Saturday, July 17, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
whoa
so it's been a while, eh?
a lot of things have happened.
1) my dress came! and i love it! it almost fits. the under layer was a smidge too long in the front, the length between my neck and the waste in the back of the dress was just a little too long, and there was some extra fabric above the bust in the front. But other than that, it is awesome!
2) the boy's suit (ordered online) came, and it doesn't fit! not even close. The jacket is fine, but the vest is too short, and the rise of the pants is all wrong. We'll have to get him re-measured and have the suit remade asap. i'm keeping my fingers crossed
3) I ordered my wedding jewelry from here.
4) We bought the fabric for the seat cushions for the ceremony. We've decided to make 18 of them. So about half the guest will be able to have one. I'm thinking that the older people will appreciate them, but the real reason they'll be there is that I can't for the life of me figure out how I'm supposed to decorate the ceremony space. It's on a flagstone patio that's about 35 feet by 20 feet. The isle is cutting across the short way and we're facing the lake (the building is behind us). So the only thing I could come up with is colorful seat cushions. With the fabric, batting and fiber fill they'll end up being just under $3.00 each.
5) I found some ostrich feather fringe online that I'm going to use to make my feather hair piece, and as soon as i have that figured out I'll post it.
6) I got three cropped cardigans from old navy for the bridesmaids to wear if it ends up being cold. they were on sale for $10 each and i had a coupon code for 20% off so they worked out to be extremely affordable.
7) We've decided to nix the welcome bags at the Family Get-together the night before because we couldn't come up with much to put in them. But we're still in charge of the adult refreshments so there's still some figuring out to do.
a lot of things have happened.
1) my dress came! and i love it! it almost fits. the under layer was a smidge too long in the front, the length between my neck and the waste in the back of the dress was just a little too long, and there was some extra fabric above the bust in the front. But other than that, it is awesome!
2) the boy's suit (ordered online) came, and it doesn't fit! not even close. The jacket is fine, but the vest is too short, and the rise of the pants is all wrong. We'll have to get him re-measured and have the suit remade asap. i'm keeping my fingers crossed
3) I ordered my wedding jewelry from here.
4) We bought the fabric for the seat cushions for the ceremony. We've decided to make 18 of them. So about half the guest will be able to have one. I'm thinking that the older people will appreciate them, but the real reason they'll be there is that I can't for the life of me figure out how I'm supposed to decorate the ceremony space. It's on a flagstone patio that's about 35 feet by 20 feet. The isle is cutting across the short way and we're facing the lake (the building is behind us). So the only thing I could come up with is colorful seat cushions. With the fabric, batting and fiber fill they'll end up being just under $3.00 each.5) I found some ostrich feather fringe online that I'm going to use to make my feather hair piece, and as soon as i have that figured out I'll post it.
6) I got three cropped cardigans from old navy for the bridesmaids to wear if it ends up being cold. they were on sale for $10 each and i had a coupon code for 20% off so they worked out to be extremely affordable.
7) We've decided to nix the welcome bags at the Family Get-together the night before because we couldn't come up with much to put in them. But we're still in charge of the adult refreshments so there's still some figuring out to do.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
invites
They are officially in the mail! I will get pictures up asap. Other than that I haven't really been doing much wedding wise.
The boy's parents decided to help us out with the casual get together, which is amazing. They're going to set the whole thing up with finger food, and we're going to provide refreshments. And because we're saving so much money by not having the fancy dinner the night before, we're going to have some guest bags for people to take home too! We're trying to come up with local brands from Wisconsin, but so far we can only think of a few, and most of those are all cheese companies, which won't do well outside of a fridge.... bummer. Stupid wisconsin and your damn cheese.
Next on the list is making programs, wreaths, and figuring out my hair and makeup.
My hair is not long enough to do an up do easily, but i want to show off the collar of my dress, so i'd like it off of my shoulders. I used to be really good at fixing my hair, but for some reason every time I try it now, it looks like crap. On top of everything I'm going to have to leave it curly because I just know that setting everything up before the ceremony will make it get frizzy and out of place if i straighten it.
I really like this one, but my hair just isn't long or full enough to do it.
This do is AMAZING, but I just can't figure out how to do it... I've tried several times.
This one I can do, but it ends up looking messier than I'd like.
I'll post some pictures of my "hair trials" when I can.
