Posts Tagged ‘Budget Wedding’

Feb 2012

I’m engaged! Hurrah! It’s all very exciting. We originally looked into the BIG wedding day—and by BIG, I mainly mean expensive! We sat down, talked about it, and decided we didn’t want or need this. It was way too much money. We didn’t want to take a loan out for it. We didn’t want to be saving for the next two plus years for it. We just want to be married. We just want to have fun.

Then, I read about cocktail receptions and came up with an idea. We decided we really want to do a Sunday afternoon, finger food type of affair. We found a cool bar in town which has a rooftop area we can rent. We plan on having finger food, cupcakes and drinks and a lot of all of it! We’re going to over-order slightly to make sure no one goes hungry. And no one eats dinner at 3pm on a Sunday, anyway, right? However, people are giving me a hard time. No sit-down meal? Shocking! No first dance?! Noooo!

We haven’t booked anything yet. I’m quite put off by people’s reactions. Whenever I mention my idea I get that look. That, “Ohhh…” like I am somehow cheaping out on them. I’ve even been told I can’t expect gifts if I don’t provide a meal! (It’s not about gifts!)

So now I’m stuck. Should I proceed with my cheaper, finger food wedding? Or throw the towel in?

-Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

A wedding invitation is not a dinner invitation. Let’s just stop that train right there. The idea that a “traditional” wedding equals a steak dinner and open bar is a fairly new concept—just ask your grandparents! I bet more often than not, they served cake and punch. There’s no thesaurus anywhere that lists “wedding” and “dinner” as synonyms. Also? There is no meal-for-gift exchange program going on. Think about it— dropping a hundred dollars on a plated chicken marsala for your Cousin Charlie isn’t exactly the easiest way to score some dish towels, is it? Not really.

You’re inviting your friends and family to celebrate your wedding. Not to have family dinner. Not to buy you things. If you choose to give them some baked ziti, awesome! If they choose to bring a blender wrapped in tissue paper, terrific! Neither of those things—the meal OR the gift—are requirements for a celebration of marriage. AT ALL.

Of course, guests can be jerks. Weddings don’t magically make everyone behave like generous and civilized individuals. There may be a few folks who will hear that there won’t be dinner, turn on a heel, and go return that awesome rubber spatula giftset out of spite. Harumph. But, as you said yourself, the gifts aren’t the point. So who cares?

You’re actually in very good company. Not only were so many weddings from previous generations comprised of just snacks or cake, but the daytime wedding is a bit of a trend among APW staff. Meg, Alyssa, Emily, and Kate all had daytime receptions, and at my own Sunday afternoon wedding, we served just dessert and champagne (yum). As Meg outlined after her own wedding, there are definite pluses to having a daytime wedding, and as I’ve written previously, there are positives to appetizer reception. The format is a little more free form, which can encourage guests to mingle and chat and can also allow for a flexible itinerary. Dances! Bouquet tosses! Those things can still happen—but only if you want them to—and according to your own prerogative. Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Skipping the Meal

Posted in: Ask Team Practical | 198 Comments »

Oct 2011

Wedding Graduates: Heidi & David

Today’s wedding is, in some ways, the classic APW wedding. It’s the marriage of two artists, who made almost everything for their limited budget low-key wedding. It proves that you can do it. No matter what your circumstances are, you can have an amazing wedding. But it’s funny. What you’ll really take away from this wedding is that it’s not the details that matter, even if the details are crafty and clever. What really matters is people celebrating you, seven-year-olds doing the hokey pokey, and pure joy. So here is Heidi of Long Live Love Designs, telling her story.

After we got engaged we knew a few things: we would be paying for everything, we would be on an very limited budget (um hello, we are both artists—very limited budget, maybe $4000 for everything, soup to nuts) and we wanted the wedding to not only be a celebration of us but also a celebration for everyone that we wanted to include in our day.

David and I are both originally from Ohio, but we met and fell in love in New York City. In our previous lives we had both adamantly claimed that we would never get married, and then we met and there wasn’t any reason not to.

