face on them
Wedding Rings:$1850 for both rings, his was from Costco, mine was made from diamonds I got at an estate sale by a local. jeweler. I am obsessed with my ring. there was an additional cost to polish/dip our rings and watches and jewelry but I'm not counting it in this budget because it's regular maintenance.
****Gifts and things people kept****
Stationary:~ 350 + invitations this includes: save the dates ($175), invites, thank you notes, & invitations to our virtual celebration (honestly I don't know my mom just paid directly to the invitation lady), ceremony programs ($70), menus ($30), place cards ($30),
Wedding Party Gifts:~$550 for 6 bridesmaids, 5 groomsmen and 2 jr groomsmen. bridesmaids got a zip up for getting ready, a makeup case and a faux fur shawl in case they were cold. Groomsmen got a yeti bottle opener and a six pack of their favorite beer. Not including the gifts we gave when we asked them to be in the wedding
Welcome gifts and Bathroom Basket:~$300, 25 bags we included 2 new mexico soaps, costco snacks and drinks in a canvas bag. the bathroom basket stuff was all free and leftover things we used from my cousin's bat mitzvah
Favors:$241.51 we had the cutest little globes we filled with gummy bears! The shipping on the gummy bears was dumb but weddings make you do dumb things.
Flip Flops :$30 for 30 pairs of flip flops. My mom bought the baskets from Marshalls, not sure how much they were but assuming under $20 each. We ended up selling the ones we didn't use.
****Misc****
Wedding insurance:$636.00 this includes the liability insurance required by our venue and full cancellation insurance in case my husband was unexpectedly deployed. We didn't want to take any chances with this and losing deposits/full amounts, even though in the contracts we ensured there were military clauses throughout. This was purchased in 2019 and gave us incredible piece of mind as we opted for full full coverage.
Misc Decor and things:$500 This includes: photo frames (we did pics of us in the tub as kids on the bathroom doors) and a photo table, placecard holders, ribbons so we could do a socially distanced hora, a Mr. and Mrs sign for our table, alcohol for our suite afterparty, chargers for the tables, kudoboard (unlimited), website domain
****Not counted in this budget **** Dance Lessons:~$600 This money would've been super well spent if I hadn't hurt myself. we still did dance a bit but it wasn't what we planned. One day we can use those skills. I actually had a great time at the dance lessons and I'd 100% do it again. Pre Marital Counseling:~$500 very much money well spent. We did 4 sessions with a counselor online in the weeks before the wedding. We both felt like we got some great tools and it was a fantastic outlet for conversations we needed to have. I liked that it was virtual which made it accessible and I feel like we could go back to that counselor if we ever needed it. Ketubah:~400, this was a Hanukkah gift in 2019 Smashing Glasses:~200 this was a gift from my aunt who officiated the wedding. Engagement Ring Honeymoon Post-Wedding Brunch - My parents paid for this, it was casual Wedding Shoes:~$400, I bought these incredible something bleu shoes Navy kitten heels and then glitter keds for the party. I ended up in a boot and a sneaker so womp. But luckily both pairs of these shoes aren't very "bridal" and i'm definitely planning on wearing the glitter keds to the next tech conference I go to. I don't consider these "wedding budget" things because I'll wear them other times as well. Rehearsal dinner - MIL paid for this I'm glad I can post this and happy to talk to any other brides/grooms who are in the midst of planning!
Help from DIY-ers? How can I make these hoop centerpieces happen?
(cross posted to DIY weddings) So I am NOT a crafty person at all (and have very limited space in my apartment for either crafting or storage, no outdoor space or garage at all, no car). My original plan was to rent fake flowers for centerpieces...everyone hated the idea lol. My FMIL is craftier and thinks she can make the centerpieces herself as a gift (I would purchase, she would do the labor). She thinks we can do these centerpieces for under 30 per table, but I'm just lost on how we could possibly do it. Would love ANY tips or experience if anyone's done them! The centerpieces I like look this: Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 I've found a relatively affordable hoop on amazon here...I'm not sure if it's possible to find cheaper but would love resources if anyone has them? I am also really unsure HOW we would actually attack these to a base securely without having to nail them in or something complicated....And then for flowers I've been looking at ling's moment, a box costs between 24 - 30 dollars but it looks like we'd need a box per centerpiece...so already the budget is kind of blown.... A lot of tutorials seem to use hula hoops but I'm a little wary...first, I can't find cheap hula hoops (like 5 or under per hoop?) anywhere online. Secondly I'm concerned it's too labor intensive for FMIL (stripping them, repainting, etc). And thirdly I'm concerned they are too light and will topple over... So basically I'm just lost. Would love to hear from some expert DIYers on this whole idea.
Oops, I’m a covid bride... A picnic wedding reception wasn’t my original ~vision~ but I’m rolling with the punches. Postponing our wedding has made us realize how expensive our original plan was, so we’re rethinking everything as we try to find a celebration that will fit our budget. Side note: We‘re not planning to do this until the pandemic has calmed down. My inner bridezilla hates all the waiting but I’m not willing to risk anyone’s health. THE VIBE I’m going for “garden party” as opposed to “rustic farmhouse chic,” but I also want things to feel laid-back and easy THE LOCATION A public park in the middle of my city THE TIME 11:00 am following the 10:00 am ceremony at our church THE DETAILS • The menu consists of brunch-y finger foods like fruit skewers and bagels, mimosas, and cupcakes for dessert • To save on a DJ, we’ll replace music/dancing with lawn games and other activities (croquet, hula hoops, a wedding cake piñata, a photo scavenger hunt with prizes) • Seating will consist of picnic blankets, with chairs/tables provided for those who are physically unable to sit comfortably on the ground • Flip-flop sandals as party favors will give people the option to change out of their heels • A Selfie Spot instead of a photo booth will save so much money it’s actually OBSCENE WHERE I NEED HELP • A timeline. Will guests eat and immediately leave if there’s no dancing? I‘m hoping that if we schedule the scavenger hunt prizes and the piñata for an hour or so after brunch is served, there will be something keeping everyone here. • Seating logistics. For the original wedding, I created a seating chart (which is suuuuper necessary for this group) that had 8 people per table—which, in this case, means 8 people per picnic blanket. How big should each blanket be to comfortably accommodate 8 guests? I’m also providing a pillow for each guest to sit on...anybody know where to get like 60 pillows for real cheap? My mom is sewing pillowcases to help everything match. • Decorations. I’m keeping these to a minimum: a couple of signs with directions, props and a backdrop for the Selfie Spot, and centerpieces. I’m planning to buy small wooden boxes I can put in the middle of each picnic blanket to hold table numbers and centerpieces; any ideas on where to get boxes like that? Suggestions for decorations I haven’t thought of? • Set-up logistics. Someone needs to go set everything up the morning of the event and babysit everything while the ceremony is going on—it’s a public park, and while we’re allowed to reserve it for the wedding, the park doesn’t provide security to keep people away from our stuff. Has anyone done this before? I can’t ask my MOH because whoever is in charge of this will have to miss the wedding itself. Sorry this post got so long. I love love love this stage of the planning process and now that I’m over the initial disappointment of postponing, I’m excited to start it all over again. Let me know if you have ideas/critiques/suggestions—I’m super open to brainstorming, I love to DIY, and my Pinterest app is OPEN!
Hey guys, I know I've posted on a number of posts, but I wanted to hopefully help give you some ideas. 1) When will it be safe to have a wedding? Both Moderna and Oxford trials conclude this month, with their release of their findings to be announced in September. That means next month, we could very well have a date as to when the vaccines will be released to the general public around the world. If I were you, use this as a time to assess the situation and decide what to do from there. If earlier statements of a December vaccine release date are correct, and the vaccines take 1-2 months to build antibodies and T-cells in the body, you're looking at around a February or March for this to start lifting. But Disclaimer: I ain't a doctor, please read credible news sources and be informed of your own volition. 2) How can I prepare if I need to move the date again? Build your Plan B, C, D or X if need be. Communicate to your vendors. Be flexible, and be safe. But you don't need to "start all over": first ask the venue for the next date that works, as well as the rest of your vendors. Same wedding, different date - just don't print your date all over the place and you'll be fine. If anyone gives you crap, start putting everything in writing with delivery confirmation (or email). No more verbal communication - just in case you need to lawyer up. 3) I really want to try on wedding dresses, but, pandemic? There's SEVERAL try-on dress shops that ship to your home. Even better? There's a lot of out-of-work seamstresses, tailors, and costume designers right now. Ever wanted a dress that's ACTUALLY custom made? No, I mean for real, and ACTUAL custom dress? Well, here's your chance. Contact your local tailors and seamstresses. Contact your local film commission branch to see if they have any recommendations. If you're in NYC or LA pretty sure calling the Garment/Fashion district stores will lead you to some wonderful recommendations. As always, make sure you see a portfolio of your designer's work, you communicate your budget clearly, and ask them what a whip stitch is. If they don't know, hire someone else. Even a costume design graduate can do a "thrift flip" aka, take a dress base and tweak it to your style at a much lower cost with some great results. 4) This is horrible! I have more time to wait I don't know what to do with myself! Yah, I feel you. I live in Florida, and I wanted it to be cold (aka, not feeling the makeup melt off my face). The date we had in mind was important to us but, oh well that's how the cookie crumbles and it turns out our new date will be even cuter, so it all worked out. My December wedding is now a March wedding* (pending COVID), so now I have extra time to... oh god.. PLAN MORE SHINY THINGS! :D -I decided to learn how to use epoxy resin to make badass escort cards for really cheap. -I decided to put more energy and effort into the table settings, which I wouldn't have done before. -I decided I'll DIY my signs using a new technique for fun, which I wouldn't have been able to do. -The fiance and I are taking more time to plan our honeymoon for whenever we can do it. -We're making all of our centerpieces with silk flowers. Then it doesn't really matter what time of the year it is, silk flowers don't die and don't have "seasons". You don't even have to water them! :D So I encourage you to embrace the weird. Embrace the crazy that is these times. Think outside of the box. Throw away the "normal" and just go with the times. Don't settle for your dream wedding: push beyond it to surpass your expectations by stepping beyond the comfort zone of normlacy coz this ain't normal. At the end of the day it's going to be ok. Take advantage of this extra time to exchange ideas to make our weddings even more badassical and fabulous, everyone. Use the extra time to make your wedding even more incredible while you protect the lives of those you love. As a final note, to those who absolutely have to get married now for reasons (immigration, army, etc hopefully you get what I mean): My heart goes out to you and I'm sending you ALL the virtual hugs. I really hope some of my suggestions might help some of y'all. Be safe, and hang in there. <3 Let me know what you think, or if you ave any tips as well for those navigating these times!
Hello! I hope other brides find this helpful! But first... PICTURES! Location: San Gabriel, Pasadena & Westminister, CA Guests: 250 Budgeted: $35,000 Spent: $32,959 Our wedding was a Chinese/Vietnamese-American Catholic wedding. My husband and I paid for the wedding out of our own pockets. It took us about 2 years to plan and save for the wedding. There were a lot of DIYs to cut costs and help from family and friends setting everything up. Now onto the details! Florals: $294
Bouquets: $129
We bought fresh wholesale flowers from the Flower District in DTLA. My husband and I woke up early in the morning to get the best picks and spent a couple of hours putting it together the day before the wedding. This made for great bonding time. In total we made four bridesmaid/groomswomen bouquets, a small one for the flower girl, the groom's boutineer, the bridal bouquet and flowers for the wedding cake. Our flowers were actually more expensive because it was so close to Valentine's Day. The ribbons and pins were from Michael's and Ann linens. Always use coupons!
Florals for the church alter: $130
We ordered two huge flower baskets for the church alter from the Flower District. We picked it up the day before the wedding since they didn't deliver.
Boutineers (family): $36
Bought ~50 ribbon flower pins from AliExpress for family, aunts and uncles. It's an Asian thing.
Ceremony (Catholic Church): $700
Church Donation: $500
This is pretty much the rental fee.
Coordinator for rehearsal: $50
Pianist: $150
He was actually the church's pianist so he knew exactly what to do.
Tea Ceremony: $479
Vu Quy signage + Floral Arch (rental): $75
This is a sign for wedding day. "Vu Quy" is the term used to signify leaving the house for the husband, and this sign is usually used at the bride's side of the wedding.
We didn't want to share the same tea cup among 20+ relatives
Roasted Pig: $280
Wine: $58
We bought wholesale from a winery
Wedding Trays (rental): $40
To put the gifts for the bride's family. The gifts included wine, fruit, teas and herbs (provided by groom's parents).
Reception: $18,253
Food/Venue: $13,984
Asian banquets charge by the table and each table seats 10 guests--we had 25 round tables + Sweetheart table. The venue included the wedding cake, hors d'oeuvre during cocktail hour, a 9-course family style meal per table and soda. We also paid for special meals for guests that had dietary restrictions and our vendors (MC + Photo/Video team). We had the place from 3PM for set up till 11PM. The venue cleaned everything themselves.
Going with an asian banquet made everything so much easier. It's affordable and it includes everything like tables, chair, table clothes, glassware, plates, lighting and etc.
Open Bar: $1,856
Early on in the wedding planning, my husband and I knew we wanted an open bar cuz a majority of our guests love to drink. One of the deciding factors of our reception banquet was that they had an open bar option in the package. This meant one less vendor for me to worry about. Other banquet halls that we checked out were BYOB/hire your own bartenders. We paid for four hours of the premium menu. They were also very VERY generous with the alcohol so everyone had a blast. They also included virgin drink menu for kids. After doing the math, if each guest had at least one drink, it'll be $7 per head. So it was worth it in my opinion. And at the end of the night, everyone had enough liquid courage to get onto the dance floor.
Emcee + Tip: $550
We hired an MC that spoke Cantonese/Mandarin. She was the MC of a previous wedding we attended. She had a great presence and knew how to keep the crowd going with games.
DJ: $619
The DJ was actually the manageson of the owner so we got a discount when we hired him.
