Then we ran off to the airport and spent a wooonderful week in St. Thomas. Hurricane season, schmuricane season! The weather was PERFECT. In the 80's, and would have felt MUCH hotter had it not been a little cloudy every day. We got to do some snorkeling, swimming, movie-watching-on-the-beach, shopping and lounging around. Then we got back, Ben went back to work and I started my new job at Witch Hazel Elementary. I adore the students, love my hours (although our bank account might not!), and am really excited to really help these kids learn to read better!
Back to the wedding! We attempted to do a lot on a little budget. We started out with $5500. I wanted good food, pretty decorations and a fun time. With a lot of guests. I wondered at times if it was possible. I considered running away to Vegas at times. Or just to the courthouse, screw weddings!!!! But we pushed through it and made it to the other side. And I am so glad we did! We could NOT have done it without the help of a billion people. This wedding should have easily cost twice what it did. But we had people cooking, organizing, flower-arranging, deejaying and graphic designing as volunteers. And we had moms buying things for us and making last-minute Costco runs.
The day of, I didn't do a single thing but have a list prepared of what to do, and boxes organized with labels saying where they should go. Then I just made myself pretty (with the help of Jillian Hibbs at Trend Designs in Philomath) and had fun. By the time the ceremony started, everything was beautiful and in its place thanks to our amazing helpers. Pretty much our entire House Church showed up to work their butts off and put things together. I didn't worry about a single thing, and I couldn't have done anything better myself. It was PERFECT.
I cannot thank the people who helped us enough. I literally don't know how to thank them all. I could give them all a million dollars and thank them every day and wash their feet with my hair. But that wouldn't adequately express our appreciation. So I'll just blog about it...
Anyway, for those who are planning a budget wedding, let me tell you that it is possible. But it is a LOT of work. Without a ton of helpers, it's not really possible I don't think! Get some good people surrounding you who will donate time and energy to your big day! Really the only reason we were able to do this for the amount we did was because we paid only a few hundred dollars total for food. We had so many people buying and making food for us that we just didn't have to spend much there. Here is a breakdown of how we spent our money! Our plan was $5500. We ended up spending about $7100, but $1000 of that came from spending extra on photography that we hadn't budgeted for. Worth it. Here is where it all went:
| Final cost | Budgeted | |
| Venue fees | 1065 | 1025 |
| Alcohol | 1037 | 600 |
| Dress | 971 | 1121 |
| Food | 264 | 650 |
| Favors | 130 | 100 |
| Decorations | 311 | 200 |
| Invitations/postage | 397 | 300 |
| Officiant/counseling | 140 | 150 |
| shoes/hair/makeup | 261 | 200 |
| flowers | 90 | 100 |
| Gifts/tips | 736 | 500 |
| Photography | 1500 | 500 |
| Limo | 144 | 0 |
| Other | 68 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 7114 | 5446 |
So basically, without the extra for photography, we only went $600 over our original budget. Which is pretty amazing if you ask me! Everyone that I talked to who did DIY weddings and who did a wedding on a budget regretted not spending more on a photographer. So we took their advice and booked a good photographer (although she was still way cheaper than anyone else we found!) even though we knew we were going to be spending $1000 more than we budgeted for photography. We loved her, and are so excited to see the pictures and know they are going to be amazing! So we don't feel bad at all about that! The extra $600 really came from extra alcohol and extra gifts for people helping us. While we have plenty of leftover alcohol and could have saved some there, we really wanted to thank those who helped us the best we could, so again were willing to go over budget to do so.
My advice for DIYers?
- Find someone who you really trust, who is totally willing to work their butts of on the day of the wedding to get everything done for you. Get that person a lot of helpers.
- Ask friends and family to bring your favorite food dishes if you are doing your own catering.
- Don't be cheap when it comes to photography, that's the one thing that lasts.
- Invite everyone you want. Trust the statistics that say that only 30% of those invited will show up. We ended up with way fewer guests than we hoped and planned for because we didn't trust that and didn't invite everyone up front. There were a lot more people we wanted to invite, but didn't by the time we realized we'd have more space than we thought based on our RSVPs, it was too late to invite more! We invited 240 to start with, and ended up inviting about 50 more after we received our first round of invited, but had a good 50 more we would have invited if we realized how things were going to end up! I don't have an exact total, but I think we had about 120 guests. And had enough food for 200. Anyone want some pulled pork...? :/
- And get on Pinterst. Seriously. Don't be afraid to try being crafty yourself! You wouldn't believe how many Pinterest ideas we borrowed for our wedding!
And here are some people you should use for your wedding:
- Venue: Rogue Hop Farm-beautiful, big, fun, lots of freedom, budget-friendly, tons of options.
- Photography: Mai Camera Photography-she's really energetic and sweet and takes great pictures, plus is wonderful with kids!
- Wedding DJ: my wonderful friend Sean Williams. Let me know if you need an amazing DJ and I'll hook you up if he's interested!
Now please excuse me while I go change my name with everyone under the sun.
Wedding was a smashing success! SO many people said it was the best time ever! Sucks that they cost so darn much though. :*
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