We love NYC, but we knew that it would just be too pricey for us to have our wedding there. We decided to have it in our home state to minimize both costs and cost of travel for family/friends. Neither of us really felt the necessity to have a church wedding (which was sad for my family). Both of us really envisioned ourselves outside, near water, and having a melding of bonfire/BBQ/festival/relaxing vacation-y style wedding. We found a little inn—a small bed & breakfast right in the middle of Lake Erie. Not only was it on an island (what’s up destination wedding with a Midwest flair) but it would also mean a couple of things: people would be taking a ferry to get to the island (no vehicles…just bike rentals and golf carts), so there would be a real sense of community since you’d have to swim to leave or have an accurate ferry schedule (which were in short supply). Plus, being on an island means you must relax.

We did a lot of work—a lot of work. We made a painting to incorporate into the invites, made all the invites, and made basically everything for the wedding (decorations, favors, bouquets, boutonnieres, hair accessories). We also made the food (with lots of help from family and friends). Our family made all the desserts and manned the grill to make tons of delicious Ohio style foods.

The girls and I did our own hair and makeup. We made the playlists. We had one of my bridesmaids sing our first song (a wonderfully lovely version of Buckley’s “Hallelujah”). We wrote our vows and picked out some lovely poetry. A great friend of mine, Sara Streit, did our wedding photography in exchange for me designing her photography branding. D’s mom made my dress and my flower girl dresses. We planned and planned and drank a lot of wine and we made it happen.

Planning a wedding from far away is hard. Planning it on a super limited budget while working fourteen hour days is even harder. But I have to say this: without the crazy love and support my husband and I have for one another, we could have never done it. Not only could we have never done it, but it wouldn’t have been worth it. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Heidi & David

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 20 Comments »

Oct 2011

Wedding Graduates: Sarah & Marcus

Today’s Wedding Graduate post is especially moving because it’s a Wedding Graduate post and a Wedding Graduate Returns post all in one. We’ve been in the process of cleaning out our Wedding Graduate archives (so much brilliant stuff in there), and following up with people on what has happened since they wrote their posts. Sarah‘s post talks about all the work they did to create a green wedding, and about how in the end, what really deeply mattered were the people there loving them. In the past year, their lives have changed enormously (more at the end of the post!), and it’s that tremendous sense of love celebrated on their wedding day that acts as an anchor for what came next.

My husband (gah!) and I live in New Zealand. For those who aren’t quite sure where that is—and that is fine, there aren’t that many of us down here—it is south east of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean. We got married on the 3rd of April on a remote beach called Wai iti in Taranaki. Taranaki is where I grew up and it’s where all my family lives, too. It has this great wild coast of beaches with high cliffs and slapping seas. It is beautiful there, and it’s where we wanted to get married from the start.

Our wedding was a truly magical weekend at the beach, filled with love, wonderful family and friends, fun and games, and lots and lots of very special moments. When we first started planning, Marcus and I brainstormed together everything we wanted our wedding to be. We stuck our brainstorms on the wall in the office and they framed our approach to the weekend. While admittedly, in the end, we did have smack loads of help and luck, I think focusing from the start on what made sense to us, and doing it, made it the epic occasion that it was.

Right from the beginning, it was paramount to us that we got married in a sustainable way—both for the environment and for our own wallets. We are really into being low impact in our lives, and it was important that our wedding day reflected that. It was quite the challenge, but we relished trying to put it all together without using too many of the Earth’s resources.

We bought a great deal second hand. I did get mildly obsessed by charity shops as I hunted for vintage fabrics (to be sewn into tablecloths) and mismatched cut glass vases. We not only went second-hand, but we also up-cycled things that you might otherwise throw out. My friends and I had a ‘Wedding Bee’ at our house to create decorations. Actually it was less a ‘Wedding Bee’ and more a small sweat shop as we furiously made all the place names and then fifty tin can lanterns out of recycled cans. It was a great girls night in.