Photobooth: $500
We rented a photobooth for four hours. The package included unlimited use, custom artwork/templates, onsite attendant, CD/cloud download of all photos, props and delivery/setup/tear down.
Sweetheart Table Decor: $173
This included flower row from Aliexpress, candles from Ikea, various sizes of vases from Dollar Tree, Ikea and Burlington Coat Factory.
Table Center Piece: $291
These were completely DIY and we made 25 of these. I bought candle holders and glass bowl from Dollar Tree, fake flowers from AliExpress and glued them all together. As much as I love fresh flowers, I couldn't bring myself to spend thousands on them for them to wilt in a couple of days. It's been a couple of months and I still see my centerpieces at my guests homes!
Wedding favors: $205
I ordered 250 wedding favor boxes from AliExpress and put two ferror rochers into each. The ferror rochers were on sale at Costco. The downside was we had to fold all 250 boxes ourselves. This gave us something to do during those Netflix nights.
Card box: $21
Since this was an Asian wedding, all our guests brought card gifts (e.g. checks, cash, giftcards).
Sparklers: $28
I highly suggest doing an exit with sparklers. It made for awesome pictures/video.
Cake topper: $35
My husband and I are into anime instead of ordering a typical take topper from Etsy, we opted to order a couple of bootleg Nendoroids off of AliExpress to customize figures that look like us.
Photography + Videography: $9,161
Photography + Videography: $9,100
When my husband and I started planning our wedding, we agreed that if we were to splurge on anything, it'll be the photo/video. They were such a dream to work with. Everything went so smoothly because of them. They've worked with Asian weddings before so they knew the ins and out of our day/tradition. They'll tell me if I had a stray hair, if my husband had to move his hand an inch, or to fix my wedding dress. I have absolutely no regrets.
We paid for 14 hour coverage. It was a realllyyyy long day. I think there were about 8 of them with us the entire day.
We also paid extra to have them compile a 3-4min video of the wedding day. This was a great idea because instead of going through 14 hours of footage from multiple cameras, we already have a video to look back on to relive this special day.
City Hall Permit: $61
Some places require a permit for wedding photos. Double check yours!!
Attire: $2,228
Wedding Dress: $1,098
I ultimately decided to rent my dress instead of purchasing it. The rental included the wedding dress (obviously), alterations (two sessions), veil, earrings, hair accessories and dry cleaning. My wedding dress was Perla by Kitty Chen (MSRP ~$2.3k).
Bride's Shoes + Inserts: $97
I bought two pairs of Jewel Badgley Mischka that were both on sale/clearance ($65 + $26) at Nordstroms and Macys. One for the wedding day, and another shorter, more comfortable one for the evening. I highly recommend buying inserts ($6). I was standing, walking and dancing all day (14+hrs).
Evening Dress + Alterations: $275
Something to change into since the wedding dress was so heavy. Plus I wanted to wear something super sparkly and glittery and gold. This was the best time to do it.
Garter Belt: $3
I just bought a cheap one from AliExpress since it was gonna be thrown around in the evening anyway.
Bridesmaid/Groomswomen dress: $208
I bought them the infinity dress so they can be creative and customize it to however they like. In the end, they all ended up looking the same anyway lol
Grooms Suit + Alterations: $179
From the Fashion District in DTLA. This includes shirt, jacket, pants, tie and vest.
I bought 6 satin pairs from AliExpress. Funny story, the pants tore on the butt area while taking jumping pictures. It just couldn't contain this booty. I recommend buying something stretchy.
Traditional Vietnamese Outfit- Bride (rental): $75
Includes the traditional hat, alterations, and cleaning fee
Traditional Vietnamese Outfit- Groom (rental): $35
My husband actually rented the groomsmen style. He didn't like the groom's style or else it would have been $75.
There were two MUAs. This includes bride + five other girls. We started getting ready around 4:30AM till around 9:30AM.
Nails: $155
I paid for my mom and I's nails. It was our first time getting mani professionally done so it was such a treat.
Hair Extensions: $85
I have pretty thin hair so I needed the extra volume.
Misc: $609
Wedding Invitation + Postage: $256
Marriage Certificate: $91
for California!
Sheraton - Junior Suite: $262
I actually used my Chase points for this. The bridesmaids and I slept overnight in the room. We also rented this suite to get our hair and makeup done.
Thank you if you've made it this far! Feel free to ask questions, if any :)
Wedding Recap: 18k Afternoon Wedding in Albuquerque for 65 guests
First, Pictures! This is a wedding I planned for my wife. She was the stereotypical bride that always dreamed of a big fancy wedding, but she had no interest in planning it. I was the stereotypical bride that did 99% of the planning, because I had no interest in a wedding for myself but I loved researching and planning and I wanted my wife to be happy. I know a lot of hetero couples have issues with this labor imbalance, but for us it worked perfectly.
Summary
Date & Location: 2/8/20 in Albuquerque, NM
Length of relationship/engagement: Engaged for 6 months, together for…8 years? Depends how you count.
Estimated budget: 20k
Final cost: 22k including the welcome evening and rehearsal lunch. Paid mostly by my father, although we could have swung it ourselves.
invited: 120 ish
RSVP yes: 65, 63 attended. About 98% of the people we invited were from out of town and couldn’t make it. Her family also has some born-again Christians who refused to attend.
Costs
Venue: $500
Our venue was a historic hotel downtown. We had the welcome evening, the ceremony and the reception here. A lot of our guests stayed at the hotel and commented on how convenient it was for them. Ceremony Fee: $500 for the ceremony space. We picked the venue specifically for this ceremony space which isn’t available in the evenings, which forced us to have an afternoon ceremony. Worth it. Reception Venue: fee was waived because we met the minimum spend!
Food & Drinks: $10.5k
$70 per adult, which included a buffet, beewine/soft drinks, and passed appetizers for 1 hour (this price doesn’t include taxes etc). The total for the food including taxes was $6,288. We hosted a full bar for the whole night in addition to this package, which came out to $3,468. Dessert: We brought in gelato from Frost for $810. Their standard package feeds 200 people, so at the end of the night there was a TON of leftovers. They packed it up into pint containers for us and held it at their local store for us to pick up the next day. We hosted a lovely post-wedding ice cream social and gave it all away to local friends.
Attire: $1.5k
My attire: $77 I wasn’t too particular about my dress, so I just kind of bought the first dress that I liked (Lulus Awaken My Love in Grey). After I bought it I got a little obsessed and made this pinterest board featuring this dress as a wedding dress. My alterations: $80 I got it taken in to tea length and fixed the sleeves to fit better. My accessories: $180 This includes a veil, barefoot sandals, hair vine, and gaffers tape I used as a bra. I also wore a gold locket that my mother gave me when I was a teenager. Wife’s attire: $259 She ordered a dress from RenzRags which was kind of a hot mess. The bodice was too small and the skirt looked cheap so she ordered a tulle skirt to go over it and a shaper to squeeze her torso. It was a little stressful, but in the end it all worked out. Wife’s alterations: $60 To alter the dress mentioned above. Wife’s accessories: $180 She bought nice jewelry for all her body piercings and a crystal flower crown. Rings: $612 Her ring is a dainty 14k white gold ring with a pink moissanite which I bought on etsy. My ring is a plain 14k gold band that I found while digging in the garden a few years back. They match our personalities pretty well.
Decor: $1.6k
Florals: $877 We went full DIY on the florals. This is a combination of plastic flowers from Michaels, foam roses from Amazon, Sola wood flowers, artificial boutonnieres and flower crowns from Etsy, and 200 feet of real green garlands from Sam’s Club. The garlands were $400 and well worth it; there was enough for all the tables in the reception and to decorate the chairs for the ceremony. Non-florals at ceremony: $417 Most of this is from the $278 wagon we bought for our young son to ride down the aisle. We also bought bubbles and a round arch. Non-florals at cocktail hour: $54 The hotel was pretty enough, we just put up a schedule sign so people would know what’s going on. We labeled it “The Gay Agenda” and everyone loved it. Non-florals at reception: $279 We went with long farmhouse tables so the centerpieces had to be simple. I found some cheap geometric candle holders on amazon, put some flickering LED candles in them, and arranged them around the garlands on the table. There were also a lot of leftover sola wood flowers so we arranged them in the garlands too.
Stationery: $400
Save-the-dates/Programs./Menus: $0 we skipped all of these: save-the-dates because of our short engagement (we just sent out our invitations reallllly early), programs because we had a super short ceremony, and menus because we had a buffet. I don’t think anyone missed them. Invitations + postage: $245 We just bought something off of Minted. We ended up with like 50 extra invitations somehow, so we probably could have spent a lot less here. Thank you cards + postage: $100 Again, just something cute from Minted. Escort cards: $82 Another DIY. We went with named tables, so I bought some nice tree illustrations from Etsy for table cards, made a seating chart spreadsheet that generated the escort cards for me, and printed out the escort cards on some nice cardstock. This seemed like a good idea until I was cutting out the escort cards at 1 AM two days before the wedding. I don’t recommend this unless you have a way to cut paper in bulk.
Other Vendors: 3.8k
Coordinator: $0 The venue includes a venue coordinator and I think that was all we needed. I wasn’t super stoked about the whole wedding thing, but I love planning things. I think if we had an event coordinator I would’ve enjoyed the day less. Music: $1371 We hired a string duo for the ceremony and a DJ for the reception. I’m really glad we got the string musicians. Photographer: $1882 This includes 7 hours of shooting, with a second shooter for about 5 of those hours. Hair Stylist: $8 We didn’t want anything super fancy, so my sister-in-law did both of our hair. The only thing I had to buy was some hair wax (which I will probably never use again). She did a great job! Make-up Artist (+ trial): 250 This includes two trials and one day-of face. My wife found a local mua who came out and did a trial for us both. I ended up hating it even though she did a great job, so I did my own makeup day-of along with our brides’ maids. Officiant: $0 Our lovely friend of 10+ years did the ceremony for us as a wedding gift. Tips: $300 I took out this much for tips and I’m sure it all went to that, but I couldn’t tell you who got what.
Gifts: $150
Wedding party gifts: $150 for bridesmaids boxes. Everyone also got sweet thank-you cards.
Additional Events: 3.7k
Rehearsal Lunch: $1000? I got a reservation at a cafe down the street from the venue and we just all walked over after the rehearsal. I wanted to pay for this, but my dad got to the check before me so I have no idea how much we spent. Welcome Party: 2.7k Since everyone was coming from out of town, we had a little cocktail party at the venue the night before.
Additional Info
Timeline
We fell in love with this ceremony space but it was only available before 2 PM, and my wife really wanted to have the standard dinner & dancing reception, so our timeline was a little non-traditional: 1:30 Ceremony (we put 1 on the invitations and one of her cousins still missed it, lol) 1:45 Receiving line into cocktail hour+ 2-ish to 3:30 Cocktail Hour+ 3:45 First dance and parent dances 4:00 Prayer and dinner (we had a buffet) 4:45 Speeches/Toasts, dance floor open 6:00 Dessert, more dancing 10:00 Late night Loteria to finish the night
What Went Well
Pretty much everything. I originally didn’t want a wedding, but in the end I’m glad my wife convinced me into it. I was worried about so much stuff not working out (like our last-minute welcome evening, wonky timeline, super-short ceremony, non-traditional dresses, the seating chart, the dance floor) but all of it turned out perfectly fine. I’m also really glad we played Loteria (mexican bingo) at the end of the night once the crowd had thinned out and everyone was very drunk. Her family plays it a lot at family gatherings so it was a nice way to bring the two sides of our family together!
Things I Would Have Changed
I definitely wouldn’t have DIY’ed the escort cards, it was so much work at the very last minute. We did have some trouble getting people to RSVP, but I think this was mainly cultural, so probably unavoidable (her family’s weddings are usually much more casual and folks just kind of show up).
Budget/Breakdown: $30k MN July wedding, 100 guests, Long engagement
First of all,PHOTOS! Background info We live in Minnesota, were high school sweethearts, and are in our mid-20s. Of the 10 years we’ve dated, we’ve lived together for 5 years and were engaged for 2.5 years. I planned everything myself, and we paid for the wedding ourselves. Pros of a long (2+ years) engagement:
It felt right for us and allowed us to leisurely enjoy being engaged
Plenty of time for research and venue visits
Most vendors were available on our date
Costs were spread out and thus easier to afford
Months at a time with nothing wedding-related to do (helped mitigate burn out)
No cold feet. We both felt VERY ready to be married when the day finally came
Cons of a long engagement:
DH’s grandpa died two months before the wedding. If we had a shorter engagement, he would have been able to attend.
