It seems like as soon as you announce an engagement, you’re instantly flooded with questions and unsolicited advise, as well as opnions that you may or may not want.  I thought it would be a fun project to reach out to family and friends for thoughts on things that they would have done differently with their own weddings.  I’ve gotten some good food for thought.  I ended up getting several responses and wanted to share them with the BSB World!

I’m happy Nick and I opted to do things our own way and not to feel obligated to do things the ‘traditional’ way. Instead of a DJ and the dance, we had a charter bus and went to a bar and then picked up the tab. We had visited the bar prior and agreed w/ the bar to flag us when the tab got to a certain amount so we would be surprised We also didn’t have a wedding cake because we both hate cake. But, we did have a dessert bar and then our own personal cheese cake.  We got a lot of flack before the wedding because of some of the things we cut out but afterwards received so many compliments on how nice it was because it was obvious it was about us and what was important to us. We also got the idea from ‘Friends’ to have our friend, Peter, get ordained to marry us. I think more people do this now,but 7 years ago it was a bit usual.  Oh, and I had Taylor (my daughter) AND my dad give me away. With so many second marriages or children born first, it was something nice and I know she remember is vividly even though she was 5.

-Jessica, Iowa

I definitely have one thing that has bothered me ever since my wedding almost five years ago that I wish I could go back and do over. We decided to skip the receiving line after the ceremony (for the sake of taking pictures/saving time), and greet the guests at our reception instead. However, our wedding was in our local town, and the reception was about 20 minutes away, downtown. Some of our older relatives decided not to make the drive on the interstate downtown, so we missed even being about to thank them for coming. I really regret that.

-Lindsay, Indiana

We didn’t have a helpful wedding party. My wedding party was more concerned about themselves than helping me – so be careful who you pick!

– Janet, Ohio

I would have NEVER have picked the colors I ended up with – it was a bad compromise & a long story but I hated them (sage & butter).  Something I DID do that was super cheap & effective was look at dresses in stores, write down the designers & styles and then ordered mine online (so naughty!).

-Jennifer, Missouri

I would have had a larger wedding.  We were given a generous budget by my parents, and chose to use part on a smaller wedding, and the other part to buy a new car.  I don’t remember a thing about the car now, but wish we would have had a larger wedding.

    -My Mother, Iowa

I would not have had my sister-in-law stand up with me.  She was a pain, hated the yellow dress, and complained the whole day. 

-”Don’t put my name on this”, Illinois

Photo By Image Trick Photography

I wish I would have taken more time making some decisions. We got engaged on April 17th and got married on August 15th, so that literally left me with 4 months to plan a wedding!  A short engagement is definitely do-able but I wish I would have thought a little more about what I wanted certain things to look like. Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy with the way everything turned out, but if I would have had a little more time I would have probably chosen a few different things: I would have discussed (in details) with the florist what my bouquet was going to look like.  I would have gone over the final look of the cake before the wedding. It had too much ribbon and stuff on it, I would have liked it a little more simple (but it was delicious!) I would have liked more pictures done outside too.

    -Stefanie, Tennessee

If getting married in a facility where you have to use their food and beverage (unless you are tied to a sit-down meal), offering buffet style heavy hor’devours or food stations in a reception style, can many times be more economical than a plated meal.  If your reception time is “between meal times” –plan on approx. 4-6 pieces of food per person.  And…if you are tied to a plated meal….negotiate serving a lunch portion rather than dinner.  For hotels, the per person cost can be as much as half the cost for a lunch portion meal.

-Jill, Tennessee (also works in event planning)

No moonshine!

-Lisa, West Virginia

Things I wish I had done differently are researching/asking around more about my photographer and caterer. Wish I would have gotten a bigger venue. Wish I would’ve waited a couple more months to get married to we could have a little bit nicer wedding. Things I’m glad I did are starting and maintaining a binder with pictures of things I liked and ideas I got about decor, etc. Glad I stuck with the vision I had for the actual ceremony even though some people seemed to think it wouldn’t work. (It did work!) Wedding was January 2006.