Though a word of warning: if you are thinking about making tin can lanterns, wine, hammers and nails are not a good mix! Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Sarah & Marcus

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 36 Comments »

Oct 2011

How To: Luminaria with Kelly Wilkinson

Remember when I wrote that post about going dancing? (Of course you do!) Well, one of the people I went dancing with is Kelly Wilkinson. Kelly is an NPR reporter here in the Bay Area (David is always saying, “I can’t believe you know Kelly Wilkinson, OH MY GOD,” because he has that kind of relationship to NPR), but she’s also an excellent crafter who writes at Make Grow Gather. She has a soft spot in her heart for us lazy girls, too. So I’m thrilled to announce that she has a book out called, Weekend Handmade, which is full of beautifully styled super easy projects, perfect for your kind-of-lazy-DIY-ish-wedding. Kelly has created a whole step-by-step tutorial just for us for making easy (seriously, I could do them, and I’m not a crafter) luminarias. She makes them with greenery, but you could clearly go crazy on design choices here. Here is Kelly:

I promise, you don’t need to think of yourself as crafty to whip up these lanterns. If you know how to measure, cut, and iron, you can make these. And you should! The most time consuming part is collecting flowers and greenery to press and waiting until they dry nice and flat. Once the lanterns are made, they give off a soft, gauzy light from the fused waxed paper.

Materials:

Flowers and greenery

Heavy book

Paper towels

Waxed paper

Ruler

Craft knife (like an X-Acto)

Cutting board or self-healing cutting mat

Iron

Ironing board or cloth for pressing

Washi tape (I buy mine here)

Press Flowers and Greenery

1. Collect leaves, flowers and foliage, keeping in mind that delicate, thin leaves and petals will dry faster than thicker specimens. Put flowers, etc. in between two paper towels and place inside a heavy book to dry.

Measure and Cut Waxed Paper

2. Measure and cut four 4 ½ x 9 inch rectangles. You can adjust and make these any size you want, but I’m partial to a nice-sized cube, which makes the math easy. If you adjust, cut the rectangles twice as long as they are high, so they fold into a square.

Make Panels

3. Fold the waxed paper rectangle in half to make a square. Open square, place flower or greenery inside. (photo #2) Close the square so the flower is sandwiched between the two layers of waxed paper. Continue reading How To: Luminaria with Kelly Wilkinson

Posted in: How To | 30 Comments »

Sep 2011

Wedding Graduates: Michelle & Tom

Today I’m delighted to introduce wedding grad Michelle and her beautiful DIY Pennsylvania wedding. She wore her mother’s wedding dress (with some modifications), figured out how to make her wedding her own, and dealt with a runaway vendor (by hauling him to court and winning… BAM!). To make this wedding graduate post even richer, the photos were taken by APW sponsor Kristy Rowe of Moodeous Photography, who is an exceptional person and photographer (Denver ladies, take notice!), but also happens to be one of the bride’s best friends. She notes that she shot this wedding ages ago, but it’s no less lovely for that. So dig in, and enjoy.

I found the planning process overwhelming. My husband Tom and I struggled to balance our decisions with what felt comfortable to us, and what we felt was best for all the family and friends involved. Some people say to just be true to what you want, since it’s your day, but Tom and I both felt strongly that at its core, a wedding is about celebrating family.

We both dislike being the center of attention and we are very laid back. All we knew was no church wedding. So after a lot of agonizing over destination weddings and endless research, we decided that what felt right (even though it was bigger than what we wanted) was doing a more traditional wedding in Pennsylvania, near my childhood home and family. All in all, it took us about three months to figure it out and just get a date booked.

After we booked a day at the Pearl S. Buck House, a lot of the other decisions seemed much smaller and easier to make. I wore my mother’s dress and we worked with a seamstress to alter it. Photos were shot by my best friend Kristy Rowe of Moodeous Photography (excellent Denver APW sponsor) plus a second shooter found on craigslist to shoot the reception so she wasn’t working the whole time. I am a graphic designer and really enjoyed the chance to be in creative control of designing the invites and other paper items. Printing was gifted by an old family friend. Flowers were done with a local grower. My family and I baked the cake. While we wanted to write our own vows for the ceremony, we chose a nondenominational minister who created the ceremony, which felt more comfortable to us.