With nothing else to do for months, I overthought and doubted decisions
I got bored and created things for myself to do (which resulted in blowing the budget)
The month leading up to the wedding was still stressful and crazy, despite how much I planned ahead
Budget and Gifts Initial budget: $20k Final cost: $29k Our parents/grandparents gave us $17k in total, and gifts from guests totaled $3k. Guest List If I had to plan a wedding again, I might elope, only to avoid the guest-list drama. My guest list: 80 Parents’ guest list: 200+ Guests invited: 125 Guests RSVP’d yes: 101 Guests invited late due to parents begging: 7 Guests who actually attended: 98 (2 of whom RSVD’d no) Theme My vague theme was "royal wedding in the park." My inspiration words were, "Colorful, elegant, simple, and classic." Final Costs Day-of Coordinator: $1175 If I could only give one piece of advice, it would be to hire a coordinator. Nothing major went wrong, thanks to our coordinator. Neither me nor my family had to lift a finger to set up or tear down. It was an entirely relaxing, wonderful day. Attire: $4430 In my experience, buying my dress two years before the wedding was great. I recommend waiting to buy your accessories, though. I thought I needed this $500 belt, but by the wedding day, I liked my dress better without it. I only wore it for the reception. 3 bridesmaids skirts (DIY): $230 My dress: $1200 Accessories: $700 Alterations (hem, take in the bust, bustle, add straps): $550 Groom tux and attire (rented from The Black Tux): $200 My ring (excluding engagement ring): $900 His ring: $650 Hair and Makeup: $1200 I let everyone choose whether they got hair and makeup done and how they wanted to look. Everyone but my mom opted in. I disliked the hair stylist I was assigned. Even after after a second trial, my updo was frizzy, sloppy, and coming out before the ceremony. Bridesmaids hair also came out before the ceremony. My hair and makeup (including a trial): $400 2nd hair trial: $65 3 Bridesmaids and MOG haimake up: $600 Tip: $150 Stationary: $328 I designed and printed our invitation suites myself, which was stupid. The paper I bought wasn’t made for printer ink, so although they looked beautiful at first, most of the ink rubbed off in the mail. In hindsight, I should have had them professionally printed on good paper. I spent hours on those invites--even doing calligraphy for every name and address--just to have them smudge. STDs from Minted: $118 Invites (DIY): $100 Thank You Cards: $25 Postage: $85 Venue: $3480 Both the ceremony and reception were at a local park with a lovely indoor space. Counseling: $160 In hindsight, we should have skipped pre-marital counseling. We have a fantastic relationship, but I thought we should try it. We did Prepare-Enrich, which reported we had no weaknesses, and had an hour of therapy. Afterward, the therapist said we could continue but didn’t think we needed to. Dance Lessons: $80 This covered four dance classes. It was a group class designed for engaged couples practicing for their first dance. We had so much fun! The weekly lessons were like date nights. We had no prior dance experience and learned a ton. Officiant and License: $515 Food for the drama llamas: Shortly after we got engaged, I asked my distant cousin (a pastor) to marry us and he agreed. Two years went by. I struggled to get him on the phone or talk about logistics. When we did finally talk, he wouldn’t let us get a word in and talked for two hours about how we needed more pre-marital counseling. Two months before the wedding, he said he didn’t feel comfortable marrying us because we live together and aren’t religious. I was annoyed but relieved, and we hired an officiant. Officiant: $400 Marriage license: $115 Photo and Video: $4575 For videography, I wanted raw footage because I dislike modern wedding videos. Before hiring him, I told our videographer I didn’t want to see things the photographer was already capturing. I wanted him to film stuff I would miss. Candid moments. Family arriving, groomsmen goofing off, my sister carrying my train, my little cousins playing. But instead, he stuck to the traditonal script and filmed bridal party posing for pictures, the ceremony, speeches, and the dance floor. In hindsight, I should have just “hired” a friend to be the videographer. On the other end of the spectrum, our photographer was incredible! Photography: $3800 Videography: $775 Food and drink: $5815 Many people doubted my decision to have tacos for dinner and donuts for dessert (no cake). (At least DH was super excited about the food I picked!) I defended my decisions, and it turned out great. Appetizers and buffet dinner: $4155 Donuts: $220 Open bar (beer and wine only): $1440 DJ/entertainment: $1125 In addition to a DJ, we had ping pong and a retro arcade cabinet (both borrowed from DH’s uncle), which people enjoyed. I’m sad DH and I never got a chance to play. Decor: $1370 I won’t go into the saga that was finding cylinder vases and pillar candles for a reasonable price. The lesson is to do all DIY as early as possible. Just do it now because it will not go as planned and you’ll have to resort to plan B (or C or D.) Chair rental cost surprised me. We needed 100 basic chairs for 20 minutes, and most vendors quoted me $1k. My friend’s dad rents chairs for graduation parties but was willing to do weddings too, so I got a deal. If you’re looking for basic chairs, try searching for grad party rentals instead of wedding rentals. Vases and candles: $50 and my sanity Blue goblets from eBay: $540 Ring box: $40 Ceremony arch (DIY): $45 Place cards (DIY): $20 Paper cranes (DIY): $5 Fake greenery for headtable: $100 Chair rental for ceremony: $570 Floral: $2440 Flowers on ceremony arch: $400 Floral centerpieces: $100 each Greenery centerpieces: $50 each My bouquet: $300 Bridesmaids bouquets: $150 each Boutonnieres: $15 each Corsages for moms: $30 each We had some random buds scattered on other tables too, which were $50 per table. The rest is taxes and delivery fee. Gifts: $75 I gave my bridesmaids silk butterfly clips from Etsy to wear in their hair. DH gave his dad and groomsmen custom flasks. To each of the parents, I wrote heartfelt notes. Bridesmaids gifts: $25 Groomsmen gifts: $50 Parent gifts: $0 Honeymoon: $2300 Four days in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We’ve been there several times before, which meant we didn’t have to plan or research anything. DH grandparents offered the use of their timeshare, so hotel was free. We waited too long to book flights, so they got expensive. Hotel: $0 Flights: $1800 Food/activities: ~$500 What Went Well When we started planning, DH and I had a conversation about expectations. I asked, “What makes it a wedding to you?” His answer surprised me, and it helped me prioritize things while planning. Hiring a day-of coordinator was the best money spent. I was worried about being sick with anxiety all day. My mom told me if I expected myself to be anxious, I would be. I took her advice and actively corrected my thinking. I pictured myself calm and happy as often as possible. In moments of stress, I focused on things I was excited about. In the weeks leading up, I told myself over and over I would be at ease and carefree. And it was so! I couldn’t believe it! If it’s going to be hot and you’re doing photos outside, bring cooling towels. Our bridal party loved them in between pictures. If you don’t want to do something, then don’t. No one will miss it. We skipped a lot of “traditions” and no one noticed. We had no guestbook, cake cutting, father-daughter dance, bouquet toss, garter toss, grand entrance, or grand exit. We did a receiving line, and it was the best. It got the hugs and congrats done right away and ensured we greeted every guest. It only took about twenty minutes. Then, at the reception, we were free to mingle with whomever we wanted to talk to more. No one pulled us aside or interrupted us during the reception. Instead of a father-daughter dance, my dad played accordion and guests participated in a group folk dance. It meant a lot of my dad. It was also a sneaky way to get a lot of people on the dance floor for when the DJ started. I was surprised by how much power the bride has. I realized this when people on the dance floor mimicked my moves and responded to everything I did. If I clapped my hands to the beat, so did they. If I left the floor, they stopped dancing. If I pointed at someone across the floor, they pointed back and we sang lyrics together. As a shy person, I’ve never experienced anything like this. Once I realized my power, I used it for good. I made a point to dance with people who had no date or knew no one. I thanked and complimented people profusely. I visited more tables than I normally would have. What Went Wrong The list below is nitpicking for the sake of this post. I mean it when I say the day was absolutely perfect and nothing on the list below affected our happiness.
My dress was too long, which made it almost impossible to walk without holding up my skirt. The only time this really mattered was walking down the aisle. Every time I tried to look up at my DH and enjoy the moment, I would trip on my skirt. It kind of spoiled the moment.
We only registered for gifts at the insistence of our moms. It wasn’t worth the effort because most people gave us cash anyway. I wish we hadn’t bothered.
The DIY invitations smudged in the mail (see above)
I forgot to give my beautiful, sparkly belt to the photographer to include in the details shots. Oops!
In the morning, while steaming my dress, my brand new steamer malfunctioned. My mom had to run out for a new one with only 30 minutes to spare.
During the ceremony, holding back tears made my nose run. The officiant handed me a tissue, but I wasn’t going to blow my nose during our beautiful ceremony! I couldn’t even give it a good wipe because that would look gross and smear my makeup. I dabbed a few times, but the snot just kept coming! These are the thoughts that occupied my mind throughout our ceremony. By the time of our first kiss, the snot had trickled onto my upper lip, and I felt sorry for DH having to kiss me. I brought it up later and we both laughed. Now it makes for a hilarious memory!
The expensive floral centerpieces, which I had carefully planned to be on VIP tables, ended up on the wrong tables.
The videographer didn’t film the “behind-the-scenes” moments like I wanted (see above)
My grandma, who is in early stages of dementia, got lost and didn’t arrive early for family pictures. She arrived just in time for the ceremony, luckily. We took pictures with her during happy hour instead.
I had my period on the wedding day. I think I earned some kind of female achievement award for changing tampons in a white ballgown! My sisteMOH was a rock star.
I couldn’t eat more than two bites of dinner. This was a combination of being too hot, the very tight bodice of my dress, and adrenaline. I felt like Scarlet O’Hara at a BBQ.
My poor bouquet was neglected at the end of the night. I put it in a vase during the reception and forgot about it. The next day, I found it stuffed in a box (with no vase or water) where it had sat all night. It was heartbreaking to see it so wilted. I put it in water, which perked it up, but it could have lasted so much longer. I should have designated someone to take care of my bouquet.
The beautiful silk blue ribbon wrapped around my bouquet was lost (likely thrown away during clean up.) Even now, seven months later, I still think about my lost ribbon sometimes and feel sad.
Finally, I just want to say thank you to this wonderful community. I got a lot of ideas and support from this fantastic group. This place is unique among subreddits and online communities. Please never change, Weddit!
Wedding Recap: October 12, 2019, Ventura, CA—Vintage Chicano theme
It’s been 6 months since my husband and I got married! I always loved reading through wedding recaps because it helped me establish budgets and I found so many cool items/ideas I was able to incorporate into my own wedding! I know this is a difficult time for those that have had to reschedule their wedding or are thinking about having to do that, but I hope it gives you more time to create the wedding you and your partner wants. Here are some photos: Blog from my wedding photographer Rodney Ty My personal favorites: Us and the Details Overview: My husband and I knew that we wanted to have a wedding that reflected our style as couple. Our goal was to have our guests think, “this is definitely Kat and Angel’s wedding!” We have a lot of friends who are talented artists or own their business so we asked for their help (if they were able to) instead of purchasing a gift for us. I put an * to signify items that these were made/created/discounted by friends and family because some of the prices may seem unrealistic. Our theme: Us aka Vintage Chicano Colors: Hunter green, orange, and yellow Top 3 most important things for us: Food—We love Mexican food and we’re Latinx. I’m vegan and he wanted to have the taco truck that he grew up eating. Alcohol—Our family and friends love to party and we love to throw parties! We wanted to make sure we had most liquors available so we purchased a wide variety. We had craft beer and our friends brewed a beer in our honor—PS I love craft beer and weirdly my husband has never had a drink in his life! Music—A common theme throughout our decor was music (records and boomboxes). We also needed a really good DJ because we love to dance and knew we wanted to spend most of the night doing that. We got that and spent the night having and awesome time! (Photography was pretty high as well. We love taking photos together and have had some great ones over the years--wanted to add some to our collection.) Favorite/Memorable Things Support of Our Friends and Family: People were so excited for us to get married! Leading up the wedding people offered their physical labor, time, energy, or craft. This allowed us to have a high guest count, but not spend a ton of money. I’m forever grateful to these people and have the privilege of having special memories from our wedding. Our Own Beer “Love on the Radio”: Strawberry Hazy IPA brewed by our best friends. I love hazy IPAs and he is from Oxnard (strawberry city) and loves boomboxes, which is how they came up with the concept. They created a label and made glasses for our family and close friends. They did a pouring at our rehearsal dinner since our wedding party would most likely not be able to try it during cocktail hour. Signature drinks and Pouring Shots: We had fun creating these with our friends and personal tastes in mind. “La Ramona” is our cat who is a lil nutty. At one point towards the end of the night, the bartender allowed me to get behind the bar and pour shots for all my guests who wanted to participate. It was epic! Dedication hour: We love Art Laboe and listen to his dedication show on the radio. We wanted to incorporate this into our wedding somehow. During cocktail hour, we had our friends and family write “dedications” that were read throughout the night. It was super fun to randomly hear our friends tell us how much they love us! BUDGET BREAKDOWN Initial Budget: $20,000 Total Spent: ~$30,000 (a little less, but I assumed we are missing some items) Attendees: 196 guests Venue/Rentals/Catering/Beverage: $12, 996
Venue ($3,005):
Olivas Adobe This is a local historical park that allows you to rent the property for an hourly rate, which is pretty affordable. We chose this venue because they allow you to bring your own food and we wanted to bring in a taquero and vegan food (a majority of venues in our area require the use of their caterers). We did have to bring everything to the venue because its run by the city, but it wasn’t a deterrent because we had a vision of how we wanted it to look. I learned about this venue from a family member, it was not listed on any of the wedding sites!
Rentals: E-Rentals--Great company that allowed us to negotiate with them. They were great with communication and made a layout of the ceremony and reception area that we were able to use for planning. They did everything from chairs and tables to stringing lights.
Caterers:
Cocktail:
Family friend/caterer* ($800): We asked our family friend to make a cut up fruit and tajin station for cocktail hour. Think LA fruit street vendor. We also paid her to serve the vegan food and cut our wedding cake, which is why the cost is so high.
Dinner:
Husband’s Favorite Taco Truck ($2,000): $10 per person for unlimited tacos, rice, beans, and all the salsas.
Norte Sur ($170): Vegan nachos, pastor tacos, rice, beans and salsas for 50 vegans and veggies.
Beverage
Bartender ($1,565 including tip): Our bartender brought the physical bar, all the ice, cups, mixers, and garnishes. The bartender brought another person to help during the cocktail hour to keep the lines down.
Alcohol ($1,200): We purchased all the alcohol from Costco and we still have sooooo much! We had three signature drinks, almost full bar, wine, and 2 kegs from a local brewery.
Liquor License ($173): Required by our venue.
Photography: $2800 (including tip) Rodney Ty Photography: He was my friend’s wedding photographer. I love his pictures and the mood he is able to set. He is great at candid shots and uses film and digital photography. Florist*: ~$680
Centerpieces and bouquets:
Maciel Flowers* (~$500): Close family friend owns this company and is a wholesaler. They put together our centerpieces (16 tables) and my bouquet. My friend put together the bridesmaid’s bouquets (10 bouquets) from the flowers we purchased directly from them.
Cactus and Succulents ($180): Local business who put together centerpieces in terracotta pots and small glass bowls I purchased. She also allowed me to borrow cactus/succulents for the aisle.
