Wedding Update

[devilgrrl]

I finally finished the wedding party section tonight. The bulletion board will have to be installed, but I need to hear from support first. Officially now, 2/3s of the site is live. I'll finish up the guest section over my spring break and then I'll have nothing but maintenance to do. Not bad for 10 months out.

We started to check out another church tonight. Our friend Bethany attends Old South Church and go married there last December. Even at the full, non-member price, it's cheaper than Channing Church and it's also nicer. I also did out some projected costs and right now, with the catering, reception hall rental, and church, we're coming in between $3100 and $3500. This is out of an estimated budget of $5000. We have a DJ, which will take an addition $500. That leaves us between $1000 and $1400 for a photographer, a cake, invitations, and favours. Luckily, we may end up having one of Mom's friends' boyfriends make our cake for cost. He's a professional pastry chef and Mom says his cakes are really good. If not, we have an estimate of $320 from one of the top bakeries in the area. Beth also suggested that we talk to the pastor and explain our precarious financial situation and see if they can work with us. Invites will be around $100 and we will print response postcards ourselves. Guests will have the option to RSVP online, so we may cut stamps on some of them.

This is starting to really feel like it's coming together. When we first started looking, last summer, I never thought we'd be able to do this for $5000. The average wedding around here runs about $30k. Original estimates had us around $12k. We've really cut our guest list and we've given up on the idea of a hotel wedding. It's really giving us a chance to see what the wedding is actually about-- the celebration of our marriage. People will have just as much fun at a hall as they will at a fancy hotel. We have an amazing DJ and our caterer is awesome. My dress was a great bargain and we're lucky enough to have very creative friends and family so we don't have to worry about decorations.

I'm starting to get really excited. All I need now is to be motivated enough to get my ass to the gym so I can look amazing. 

Comments

[aliki.livejournal.com]

When we started wedding planning almost 1-1/2 years ago, I was shocked to find out what average costs of weddings were. As a guest to many of them, I really couldn't fanthom the price people paid for their weddings (around here in NJ, it's also $30K for an average, and for NYC weddings, it's $50K!).

I have to admit, some days I felt like ripping my hair out after scrambling to find good bargains or haggle for a good deal, it just took so much out of me. But we didn't have the big fancy dress, or the fancy reception. We didn't invite our neighbor's daughter's second-removed cousin (haheh- seems like some weddings has everybody the bride/groom have ever met!).

How big is your guest list? In my research, I found that essentially determined how much you had to spend for a budget wedding. For us, having 100 people meant $10K (what we ended up doing), but if we had cut it to 60, it was $5K.

[devilgrrl.livejournal.com]

Our guest list is around 125 right now and that's cutting a lot of people. That's been, by far, the biggest headache. I'm going to see if we can shave a few more people off, probably on Steven's side. My MIL gave us a list of family she hasn't seen in years, but "will send a good gift." That isn't a reason to invite someone.

I think we're still going to end up being a little over budget, but not as bad as originally thought.

[aliki.livejournal.com]

My mother tried that stunt too, along with "and this is a list of people we haven't seen in a long time, and the wedding is a good excuse for us to reconnect". Another bad reason, in my opinion. Another one was "but we invited X, so now we have to invite X's sister, since we know her". Just because we know her doesn't mean she has an automatic invite, especially if the only context in which I know her is as X's sister.

[devilgrrl.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what we're doing now. If we're not directly friendly with someone, it's a no go. I cut a bunch of my cousins because I haven't seen them in 5 years.