          -Lauren, Kentucky

I would have never had an open bar.  The cost ended up being a LOT more than we had anticipated because we paid on a per-drink basis.  I felt like we were secretly looking around to see who was drinking a $15 glass of champagne.  We also had a few people “overindulge” and cause drama, which may have been avoided.

    -Nicole, Tennessee

Keep things about the two of you– My wedding was more my Mother’s than mine.

-Annonymous, Ohio

Photo By Henderson Photography

I would have asked my bridesmaids in a more creative way.  I would also recommend a venue that does not make you cater from them alone, but allows outside catering.  They get you with that!

-Lindsey, Tennessee

Brandon & Jessica

August 20th, 2011
Charlotte, NC

-Church:  The Plaza Presbyterian Church
-Reception:  The Marriott at Southpark

What was your budget? If you are able, give us a rough breakdown of how you spent your budget.

-We spent about $16,000
Venue:  10,000, Dress:  1,000, Cake:  500, Photographer:  1,200 (included engagement and bridal shoot),  Band: 200, Flowers:  300,  Rings:  2,000, Misc, invitations, party favors:  1,000

How many guests did you have?

-130 guests

What creative or personal aspects did you include in your wedding?

-My fiancee and I both have fathers that are pastors.  So after my dad walked me down the aisle he turned and joined my new hubby’s dad and they both married us.  It was a very special memory from my wedding.

What was the biggest thing you did to save money?

-I have two things:

1.  We bought our flowers from the farmer’s market.  They not only will arrange the flowers if you bring vases, which make great centerpieces, but they will make your bouquets for you as well.  We spent about $300 for 8 bouquets and 11 beautiful and fresh centerpieces.  Some friends delivered them to the venue.

2.  We found our cake baker in a flower shop who make cakes as a hobby.  It was a great way to save money because they don’t have a clientele yet, but are trying to build one.  So after we interviewed him and saw some of his work, he made us a $1000 cake for $500 (including delivery).  He worked with our budget and gave us a beautiful and tasty cake.

What’s the best advice you have for planning your wedding now that you’re on the other side?

-It’s never to early to start planning.  Don’t let anyone push their opinion of how your day should be on you.  This is your special day and you only get one so make it about you.  Lastly, take time to pause during your day to take it all in.  It goes by so fast and you will get so wrapped up in things that you forget to take a moment and soak it all in.

What was your biggest splurge?

-My venue and my dress.  I wanted give my guest an amazing experience and I wanted to feel gorgeous in my dress.  So I had to splurge on both.  By the end of the night, I didn’t want to take off my dress.

What was your favorite detail?

-The band for cocktail hour.  We had a patio attached to the venue, so we found an amazing band on craigslist that played the whole night for $200.   It was a nice touch that our guest really enjoyed.

What is the most memorable moment of your day?

-My gift to my husband was my garter.  He is a huge steelers fan, so I surprised him by finding one online for under $30 (toss and keepsake).  His face was priceless and I can tell it meant so much to him.  Plus, there was a little blue ribbon sown into the inside of the garter for my something blue.

Vendors:

Photography: Kimberly Joyce Photography
Cake: Crumbs by Couture
Flowers:  Farmer’s Market Charlotte
Dresses: David’s Bridal
Tuxedos: Men’s Wearhouse
Venue:  Marriott
Garter:  Etsy

My next few posts will probably bounce back and forth between pre-wedding, wedding and post-wedding, since I totally dropped the blogging ball the last few weeks before my wedding….

Let’s talk wedding disasters. You know how in your wedding planning, when you’re stressing that something is going to go wrong, and eeeeeverybody insists that the things that always go wrong are the tiny little things that no one notices? Ignore them when they say that. Sometimes you have a disaster, or even two, and all 150 people notice. However, when those same annoying advice-givers tell you that everything will work out in the end and people will have a great time, listen to that part. That part is actually correct.