DJ/MC/Photobooth* ($2,300):
Vendor: Provision Entertainment •
Our nephew (full blown adult) started his own entertainment company that provided us with sound for the ceremony, amazing music during cocktail and the reception, a bilingual MC, and a photobooth during the whole reception. I would have paid them all the money because they were amazing, I received so many compliments on the music and MC alone! We partied hard that night.
DecoMisc (~$2,941): This is where we went a little crazy, but we wanted to ensure that the idea of Us came through. We wanted our family and friends to come to our wedding and recognize that it represented us to our core. Here are all the details we are super proud of! Desserts ($853.50):
Vegan Wedding Cake* ($400): 2 tier cake, vanilla/strawberry/almond on top and oreo cookie chocolate cake on bottom. 1 sheet cake of red velvet. There was a total of 125 pieces. People loved it!
Sugar Cookies (free): Our other friend who is a baker surprised us and brought them the day of!
Cake Topper ($125): VW Bugs in our wedding color (see picture of cake)
Bride’s Attire ($1,566, including alteration):
Vendor: Wear Your Love Zoey Top ($500), Bhldn Clarke Skirt ($600), Veil from Etsy ($153), Emerald Earrings from eclectic ($56), huarches from Ethnic Heritage ($32).
I knew exactly what I wanted so I DIY my dress by buying a top that was made for me and a skirt that I loved! I have large breasts, but I love A line shape so I knew I needed to find a lower waisted skirt so it didn’t delete my waist.
Groom’s Attire (~$655.00):
Vendor: Hockerty (green velvet suit custom made), Undandy (custom wing tips), and boutonniere and engraved tie clip from Etsy.
My husband is a very fashionable dude so I’m not surprised he wanted custom everything!
Wedding Bands ($2,500): • Vendor: Sueno Jewelry Studio
My engagement ring is my mother’s wedding ring. My father passed away 15 years ago so she hasn’t worn it much and wanted one of her children to have it. When my husband spoke to my mother about us getting married she unexpectedly gave it to him. When he proposed, I immediately recognized my mother’s ring.
We worked with our jeweler to make custom engagement rings. I love emeralds and more dainty jewelry so I wanted that be reflected in my wedding band.
Miscellaneous Attire ($360): 3 flower girl dresses from Bhldn for our three nieces (one didn’t make it down the aisle because she was too nervous). Makeup/Hair ($100/2 $50 gift certificates for my friends):
My two grad school/forever friends did my makeup. I love how they do their own hair and makeup so I asked for this in lieu of a wedding gift. I do not wear any makeup regularly so I knew I wanted to look like myself. We practiced 3 times and I love how it came out. I asked for Chicano pin-up style to match my personal style and wedding.
Paper Costs: Save the Dates, Invites, and Postage ($883)
Save the Dates Postcards--Vendor: Minted ($132.55) for 120 pieces
Invites o Vender: JP Stationary ($622.43) for 120 invites. This included papel picado themed invite and info card (Electronic RSVP)
Postage (97.95) o National park (we love camping) stamps for save the dates and papel picado for the invites
Personalized VW Bus Stamp from Etsy ($30)
Bridal Party Gifts (~$450)
We had 10 groomsmen and 10 bridesmaids so everything cost a lot in general, but we tried to keep is reasonable.
Groomsmen: Tie, engraved tie clip and tie bar, and boutonniere.
Bridesmaids
Initial ask gift: homemade candle, engraved beer jar, and swatch of color for bridesmaids dresses (hunter green)
Final gift: engraved cactus tote with water bottle, snacks, tissues, and small emergency kit.
Rehearsal Dinner ($634.28)
Vendor: StoneFire Grill: Full dinner and dessert for 50 guests. This included our bridesmaids, groomsmen, families, and their partners. We had a great time!
Please feel free to reach out if you want any further details on anything I purchased or general questions!
My DH and I are both Canadian and living in Ontario. He is originally from BC and I am originally from Newfoundland, this plays a little bit in some of the traditions that I will tell you about in this recap. My DH and I met about 6 years ago on an online dating site (OKcupid). He was inactive on his profile but I messaged him anyways and when he noticed me he said he just had to message me back. We started dating pretty quickly - it was a true whirlwind romance. Less than 3 months after our first date we were closing on the purchase of our first home together. The next 5 years life was full of ups and downs for us, but our relationship always continued to grow stronger. I quit the job I hated, went back to school, and started my career after graduating. Last year on Canada Day, after getting home from the fireworks, he couldn’t wait any longer and proposed to me in our living room. I said yes! Finally! At this point I couldn’t even imagine how labour intensive the wedding planning was going to be for me and just how much I was going to love every moment of it. I know a lot of people hate planning and wedding planning especially but not me. Except for some friend drama (surprise!) everything went pretty smoothly. DH and I wanted something unique for the wedding and I’ll be damned if that's not what we created.
Budget Breakdown
Invitation Suites: $150 Save The Dates: $50 Invitations: $100 (Vistaprint + cardstock) Ceremony $891 Venue: $171 Officiant: $400 Chair Rentals: $200 Marriage License: $120 Reception $5811 Venue: $600 Catering (including linen and dinnerware rentals): $5071 Mobile Bar Rental: $80 Cake: $600 Music $600 DJ: $600 Photographer: $2500 10 hours of coverage 2 photographers (they brought a third!) Full online photo album Attire $1840 Grooms Suit: $250 Grooms Tie & Pocket Square: $100 Cufflinks: $10 Brides Dress: $800 Veil: $100 Jewelry: $200 (not including necklace gifted by mom) Shoes: $80 Hair: $150 Makeup: $150 Decor $1500 Misc DIY: $1000 Signing Table and Antique Chairs: $100 Marquee Letters: $160 Flowers: $250 Misc $414 Event Insurance: $324 Liquor License: $90 Total: $13,706
The Invite List
Invited: 129 Accepted: 99 Attended: 98 Out of town guests: 22
The Bridal Party
Man of Honour Maid of Honour 3 Bridesmaids Best Man 4 Groomsmen
Gifts
Bridesmaids · Kate Spade Keds Rose Gold · Custom tote (DIY’d) · Custom hanger (DIY’d) · Hair comb (DIY’d) or glitter bow tie · Custom handkerchief (DIY’d) · Initial necklace · Fossil watch (Man of honour) Groomsmen · Boutonniere (DIY’d) · Custom flask (DIY’d) · Custom hanger (DIY’d) · Geode cufflinks · Gift box · Rose gold tie clip · Custom engraved hatchet Mother of the Bride · Custom necklace Father of the Bride · Custom cufflinks Mother of the Groom · Necklace · Music Box Father of the Groom · Engraved pocket watch
The Vision
Our vision for the wedding was ethereal with a touch of nerdiness, if that makes sense haha. The Ceremony was going to be filled with nature and the natural beauty of the park we were getting married in. We also knew that we wanted to pay respect to the heritage of our families by having a handfasting as part of our ceremony. At our reception, however, we wanted to showcase our personalities. I’m an active participant in the tattoos/piercings/body modification community and love being ‘alternative’ while DH is a computer geek, loves playing D&D, and video games.
For the Groom and groomsmen we went with a simple navy suit, navy vest, white shirt, navy pants and black shoes. The Groom had a custom made rose gold tie and pocket square, while the groomsmen wore burgundy. Each of the guys got their own crystal boutonniere, geode cufflinks, and rose gold tie bars. The ring bearer wore, navy blue pants, a white shirt, suspenders and black shoes as well. He also wore a matching rose gold bow tie to match the groom.
The Ladies (and one gentleman)
I wore a sweetheart lace gown from David’s Bridal. It was actually a ballgown, however, one thing I specifically didn’t want in my wedding dress was poof. Luckily during alterations I was able to remove all of the crinoline from the dress which gave it a more soft, flowier feel. My accessories consisted of my crystal crown, ivory cathedral veil with gold stars , vine necklace gifted to me by my mother, vine ring, gold vine belt from David’s Bridal , a quartz bangle , vine bracelet and burgundy Kate Spade glitter keds. The Man of Honour for the Bride wore a Burgundy suit from ASOS , a white shirt, a crystal boutonniere, rose gold tie and tie clip, glitter pocket square, and gold/rose gold glitter loafers . The Maid of honour and two bridesmaids were given freedom to pick whatever dress they liked so long as they were burgundy and floor length. My Maid of Honour found her dress on Amazon. Two bridesmaids found their dresses at David’s Bridal (dress1dress2) ). My fourth bridesmaid had the option to wear a suit instead of a dress, so she ordered the same suit as the Man of Honour and wore a glitter bow tie. The girls all wore rose gold Kate Spade glitter keds gifted to them by the Bride, as well as custom initial necklaces and handmade crystal hair pins. Finally the flower girl wore a rose gold and tulle dress, rose gold shoes and a pair of custom made fairy wings.
Morning Of
The morning of, my FH and I woke up around 7am. He promptly showered and I got dressed in my onesie for the morning (having showered the night before). I opened the drapes to our hotel suite to be greeted with a grey, overcast sky. My bridesmaids showed up bright and early around 8am along with our hair and makeup team and got to work right away once I banished my future husband to his best man’s room. It was early but with lots of coffee and muffins we were good to go. There was only 4 of us getting our hair and makeup done, so with two makeup artists and two hair stylists were were actually done around 9:30-10:00. I honestly was super surprised that we were done our hair and makeup so early, especially since the ceremony wasn’t until 4:30 in the afternoon, but I’m really glad that we didn’t have to rush. Once we were done, we all just hung around in the room dressed in our animal onesies, and just had a good time. Our photographer showed up around 11:00 to do some photos. When I signed the contract with this photographer our package included two photographers for the whole day. However, when he showed up, he had brought a third photographer! I think this third photographer was training, but I didn’t mind. Another perspective was definitely going to be awesome. Since our hair and makeup was done so early, I unfortunately didn’t get any photos of that process. The (main) photographer was so inspired by our onesies that after taking some fun shots in the room he decided we needed to go run around in the streets for some fun photos. We held up traffic running in the streets, hid in the bushes and just acted like idiots. It was a blast. This is where things took a bit of an unfortunate shift. I had asked my dad and his friend to pick up the chairs for the ceremony from our rental company - fine. However, my dad ended up calling and telling my brother to get ready and go help them do this. My brother, my man of honour, left. I had hoped that they wouldn’t be long as we went back to the hotel room to start getting dressed.
The First Look
Once we all got dressed, the girls all went to take some photos outside. It was still raining but we managed to get into a few places where we could still get some good shots without getting soaked. That being said, my brother (my man of honour) still wasn’t back. I was frustrated, and worried. Our ceremony was supposed to be outside but it was raining and I didn’t know when it would stop. I hadn’t heard from my day of coordinator at all so I didn’t know what was happening. Were we moving the ceremony indoors? Was it still going to be outside? Where the hell was my brother!? This is where I got anxious. After some coordination with the photographers, and wandering around the hotel to find a nice place to do our first look, we settled on this beautiful dining hall with a fireplace and twinkle lights. My bridesmaids and I tucked in the corner while they created a barrier around me so that my FH couldn’t see me as he and his groomsmen came in to get in position for the first look. That’s when it hit, the panic, the anxiety, everything. I was shaking, it was all coming to a head in this one moment. Was my FH going to like my dress? Was he going to be disappointed that it’s not some extravagant, out there dress that I know everyone expected me to have? What is happening with the ceremony? Why won't someone tell me? And where the hell is my brother?! The photographer lined up the groomsmen facing me, with my FH facing the other direction so not to see me. I had my bridesmaids behind me and then he turned around. Suddenly everything just drifted away. All my worries faded, and I knew everything would work out alright. After all the emotion, we took some photos inside and then FINALLY my brother shows up. I had wanted to do a first look with him, but at that point it was too late. I’m a little disappointed but, oh well. We then ventured outside to endure the rain that was starting to lift a bit and get some photos of the wedding party all together. We walked around the park for a while, and then, just half an hour before we were to head over to the ceremony, the sun came out. Holy shit. I was so relieved, and I prayed that it would stay that way at least until the reception started. We walked around the little town and made our way to the bridge where we would be making our entrance to the ceremony, and surprisingly, we were on time.
Ceremony
The pre-ceremony music was a playlist I made of instrumental covers of popular songs. The ceremony space was held in Stewart Park beneath a large willow tree along the river. The aisle was adorned with flower arrangments I made a few days before with white roses, babies breath, daisies, and eucalyptus. On each of the chairs we had a wedding program and a wand with bells and ribbons for each of the guests. The start of the ceremony began with the song Can’t Take It In by Imogen Heap (music only version) with the Father of the Groom accompanying the Mother of the Bride. Then the groomsmen made their way down the aisle, followed by the Best Man and then the Groom arm in arm with his mother. After the guys followed the ladies, with the man of honour being the last one up the aisle before the flower girl and ring bearer. When the flower girl and ring bearer went down the aisle the music changed to Moonlight Denstetsu by Harpsona. Then it was my turn, and I was accompanied down the aisle by her father. The ceremony itself was everything I had dreamed it would be. We began with a cleansing using a floral and sage mix. It was beautiful albeit a little difficult to keep lit with the wind. Our officiant then performed the reading “These Hands” which worked beautifully with our handfasting. We then exchanged the rings and performed our handfasting ceremony. The vows and handfasting were everything we wanted - it was so beautiful.The only hiccup specifically with the ceremony was that the signing table and chair I had rented were missing. Apparently no one got them out of the best man’s room to bring to the ceremony location. NBD. Because of this we actually skipped the signing and legal stuff during the actual ceremony which my husband and I actually preferred. We felt that the ceremony flowed much better without that awkward time where we sit and sign paperwork. We then finished with a blessing before we were finally pronounced husband and wife. Finally it was the moment we were all waiting for - the kiss! We walked hand in hand back down the aisle while our friends and family waved their wands and celebrated with us. It was such an overwhelmingly special moment. Once the ceremony was over and before we began to take family photos, we stood within the crowd of our friends and family and signed our marriage licence with our bridal party. It was perfect. If anyone is interested in seeing the whole ceremony script I’d be happy to post that as well.