The boy's parents decided to help us out with the casual get together, which is amazing. They're going to set the whole thing up with finger food, and we're going to provide refreshments. And because we're saving so much money by not having the fancy dinner the night before, we're going to have some guest bags for people to take home too! We're trying to come up with local brands from Wisconsin, but so far we can only think of a few, and most of those are all cheese companies, which won't do well outside of a fridge.... bummer. Stupid wisconsin and your damn cheese.
Next on the list is making programs, wreaths, and figuring out my hair and makeup.
My hair is not long enough to do an up do easily, but i want to show off the collar of my dress, so i'd like it off of my shoulders. I used to be really good at fixing my hair, but for some reason every time I try it now, it looks like crap. On top of everything I'm going to have to leave it curly because I just know that setting everything up before the ceremony will make it get frizzy and out of place if i straighten it.
I really like this one, but my hair just isn't long or full enough to do it.
This do is AMAZING, but I just can't figure out how to do it... I've tried several times.
This one I can do, but it ends up looking messier than I'd like.
I'll post some pictures of my "hair trials" when I can.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
to do list
The biggest thing looming on the horizon is getting the invites together. I'm still not sure exactly how i'm going to do it, which is making me nervous. We need to figure out what we're doing for dinner the night before so that we can finalize the text on the actual invite. Beyond that I'm going to have to figure out where I'm going to get the damn thing printed. We don't have a ink jet printer, believe it or not (only a laser), so i can't run the card stock through at home. I might be able to use his parents printer, but I'm not sure. Otherwise I'll need to get quotes from office max and some other local copy places.
Other things to do
-make, or find cake stands. We need 6.
-ever since I saw this picture on snippet n ink I've been in love. I want to have two huge flowy curtains on the french doors at the beginning of the isle that I'll walk down. I'm assuming that I'll need to find a tension rod to span the door way since I can't use nails or anything. I have some grey fabric that would be light weight enough to use. So I'll try to work with that.
-make two fun wreaths like this one (with blue, green and white fabric), to hang on the bathroom doors.
-figure out an easy way to hang all the things I want at the reception.
-make photo booth props. Examples, empty frames for posing, framed chalk boards, chocolate mustache pops (double as favors).
-make napkin rings
-figure out what we're going to use as table runners. Top choices are; butcher paper, burlap, dyed canvas, or some awesome fabric that I have yet to find.
-make a banner for the balcony over the entrance to venue with blue, green and white fabric.
-make, or find bridesmaid jewlery. I found a picture of a cuff made from buttons, and I really like it. I think that it'd be easy enough to make. Now all i need to do is find some killer buttons.
-come up with a back drop for our "photo booth". I like this one, but I can't decided if i even need one. Would the stone wall in the venue be decorative enough?
Other things to do
-make, or find cake stands. We need 6.
-ever since I saw this picture on snippet n ink I've been in love. I want to have two huge flowy curtains on the french doors at the beginning of the isle that I'll walk down. I'm assuming that I'll need to find a tension rod to span the door way since I can't use nails or anything. I have some grey fabric that would be light weight enough to use. So I'll try to work with that.
-make two fun wreaths like this one (with blue, green and white fabric), to hang on the bathroom doors.
-figure out an easy way to hang all the things I want at the reception.
-make photo booth props. Examples, empty frames for posing, framed chalk boards, chocolate mustache pops (double as favors).
-make napkin rings
-figure out what we're going to use as table runners. Top choices are; butcher paper, burlap, dyed canvas, or some awesome fabric that I have yet to find.
-make a banner for the balcony over the entrance to venue with blue, green and white fabric.
-make, or find bridesmaid jewlery. I found a picture of a cuff made from buttons, and I really like it. I think that it'd be easy enough to make. Now all i need to do is find some killer buttons.
-come up with a back drop for our "photo booth". I like this one, but I can't decided if i even need one. Would the stone wall in the venue be decorative enough?
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Dinner talk
The boy's birthday was yesterday and I made him a chocolate black out cake. We took it over to his parents house and had a nice talk about the whole dinner before the wedding dilemma that we've been dealing with. I hate to admit it but I really think that we either need to cut it completely, or we need to severely cut back on it.
My only hesitation is that we sent out the save the dates and which asked the guests to reserve the night before for a celebratory dinner. So if we end up cutting it, it will be glaringly obvious to everyone. bummer.
I was thinking that if we're going to rent a block of rooms at the hotel nearest to the wedding site, that they might let us use one of their smaller rooms. Then we could order in some food of some kind and have a nice casual meet and greet the night before.
The boy is afraid that this option isn't going to be classy enough. I am a little worried about it, but i know that the actual wedding is going to be amazingly classy, so I think it will make up for it.