My wedding ceremony was perfect. Absolutely, down to the last detail, perfect. Which was funny, since I really hadn’t put a ton of thought into the ceremony except slaving over our choice of processional and recessional music. The reading choices took about 10 minutes. But for now, I’m going to skip over the perfect ceremony and jump to the partially-horrifying reception.

Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t see Dave before the ceremony. So after the ceremony and big family group photos, the wedding party had about 45 minutes of late afternoon winter sunlight to get all our pictures. We took our pictures and then very haphazardly told each other we’d see everyone at the reception (Mistake #1: not organizing transportation better).

There was a 40-minute drive between our ceremony site and our reception site. When Dave and I got there, after being what we thought was a few minutes behind the rest of the wedding party, we were surprised to find very little of our wedding party waiting for us. We had completely lost one of our groomsmen, who had ridden with a non-wedding party friend, and that was cause for a bit of a stress, because we were slightly behind schedule and wanted to get into the reception. But that wasn’t nearly as stressful as finding out where most of the wedding party had disappeared to- they were in the reception room, trying desperately to fix the two full kegs that weren’t working At All. $250 worth of beer, trapped in non-functioning kegs. Dave and I found this out through his very blunt grandfather, who came out to the lobby to tell us that everyone was cranky because they wanted food, there was no beer and no music was playing. I found my father and asked him how bad it was, and he very reassuringly said, “Oh, it’s bad.”

At this point I’m already in a panic, and I haven’t even figured out why there’s no music. Dave’s brother/best man told us there was a problem with the music, so the playlist we’d slaved over had not been playing for the last hour and a half. As we finally gathered all of our wedding party and our emcee got ready to announce us, Dave’s brother turns to him and said, “So I might as well tell you this now, Dad spilled a Coke on your laptop and that’s why the music isn’t playing.”

Dave just sat on a chair with his head in his hands. I almost punched his brother right then and there. Not exactly the most opportune time for us to be told this. So while most newly wedded couples walk in to their receptions dancing and pumping their fists, we walked in with fake smiles and slight grimaces. With all the pressure our male relatives were giving us about everyone being hungry, we just kind of walked to the head table, didn’t sit down, said screw this and I just walked over to the buffet line to get it started.

It was a miserable start to the reception. I was trying not to cry or scream, nothing was organized, Dave’s poor cousin who was supposed to be emceeing and dj-ing was in a panic; it was a horrible mess. As Dave and I started to eat, I looked at him and very pathetically said, “This is not how I want to remember my reception.”

To make a long story short, we got my laptop out of Dave’s car (Thank God I had grabbed it at 3 a.m. when I left my house, with my exhausted bridesmaids asking me why I needed it), and a dedicated groomsman and bridesmaid’s boyfriend sat together and downloaded music and logged on to Youtube to get songs. The beer never did get fixed, so less than half of one keg was salvaged from the two kegs we had. Luckily, the lodge didn’t have stringent alcohol rules, so I had told all my friends that they could bring their own liquor if they wanted it. Some of them did, the rest became wine drinkers for the night. I don’t know how the wine lasted- as my dad said, “Loaves and fishes,” i.e., somehow it kept multiplying.

So in the end, everyone had a great time. Most people knew there was no beer, and a lot of people knew there was a music problem. I don’t think anyone remembers the awkward march to the buffet line. We ended up doing the toasts, cake cutting and first dances all back to back, instead of having some informal dancing between the first dances and the cake cutting, like we’d planned. While the awesome playlist that Dave and I spent weeks on was not used, and a lot of my favorite songs were not played, everyone danced and had a great time dancing. When I hear a fun song that was on the original playlist, I get a little wistful that it wasn’t played, but in the end you just gotta let things go.

