Jacquie, lawyer & Carlos, lawyer
One sentence sum-up of the wedding vibe: Bohemian Mexico in Northern California.
Planned Budget: $5,000
Actual Budget: $6,000
Number of Guests: 57
A small wedding with under fifty guests for two Mexican Americans with enormous families you ask? Some would say it’s impossible, unless you tick off almost one hundred and fifty near and dear family members. My response? “Well, we are paying for this ourselves, so please forgive us you are not invited.” Now, that is not exactly how it happened, but it gives you the gist. When you are paying for your nuptials yourself, many tough decisions have to be made. Our goal was to throw our dream (albeit practical) wedding, without taking on a pile of credit card debt and endless headaches.
The original budget started at $4,500–$5,000 but it all hinged on finding the perfect venues. After I found a non-traditional small venue in Sacramento for our reception, it started falling into place. It was a relatively new venue that hadn’t hosted many weddings in the past, but we took a chance (the first of many), and the final cost of the reception venue came out to $665! Yes, really! When it came to the ceremony venue a friend suggested the State Capitol, which had multiple areas that could be reserved by permit for FREE—yes FREE. We reserved two areas (just in case of weather problems) and thankfully, ended up having our ceremony under the shaded trees of the State Capitol’s Old Rose Garden. With our reception and ceremony locations pinned down, the rest was actually fun with a little help from our friends and Pinterest, of course!
After finding the perfect venues we set a guest list of forty-eight. It actually ended up at fifty-seven because everyone we invited came! I was expecting five to ten people would decline since our wedding was taking place in Northern California, but I was wrong. In the end, we went from forty-eight to fifty-seven guests but everything worked out thanks to an awesome caterer.
Our wedding was everything I could have dreamed of and more because it was all about family and love.
Where we allocated the most funds
Photography and music. I came across the wonderful Danielle Hatcher online, and she not only had beautiful photos in the timeless style I was looking for, but she was a wonderful person as well. We met for coffee and I looked at her book and was blown away with her talent. She also was able to offer a four-hour package for a very reasonable $1,200 and even offered to throw in an extra hour for free (I love her). I trusted that she would do a great job, and I was so right!
For the music, our wonderful friend (and bridesmaid) had a good relationship with a local San Francisco DJ who, as a favor to her, agreed to DJ our entire reception for only $800! As a wedding gift, our generous friend agreed to pay him $300 as well as his hotel room in Sacramento and we paid the remaining $500. He was wonderful, and so is she!
Where we allocated the least funds
Decor and clothes. For decor, I went with a specific theme: Bohemian Mexico, because it allowed me to celebrate our culture without the obvious piñata and maracas imagery that sometimes gets interpreted as “Mexican.” I ordered custom-made white papel picado from Mexico and ordered custom-made goody bags from Etsy and filled them with my favorite childhood candy. Our gorgeous embroidered table runners were purchased from Santee Alley in Downtown LA for a mere seven dollars each, and my sisters and mother gifted me five or six beautiful tablecloths and lace runners. I scouted most of my decor from local vintage stores, and candles, succulents, and a lot of gold spray paint tied everything together nicely. For flowers, my talented sisters made a farmers’ market run the morning of the wedding and handmade all of my floral arrangements including my flower crown, my bouquet, and the boutonnières with a budget of only seventy-five dollars. The end product was better than I ever could have expected.
My dress was a sheer lace Miguelina creation that cost me $550. My veil was a custom Etsy order that came out to under thirty-five dollars. The shoes were a bit of a splurge from Anthropologie and came in around $220 (on sale). The jewelry was gifted J.Crew and my hair and makeup were done by the talented Evelyn at Sacramento’s Colour Bar for $250. I saved money by skipping the hair and makeup trial and trusted in Evelyn’s talent. (I was right to do so!) My husband rented his tux from the Men’s Warehouse Vera Wang Black collection and wore his own shoes.