If we end up cutting the night before cost to something like $500 to use a room and order in lasagna or pizza or something, it would bring our costs down by $4000! let me say that again... $4000!
When we told his rents that the restaurant that we booked had a minimum of $3500, their jaws dropped. As much as I love the restaurant, and as much as I would love to have the dinner there, I'm having an harder and harder time justifying the cost. It would be an amazing dinner, but in reality, we could have an amazing dinner with out the fancy restaurant. Our friends and family will be there, and that's what really matters. Even if we're sitting around on some folding chairs with a slice of pizza in one hand and a beer in the other. We'll have a blast either way.
I have to keep reminding myself that.
My only hesitation is that we sent out the save the dates and which asked the guests to reserve the night before for a celebratory dinner. So if we end up cutting it, it will be glaringly obvious to everyone. bummer.
I was thinking that if we're going to rent a block of rooms at the hotel nearest to the wedding site, that they might let us use one of their smaller rooms. Then we could order in some food of some kind and have a nice casual meet and greet the night before.
The boy is afraid that this option isn't going to be classy enough. I am a little worried about it, but i know that the actual wedding is going to be amazingly classy, so I think it will make up for it.
If we end up cutting the night before cost to something like $500 to use a room and order in lasagna or pizza or something, it would bring our costs down by $4000! let me say that again... $4000!
When we told his rents that the restaurant that we booked had a minimum of $3500, their jaws dropped. As much as I love the restaurant, and as much as I would love to have the dinner there, I'm having an harder and harder time justifying the cost. It would be an amazing dinner, but in reality, we could have an amazing dinner with out the fancy restaurant. Our friends and family will be there, and that's what really matters. Even if we're sitting around on some folding chairs with a slice of pizza in one hand and a beer in the other. We'll have a blast either way.
I have to keep reminding myself that.
Monday, January 4, 2010
new year
nothing much is happening with the wedding planning, which is why i haven't posted. We're still looking into a different venue for the "preception" but we haven't had any luck yet.
I just realized though that i have less than a month an a half before i need to send out my invites, so we better figure it out quickly!
I'm anxiously awaiting my packet from my dress maker with her sketch and a swatch of fabric.
On another note... I found out that my great aunt (my namesake) left her diamond wedding ring to my mother when she died. My mother never used it for anything and just now told me about it. She's said that the setting is horribly old fashioned (i've never seen it) but she's offering it up to me as a wedding present. It's in the mail as well, so we'll just have to see how ugly this thing is! I can't imagine that it would be terribly expensive to have it reset in silver.
I just realized though that i have less than a month an a half before i need to send out my invites, so we better figure it out quickly!
I'm anxiously awaiting my packet from my dress maker with her sketch and a swatch of fabric.
On another note... I found out that my great aunt (my namesake) left her diamond wedding ring to my mother when she died. My mother never used it for anything and just now told me about it. She's said that the setting is horribly old fashioned (i've never seen it) but she's offering it up to me as a wedding present. It's in the mail as well, so we'll just have to see how ugly this thing is! I can't imagine that it would be terribly expensive to have it reset in silver.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
wedding revamp (almost)
We have been seriously looking at our budget, and it's making me nervous spending this much money for an event. I realize that a wedding isn't just any event, but it's an event none the less.
I have been reading wedding blogs for a few years now, and I always hated it when they'd talk about the budget in a round about sort of way. One of the reasons I really like $2000 dollar budget wedding blog is because they were exact when they broke down the budget and didn't just leave it at percentages (ex we spent 40% of our budget on the food at the reception). They told me dollar for dollar what they spent and where it went. Very useful.
So... I'm going to be as specific as I can be in order to help as many people out there as I can.
In an ideal world we'd like to have our parents contributions cover the cost of the wedding, but that just isn't going to happen.
My parents are giving us $5000 with no strings attached. It doesn't even have to go towards the wedding. We could use it towards a down payment on a house, the honey moon, or we could invest it, whatever (this no strings attached thing is SO nice). And his parents are giving us $1000, also no strings attached. For a total of $6,000, which would be plenty for plenty of people out there. We could probably have worked with that kind of budget if we had really thought about it from the beginning, but at this point it's just too late to change it.