Cocktail hour
While my husband and me were taking photos with our families during the cocktail hour, the rest of our guests headed over to the reception area.There we had a table of assorted cheese, crackers, and fruit as well as the open bar for them to enjoy. **Disclaimer: This is pretty common in my area, and even those who had never done or heard of our plans for the bar, loved the idea. I understand that in some areas that this may not be the social norm, but everyone seemed to really enjoy this.** We were very fortunate that we were able to provide an open bar for our guests through the generosity of our friends and family. When we got engaged, we decided to throw a “Stock the Bar” engagement party if someone wanted to gift us something, where in lieu of other gifts, if someone wanted to gift us something we asked that they bring a bottle of alcohol for us to use at the bar at the wedding. This went over very well, and before we knew it we had more than enough hard liquor to provide for our evening. For wine, our husband’s mother gifted us 30+ bottles of her homemade red and white wine which we put out on the tables as well as at the bar. And last but certainly not least- it was my favourite part- was the 6 kegs of homemade beer and cider that two of my co-workers gifted us. We had two types of cider (regular and dark) as well as an ESB (Extra Special Bitter) beer and a Rye-PA. This went over amazingly. Everyone loved the beer and wine and by the end of the night we had almost drank the kegs dry.
Reception Grand Entrance
The gents Song - Imperial March The ladies Song - The Best Damn Thing - Avril Lavigne The Newlyweds Song - Sherlock Medley on Violin - Taryn Harbridge
Critical Kiss
Instead of clinking glasses or singing love songs, guests had to come up and roll the D20 die if they wanted us to kiss. Make a critical roll of 16-20 and the couple will kiss. Roll 11-15 and the couple will have a quick peck. Roll 6-10 and there’s no kiss. But beware, roll a critical failure of 1-5 and you must kiss another guest who you did not come with! This was particularly fun because it got guests up and interacting with each other. My husband ended up getting kissed a lot by his friends which was so fun to the rest of us.
Dinner
Menu: Salads Field tomatoes with red onions, basil, balsamic vinegar and fresh mozzarella. Mix green with a vinaigrette Mixed beans, corn, cilantro and avocado, with a salsa vinaigrette Meats Roast beef, carved at the buffet table, with le "au jus" sauce, and horseradish Braised chicken with roasted peppers and caramelized onions. Sides New mini roasted potatoes Medley of eggplant, zucchini, onions, peppers in a tomato sauce, also known as a ratatouille. Dessert Apple crêpes topped with apple syrup. The food was absolutely fantastic. I was so blown away by how good everything was, though I honestly wasn’t very surprised. I had attended a friend’s wedding last year that used this caterer and the food there was fantastic as well. It’s what made me decide to use them for our day as well. It’s a food was as good as it was because our caterer’s customer service and attitude were horrible. More on that further down. During the dinner my uncle emceed for us. He’s a performer, has been all his life, so he was the perfect one for me to ask to do this for us. The speeches that my family gave, and the stories that were told very much reflected that. If you’re not familiar with Newfoundland, you might not know that one of the most popular towns in the province is Dildo. During one of my uncles speeches, he brought my husband and I up and presented us each with Dildo t-shirts for us to wear the next day. Everyone had a great laugh over it and it’s one of my favorite parts of the night.
Cake
When people say wedding cakes are overpriced, I might be inclined to agree. However, I can honestly say that our cake was pretty well worth the price tag. Our cake was a stunning two tier barrel red velvet geode cake with cream cheese frosting. Navy blue with white marbling, and gold fakes. We did the cake cutting, and fed each other a piece and OMG it was so freaking good. I just wanted to keep eating it. Unfortunately, I never thought to organize someone to cut the cake and actually serve it. Once we cut our piece and did our thing, we kind of just left the cake for people to help themselves to. Definitely not how I would have wanted to do it but, again, oh well. People did eventually help themselves to some of it thankfully but there was quite a bit left over. More for me though!
The Drama
Okay, the part you’ve all been waiting for. Not really, but you know. What’s a wedding without some DRAMA? After the cake cutting, we were doing some mingling. At one point our cater came up to me to ask how my night was going. They were starting to pack up all of their stuff for the night, because they were finishing at around 9pm. A few minutes later he came up to me again, asking where my coordinator was because he wanted to get the check. Queue more panic, I forgot to bring the check. Now, before you @ me, the caterer didn’t send me the final invoice for the food and linen rentals until the night before. The night before the wedding we were at our rehearsal dinner and then in our hotel room and I wasn’t exactly checking my emails. I know, my own fault for not paying attention or bringing my checkbook with me but that’s no excuse for what happened next. The caterer then proceeded to follow me around for the next half an hour, berating me to get paid and to call whoever I needed to. He was rude and aggressive even though I offered to deliver the check the next morning myself, but he wouldn’t accept that. He wanted to get paid. Now. I didn’t exactly bring my wallet with me to my wedding, nor did anyone have a checkbook with them to help us out. Eventually I managed to get a hold of a phone to do an email money transfer to him. Well, partially. The account would only let us send half of the amount so I spent a good 10 minutes trying to find one of our parents to send the other half from their account for us (and we would pay them back). I was panicking, stressed, and just super anxious because this guy wouldn’t leave me alone. Look, I know. I get it. You provided a service and you want to get paid. I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND. He probably has dealt with people not paying in the past, and wants to avoid that. THAT BEING SAID! It was a Saturday night, even if I had the check with me, he wouldn’t have been able to cash it until Monday anyways. Why couldn’t I drop it off to him early the next morning? Why couldn’t he have sent the invoice a few days earlier so I could have paid him before the wedding? Most of all, why couldn’t he go to someone else other than the bride about this? I had so many people stop me and ask what’s wrong, that I looked panicked and frazzled. It was super obvious that something was going on apparently. Eventually he kind of disappeared, I sent the money and it was done. I was still feeling super anxious to the point I was having stomach pains. Finally, I left and went to the washroom and ripped off my spanx and had a breather.
Dances
Finally after all the drama, we were able to get to our dances. It was much later than I wanted, but we moved on. We started with my husbands and my first dance: How Long Will I Love You - Ellie Goulding Father daughter dance The father daughter dance followed with Sweet Child O’ Mine by Jasmine Thompson which then faded into Thunderstruck by AC/DC. AC/DC was a surprise for my dad - It’s his favorite song. As Thunderstruck began to fade in my dad thought his cell phone was going off! Mother Son dance After the father daughter dance, DH and his mother danced to Humble and Kind - Tim McGraw where we also surprised his mother by fading into Convoy. A song and that the two of them have a special connection to as well. Brother Sister dance Brother - Kodaline There were tears. So. May. Tears.
Tattoos
Yep. You read that right. Tattoos. I have been getting tattoos for well over a decade, worked in tattoo shops, and have many friends who are artists. So, after talking to a few of my friends, I found an artist who wanted to come and tattoo at my wedding reception. We decided on a few tattoo designs, about 10, for our guests to choose from. The guests would have to pay for their tattoos if they decided to get one, so we set the price at $60-$80 depending on the design. We did inform our guests a few days before the wedding that we were planning on doing this so that they could come prepared with cash if they so choose to. We also set some conditions for those who wanted to get one: · Cash only · Must not be intoxicated · Must sign a waiver · Must be 18+ years old Holy. Shit. I honestly am still so surprised by how well this actually went off. The artists thought that they might get 6 or 7 tattoos, however, by the end of the night they were turning people away. They were tattooing people from the beginning of the reception until the end of the night around 11:30. It was incredible! My husband and I each got a tattoo, to commemorate the day, and we were the last two of the night. This was my favorite part of the night by far. Not only was it an awesome and unique experience that I was able to share with my guests, it also gave them something from this day that they could carry with them forever. Yes they had favours (little crystals I made) as well as the wands that they got to take home, but these tattoos were something they’d always have. And I think that’s pretty great.
When they say not to sweat the small stuff because you’re marrying the love of your life - it’s true. I was surrounded by my closest family and friends, the most important people to me as I stood up in front of them all and married my best friend. I got to spend my morning hanging out with my best friends, getting glammed up and feeling confident. I got to spend quality time with my mom as I got ready and experience those great moments that I will carry with me the rest of my life. I got to see the look of shock and awe the moment my SO turned around and saw me for the first time that day. I got to have the wedding ceremony of my dreams, under a willow tree in the fall, with the Celtic handfasting I always wanted - to the man of my dreams. My guests had a blast at the wedding, the homemade beer and wine went over SO WELL ( a little too well in some peoples cases I think). The tattoos went over, phenomenally! Seriously, I can’t believe how many people got tattooed and the number of comments I got from people afterwards about how awesome they thought it was!
The Bad
My man of honour went AWOL for a few hours and we never got to do the first look I had planned with him. We also didn’t get any photos of just him and me. The signing table and chairs I rented never made it out of the best mans room and never got used. It sucks, but honestly no one noticed but me. It rained ALL morning and dresses were soaked by the time the ceremony happened, but the sun came out half an hour before the ceremony and we were able to keep the ceremony outside like we had wanted. Our caterer was a dick. He followed me around for 30 mins demanding his money during the reception, but he got paid and went on his way.
I’ll keep this short and simple for you… Everyone always says that your wedding is supposed to be the best day of your life. Was it? I don’t know, but it had some of the greatest moments of my life. It was honestly an amazing, wonderful, and magical day that I’ll never forget.
RECAP: New Hampshire June 22, 2019 brewery wedding - 70 guests, $16.8k wedding cost, $19.5k including rings and honeymoon (LONG)
Hi Weddit! This community has been so lovely and such a great place to hang out during my two year engagement and wedding planning process. I finally have photos back, so it is time for my recap! I am type A and kept really detailed notes during this planning process, so this post will be LONG. Like, really long. But first, as always, PHOTOS. General Info Engaged: August 19, 2017 Wedding: June 22, 2019 Engagement: 22 months - I was finishing my Ph.D. when we got engaged so we took extra time to save money, so I could focus on my dissertation, and to make long-distance planning a little easier. I graduated 6 weeks before our wedding. We have been together 10 years. Location: Lakes Region, New Hampshire - we live in the Midwest but grew up together in New Hampshire, so getting married there was a no-brainer. Long distance planning has its own unique challenges, but overall we found it manageable. Happy to give out vendor information for anyone who might be interested! RSVPs and Guest Count I previously posted an in-depth summary of our RSVPs and my guest count predictions. Here are our RSVP numbers and final numbers.Invited: 108 Accepted: 79 (73.15%) Declined: 26 (24.07%) Late response: 4 (3.7%) Actually attended: 70 No-Shows: 9 Of the no-shows, 4 gave notice ahead of time (two of them had a family emergency) and 5 said nothing. One of these five had childcare fall through (and ended up showing up in the parking lot after the ceremony to say hello to my husband, but for some reason didn't attend the ceremony?), one is known for not showing up to family events, two were plus ones, and one may have had health issues. Honestly, I didn't even notice the missing people on the day of, and our venue packed up the extra food for our families to take home. Budget Initial "Sweet Summer Child" Budget: $10k total Adjusted "We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat" Budget: $15k total Actual "Bran the Three Eyed Raven Probably Saw This Coming" Budget: $19.5k total Our original budget was $10k, which I ended up adjusting once I learned more about wedding pricing and our families pledged support. We ended up with a working budget of $15k, and eventually went over that. However, we both had side-gigs from which we saved all the money, and our long engagement meant that we had tons of time to save and paid off vendors over a pretty long period of time. I am proud of us for staying below $20k, and I actually think we got a screaming good deal for what we paid. The wedding total, not including rings, minimoon, and our European honeymoon, was $16,780.95, which wasn't far off our $15k budget. Including our rings and honeymoon(s), we paid $19,503.55. Here is a stupidly detailed breakdown.
Category
Spent
Details
Ceremony
$747
Marriage license ($50), chair rental fee ($297), Officiant fee ($400)
Reception venue fee
$1,382.50
Venue is a brewery that charges per person rather than a set price. June is actually priced as "off-season" because fall is so popular in NH (leaf colors!) so we decided to do June to save money and to work around my school schedule. We paid $17.50/person rather than the $20/person for July/Aug/Sept/Oct
Food, service, and tax
$4,791.06
We did ala carte rather than a package because the pricing was better. This included: Appetizers - cheese and crackers, smoked salmon crostini station, beef teriyaki skewers, vegetable spring rolls. Starters and sides - fresh gazpacho soup, herb roasted potatoes, crispy Brussels sprouts. Entrees - choice of chicken cordon bleu, broiled glazed salmon, or vegetable wellington.
Beverages/Bartenders
$2,000
My in-laws put down a set amount on an open consumption bar (well drinks, not top-shelf!) and then the bar would become a cash bar once the money ran out. We actually ended up using $1,940 of the set amount and drank the entire brewery out of two types of beer AND all the Chardonnay they had. We offered 6 types of beer, 3 red wines, 2 whites, 1 blush, 1 sparkling, and all the usual liquor.
Cupcakes
$404.84
120 cupcakes in four flavors - maple bacon frosting with chocolate cake, salted caramel frosting with chocolate chip cake, lavender frosting with lemon cake, and vanilla frosting with carrot cake. Price included delivery and setup and a rented cupcake stand. We picked cupcakes solely to avoid the cake cutting fee at our venue. This was the best food of the night, easily.
Reception Extras
$51.72
Card box (hand-me-down), chalkboard easels and markers, bug spray for ceremony
Attire
$1,587.15
Includes my dress ($318.43 from DB), alterations ($425), headpiece and DIY floral veil ($61.68), undergarments ($72.24), wedge sandals and floral sneakers ($108.93), aquamarine earrings ($138.65), rehearsal/shower dress ($29.90), hair trial and day of ($170), makeup trial and day of ($143.34), groom's suit ($119 off the rack).