Our maids wore their own pink dress of choice and a flower in their hair and the groomsmen wore grey suits and navy ties. I liked that nothing really matched, but yet somehow kind of did—and they all looked absolutely gorgeous.
What was totally worth it
Taking a chance. A lot of chances, really. When it came to our caterer, our awesome friends recommended a local woman who catered delicious Mexican carnitas, and we booked her without ever trying her food. (Again, this involved A LOT of trust!) She made amazing carnitas, and because my husband and I are vegetarians–she also made a delicious vegetarian option: cheese enchiladas! Our food was so GOOD and many guests got up for seconds. The total cost for the caterer was only $550.
We spent an additional seventy dollars on a large order of local ceviche, which was gobbled up in minutes. For our cake, we ordered a small white cake and delicious pies from Freeport Bakery for a total of eighty-three dollars.
The wine we bought over time. We chose local wineries like Bogle Winery and Delicato, and because we bought it in bulk and used our friends’ membership discounts, the total cost for forty-eight bottles came out to under $300. For beer we went to Costco and bought large whisky bottles, which we transferred into nice vintage decanters in our “whisky and cigar lounge.” The cigars were purchased online for sixty dollars.
Instead of Champagne we chose to go with a tasty Prosecco from Costco for our toast. (About ninety-six bucks for a case.)
What was totally not worth it
Stressing over setup and cleanup. I did not have a wedding planner, but my bridesmaids, friends, and family were so amazing and made it all come together beautifully. I owe them BIG.
A few things that helped us along the way
Ask—no—BEG for help when you need it. As a true type-A planning freak, I tend to take way too many things on and am afraid to ask for help when I get overwhelmed. I learned to trust in my family and friends and trust that everything would work out in the end, and it did!
My best practical advice for my planning self
Just because your vendor doesn’t have hundreds of reviews or a fancy website, doesn’t mean you can’t get quality work from them. Word of mouth and recommendations are key here. The rest comes down to trust, getting everything in writing (the lawyer in me), and a little bit of luck.
Favorite thing about the wedding
Our ceremony. We chose a tree-covered area in the Capitol’s Old Rose Gardens, which was beautiful, quiet, and green. We wrote our own vows, chose our own music, and our mutual best friend, who introduced us, officiated the wedding. My husband and our wedding party walked in to “La Vie en Rose” by Louis Armstrong, and I walked down the aisle with my dad to the acoustic version of “Hysteric” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We danced out of the ceremony to the “Two of Us” by the Beatles, and it was truly magical. At one point, I remember looking around at our guests during our ceremony and they were all in tears. My husband cried during his vows, which made me cry. It was so amazingly beautiful and I don’t think anything could have made me happier than that moment.
Two days later we flew out to Spain and Portugal for a two-week honeymoon and had the time of our lives.
Other Notes
As an added surprise we wanted our guest to enjoy one of our favorite local bars in East Sacramento, Bonn Lair. It was right next to our reception venue so we thought the timing could work out if we used it as our “cocktail hour” in between our ceremony and reception. We had no idea how it would turn out but decided to do it anyway.
The day before the wedding my husband stopped by the bar and told them we were interested in hosting thirty or forty people for an hour and a half on Saturday afternoon. They said no problem and the next day we dropped off our credit card and hoped for the best.
The day of our wedding was really hot so we were excited for the bar hour after the ceremony. We put our trusted friends in charge of overseeing the guests’ transition from the ceremony to the bar and used some of that time to get in some amazing solo shots with our photographer in the beautiful Capitol Park. My husband and I arrived at the bar at around 6:30 and were thrilled to see our guests having an amazing time. The owner of the bar was so sweet and made our party feel so at home. They said my husband’s and my drinks were free for the rest of the night! (How awesome was that?) And in the end the total bar tab was only $200. (Best $200 we ever spent!) Best of all, our guests all thought we were pretty cool for having our cocktail hour at our favorite bar. Best idea ever.