For example: We have already booked our venue, we've paid it in full, and at this point if we were to walk away it would cost us $500 (which I guess in the grand scheme of things isn't that much, but still!). Our venue requires that any food or beverage (except the cake) has to be provided by an approved caterer. And because the venue also requires us to hire a security person from them (ie someone who will be there watching us the whole day), we can't just fib and bring in our own bottled water and drinks. Big bummer. So we contacted all of the approved caterers on the list and found one that would met our needs. A brunch for 40 people that includes made to order crepes (with strawberries, bananas, and nutella), sausage, & fresh fruit is $16.98 a person. not bad right? well then we have to add the drinks. We're going to be serving coffee, orange juice, champagne and sparkling apple cider. I've been looking this part over and I think we're going to drop the champagne. Because we're getting married in IL, they're charging us $3.95 a person for a liquor license, which just doesn't seem worth it for champagne. Neither one of our families drink very much, if at all, so I doubt anyone will miss it. Plus we're having a dinner party the night before and there will be booze there. Anyway...
Back to the brunch. We found out that if we were going to rent table, chairs, linens and the like from an outside rental service they were going to charge us $600 to deliver because it's a holiday weekend AND it's a Sunday. Bad news bears. So we decided to have the caterer include these things in the quote. We will have plain white linens, simple wooden folding chairs, a couple of extra tables and all of the service ware that they would need.
Their quote came back at $2900 which includes labor, delivery and set up. The only thing that's left out is tip and taxes. This may not be such a bad deal if we were only having a brunch, but like I said we were planning on having the major meal and celebration the night before. Combine the dinner the night before and the brunch after the wedding and we're up to $8,000 right there (including taxes and tips on both ends), which is just unacceptable.
The venue is $1411.50, which includes everything from taxes to permit fees to insurance and security service. We have the space from 7 am to 2 pm.
$8,000 + $1,411.50 = $9,441.50 for food, rentals and location fees
This does not include...
$100 for cake from wholefoods
$500 for my dress
$500 for his suit
$1,500 for photographer
$250 for decor
$200 for flowers
$500 for transportation (I'll explain why I cannot leave this out)
$50 for favors
$150 for all paper goods including invites, save the dates, and programs
=$3,750
$9,441.50 + $3,750 = $13,191.50
Definitely not acceptable for us. There are a lot of people out there that would be absolutely thrilled if they spent under $15,000 for their wedding, but I am not one of them. For a while I could almost justify it until I started thinking of it like this.
If you divide $13,191.50 by the number of guest that we plan on having (40) you get $329,79 a person.
I looked up the average cost of a wedding in Chicago and it said anything from $17,000 to $28,000. So even there, I'm under budget, until you realize that I'm only having 40 people! I couldn't find the average number of people attending a wedding, but it has to be more than 40 people. I'm going to guess around 150. If you take the median of the average cost of a wedding in Chicago ($22,500) and divide it by 150 people, you would be spending $150 a person. Less than HALF of what we could spend if we followed our budget. Even if we lowered the average number of people to 100, they're still only spending $225 a person for the wedding which is still significantly less than us.
After these calculations I realized that we needed to slash our budget in order to justify the money we're spending on this event.
I started looking at all the things that we have listed and prioritized them.
But I took some things off the list because they have already been purchased.
-the venue
-the decor
-the paper (almost)
#1, My dress. I'm sorry but I LOVE my dress and I'll be damned if I could ever find a dress I like as much for less money. Plus it's going to be 100% cotton, which will allow me to possibly dye the dress and wear it many more times.
#2, Brunch.
#3, Dinner.
#4, The photographer. I blame this on my art background. I will not be happy with a mediocre wedding photographer. I thought briefly about having the guest take their own pictures with disposable cameras and leaving our digital camera with someone who would could take casual pictures though out the night, but again, I just can't handle the idea of leaving something I felt so strongly about up to people who had no experience taking pictures. I'm sure some of the photos would have been amazing and a lot of them would have been cute, but I'm sure many important moments would have been missed.
#5, Transportation. The only thing I didn't like about the venue we picked is that it doesn't have nearby parking. The field house is set back from the road and the only way you can get there is on a bike path. The closest lot is a good 5 or 6 minute walk, which isn't a big deal for us, or our friends, but we had to keep in mind that his grandparents are planning on attending and one of them in particular has incredibly bad knees. And in general, who really wants to walk through potentially muddy walk ways in fancy clothes and high heel shoes to get to a wedding. Not me.
#6 His Suit. we do not want to rent a tux because I feel like If I get to buy something fancy to wear he should get to buy something fancy to wear. And beyond that He'll definitely have a chance to wear a suit again.
#7 Cake. you just can't have a wedding without something sweet to end the day with.
