Saturday, July 30, 2011

Taking care of small details

Yesterday I managed to cross quite a few smaller items off my list. In order:

1. Bought ties for the guys (Men's Warehouse, $19.99 each).
2. Found a few more centerpiece items at Goodwill.
3. Called my aunt Rita and *officially* asked her to make our cake (she said yes, of course!)
4. Arranged to borrow my cousin's veil (which has also been worn by my sister) as well as her cake cutting set. (What can YOU borrow from a recently married friend/relative?)
5. Put out feelers for guest lodging through FindGroupDeals, a priceline.com service. This allows you to name your desired number of rooms and price, and negotiate directly with a hotel sales rep. We'll see if we get any good responses; otherwise, there is a hotel we have in mind that we will contact next week.
6. Sent pictures of my top 4 dress choices to my VIP ladies for final opinions and advice.
7. Just finished designing our Save the Date! It will be emailed out in the next few days (yay for saving postage/trees!) Looks like this:

I will happily design your Save the Date, too ;-)

And just today I discovered a really cool guestbook idea at The Guestbook Store. Each guest receives their own page to fill out, front and back - things like where they're from, a memory of the bride/groom and any advice for the marriage. Personal, detailed, and keeps guests occupied during the potentially boring and awkward ceremony-to-reception transition. This especially works for us because we're having everything at one location.


Naturally, Devin and I don't want a "traditional" guestbook format (truthfully, our entire wedding isn't all that traditional, because we ourselves are oddballs...), so now we get to decide if we want to order from this company or MAKE OUR OWN in a similar format. Chances are we'll DIY to make it as personal as possible.

That's all for now!

Total spent: $410
Total remaining: $4,590

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Flowery goodness

Another big hurdle cleared: our wedding flowers! We're lucky enough that Devin's aunt has a great deal of floral expertise, so she is providing our flowers as her wedding gift to us. Huzzah!

My favorite! (from The Knot)

Even though most people will end up paying some amount of money for floral decor, there are some easy and creative ways to significantly cut those costs. In order of least cost-saving to most cost-saving, we have:

1. Use less flowers! Instead of having entire bouquets made for bridesmaids, have them hold a single flower with one ribbon. For groomsmen boutonnieres, use less expensive "filler" flowers, or even just greenery, instead of roses/cala lillies/etc, and save the expensive stuff for the most important guy- the groom!

2. Consider taking care of some of the flowers yourself. If you have a particularly green thumb, you could even GROW them yourself. The next best thing would be to buy them as-is from a florist or grocery store, and arrange them yourself (at least half the cost of florist-arranged flowers comes from labor). At one wedding I photographed, this was done completely on the fly about an hour before the ceremony! The bride had a bouquet of all yellow roses, and her bridesmaids each carried a single yellow rose with some greenery and a ribbon on it. Only the mothers' corsages and the guys' boutonnieres were done by a florist.

Simple and classy. (photo copyright Kathleen Grady)

3. Don't use flowers AT ALL. That's right, I said it! My friend Julie over at Fun With the Future Mr. and Mrs. Fitz is having a flower-less wedding by making all her flowers out of fabric (and paper?) and she even wrote a tutorial for the process she is using. This is certainly the most time-consuming option, but the lowest cost, and the possible combination for colors and patterns is pretty much endless. Use paper and you'll probably save even more - just make sure you recycle! ;-)

Or get SUPER creative with buttons and brooches (from The Knot)

And in closing, I'd like to remind all current and future brides out there to use WHO you know. I'll be writing more about this, but in addition to Devin's aunt we have 4-5 other friends/family who are using their talents to provide major services for us, and it's literally saving us thousands. If you know someone with a wedding-friendly skill, don't be shy about asking them to use it! Like your wedding party, the people you ask to help out with your big day will be more than happy to lend a hand and make your wedding awesome.
Etiquette tip: don't ask for FREE swag/services, especially if the person is a professional. As a photographer, even if my best friend did this, I'd be put off. Let them offer, and if they don't, ask how much they'll charge. If they do want to be paid, but it's substantially less than their normal fee, no complaining!!!

Once again, thanks for reading. Party on, y'all!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Save some dough, yo! (on venues and vacations)

Wow, what a busy week it's been! I would have written this post sooner, but between working, a quick weekend in Indiana to shoot a wedding, and then doctor visits (more on that later), this is the first chance I've had to write.

So we cleared a big hurdle in wedding planning - we booked our venue! Initially we wanted to find something in Indianapolis, but between not having a church (we usually live apart, and don't attend regularly anyways) and the crazy-high prices of EVERYTHING ELSE WE LOOKED AT, we had to expand our search. Right around that time, I saw a new album on facebook from The Anderson Center for the Arts in Anderson, IN (NE of Indianapolis, where a friend from college is now a curator) and it was WEDDING PHOTOS. Inquiries were made, phone calls and text messages were exchanged, and on Friday, this engaged lady put down her security deposit. Pricing gets sort of complicated with time limits and using 1 or 2 rooms, but no matter what, we're saving at least 50% from the other places we looked at. TACA is also a rather small venue, so it's perfect for our small guest list (and our creative, artistic personalities!).