My reception was far from perfect, but it was a blast. My brothers tossed me in the air in my wedding gown, the boys had a mosh pit over catching the garter, and Dave and a couple friends had an impromptu concert toward the end of the evening.

As they say, at the end of the day, you’re married, and nothing could be better than that.

This is what matters.

How could this not be fun?

 

 

 

Gazing balls and glass buoys are lovely works of art that can do double duty as pomanders for the party and gifts for garden decor after the wedding!

No area of budget savvy-ness has brought me more strife than that of flowers. You see, I love flowers. I’m a huge fan of bright colors, so I was really stoked about learning more about this whole flora and fauna thing for our wedding extravaganza. Early on in our planning process, a recently married coworker of mine directed me toward a florist who does fantastic work—I loved everything I saw from her. The problem? She requires a $1,000 minimum order. My co-worker assured me that it was not difficult to spend that much on wedding flowers.

But meeting a minimum was not the problem. The problem was that I was not comfortable spending that much money on something that was going to die in a day or two (not to mention the fact that if we jet-setted out on our honeymoon right away, we wouldn’t get even that much enjoyment out of them!).

So I asked myself—as I always try to do in these types of situations—“if there are no flowers at my wedding, will I enjoy myself less? Will my interactions with my friends be less fulfilling, or the commitment to my husband be less significant?”

The answer was no.

Sure, I went through a bit of a mourning period. As I said, I think flowers are beautiful. I love pouring over the bursts of color and texture you see in bridal magazines. But I learned quickly that my bouquet alone could easily cost $200, and I just wasn’t prepared to spend that for something so short-lived.

I also felt just a little better when I found this quote:

“You shouldn’t feel pressured to have [your bridesmaids] carry flowers at all… the tradition of bridesmaid bouquets comes from the less hygienic days when the fragrance from flowers were used to cover up body odors.”

~Simple Stunning Bride, by Karen Bussen, 2010.

So giving your bridesmaids a bouquet to hold is actually offensive! Right? Right?? <nudge, nudge, wink wink>

Ok, maybe not. But the point is that your wedding will not suck because you did not spend a lot of money on flowers.

For me, the goal was color. Color brightens my day and makes me feel just a little bit more alive. Wearing colorful clothes gets me through the endless gray of the winter months. I needed color in my wedding. I just needed to find it from some other source.

Pinwheels are fun, colorful, and a DIY option! Great for garden weddings!

So I began considering the options.

• Artificial flowers: True Touch/Real Touch flowers from Hobby Lobby are a nice alternative to the flowers you might purchase from a florist. They have a wide variety of options, and these two brands (as well as others) are made of a rubbery material that actually looks and feels a lot like their real-life counterparts. Plus, you get to keep your bouquets afterward!
• Gazing balls or glass buoys: You know how in the summer, you walk by beautiful gardens and see these brightly-colored glass or metal spheres on elegant pedestals? I love them, and they often come in shades of blue and green—matches our wedding colors AND the whole garden theme! I thought about having one of these encased in a lace or ribbon holder (to hang down like a pomander) and then having each bridesmaid place theirs on a pedestal when they get to the front–additional decor and everyone wouldn’t have to worry about awkwardly holding bouquets the whole ceremony! http://www.ruthbleakley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Japanese-glass-float-net-bottom.png
• Tissue-paper pomanders or paper lanterns: These are a wonderful and inexpensive option that mercifully comes in/can be made in any color.
• Feather Fans: I love the color options you can find when using feather fans, and they have an elegant look. Plus the peacock feathers (one of my original palette inspirations) are lovely!
• Balloons: Also available in every color, and inexpensive as well! You have probably seen these used in engagement sessions, though not often in wedding pictures. I love balloons because they are fun and child-like, which would make for some fun pictures!
• Pinwheels! Fun, colorful, and they bring the element of motion to an outdoor ceremony! These can be handmade as a DIY project or purchased from a garden store.
• Lanterns: Decorative lanterns, particularly Moroccan-style (if you’re looking for an easy search term) found in places like Pier 1, Cost Plus World Market, or on Amazon are a lovely option and come in lots of colors!