#8 Flowers. If I really had to I could find an alternative to flowers that would be cheaper and probably look just fine, but I am IN LOVE with ranuclus flowers.
#9 Favors. This could easily be cut. I'm planning on having chocolate mustaches on a stick that will serve as props for our photo booth. Cute, delicious, and serving double duty.
Then I started at the bottom of the list and tried to justify cutting it completely. if I couldn't I tried to come up with a cheaper option.
Favors: I'm still undecided on this one. I really like the idea of giving something back to our guests especially since the VAST majority of them will have made a significant financial investment just by getting to Chicago, but who's going to notice if they're not there? probably no one.
Flowers: I have to wait until we're closer to the wedding so that I can really hunt around for good prices on these. My fear is that they are really surging in popularity and by the time we get married they may be out of my price range. I pick them, not only because they are beautiful, but because they are (0r were) cheap, and they last a REALLY long time after being cut. Because I'm going to be doing my own flowers, it made sense to pick something that would last. But it would make even more sense to pick something that isn't living, so that I could make them far in advance. I've been toying around with the idea of making pom pom flowers or fabric flowers. But I still haven't actually made any to see if they look good in real life. Either way I definitely want something in all the blue vases I bought to go on the table. We will not be eliminating this part of the budget.
Cake: I may end up making the cake from scratch. We would have planned on this the whole time, but it was unclear how cumbersome it would be to transport 6 or 8 cakes from milwaukee to chicago. So we took a tip from $2000 wedding and decided to go with whole foods. This could easily change once we figure out how much space we'll end up having in the car. We can always make two trips (but would it be worth it after paying gas?). We will not be eliminating this part from the budget.
His Suit: We may have already cut the cost of this one. He's found a place online that makes custom suits for less than $500. I cannot for the life of me remember if it's $250 or $450. I'll get back to you on this. If it really comes down to it, we would not be apposed to having him rent a suit for aprox. $100. But he really doesn't have anything that he already owns that would be appropriate for the event. We will not be eliminating this part from the budget.
Transportation: Like I said before, we cannot eliminate this from the budget, but I'm definitely going to be shopping around in order to get it as cheap as possible.
Photographer: We cannot eliminate this from the budget. I shopped around a lot before I finally landed on the the photographer we ended up picking. I had to get really creative in order to find a high quality photographer for a moderate price. A girl I knew in college (who i'm friends with on facebook) is dating a man in Nashville that works as a free lance photographer. I noticed his photographs because he takes tons of amazing portraits of the girl I know. All of her facebook pics are breathtaking. I emailed her and got his contact info. Turns out he's done weddings in the past and is looking to do more in the future. Another bonus, the girl's family is from Chicago, so he'd have a free place to stay when he's there, and on top of that he's willing to drive here and charge me the fed rate for gas/mileage. I have absolutely no doubt that the pictures will be amazing. We are not changing this part of the budget.
Dinner: Here's where things get tricky. The dinner we have planned now is going to cost $4,600. that's $115 a person. It's a five star restaurant and it's the only thing about the whole wedding that my boy really picked out. We're both REALLY into food. He absolutely loves this restaurant. It would be easy for us to get our deposit back and book a dinner somewhere else less expensive, but I would feel terrible about leaving the boy with nothing of his own. We will have to think about this long and hard before we make any changes.
Brunch: The caterer we picked wasn't the most expensive of the approved caterers on the list, which is good, but they weren't the cheapest either. I always thought that if the quote came back high, we could just leave the brunch out and just have cake and everyone would be happy, right? wrong. Because our wedding is at 9 in the morning (something we cannot change at this point), people aren't going to really have time to get breakfast before they need to be at the venue. Coupled with the fact that they won't be able to leave until 12 or 1, if we just serve cake, people are going to be ready to eat their own feet by the time they leave. I feel strongly that we need to feed them something (more significant than cake). I haven't decided if it has to be brunch.
My Dress: This part of the budget is not changing for reasons described above, even though my mother has offered to make the dress for me, which would bring the cost down to about $100 (for the fabric). I really don't want my mother making my dress because I am not confident in her sewing ability. It's becoming increasingly difficult to make up other reasons. I can't just tell her, "I don't want you making my dress because I'm afraid you'll mess it up."
At this point you may be thinking that I'm missing a few things, which I might be. But we have chosen not to have a DJ. We are going the ipod route. We are not paying for an officiant because we're having our mutual friend get ordained online so that she can marry us for free.
So in the end I really haven't been able to change much of anything, which is a huge bummer.
We're going to keep at it though and I'll let you know what we come up with.