Flowers/Centerpieces
$196.95
This was a place where I wanted to save money. Flowers were NOT a priority for me. We cut peonies from my mom and grandma's gardens and arranged my bouquet ourselves. It turned out great and was honestly easy. Centerpieces consisted of video game postcards, postcard holders, and string lights. We got bottles from the dump for free, spray painted them, and put flowers in them. My husband ordered dried hops online and made his own boutonnieres.
Music
$925
DJ company with great reviews, 6 hours of coverage, one DJ and one MC. They killed it.
Photography
$2,500
Another steal. We signed a contract with them in January 2018 after their second season of photography. I just looked up their pricing two years later and we saved $1300 by booking them so early. This was for 6 hours of coverage, 2 shooters, engagement shoot, USB, and printing rights
Stationery
$339.37
Paper is important to me, so I was ok spending more on this category. We ordered save-the-dates and return labels from Vistaprint, invites and details cards from Zazzle, and fancy envelopes, seals, and labels from Amazon. I got twine at Target and bought awesome dragon stamps from USPS. We used online-only RSVPs and I got cheap thank you cards from Amazon and TJ Maxx.
This was just our hotel room for Friday and Saturday night. We did not end up booking any sort of transportation shuttle or limo. My husband drove our car from the Midwest to New Hampshire the month before the wedding and we drove it home after the wedding, so we just used our own car.
Gifts and favors
$387.36
Favors ($161.16) were originally a fuck-it-bucket item but my mom insisted on them and I ended up doing three (THREE!) different types of favors. I got really into it and people LOVED them. We did mini maple syrup bottles, pet treat boxes for our guests' pets, and cupcake to-go boxes. For my man of honor and his best man we got them weekender bags and dopp kits, and for my friend who acted as our day of coordinator we got her a yoga bag and yoga club membership. We will buy photo albums for our parents and grandparents as Christmas gifts.
Rehearsal Dinner
$1,000
I am estimating this - my in-laws paid for it. There were 17 of us.
Vendor tips
$180
We tipped $20-$50 to our vendors. The wait staff and bartenders had gratuity built in. Although these were not huge tips, everyone was appreciative. We included a hand written card with each tip.
Honeymoon and travel
$1,808
This includes catsitting for the week we were gone ($120), the surprise bachelor trip to Alaska I planned for my fiance ($485), our two night minimoon to a nearby bed and breakfast ($467 including champagne and massage package), and $736 for our 2020 honeymoon to Spain and Portugal (flights and insurance).
Here is a pie chart breaking down our budget by category. Budget Breakdown Priorities A meaningful ceremony. Outdoor ceremony/indoor reception. Great photography. Hiring LGBTQ inclusive vendors. Great food and vegetarian options. Wine and Beer. Dancing. String lights. Destination feel. Easy logistics/low stress. Not going into debt. Fuck It Bucket Wedding planneprofessional DOC. Professional florist. Videographer. Shuttle/limo/transportation plan. Bridesmaids. Programs. Sexist/homophobic bullshit. Bouquet toss/garter toss. Matching suits for the men. Signature cocktails. Rhyming/cutesy signs. Wedding colors. A hash tag. The Wedding Font. Wedding party proposals. Guest book. Photo booth. Writing our own vows. Live band. Cutting cake. Mason jars/burlap. Children. DIY Projects Arbor - my husband found dead trees in the best man's family's backyard and threw it together an hour before our rehearsal and draped some tulle from Amazon on it. I am shocked at how good it turned out. Birch escort card display - my dad and uncle found dead birch trees in their backyards and used some sort of drill to cut slits in them for the cards. I asked them to cut the slits on an angle so you could read the card while standing above the table, and they turned out great. They also put nails on the bottom of each log so they wouldn't roll around. I will probably try to sell these. Flowers - we cut peonies and coral bells, as well as greenery, from my mom's and grandma's gardens on the Thursday before our Saturday wedding. I put together my own bouquet in about 45 minutes. It kept great and was super easy. Very glad I didn't bother paying anyone to do it for me, or bother buying flowers when there were such pretty ones for free all around me. Centerpieces - my dad collected cool bottles from the dump and my mom spray painted them. We just put loose flowers in the bottles the day before the wedding and they looked amazing. Keeping the plan simple helped immensely. My mom passed these along to a coworker who has a child getting married soon. Caketoppers - my husband made these out of grocery bags, masking tape, and paint from his work. He is very artistic. Veil - I bought embroidered floral tulle on Etsy, cut it into a veil shape, and hand-sewed it to a metal hair comb. Took about an hour and cost me all of $18. I'm considering trying to make some more to sell, it was a fun project! Signage - I just got chalkboards and chalk markers at Michael's and hand wrote the few signs we had. I can't stand The Wedding Font or lots of (IMO) pointless wedding signs, so I only did what was necessary. Table numbers - I busted out my fourth grade cursive using some colored pencils and hand wrote these in an afternoon. We really wanted to save money. Family wedding photos - I hunted down old family photos in albums and had my grandpa dig out some really old ones. I printed them at Walgreens and got frames at Goodwill for $1-$2 each. I did the same with cat photos for our pet treat favor display. Maple syrup tags - I used my mom's Cricut to make tags for the maple syrup flavors. I came up with 8 different puns and used paper scraps she already had to print them on. I used leftover twine from the invites to hang them on the bottles. Way cheaper than getting a custom label on the bottles themselves! Old/New/Borrowed/Blue Old - my great grandmother's ruby ring New - my dress Borrowed - my parent's vows Blue - aquamarine earrings (my husband's birthstone) What did guests notice/compliment us on? Our sweet/emotional/funny ceremony. We didn't write our own vows and honestly, I am really happy with that decision. We were both stressed at the thought of the pressure of it, so I borrowed my parent's vows instead and surprised them with that at the ceremony. They were our something borrowed ;) Favors - people LOVED them! Maple syrups were a hit, people were fighting over the pet treats, and all the cupcake boxes were taken. Our invitations - they were perfect, I love them so much and they look just like the area where we got married. I put a lot of effort into dressing them up with twine and the dark green envelopes while staying to a budget, and I love how they turned out. I am obsessed with paper products, so it made sense for me to be super picky about these and not care one iota about, say, flowers. My dress - super glad I didn't spend tons of money on it. It was perfect and comfortable and good for one day. I may try to sell this or just donate it to someone in need. Flowers - my mom and grandma were very pleased to have so many compliments on the beautiful flowers they grew themselves. Venue - it was beautiful and things ran very smoothly. The ceremony location was GORGEOUS. Cupcakes - best food of the night, hands down. My veil - LOOK AT IT!! Stuff that went wrong Honestly, very little.
My hair and makeup went over what I had budgeted for time, so I arrived back at my hotel right after the photographers arrived and I had to scarf lunch while helping them take the first detail shots.
There were a TON of ticks - summer in NH is tick season. We probably picked 10 ticks out of my dress, and were careful to do a tick check at the end of the night!
The venue served mixed veggies instead of the fancy Brussels sprouts that we paid extra for - they refunded us.
The DJ forgot to say my brother's "fun fact" when he was introduced - this did not matter at all.
I told my husband he had to make sure there were two rows reserved for our families in the processional, when in reality my side needed two rows and his side only needed one row. He ended up making his aunts and uncles move to the back of the ceremony seating and the second row of chairs was empty during the ceremony. I didn't notice it at all, and in retrospect I'm fine with it because one of his aunts wore a white lace dress...so the back was a good place for her ;)
Our venue coordinator was a NIGHTMARE during the planning process, but she quit about a month before the wedding and the GM (who was awesome) took over. So that was lucky timing, but the shitty coordinator did add quite a bit of stress to my plate over the year+ that I had to deal with her.
My mom was a handful during the planning process, but fine on the day of. More on her antics below.
My one regret was a miscommunication with my grandpa about his camera - he loves taking photos, and I was looking forward to his photos on the day of, but the photographers suggested we ask him not to bring his flash. He got confused about it and left his entire camera at the hotel. Apparently he was upset when he realized he WAS allowed to bring his camera, but he refused to let my dad send someone back to the hotel to get it for him. I noticed about halfway through the wedding, and am honestly pretty sad about it. I felt incredibly guilty that we said anything to him about the camera, because I know how much he was looking forward to taking photos. That being said, my parents and husband have told me to stop beating myself up about it, and that he was being difficult when he refused to let someone get his camera. It still makes me sad though. Our lovely photographers noticed and also felt bad, so they asked him to take some photos with one of their cameras.
Honestly, all of this (except for the mix-up with my grandpa and the frustrating venue coordinator) was very minor. Advice (LONG)
Due to our budget and long distance planning and the fact that we couldn't afford a planneDOC, we kept a lot of stuff for our wedding simple. No bridesmaids, no complicated decorations, no choreographed dancing, no matching suits for the men, nothing that would require a lot of work or oversight from us in the week before the wedding. In retrospect, I am SO GLAD we kept things simple. I wasn't stressed about decorating, and honestly, it ended up looking really woodsy-elegant. For the centerpieces, we literally just spray painted bottles from the dump and stuck some flowers in them - they turned out great and the DIY was super easy because we kept it simple. It helped that we picked a venue that was already beautiful and didn't need any sprucing up (they keep the string lights up all the time). So I recommend keeping your plans simple, especially if you are planning to do a lot of DIY or are planning a long distance wedding (or both!)
Pick your battles with your parents. My mom was difficult at times during the wedding planning process. Our relationship is normally great, but I think we had different expectations of how the planning process would go, and that was challenging. I found it was important for me to pick my battles - some things I didn't want (like favors) I let slide because she wanted them, and was glad that we did it. Other things (seating my queer cousin with a homophobic great-uncle) I stood my ground on. It can be difficult to set boundaries, but try to be understanding and compassionate (as long as your parent is not a raging narcissist) while also setting up expectations for how they should treat you and your new spouse. This sets the tone for the rest of your lives, IMO.
It is possible to pay for your wedding without going into debt. I was honestly surprised how quickly we set aside money, even on a grad student's salary, once we started saving all the money from our side gigs. It is pretty satisfying watching the number in the account tick up. We are now putting all the money towards a future house fund. Honestly, I think wedding planning is great training for the rest of your marriage - reading contracts, making difficult choices, dealing with family, working together towards a financial goal.
You can plan a wedding while in school. When we got engaged I was a month out from defending my dissertation proposal, and I finished my Ph.D. 6 weeks before our wedding. Honestly, grad school is not a terrible time to be wedding planning. Sure, we have less money, but it was a nice distraction when I needed a break from writing, and it gave me a good goal to work towards - I had to graduate so I could be Dr. Cusekyi at our wedding :)
It's ok if one of you plans more than the other. Oftentimes, I see people talking about how they are splitting the planning load 50/50. While that is awesome, it just didn't work for us. I am (as is probably apparent from this post) a driven Type A planner, and my husband is...not. While he had ideas (mostly related to design/decor) and input throughout, the reality was that I did the majority of the heavy lifting when it came to contacting vendors, making timelines and lists, reading contracts, and navigating family minefields. While my feminist beliefs sometimes made it hard for me to be ok with us falling into such expected gender norms, the reality is that I'm just better at planning and logistics than he is, and that's ok. When I really needed a break or needed him to take something off my plate, he did. He cooked every meal for a solid month prior to the wedding. Play to your strengths as a couple!
Trust your gut when it comes to vendors. I had a really good feeling about our photographers, and they killed it. We interviewed a DJ who struck me as not quite right, and even though he was good on paper, I told my husband we would NOT be hiring him. Sure enough, two days later, the DJ called me to tell me he had forgotten he was already booked for our date. I was so relieved I wasn't planning on hiring him, but can't imagine what a nightmare it would have been if I hadn't listened to my gut feeling, and if the DJ hadn't realized until closer to our wedding.
Hotel blocks are NOT always easy or simple. I see on here a lot that hotel blocks are really easy, and everyone should do them. In rural areas, businesses often can get away with being kind of a shitshow, and nothing made that more apparent to me than dealing with hotels. Getting a room block was like pulling teeth, and honestly, barely anyone used it. The people who really mattered booked their rooms early, and the procrastinators either stayed at a campground, rented an AirBNB, or drove home. Everyone was fine, and they figured it out. You don't have to put people's accommodation and travel arrangements on your plate too, it's too much to worry about.
BOOK STUFF EARLY! We saved $1300 just on our photographers by booking them 18 months in advance. We got the pick of vendors and dates, and we had tons of time to save and plan. It was honestly a huge relief to have so much time, since we had to fly to NH any time we needed to do something in person. Don't let anyone tell you that you are planning things too early. There is no such thing as too early with weddings these days. It's ok to break rules like "don't buy your dress too early." I know myself and I am a decisive person. I never regretted buying my dress 18 months ahead of time.
Try not to stress about the weather. I started obsessively looking at the weather about a month out, and while I wasn't panicked about it, I definitely was really REALLY hoping we didn't have to use our rain plan. The day before the wedding, the forecast called for thunderstorms at 4 pm - right during our ceremony. But I decided to just ignore it and keep going, and the weather was perfect. Partly cloudy, breezy (which kept the bugs away!), 69 degrees. It was a gorgeous day.
Let things slide. My husband didn't buy a suit until one month before our wedding. My brother (man of honor) didn't buy his clothes until two weeks before, and our Best Man bought his suit at Goodwill THE DAY BEFORE the wedding. Four guests cancelled just a couple days out. My husband decided (against my better judgment) to drive our 13-year-old car 1200 miles across the country for his brother-in-law to do some sorely needed maintenance on it. The car was literally at the mechanic's until 1 hour before the rehearsal was supposed to start, and we had no backup plan (husband had me cancel the rental car I had booked). And you know what? It all worked out. The men looked great in their suits. The car got fixed in time (barely!) and we had it for our minimoon, and could drive all our wedding gifts back in it.