We tried to identify the priority areas and spend the bulk of our budget there. Having those priorities made it much easier to focus on the big picture stuff, while using resources other than money on some of the less important things.

We hit a major bump four months before the wedding when we found out that our caterer had gone out of business, taking our deposit and first payment with him. We lost a lot of money and it made an already financially stressful situation even worse. It made for a horrible month of scrambling around trying to find someone new and trying to rework our numbers. It’s very hard to continue to trust your gut and ability to make decisions when something like that happens. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Michelle & Tom

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 18 Comments »

Sep 2011

Wedding Graduates: Jessica & Matt

It’s hard for me to not fall deeply in love with a wedding in a half-finished tobacco warehouse, where the couple served Indian food (why doesn’t everyone do this?), and where the pictures are gorgeous. But that’s not the kicker on this Wedding Graduate post. The kicker is that Jessica is smart, and her advice is so dead-on, that it’s hard not to fall head over heels in love with the whole thing…

Wedding planning opens the floodgates for advice… advice from Mom, Grandma, sisters, soon-to-be family, long-lost family, good friends, work friends, frenemies, colleagues, ladies at the grocery store, bloggers, bloggees, and just about anyone else out there. It’s exhausting. And, you know what, most of it can (and perhaps should) be ignored. So, as I am about to do some advising of my own, please—I invite you—to make your own path. Don’t do everything I say; it’s your wedding—for you, your partner, and your newly joined families and dear ones. Just do what feels right and have confidence in your vision.

Early in our planning, I read a post on APW in which a commenter said, “The theme of our wedding is marriage.” Matt and I loved that; we wanted something that felt inclusive, authentic, and bursting with love, without excessive pageantry or unmanageable expense. And, though certainly our marriage was the reason for the day, we would say that the “theme” of our wedding was community. As we transitioned from sort-of-adults (i.e. grad students) to adults-full-stop, it was our desire to use our wedding weekend as a way to express our gratitude to all of the family, friends, mentors, and advisers without whose support we would not be even half of what we are. We wanted all of these dear people to feel welcomed, appreciated, and loved… and we wanted them to have a blast. That’s a tall order…

What did we learn planning a community wedding on a small budget, while simultaneously starting our first job (Matt), graduating from medical school (Jessica), and buying a house? Well…

Stop Worrying About Whether Your Guests Will “Get It.” I worried and worried throughout our planning that our guests would not “understand” our wedding. What does that even mean? Well, I worried that they wouldn’t be able to find our ceremony venue (a still-being-renovated downtown warehouse), that they wouldn’t “get” the Indian food that we served at the reception (we love spicy things and Indian catering was affordable); I worried that they would wonder why our secular ceremony didn’t look like all the other wedding ceremonies they remembered, and that they would begrudge us our cake table, since we didn’t have a true “wedding cake,” etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.

On the day of the wedding, I kept worrying. I worried that guests couldn’t hear our officiant’s gorgeous words during the ceremony; I worried that more people weren’t dancing; I worried that no one understood the toast that I thought was so heartwarming.

And, fact of the matter is, that worry pulled me from the moment. It brought stress to an otherwise blissful night. And—perhaps worst of all—it was unfounded. Numerous unsolicited comments in the days and weeks after the wedding showed me that my worries were not only off-the-mark, but in fact totally unnecessary. Our guests “got” it; they understood.

What I realize now is that, I didn’t give my guests enough credit. These are “our people.” They know us and they recognized and appreciated our sensibilities all over this wedding. So, when you plan your wedding, know this: these are your wedding guests—people you know well and love. They’ll “get it.” You have my word on that. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Jessica & Matt

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 28 Comments »