Please let me know if you have any brilliant ideas.
I have been reading wedding blogs for a few years now, and I always hated it when they'd talk about the budget in a round about sort of way. One of the reasons I really like $2000 dollar budget wedding blog is because they were exact when they broke down the budget and didn't just leave it at percentages (ex we spent 40% of our budget on the food at the reception). They told me dollar for dollar what they spent and where it went. Very useful.
So... I'm going to be as specific as I can be in order to help as many people out there as I can.
In an ideal world we'd like to have our parents contributions cover the cost of the wedding, but that just isn't going to happen.
My parents are giving us $5000 with no strings attached. It doesn't even have to go towards the wedding. We could use it towards a down payment on a house, the honey moon, or we could invest it, whatever (this no strings attached thing is SO nice). And his parents are giving us $1000, also no strings attached. For a total of $6,000, which would be plenty for plenty of people out there. We could probably have worked with that kind of budget if we had really thought about it from the beginning, but at this point it's just too late to change it.
For example: We have already booked our venue, we've paid it in full, and at this point if we were to walk away it would cost us $500 (which I guess in the grand scheme of things isn't that much, but still!). Our venue requires that any food or beverage (except the cake) has to be provided by an approved caterer. And because the venue also requires us to hire a security person from them (ie someone who will be there watching us the whole day), we can't just fib and bring in our own bottled water and drinks. Big bummer. So we contacted all of the approved caterers on the list and found one that would met our needs. A brunch for 40 people that includes made to order crepes (with strawberries, bananas, and nutella), sausage, & fresh fruit is $16.98 a person. not bad right? well then we have to add the drinks. We're going to be serving coffee, orange juice, champagne and sparkling apple cider. I've been looking this part over and I think we're going to drop the champagne. Because we're getting married in IL, they're charging us $3.95 a person for a liquor license, which just doesn't seem worth it for champagne. Neither one of our families drink very much, if at all, so I doubt anyone will miss it. Plus we're having a dinner party the night before and there will be booze there. Anyway...
Back to the brunch. We found out that if we were going to rent table, chairs, linens and the like from an outside rental service they were going to charge us $600 to deliver because it's a holiday weekend AND it's a Sunday. Bad news bears. So we decided to have the caterer include these things in the quote. We will have plain white linens, simple wooden folding chairs, a couple of extra tables and all of the service ware that they would need.
Their quote came back at $2900 which includes labor, delivery and set up. The only thing that's left out is tip and taxes. This may not be such a bad deal if we were only having a brunch, but like I said we were planning on having the major meal and celebration the night before. Combine the dinner the night before and the brunch after the wedding and we're up to $8,000 right there (including taxes and tips on both ends), which is just unacceptable.
The venue is $1411.50, which includes everything from taxes to permit fees to insurance and security service. We have the space from 7 am to 2 pm.
$8,000 + $1,411.50 = $9,441.50 for food, rentals and location fees
This does not include...
$100 for cake from wholefoods
$500 for my dress
$500 for his suit
$1,500 for photographer
$250 for decor
$200 for flowers
$500 for transportation (I'll explain why I cannot leave this out)
$50 for favors
$150 for all paper goods including invites, save the dates, and programs
=$3,750
$9,441.50 + $3,750 = $13,191.50
Definitely not acceptable for us. There are a lot of people out there that would be absolutely thrilled if they spent under $15,000 for their wedding, but I am not one of them. For a while I could almost justify it until I started thinking of it like this.
If you divide $13,191.50 by the number of guest that we plan on having (40) you get $329,79 a person.
I looked up the average cost of a wedding in Chicago and it said anything from $17,000 to $28,000. So even there, I'm under budget, until you realize that I'm only having 40 people! I couldn't find the average number of people attending a wedding, but it has to be more than 40 people. I'm going to guess around 150. If you take the median of the average cost of a wedding in Chicago ($22,500) and divide it by 150 people, you would be spending $150 a person. Less than HALF of what we could spend if we followed our budget. Even if we lowered the average number of people to 100, they're still only spending $225 a person for the wedding which is still significantly less than us.
After these calculations I realized that we needed to slash our budget in order to justify the money we're spending on this event.
I started looking at all the things that we have listed and prioritized them.
But I took some things off the list because they have already been purchased.
-the venue
-the decor
-the paper (almost)
#1, My dress. I'm sorry but I LOVE my dress and I'll be damned if I could ever find a dress I like as much for less money. Plus it's going to be 100% cotton, which will allow me to possibly dye the dress and wear it many more times.