Let your people be themselves - they matter so much more than anything else. My brotheMan of Honor didn't want to wear a suit, and that was fine. What mattered was him standing up with me. Our Best Man is our oldest mutual friend, he is a free spirit and does things his own way. He even said himself that he was a "risky choice" for best man. And you know what? He flew from Thailand to New Hampshire to support us. He helped me plan (and execute!) an incredible surprise trip to Alaska with my husband and two of their friends the weekend before the wedding. He showed up for our rehearsal and our wedding in his $10 Goodwill suit. And he gave the most incredible speech about how, while he thinks marriage is stupid for 99.99% of people, we are the exception to his rule. My point is, don't pick your wedding party based on who will "perform" best as maid of honor, or expect them to become people that they aren't. Pick people who matter the most to you and let them be themselves. The fact that our best man flew all that way and put on a suit, even if it was from Goodwill, showed us how much he loves us, and I wouldn't trade that for anything.
Take a moment throughout the day. One of my favorite moments from our wedding was, after exchanging rings, looking up at the trees over us swaying in the wind while our officiant talked. I felt present and alive and grounded and so, so grateful.
Try to be present for those around you too. My best friend, who was a godsend all day as our day of coordinator, lost her father a few months before our wedding. During my father daughter dance, I looked over at her and she was sobbing. When my dance with my dad was over, I beelined it for her and held her and we both just bawled. That moment meant a lot to both of us.
Hire people you trust. Our vendors hit it out of the park on the day of, and went along with all our little requests. From the venue reserving a keg of special sour beer for us because I told them I love Berliners, to our baker setting aside 6 cupcakes for us to take back to our hotel room, to the weird and eclectic music I requested that the DJs played. All the vendors worked seamlessly together and honestly, it was really nice to hand the reins off and let the wedding unfold in front of us.
Have two DJs if possible. The music and order of events ran so smoothly because one guy covered music while the other was acting as MC.
We gave small tips - our wait staff, bartenders, and hairdresser all got 20%, but our tips for the other vendors were just $20-$50 plus a nice card. I see a lot of people on here worrying about how much to tip and honestly, all the vendors were really appreciative and said it wasn't necessary and they didn't expect a tip at all. YMMV.
We strategically under-bought apps to save money and not waste food - for an estimated 80 guests we ordered cheese and crackers for 50 people, 3 pounds of smoked salmon, 5 dozen veggie spring rolls, and 7 dozen beef teriyaki skewers. It was fine, and everyone still had room for dinner!
Do what you want and tell your vendors what you want. Both of us had both our parents walk us down the aisle, our vows included stuff about individuality, we had the DJ announce us as Dr and Mr, we asked our officiant not to say anything about "giving" me away, we used my parent's vows instead of writing our own, I asked the DJs to avoid gendered language, I asked my cake baker to set aside extra cupcakes for us to eat afterwards. Don't be afraid to tell people what you want (or surprise them - I didn't show anyone my veil ahead of time, and my parents didn't know we were going to use their vows).
Don't be shy to tell people you are getting married. I mentioned it on a Southwest Airlines Facebook post when I was flying home for our wedding and they sent us a $100 voucher and free t-shirts! On our minimoon, the bed and breakfast we stayed at after gave us each a free cocktail. It was a nice little bonus and made it feel more special :)
Favors are SO WORTH IT. I didn't want favors and my mom did and so I decided to do edible favors. I ended up going hard with the favors and did three - mini maple syrup bottles at each seat, cat and dog treats in little boxes, and cupcake to-go boxes. They got CLEARED OUT. All 80 maple syrups, 20 animal treats, and 48 cupcake boxes were gone at the end of the night. People LOVED them. One guest was raving about the maple syrup and drunkenly gathered up the leftovers to take home (his arms were packed), and people were practically fighting over the animal treats. If you want favors, do it. We had so many compliments and don't have any leftovers.
Don't drink too much. I had two drinks during the whole wedding (not planned, it just sort of happened) and had zero alcohol while getting ready. I like drinking, but honestly being sober was great. I was super present all night. I was able to have real conversations with guests, remember to ask family/friends to grab stuff that was important to me at the end of the night, and express my appreciation to our vendors. I didn't plan on not drinking much, but I am really glad I was sober.
Wear comfortable shoes. I bought Sofft brand comfort low wedge sandals and honestly, they were incredible. I felt like me, I didn't think about my shoes all night, and although I had also purchased super cute floral keds that matched my veil, I didn't need to change into sneakers. I am not a heel person, so I bought what I could handle.
Do something after your wedding. My aunt and her husband had rented an AirBNB and made an impromptu campfire, and we went over to drink beers and roast marshmallows and hang out. It was the BEST way to end the night. Friends trickled by to visit, we got to talk about how awesome it was, we enjoyed the beautiful weather and woods more, and I got to drink a bunch of beers :) It was a spur of the moment thing and I am so glad we did it.
Speaking of spur of the moment, you can make changes last minute. In the hairdresser's chair, I asked her to rebraid my hair in a fishtail instead of a regular braid. 10 minutes before our first look, I changed our location to a random barn I saw on the way back to the hotel because our original first look location was packed with tourists. These changes were SO worth it.
Photo op during the ceremony - While I see the appeal of unplugged ceremonies, I personally dislike the "put your phone away" signs. My unpopular opinion is that you can't control other people's phone usage, and the big signs/statements on wedding websites won't do anything to stop it. People will just ignore a sign if they want to take a picture, so it doesn't matter how in your face or large of a sign you put up. We decided to have a photo opportunity at the very start of our ceremony. Our officiant explained to our guests before the ceremony started that she would give them 10 seconds to take photos, and then they would be asked to put their cameras/phones down. People loved it, everyone went crazy taking photos (including jumping into the aisle). But you know what? After 10 seconds, they all sat down and put their devices away. Our photographers probably got some funny shots of everyone taking photos, but also WE have photos of ourselves at our ceremony from multiple angles because the guests shared them with us. That helped a lot while we waited 11 weeks for our professional photos to come in. I highly recommend this gentler, less bossy approach to unplugged ceremonies.
It's ok to not have a vision for certain things. I posted about this a while ago. I didn't have a vision of my dress, or flowers, or a cake. So I chose to save money in those areas. I found a dress I liked, and was flattering on me, and on the day I loved it. I didn't care what flowers we used, so we picked a few hundred peonies and coral bells the Thursday before my wedding from my grandma's and mom's gardens. I made my own bouquet with no practice or experience. This was not stressful at all because I didn't have a vision, so anything was better than nothing. Same with cake - I had no vision for what my "dream" cake looked like, I just cared about the flavor. Cupcakes were the same price as a basic cake but we would save a $2/person cutting fee, so we did cupcakes instead. My husband built the arbor the day before our wedding and I wasn't stressed because I didn't care what it looked like. The men's suits didn't matter to me, so I didn't mind that they waited until the very last minute to purchase them. It's ok to not care about everything.
Thank you all for sticking with me through this ridiculously long recap. Planning our wedding was honestly a joyful experience for me, and it was an incredible day. Happy to answer any questions! I think I'll be sticking around Weddit for the foreseeable future, this community is too lovely for me to leave just yet.
Twin Cities historic mansion wedding recap and budget breakdown
https://preview.redd.it/954omvhha0641.jpg?width=4556&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f019b0c2875805af32b7c23f939d6ad4784d76a7 TL;DR our wedding was awesome, here's an Imgur post: https://imgur.com/a/xu3GYJb I've been meaning to do a recap of my April (😳) wedding for about seven months now! Weddit was an amazing resource during our 17 months of wedding planning, so hopefully this helps someone else. I apologize for the epic novel :) We were originally hoping to spend $15-20k total on the wedding and ended up at just over $27k, including Friday night festivities (and just about every other wedding-related cost, as you’ll see below) but excluding my engagement ring and the honeymoon. We invited 150 and had 90 attend. Venue and Catering - $10,800 I'm from the Twin Cities, but my husband and I live in Oklahoma, so we planned the whole thing from out of state, and had a large number of out-of-state guests (he's from Pittsburgh, and we have friends from all over). It would have been SO much more stressful without my mom and my sister--they were amazingly helpful in visiting venues for us in the early stages, so we only made one special weekend visit 14 months before the wedding to check out the top three venues ourselves. We had a few venue priorities:
Making it easy and "worth it" to attend for our many out-of-state guests--so we really wanted to do a full dinner on a Saturday, and be in St. Paul or Minneapolis to maximize the vacation aspect for people (didn’t want them stranded in the suburbs)
A venue where we could bring our own alcohol--both to save money, and because we're beer nerds and had a **vision** for our beverage menu that beverage caterers couldn't deliver
After extensive research I ended up with a list of BYOB venues in St. Paul and Minneapolis, if anyone wants that. Our venue ended up being a great choice--the fact that it was such a full-service venue (they also handle the catering, some coordination, and most decor) made long-distance planning much easier. Their pricing was also really a la carte, so we were able to tailor it to our budget. Staff were great to work with, the food was great, the venue was gorgeous and it has a really good "fancy house party" vibe that was perfect for us! We were hoping it would be warm enough to have the ceremony outside by April 27th, but even if it hadn't been a forecast of wintry mix that day (!!) the yard was still pretty bedraggled by then. We had the ceremony in the living room instead and it was beautiful. The room flip afterwards was so perfectly executed I don’t even know when and how it happened—it was as if by elves 😊 Dessert - $300 I was all about mass-produced pies (Bakers Square, if you're familiar), but apparently my mom and husband had strong feelings about cake 🤷♀️ I'm glad they took over most of the decision-making on this! My mom suggested a bakery near her office, and my husband really wanted to do a small cake and cupcakes in a mix of flavors. It ended up being affordable and everything was insanely delicious (and I'm NOT a cake person). Picking out the different cupcake, frosting, and filling flavors was weirdly fun. This category also includes the super basic cupcake boxes I ordered from Oriental Trading Company for people to take home leftovers (a pretty awesome idea, if I do say so myself). Alcohol - $1,500 This category includes bartender service through our venue and all the beer and wine (we didn’t have liquor). We had a little leftover beer, which my family drank, and a lot of leftover wine, which we were able to return (so that’s subtracted from this cost). My planning spreadsheet indicates 12.5 cases of beer and 6 cases of wine to be purchased, but I can't remember if that aligned with reality or how much wine we returned (but I'd guess maybe 3 cases). A lot of thought went into this category, especially by my husband! We wanted our menu to represent the three states that have been important to our relationship—Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma—so we bought from a bunch of places and schlepped a lot of beer on our drive up. We ended up with five beers on the main menu and three “special selections” that we only had 10-12 of each—those were New Glarus Serendipity and two limited-edition beers from Oklahoma. We had planned on Victory HopDevil for our Pennsylvania beer since it’s one of my husband’s long-time favorites, but found out on our drive up on Wednesday before the wedding that it was no longer distributed in Minnesota or any of the other states we usually stop for beer in (Iowa and Missouri). My husband had the great idea to call the excellent Casanova Liquors in Hudson. They didn’t have it, but could order it in for Friday pickup, when he was planning to go there for the New Glarus anyway. I’m STILL delighted that this worked out! Highly recommend Casanova for any of your weirdly specific beer needs in western Wisconsin 😊 We bought all our wine from Total Wine. We had a vague idea of what we wanted (a dry red, a dry white, and a less dry white), but they were super helpful with specific wines and amounts. As mentioned, we actually ended up having to have my family return a lot of the wine (apparently we have a beer crowd?) and they made that easy too. Ceremony - $450 This includes the cost of our marriage license, a Prepare-Enrich inventory, and the amount my mom gave our pastochurch. I think my husband thought the Prepare-Enrich was a little unnecessary, but we had some good conversations come out of it. My husband is very much non-religious and so is his immediate family. My family is a mostly religious mix of Lutherans and Catholics. I attend a pretty theologically liberal but liturgically traditional Lutheran church regularly, and having God’s presence in our ceremony was important to me, but I also didn’t want it to be over-the-top all-about-Jesus to where people who know my husband would be like, “umm, I KNOW he had nothing to do with this ceremony.” I was planning on just hiring a secular officiant, but asking the pastor from my mom’s church (which I grew up in) to officiate was my mom’s idea, and it was great. Like most in the ELCA he was super flexible on the actual wording of the ceremony, so we ended up with something that I think fit both of us. We wrote our own vows, and our ceremony was modified off of our pastor’s suggestions. I think we were both nervous about coming up with the ceremony details, but sitting down and reading through example vows together and noting wording we liked and didn’t like was actually a really fun experience. I will say if you’re planning on repeating your vows after the officiant, they feel MUCH LONGER than you expect, especially in front of an audience… I was surprised by how long ours felt to me and it was almost hard not to laugh. I'm a monster. Photography - $3,200 The photographer was the second big choice we (actually I, my husband didn't really have opinions on photography) made and one of our bigger splurges. I realized as I started researching that I apparently have STRONG opinions on wedding photography 😂 I really wanted a photojournalistic style that captured the feeling of the day, and less focus on wedding party shots (since we weren't actually having a wedding party) and Pinterest-y details (since we weren't really planning any). I found our photographer on Instagram and fell in love with her work. She and her assistant were so much fun at our wedding, and I loved our photos! She also shoots 100% in film now (and did for our wedding), so that was pretty cool. We didn’t do engagement photos, since our photographer was in another state and we didn’t feel like we needed them. I used other photos of us on our website, and we took photos with a tripod and remote in the backyard for our super dorky and homemade Save the Dates that I am still EXTREMELY proud of. I don’t regret that decision at all. We’ve been together nine years, so we have lots of photos together 😊 It literally never crossed my mind that we might need a videographer. I don’t regret that either. Floral - $475 We ordered bulk flowers through FiftyFlowers and Costco, and my mom, sister, aunt, and I assembled them ourselves the day before the wedding. Not having wedding party bouquets made this easier! We made my bouquet, centerpieces for 10 tables (since ours were long rectangles, we did three small vases per table), and boutonnieres and corsages for family. I practiced my bouquet