Here are some photos I took while I was there. It was built in 1903 and was originally a library:

The outside (says "PVBLIC LIBRARY," love it)

Entryway

The Grande Room, set up for reception

Side gallery, probably where our ceremony will be

The view as you walk in - but for our wedding there will be a big Christmas tree set up in the middle.


So what have we learned?

-Think outside the big city. A smaller town 15-45 minutes away could offer a fabulous venue at half the cost. Guests who live in the city won't mind the drive, and anyone who flies in will also be within a reasonable drive from the airport.
-Look for non-profit places like this one. Prices will vary, but you'll get more personal service AND the knowledge that your money will be used wisely.
-Places like Lions Clubs and Knights of Columbus are also very affordable, but can sometimes be lacking in aesthetics. What you save on the rental fee might all end up going towards extra decor to spruce the place up.
-THERE IS NO REASON TO PAY OVER $2,000 JUST TO BE IN A ROOM (imho)

Part 2: Vacations!

Another major part of getting married is planning THE HONEYMOON. Everyone wants an amazing honeymoon location, but the airfare gets expensive at best and completely prohibitive in some cases. One easy way to alleviate those worries is by using airline miles. If you aren't already signed up for a frequent flier account with an airline, CHANGE THAT. Devin and I (and his whole family) fly United whenever possible, and on top of miles earned from actual trips, the company gives many award miles for things you do anyway - buying Mother's Day flowers from FTD and signing up for Netflix, among other things. Sometimes they just give you more miles for flying during a certain time - for instance, one offer I took advantage of this past winter was an additional 2500 miles for trips taken December - February, up to three trips. I took two trips, so I received 5,000 more miles. No complaints here!
If you really want to make a HUGE dent in your honeymoon costs, sign up for an award miles credit card. I just activated my United Visa, and received 25,000 miles after the first purchase (which covers a round-trip ticket in the contiguous US by itself; a round-trip ticket to HAWAII takes 40,000 miles with United, and they allow you to use a combination of miles and cash to purchase tickets). I plan on using this card for as many wedding-related purchases as possible to rack up even more miles - they give 1 mile per every dollar spent. I also used it for my doctor visits yesterday ($250) so at least I'm earning miles on my medical problems! (It appears to be a thyroid issue. More testing to happen on Friday. Doc assures me I'm not going to die.)
If you're one of those types who deals all in cash, then I have mad respect for you. But if you use credit cards at all, and are getting married, there's no reason not to sign up for an awards card with an airline. If you both get one, you could save over $1000 on your honeymoon!

That's all I've got for now, kiddos. The next step for us is finding a caterer and a hotel for our guests. Stay tuned!

Total spent: $350
Total remaining: $4,650

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Introductions

Well hello there, pretty people, and welcome to our blog! We are Devin and Kathleen, we started dating May 20, 2010 and got engaged June 17, 2011. We are planning our wedding for December 10, 2011, and we're freakin' stoked about it. I wanted to start this blog for short-term wedding planning documentation (and advice for anyone else planning on a budget), and for the long-term sharing of our marital adventures.

So here is the current state of affairs: We are both on summer contracts with Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, MI (1/2 hr outside Traverse City) until the end of August. We are getting married in central Indiana. We have "VIP's" (immediate family and wedding party) in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, and Colorado; and because the lease on my Indianapolis apartment ends in October, I'll be moving in with Devin, location TBD, wherever he gets a job, and finishing wedding planning from there. Probably Tennessee. "Shenanigans," indeed!

On top of crazy locations, we also have finances to consider. I've read that the average wedding costs $20,000. We say: NO FREAKIN WAY! If you have that kind of cash, by all means, go for it; it will be gorgeous and spectacular (and will still only last a day!). But many of us don't have that luxury, and there are all kinds of creative ways to cut corners while still providing a great, memorable time for everyone. We are depending on the time and talent of many friends and family members (as well as our own skills) to help us have an awesome wedding UNDER $5,000, and that is a big part of what we'll be blogging about.  

Our first wedding-related purchase was an online half-off deal ($57) for premarital counseling videos. The deal actually came up in an email from The Wedding Channel before we were engaged, but because we'd been talking about marriage for...just about our whole relationship, we went ahead and bought it to save some coin. It's a series of 8 videos...so far we've only watched 2, but we have until September to finish the series. More on those in a later post.

Today I did some shopping with friends and found the first few centerpiece items. I've promised to myself to buy all centerpieces at Goodwill (or at an insanely good deal elsewhere). And after the wedding, we'll just donate everything back (I'll be posting more on how we're being charitable with our wedding as time goes).We're going for sort of an eclectic vintage vibe, so the items I bought were clear and colored glass bottles along with some figurines in our wedding colors. Every table will be different. I will definitely want to pick up some ribbon eventually to beautify and add color to the clear and white objects, and some flowers will be added as needed also. Anyways, the total cost of about 8 or 9 items was $12. Score! Then we went to the mall, where I actually found some PERFECT lingerie at Charlotte Russe (we'll stop the descriptions there) and spent $31 (would have been more exact on the dollar amounts had I remembered to bring my receipts in from the car...). It's not the cheapest, but it was definitely a step down from, say, Victoria's Secret, and it fits my style better that most VS merch anyways.

So now that we're up to speed, I'll just keep posting as things happen. Comments welcome!

And to the end of every post, I will add:
Total spent so far: $100
Total remaining: $4,900