Stacy, Communications Specialist & Adam, Editor
One sentence sum-up of the wedding vibe: A fun, colorful, community-centered church wedding and fiesta
Planned Budget: We, uh, didn’t really set one. We just rolled with it.
Actual Budget: $14,000
Number of Guests: 80
Where we allocated the most funds
Photography and wedding rings. Both of us really wanted to find a fantastic photographer, and we sure did! Raven was wonderful, and she traveled all the way to Ohio from Atlanta twice for us: first for our engagement photos, where she patiently spent a whole afternoon driving to different locations with us, and then for our rehearsal dinner and wedding day. Raven asks loads of questions about all of your plans so she can really get to know you, which is wonderful. By the time our wedding rolled around, we felt like her friends, which puts everyone at ease.
My engagement ring is an antique with a beautiful curve to it, so finding a wedding band that would fit up next to it was impossible. So we decided to have both of our rings custom made to match. Mine fits against my engagement ring perfectly, and Adam’s is engraved to match the carving on the band of my rings.
Where we allocated the least funds
Our wedding ceremony site, officiant, and musicians were all free because we’re members of the church. It was so meaningful to us to have our dear friends playing the music, singing, and presiding over our ceremony. We also didn’t have to pay to have our programs printed because the church secretary offered to do it for us. We just provided the paper, the text, and the cover art.
What was totally worth it
My friends Lyndsey and Brandi and I spent nearly every Sunday afternoon for several months making all of those strands of tissue paper fringe, and they looked just as great as we’d hoped! Our church congregation even left them up in the sanctuary all summer.
We also spent a lot of time planning our ceremony. We are church folks: I sing in the choir and am chair of the worship committee and the thrift store committee, and Adam is chair of trustees, which is the committee that takes care of the very old church building. We wanted our wedding to reflect our commitment to each other and to our church community. Maynard Avenue United Methodist Church is a part of the Reconciling Ministries Network, which is the LGBT affirming organization of the United Methodist Church, so we were very thoughtful about choosing things that would reflect our belief in marriage equality. The ceremony included a ring warming, where our wedding rings were sent around the sanctuary so that each person could hold them for a moment and pray or just direct their good vibes into them.
Instead of having our families give us away, we asked for the whole crowd to give a big cheer in support of our marriage. Maynard folks are pretty rowdy, so I knew it would be boisterous and full of love. My bridesmaids took that moment to do the wave with their bouquets, which was awesome. Every song and reading was something that still brings tears to my eyes. After we said the vows we’d written for each other, our first act as a married couple was to serve communion to the congregation. Every moment of the ceremony was a perfect reflection of who we are and who we want to be.
Lastly, the decision to have catering done by Chile Verde Cafe, a local New Mexican restaurant, was brilliant. It was the inspiration for our whole fiesta theme. We still hear about how amazing the food and the margaritas were. We hired one of their bartenders, they brought their house-made margarita mix, and we provided the booze. Best margaritas in the city.
What was totally not worth it
We chose the location for our reception because we wanted to be able to bring in whatever food we wanted and buy our own booze. The Optimist Lodge (how perfect is that for a wedding reception location name?) at Hoover YMCA Park has a lot of character, but we had to seat some people in the loft because there wasn’t enough room on the floor. The building wasn’t heated or air-conditioned, so even though the temperatures were pretty mild that day, it still got pretty warm in that loft. A lot of the people who were seated up there ended up coming downstairs and squeezing in at other tables or going outside to a picnic table. We put the board game table up there, too, but only one table of guests played anything. If we had to do it again, we probably would pick a different location. It did look beautiful, though!
A few things that helped us along the way
We got so much help from our friends. In addition to all the help I had with making the tissue paper fringe, my friends Jen and Brandi made all of the wedding desserts from scratch: eighty cupcakes and six pies. We borrowed white Christmas lights from people instead of buying new ones. We bought our flowers in bulk from a local flower farm, and the day before the wedding, a bunch of people met me at the church and helped put together bouquets, boutonnières, corsages, and centerpieces. On the day of the wedding, since the reception site was half an hour from the church, I didn’t have time to go help with decorating. Brandi graciously agreed to be the day-of coordinator and oversee all of the reception site set up (and I’ll mention that she was five months pregnant!) once I assured her that I trusted her one hundred percent. I didn’t get to see it AT ALL until we arrived at the reception after the wedding, but it was better than I’d even imagined. Instead of hiring a DJ, we created a playlist of songs people requested on their RSVP cards, mixed with some of our own choices. Then our friend Lyndsey, who is the most charming, sparkly person we know, acted as emcee (though we really should have asked someone who wasn’t also in the wedding party to tag team with her, but more on that later). Once we left the reception, our family and friends cleaned up the lodge and broke down all the tables. We were so grateful for every single person.
My best practical advice for my planning self
When you find out that Chile Verde’s event planner is due to have a baby the week before the wedding, insist that she loop another person into your plans early. She ended up having the baby a few days before, and the guy we dealt with had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. We ended up spending a lot of time on the phone answering questions the regular planner knew, and some things didn’t go as planned at the reception. It would have been nice to eliminate that confusion.
Although Lyndsey is, indeed, the most charming, sparkly person you know, it’s a good idea to find another person to tag-team the DJ duties. Since Lyndsey was in the wedding party, she didn’t arrive at the reception when most of the guests did, and no one else knew how to operate the MP3 player. It could have gone better.
Having six flower girls is crazy, but the kind of crazy that comes with great pictures, kid art, and lots of fun dancing at the reception. Giving them baskets with moss stuck to them was probably not a good plan, though. They made a huge mess on the sanctuary floor and stressed out their poor parents, who were worried their children would ruin everything. It was all fine, though.
Favorite thing about the wedding
It’s been a year and a half since our wedding. Looking back, my favorite thing is knowing that I was pregnant but didn’t know it yet. I look at myself in all those pictures and think, “That woman is in for the surprise of her life in about ten days.” We welcomed our son, Henson, at the end of January.