and centerpiece with grocery store flowers in advance, but wish I had practiced corsages--those got stressful and my sister had to save the day and take over so I could leave and finish up other wedding stuff 😂 but overall I'd still recommend this route! It was fun, they turned out great, and we spent $475 total including the practice flowers, all supplies, and vases from Facebook Marketplace. Guestbook and Other Décor - $520 This category includes décor rental through our venue, our guestbook, supplies for our cake topper, and a few random frames for menus and table numbers. We made our own cake topper because my husband had access to a laser cutter and I liked the idea of having all my fonts match even though literally no one else would ever notice. This was unusually crafty for us (well, for me anyway) and and actually fun to work on together! One of the only super unique touches we did (that we both LOVED and were super proud of) was our guestbook. I wanted something we’d actually see regularly, unlike a traditional guestbook, but most of the décor options were really not to our taste. We do love to listen to vinyl together, however. I got this idea somewhere else on the internet so I can’t take credit, but we ordered a one-off lathe-cut vinyl record from American Vinyl Co. We each picked songs for one side, and I designed the gatefold cover with pictures of us and our dogs and a lot of white space for people to sign. I’m still obsessed with it TBH. Stationery and Website - $520 This category includes basically every paper good and related item… Save the Dates, return address labels, pens, invitations, escort cards, programs, table numbers, wedding thank you cards, bridal shower thank you cards, and postage for everything. Our Save the Dates were ordered through Vistaprint, as were our thank you cards. For invitations, we used Ann’s Bridal Bargains—they are so cheap (especially with a 30% off coupon), quality was great (I think I upgraded the paper thickness), they looked classy, they ship you extras, and the fold-and-send invitations with integrated RSVP postcards were a hit! I also decided to learn hand-lettering (thanks Youtube) and address our invitations, which was surprisingly fun and got many compliments. We used Joy (withjoy.com) for our website and I can't say enough good things about it! Very nice-looking, easy to use, and free. We offered our guests the option of either online or paper RSVPs, and it worked very well. I also splurged and bought a domain from GoDaddy for $20 so we had a fancy redirect address 😂 I designed the programs and got those printed through CatPrint. It’s kind of weird that we somehow managed to use three different printing services for this not-that-complicated wedding, but each just offered the best price and/or the exact product I needed for that particular item. I’d use any of them again! (but I do always make a point to tell people about Ann’s Bridal Bargains because I feel like they don’t get enough love) Photo Album - $300 I splurged on this through Artifact Uprising. They have some guidelines and tools that make it surprisingly easy to sort through all your pictures and design a nice album. It turned out beautifully and I love it! Bridal Attire and Beauty Services - $1,400 I bought my Lillian West dress as a sample—it was originally $1,500 and I paid just under $1k after tax. I currently have it on consignment, so we’ll see how that goes. I didn’t have major expectations for "the dress", but I fell in love with this one at the second store I went to and it fit me perfectly. Still love it! This category also includes my alterations ($100 for hemming, a one-point bustle, and getting push-up cups sewn in because I have super small boobs and needed a little more space taken up!). I should have had my seamstress sew the bustle a little higher—it ripped out while my husband and I were upstairs practicing our first dance, and he had to safety-pin it a few more times before our DOC sewed it up higher and saved the day. So that’s something to watch out for! I also recommend going to your regular tailor if you have one rather than some fancy bridal person—I feel like I saved a ton of money compared to what I was seeing on a Facebook page for local brides. I was super happy with my hairstylist and how she handled my curly hair—it ended up looking like me, but better, which is what I was going for. I'm not a big makeup wearer, and having had my makeup done for other weddings I was nervous about not looking like myself. I did my own with my own drugstore eyeshadow and beloved Sephora mascara. I don't think I look washed out in pictures :) Groom Attire - $475 This category includes my husband’s suit from a local shop, alterations, shirt, tie, cufflinks, and shoes. He’s pretty low-maintenance 😊 Day-Of Coordination - $1,500 The single best wedding-related decision we made was hiring our DOC. Venue staff had told us most people there don't end up hiring a DOC because the venue provides so much service, and initially I felt like we had so few vendors to coordinate we didn't really need one. However, the venue end up having quite a bit of staff turnover during our planning and it just made me nervous. I also know myself and I've worked in events and I'm a stressed out, raging bitch when things are going wrong and people are asking me lots of questions--and I did NOT want to be that person on my wedding day. I'm so glad we decided to spend money on this! Our two-month-out call with our DOC came at a time when I was starting to get super stressed about planning and all the details I was sure to forget, and she immediately put me at ease. On our wedding day, my hair appointment ran late but arriving at the venue to see her and the venue staff already setting everything up perfectly was the greatest feeling. She not only saved my bustle but also probably put out countless other fires throughout the night that I don't even know about. In short, if you are wondering whether a DOC is worth the money, think about how much you're spending on everything else--the DOC is who you pay so you can ENJOY all those other things you're spending money on! 10/10 would do it again. DJ - $850 For the LONGEST time, I planned on DIYing our music with Spotify and rented equipment. I was really trying to save money, and I've always loved putting together party playlists so I figured it would be fun. When the time came to actually dive into that part of the planning, I started to realize there was more to think about than I had anticipated (how do I normalize the volume across all my tracks? how do I eliminate gaps between songs?) I'm a perfectionist about weird things and it was starting to stress me out. We also didn't have a great family/friend candidate to be the point person on music and sound system issues. I ended up finding a super reasonably priced DJ who seemed normal and experienced, and he was willing to go very a la carte (we started with JUST music for dancing and then eventually I ended up just having him do the ceremony too, which was totally worth it and still affordable). He ended up being a lot of fun at the wedding (weirdly he was a former pastor and he and our officiant knew each other) and he picked the PERFECT song off of our guestbook album to make me not sad when the lights came up and the night ended ("Oh What a World" by Kacey Musgraves). Welcome Dinner - $1,000 Since we didn’t have a wedding party or a particularly complicated ceremony, and DID have a lot of out-of-state guests, we skipped the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner and invited everyone to a brewery within walking distance of the hotel for pizza, pierogies (to rep my husband's Pittsburgh/Polish heritage), and beer on Friday night. My in-laws paid for this, which was super sweet, and it was a lot of fun to have that extra time to hang out with our guests! We also had a few in-town people who brought their kids to the welcome dinner but not to the wedding (even though all kids were invited—they just wanted an adult night!) which was super fun. Rings - $675 This is mostly my wedding band and getting it resized and soldered, since my husband’s titanium ring was $15 on Amazon 😊 I struggled for a while with what to do for a wedding band and even considered not getting one at all. My engagement ring is antique and a fairly unique shape, so I initially thought my only option was getting a new band custom curved to fit the shape (which I worried wouldn’t match the antique look). I actually ended up finding a straight antique band that goes super well with the engagement ring. There’s a gap, but I totally dig it. Happy to share pictures of this if it helps someone else, because I know I really struggled with visualizing what the options would look like (although once I gave up on the online search and just went to an antique jewelry shop in town, the decision was easy, so I highly recommend that!) Name Change Costs - $180 Yes, I kept track of this, because I’m insane. Dance Lessons - $180 I’m so glad we both wanted to do this! We kept it pretty simple and just did three lessons to learn a basic step and a couple of spins. Our first dance song was “Come Rain or Come Shine” by Ray Charles, which has a slow beat that can be tough to hear, and neither of us really knew the first thing about dancing, so the lessons were super helpful and a lot of fun. Highly recommend doing something like this! Hotel Shuttle - $740 We had a couple of hotel block issues that were totally my own fault, but I had no idea what I was doing so want to share and hopefully help others not make the same mistakes! I used Kleinfeld’s hotel block service to research hotel options, and ended up choosing our hotel based on price, location, courtesy block size, and availability of an affordable shuttle. However, when I went to make a shuttle reservation two months before my wedding, I was told that the only shuttle had already been reserved for another wedding at the same time. In retrospect, I should have requested much earlier, and maybe even if I hadn't had my timeline ready yet I could have asked them about shuttle availability and found out they only had the one, but had multiple wedding groups blocked for that weekend... it was my mistake not asking for more info earlier, but it ended up being an expensive one (I think the hotel’s shuttle was only about $150, and I ended up having to use an outside company for $640 plus tip). The second issue was that I did not carefully review the block info that was sent to me at the time of confirmation, or I would have noticed that although they reserved the full courtesy block for me on Saturday, they had only reserved five rooms on Friday. I think this was actually Kleinfeld's request, and it was my mistake to not look it over more carefully! I ended up freaking out shortly before the wedding when one of my guests mentioned that the block was already full. The hotel worked with me to add on as many more rooms as they could, and even switched me to another employee when I basically destroyed my relationship with my initial contact (my only bridezilla moment 😂), so I really appreciated that! Miscellaneous - $2,300 I know that’s a lot for a miscellaneous category! This includes a lot of expenses related to getting married in another state (airfare for our one planning trip; airfare for my bridal shower; expenses for the road trip up for our wedding), plus our two nights at the wedding hotel, welcome bags for our guests, and a few other truly miscellaneous expenses. Honeymoon - $5,800 I didn’t include this in the total above, but we did eight days in Paris and the Loire Valley immediately after our wedding and it was glorious. We watched numerous flight price trackers for a cheap flight somewhere in Europe that sounded fun, and ended up with two tickets to Paris for $500 each (and then I got $500 cash back on my Capital One Venture card). How We Paid For It I feel like this is helpful info, because I know I personally was curious about what a realistic budget was for my own situation when I was planning. I’m 31 and my husband is 40, and we did not anticipate using any family funds for the wedding, although our parents ended up generously surprising us (mine helped us out with a few thousand dollars and his paid for our Friday night event). The primary source of funds was a $20k nest egg of our own that I had set aside specifically for the wedding when I worked in a much more highly-paid industry in my first few years out of school, and cash-flowed the rest (I’d say we make pretty average money, but we also live in a very low COL area, which helps). What We Skipped We didn't have a wedding party, favors, a videographer, a bouquet toss, a groom's cake, a unity ceremony, professional makeup, or probably some other common things that I’m forgetting. My best wedding planning advice would be to a) remember that it's a party, not a photo shoot (this was my mantra and guided MANY decisions) and b) leave something out if you and your partner don't care about it! Don't feel like you have to do something because everyone else does. We focused our money and effort on the things that mattered most to us and it worked out perfectly. We literally couldn't stop saying to each other that night and the next day, "I can't believe how perfect everything was!" You guys know what you like, so you do you!
Aug 14, 2018 - Create the wedding of your dreams with these DIY centerpieces for reception tables. Pretty simple to create, and able to add your own touch!. See more ideas about wedding centerpieces, centerpieces, diy wedding. Peachy Centerpiece. For a beautiful peach themed table setting, arrange fresh peaches in a glass bubble bowl vase with bunches of white hydrangeas filled with water. This floral arrangement is so simple to do yet makes stunning centrepieces for your wedding tables. If you want to create DIY wedding centerpieces with flowers, we recommend either using flowers that are local and in season, or silk flowers to help keep the costs down. It might surprise you just how many beautiful blooms there are to be found close to you. Mason Jars are a terrific choice if you want to make DIY centerpieces. Jan 16, 2021 - Affordable centerpieces. See more ideas about centerpieces, budget centerpieces, wedding centerpieces. 29 Budget-Friendly, Easy and DIY Centerpieces Looking for a project that doesn’t take much time, doesn’t cost too much and – oh, yeah – is perfect for your wedding centerpieces ? We’ve rounded up a boatload of them (if a boat holds 29 awesome ideas, that is). Depending on the size of your wedding celebrations, centerpieces could end up costing you a bomb. If you're on the hunt for ways to cut costs then these 25 DIY wedding centerpieces will be right up your alley. They're beautiful, classy and elegant - and they won't blow your budget! Add a personal touch to your special day with these creative, low-cost DIY wedding centerpieces. Your day is all about you and the unique relationship you have with your spouse-to-be. Showcase your bond’s personality with charming, impressive centerpieces lovingly handcrafted by you or your family. But there are plenty of options for budget-friendly centerpieces that are as affordable as they are beautiful. First, you should decide if taking on a DIY wedding project is realistic. If you’re crafty, have a calm personality, and actually enjoy putting projects together, this might be the route to take. A centerpiece from the local florist may easily price $200, and should you have 10 tables, that would be an overall price tag of $2,000! On top of that, these DIY centerpieces help you follow your budget. These are ideal for your centerpiece. This is a good centerpiece to make! This whimsical centerpiece is affordable and oh-so-easy. Getting married this year and not sure how you are going to ever afford the decor, much less the honeymoon? Well, fortunately, some of the best wedding decor is DIY, plus you get to show off your crafting skills with special things you made. Whether you have an indoor or outdoor wedding, summer, winter or spring, we have the best centerpieces you can make for your special wedding day.
You don't need to spend your life savings to have a pretty wedding day!Subscribe to BuzzFeed Nifty: https://bzfd.it/2QDIdkqAbout Nifty:The official Nifty You... Ideas for Cheap Flower Centerpieces. Part of the series: DIY Wedding Centerpieces. Many centerpieces can be created using cheap flowers purchasable anywhere.... DIY Wedding Centerpiece on a Budget. Not only is this DIY Wedding centerpiece easy but it’s super affordable. Make this Bottle wedding centerpiece that is su... Follow me on Instagram:http://www.instagram.com/bargainbethanyDOLLAR TREE HOME DECOR PIECE MENTIONED IN VIDEO (UPLOADED JANUARY 14,2019): https://www.youtube... Wedding DIY Ideas for Brides on a Budget ~ Centerpieces Oriental Trading – Square Vase Oriental Trading - Submersible White LED Candles Oriental Trading – Cl... DIY Glam Home Decor 2019 Dollar Tree DIY Mirror Decor Ideas 💖Hi everyone I hope you all have had a wonderful week so far! You guys!! ️ Thank you all so ... Join Our Elegant Creators Academy TODAY for FREE ️ http://bit.ly/elegantcreatorsacademyJoin Our Free Facebook Group ️ http://bit.ly/elegantcreatorsfbgroup ...