#2, Brunch.
#3, Dinner.
#4, The photographer. I blame this on my art background. I will not be happy with a mediocre wedding photographer. I thought briefly about having the guest take their own pictures with disposable cameras and leaving our digital camera with someone who would could take casual pictures though out the night, but again, I just can't handle the idea of leaving something I felt so strongly about up to people who had no experience taking pictures. I'm sure some of the photos would have been amazing and a lot of them would have been cute, but I'm sure many important moments would have been missed.
#5, Transportation. The only thing I didn't like about the venue we picked is that it doesn't have nearby parking. The field house is set back from the road and the only way you can get there is on a bike path. The closest lot is a good 5 or 6 minute walk, which isn't a big deal for us, or our friends, but we had to keep in mind that his grandparents are planning on attending and one of them in particular has incredibly bad knees. And in general, who really wants to walk through potentially muddy walk ways in fancy clothes and high heel shoes to get to a wedding. Not me.
#6 His Suit. we do not want to rent a tux because I feel like If I get to buy something fancy to wear he should get to buy something fancy to wear. And beyond that He'll definitely have a chance to wear a suit again.
#7 Cake. you just can't have a wedding without something sweet to end the day with.
#8 Flowers. If I really had to I could find an alternative to flowers that would be cheaper and probably look just fine, but I am IN LOVE with ranuclus flowers.
#9 Favors. This could easily be cut. I'm planning on having chocolate mustaches on a stick that will serve as props for our photo booth. Cute, delicious, and serving double duty.
Then I started at the bottom of the list and tried to justify cutting it completely. if I couldn't I tried to come up with a cheaper option.
Favors: I'm still undecided on this one. I really like the idea of giving something back to our guests especially since the VAST majority of them will have made a significant financial investment just by getting to Chicago, but who's going to notice if they're not there? probably no one.
Flowers: I have to wait until we're closer to the wedding so that I can really hunt around for good prices on these. My fear is that they are really surging in popularity and by the time we get married they may be out of my price range. I pick them, not only because they are beautiful, but because they are (0r were) cheap, and they last a REALLY long time after being cut. Because I'm going to be doing my own flowers, it made sense to pick something that would last. But it would make even more sense to pick something that isn't living, so that I could make them far in advance. I've been toying around with the idea of making pom pom flowers or fabric flowers. But I still haven't actually made any to see if they look good in real life. Either way I definitely want something in all the blue vases I bought to go on the table. We will not be eliminating this part of the budget.
Cake: I may end up making the cake from scratch. We would have planned on this the whole time, but it was unclear how cumbersome it would be to transport 6 or 8 cakes from milwaukee to chicago. So we took a tip from $2000 wedding and decided to go with whole foods. This could easily change once we figure out how much space we'll end up having in the car. We can always make two trips (but would it be worth it after paying gas?). We will not be eliminating this part from the budget.
His Suit: We may have already cut the cost of this one. He's found a place online that makes custom suits for less than $500. I cannot for the life of me remember if it's $250 or $450. I'll get back to you on this. If it really comes down to it, we would not be apposed to having him rent a suit for aprox. $100. But he really doesn't have anything that he already owns that would be appropriate for the event. We will not be eliminating this part from the budget.
Transportation: Like I said before, we cannot eliminate this from the budget, but I'm definitely going to be shopping around in order to get it as cheap as possible.
Photographer: We cannot eliminate this from the budget. I shopped around a lot before I finally landed on the the photographer we ended up picking. I had to get really creative in order to find a high quality photographer for a moderate price. A girl I knew in college (who i'm friends with on facebook) is dating a man in Nashville that works as a free lance photographer. I noticed his photographs because he takes tons of amazing portraits of the girl I know. All of her facebook pics are breathtaking. I emailed her and got his contact info. Turns out he's done weddings in the past and is looking to do more in the future. Another bonus, the girl's family is from Chicago, so he'd have a free place to stay when he's there, and on top of that he's willing to drive here and charge me the fed rate for gas/mileage. I have absolutely no doubt that the pictures will be amazing. We are not changing this part of the budget.
Dinner: Here's where things get tricky. The dinner we have planned now is going to cost $4,600. that's $115 a person. It's a five star restaurant and it's the only thing about the whole wedding that my boy really picked out. We're both REALLY into food. He absolutely loves this restaurant. It would be easy for us to get our deposit back and book a dinner somewhere else less expensive, but I would feel terrible about leaving the boy with nothing of his own. We will have to think about this long and hard before we make any changes.