So for every budget-savvy bride who has been told that you have to have flowers or is mourning the loss of expensive and short-lived wedding-magazine-quality bouquets, do not despair! There are all kinds of options available out there,  and I promise that you will have an amazing wedding, no matter what you choose!

What creative options have you found?

Oy. The decisions one must make during wedding planning… because you can try and put them off for as long as possible but eventually – they needs to be made, y’all. One of those major decisions has hit The Boy and I right smack dab in our collective faces, too. And that decision is – where will we be honeymooning?

From the moment we began planning a wedding, we also knew that we wanted to do a honeymoon. See, one of the major reasons that we’re getting married is because we want kids (not romantic but very true) and, due to our ages, we really do need to start trying pretty soon after we get married. So, a honeymoon would be more to us than a fun trip together post-wedding. It’ll be our last big vacation without kids for a long, long time. Because of that, we really want to do it up right.
p style=text-align: leftSo, we’ve been tossing around ideas for places to go and have been trying really hard to come up with a compromise. I want the beach. He wants history (actually, he wanted to go to a hunting lodge but there is NO WAY IN @*%*% I’m spending my vacation butchering something thankyouverymuch). Anyhoo, we’ve narrowed it down to three options:
strong/strong/p
p style=text-align: centerstrongLondon, England (and surrounding areas)/strong/p
p style=text-align: centera href=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/London.jpgimg class=aligncenter size-full wp-image-13608 src=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/London.jpg alt= width=600 height=478 //a/p
p style=text-align: center(Image Courtesy of: a href=http://www.studylanguages.org target=_blank target=_blankStudy Languages/a)/p
p style=text-align: left
The Boy was stationed in England and Wales in the early 1980’s and LOVED it. Unfortunately, due to the political climate of the time, he was never allowed to visit Ireland and that’s always bugged him. Also, one of his good friends (whom I adore) is currently stationed there and it would be fun to see him again./p
p style=text-align: centerstrongCrete, Greece/strong/p
p style=text-align: centera href=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Crete.jpgimg class=aligncenter size-full wp-image-13607 src=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Crete.jpg alt= width=500 height=333 //a/p
p style=text-align: center(Image Courtesy of: a href=http://www.lannavacations.com target=_blank target=_blankLanna Vacations/a)/p
p style=text-align: leftThe beach! Yummy food! History! This is the one that I’m pulling for, especially after we discovered the a title=Armed Forces Vacation Club href=http://www.afvclub.com/ target=_blankArmed Forces Vacation Club/a – they offer killer deals on lodging all over the world to members of the armed forces and veterans. We found out that you can rent a fully furnished apartment only 100 meters from the beach for just $53.00 a day. A DAY! Score/p
p style=text-align: centerstrongNew Orleans, Louisiana/strong a href=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/New_Orleans.jpgimg class=aligncenter size-full wp-image-13606 src=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/New_Orleans.jpg alt= width=560 height=366 //a/p
p style=text-align: center(Image Courtesy of: a href=http://madeinneworleans.org/ target=_blank target=_blankMade in New Orleans/a)/p
p style=text-align: leftThis is our omigodwehavenomoney option. Neither of us has been there before and, after the devastating one-two combo of Hurricane Katrina and Gulf Coast spill, we loved the idea of helping support the economy with our tourist dollars. Plus, we lurve eating fresh seafood and mocking drunk people (preferably at the same time)./p
So, have any of you made your honeymoon plans yet? How’d you make the decision? Which place do you think we should pick? Are any of you going to (or have any of you been to) London, Greece, or New Orleans? What should we know before we go? In the meantime, you can also a href=http://pinterest.com/kissmytulle/honeymoony/ target=_blankfollow my honeymoon board on Pinterest/a and see what I’m thinking of packing!