Sara, Exhibition Manager and MBA candidate & Matt, Paralegal and law student
One sentence sum-up of the wedding vibe: My Big Fat Jewish Wedding meets the final scene from Meet Joe Black (minus the sadness, death, and fireworks).
Planned Budget: $25,000
Actual Budget: $30,000
Number of Guests: 150
Where we allocated the most funds
Food and rentals. We held the wedding in my hometown and it was catered by the restaurant where my family has always celebrated special occasions. It’s a formal place, but my memories of it are warm and inviting, so I was trying for the same feel. Eventually I landed on the idea of doing a different style of service for each course, which seemed to achieve that goal. The salad was elegantly plated, the main courses were served family style to encourage conversation, and the dessert was a buffet (because everyone loves a dessert buffet).
Wine and alcohol. If our wedding had a theme, it was “Lots of Good Booze.” My dad had been gathering wine for years, mostly because it’s his thing and it provided the perfect excuse for regular trips to Napa. He loved going from table to table encouraging people to taste and telling them the stories behind each bottle. We also served signature cocktails between the ceremony and reception (Dark and Stormies for Matt and something using Hangar One Mandarin Blossom—they used blossoms from Lindcove Ranch, a family friend’s local farm—for me) and then a whiskey bar and cigars with dessert.
Where we allocated the least funds
I had a complicated relationship with paper. Printing menus was important, as was having a fancy letterpress invitation suite. At the same time, I struggled with the amount of waste created by an event on this scale and couldn’t justify printing programs for our fifteen-minute ceremony. I also recycled our RSVP cards to serve as a “guest book.” We put the returned cards on the tables and asked guests to write a note or piece of advice on the back. The front of the cards said “I promise to dance if you play ______,” which will be fun to revisit in twenty years.
What was totally worth it
Maddie was the first vendor I hired and one of the few decisions I never once questioned. Her EQ is off the charts, which is really what you want, both in a photographer and in the person who’ll spend almost the entire day with you and your spouse.
We wrote our ceremony (performed by the mutual friend who introduced us) including adapting the Jewish seven blessings for our mothers to recite. It took hours from our already busy lives, but the process of deciding what to include and precisely how to say it was a bit like self-administered pre-marital counseling.
I wanted to build in a delay between guests’ arrival and the beginning of the ceremony, but felt that we should offer refreshments. To manage costs, we filled beverage containers with lemonade (Lindcove Ranch again), had the bartender offer vodka (dressed up in a beautiful decanter), and put out bowls of spiced nuts from a recipe my mom was able to make in advance. It was low budget, but our guests still felt welcomed and cared for.
What was totally not worth it
My stress over only five of ten members of the wedding party making it to the rehearsal. It’s a wedding, people generally know what to do, and I wish I’d been able to enjoy the time with the five who were there!
A few things that helped us along the way
I spent many months of my planning thinking of the wedding as a referendum on my taste. Anything the slightest bit unusual (non-matching bridesmaids dresses, using a private property as a venue, forgoing a cake) required an explanation, which I took as a critique. Eventually, I realized that weddings are actually a kind of Rorschach test; my guests’ reactions would say more about them (consistency/a pre-tested floorplan/cake is important to them) than me. At the time, this felt life-changing. It freed me up to see questions for what they were: curiosity, not judgment.
My mom was the best planning partner I could’ve asked for. She did all of the local legwork, handled my stress with grace, and contributed her impeccable taste to most of the decisions. When I saw the space the day of the wedding, my first instinct was to find my mom for an epic high-five.
My best practical advice for my planning self
Don’t be afraid to mine your contacts. I do a lot of work with graphic designers, so when I decided to design my own invitation suite, I was able to ask one of them to clean up the file and make it print-ready. She then went a step beyond and found a printer who could make my letterpress dreams come true within my budget. In the meantime, my mom knew a printer for the menus and another family friend connected us with a taco truck for the rehearsal dinner.
Accept the gift of friends who offer to help. My mom’s book club made Mexican wedding cookies for the rehearsal dinner, which was held at my dad’s law partner’s ranch. Other friends made the California-shaped cookies that went in the welcome bags, arranged all of the wholesale flowers for the tables, sang our first dance song, or let us borrow hundreds of votives. One of my bridesmaids put together a “getting ready mix” that was a walk down memory lane, and family in town from the East Coast even stayed to help with clean-up duty the next day. And of course the family friend who let us use her home and land as our venue gave us such an incredible gift! The generosity of these loved ones was absolutely key to making the weekend wonderful.
Use your skills, but accept your limits. Designing the paper goods for the wedding was the extent of my DIY projects. The pressure of Pinterest and blogs disappeared once I accepted that I’m just not crafty. Selective and creative? Sure. But cute, wooden table card numbers that have been spray-painted gold were not going to happen just because I wanted them to magically appear.
Distraction helps fend off questions when your patience is waning. “You’re not doing a cake? But you have to feed it to each other!” “Hey, have I shown you my bridesmaid dress swatches?”
Favorite thing about the wedding
About a week before the wedding, the heat went out in our apartment. I was running a slight fever, so Matt boiled a kettle of water, poured it into our bathroom sink, and turned on the tap until the water was just right. I climbed up onto one side of the counter and he climbed onto the other. We sat laughing and talking with our feet in the little footbath he’d made for us. It was one of a thousand kindnesses in that harried week, but it felt like a special moment. On the eve of the wedding, we repeated the experience in the bathtub of our hotel suite. We sat quietly, perched side-by-side on the edge of the tub, enjoying the simple pleasures of clean feet and warm water. Much of the weekend was naturally focused on the wedding, but that private moment was about our marriage.
Other Notes
I built something into the morning of the wedding that was just for me. Best. Decision. Ever. A friend I danced with growing up is now the dance teacher at a local high school. I asked her to give me a class the morning of the wedding and I invited the rest of my hometown friends. She even choreographed a little piece for me, set to “Feeling Good.” In addition to having a nerves-shedding workout, I got to spend the morning with people who had known me since junior high (or longer) and immerse myself in that connection to my past. The quadruple pirouette I knocked out was icing on the cake.