Brunch: The caterer we picked wasn't the most expensive of the approved caterers on the list, which is good, but they weren't the cheapest either. I always thought that if the quote came back high, we could just leave the brunch out and just have cake and everyone would be happy, right? wrong. Because our wedding is at 9 in the morning (something we cannot change at this point), people aren't going to really have time to get breakfast before they need to be at the venue. Coupled with the fact that they won't be able to leave until 12 or 1, if we just serve cake, people are going to be ready to eat their own feet by the time they leave. I feel strongly that we need to feed them something (more significant than cake). I haven't decided if it has to be brunch.
My Dress: This part of the budget is not changing for reasons described above, even though my mother has offered to make the dress for me, which would bring the cost down to about $100 (for the fabric). I really don't want my mother making my dress because I am not confident in her sewing ability. It's becoming increasingly difficult to make up other reasons. I can't just tell her, "I don't want you making my dress because I'm afraid you'll mess it up."
At this point you may be thinking that I'm missing a few things, which I might be. But we have chosen not to have a DJ. We are going the ipod route. We are not paying for an officiant because we're having our mutual friend get ordained online so that she can marry us for free.
So in the end I really haven't been able to change much of anything, which is a huge bummer.
We're going to keep at it though and I'll let you know what we come up with.
Please let me know if you have any brilliant ideas.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The invites (so far)
Because I work at michaels I am always looking for a deal. I found the Cosmos set of invites from the Martha Stewart collection on clearance for $9.99. On top of that, I ended up using a 50% coupon and wound up getting 40 invites with rsvp card and envelopes for $5.00! Outstanding deal. Because I saved so much money on the invite set I don't feel bad about only using the pretty jacket part. I wasn't a huge fan of the whole white on white thing going, so I decided that I would get some inserts from cards and pockets. I ordered a sample of their vertigo style pocket insert along with several color swatches. The inserts start at 98 cents each, which I can swing because the jackets wound up being 12 cents each. I can still use the actual invitation that came with the set because it's a standard a-7 flat card. And because it's a martha stewart set, they have templates available on their website to help me set up the text in word and print them out correctly.
Right now I'm leaning towards a nice aquamarine colored insert. I'm looking online (because we don't have any at michaels) for some green paper with tiny white polka dots to use as an accent paper, but I'm not having any luck. Does anyone know a good line source for paper/card stock?
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Decorations
I will link these up when I get home.We're going to have two 18 foot tables that will each seat 18 people (hopefully we'll only have 36 people!)
I got a Martha Stewart blue tissue pom pom kit (pictured above) on clearance for $5.99, along with the paper jackets for our invites (I'll talk about that on the next post). Working at a craft store really does have it's perks. Especially when you're the one who marks everything down to clearance. First come first serve baby!
I have about thirty 8 inch paper lanterns (49 cents each on clearance) that I'm thinking of hanging everywhere along with the pomp poms and some little wire bird cages. I've tested the idea of gluing colored tissue paper to the outside of them so that they wouldn't be so white, and it actually worked. Now the questions is whether or not I actually have the time and patience to do it...
I would love to have cascades of paper circles (pictured above), but again, I'm not sure I have the patience. It sure would look pretty!
We Have two huge blue/teal glass vases for the two long tables at the brunch along with several more smaller vases in varying colors of blue. We bought a dozen or so vintage green and clear glass goblets , like the ones pictured, from goodwill. The plan was to put some glass rock type things (which I got from work) in the bottom of them fill them with water and then float a candle in each one. But now that we're having a brunch wedding I'm not sure if it would be worth it to have candles.
Unfortunately I'm not lucky enough to have a collection of jadeite dinnerware sets. But if I was, I'd use it all! Jadeite is probably my favorite thing in the whole wide world.
I've also collected milk glass "compote" bowls of varying sizes. Some of them are large enough that they're probably considered punch bowls.
I'm not sure what i'm going to put in them because They'd take a lot of flowers to fill (which I don't really have the budget for). The boy likes the idea of putting moss in there, but moss seems pricey too. Any suggestions? I might end up using them for sweets and favors.The table linens will most likely be a solid color blue of some kind. If I find something good to use as an over lay I'll do that, but if not, I'm planning on getting a roll of kraft paper and using it as a table runner.
Interesting
The day after I posted about the friend who wouldn't respond to my emails, I get a call from her... I have told no one, except the boy, about this blog, and when you google my name, it doesn't show up in the first 500 results. I wonder if she read it?
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