outsourcing is good!
Invitations. Someone told me that they set the tone for your wedding. They are the first thing that people see. Now while I generally do not subscribe to wedding hooey, I did want the invitation to be unique and me. I went to traditional wedding invitation stores (back to sticker shock land). I went to a shop to which a printer friend of mine told me had good prices. I was a little wary when the store was located in a part of the city that I had never been to, the signs were not in a language that I understood ,and when we called for directions, the sales lady asked me if I was Vietnamese or Chinese. Hmm…I think we got the white people pricing package. Since I am not much of a haggler and it was obvious that haggling was going to be required here, we quickly checked that store off of our list.
I ordered sample invitations that were in my acceptable price range from well known invitation catalogs. They came. They were boring and drab. They were flimsy card stock. They did not seem uniquely me. I happened to be talking to a friend of mine and she told me that she had found really good invitations on the internet. I had been to her wedding and I definitely remembered the invitations. The trick was, the invitations were from India.
I went to Indian Wedding Card and started to look at the hundreds of invitations. I even engaged my best friend in the invitation search. She and I searched the site simultaneously and sent each other links over IM chat of the ones we thought were pretty. In the end, I ordered 14 samples. The samples got to me in a week. They were exotic, colorful and uniquely me. They smelled a little odd, but I looked over that. I loved them all. Of course, some of them were a little too Indian for our wedding, so they were quickly eliminated, but there were at least 4 in the running.
Uncategorized | Comment (0)no pictures please
One of the things that you quickly learn when shopping for bridal gowns, is the bridal shops want to do everything they can to keep you from being able to “shop” the gowns. As I mentioned earlier, they take the designers tags out, replacing them with their own. They don’t tell you the designer’s names unless you ask, they won’t write the dress names/designers down for you and they certainly don’t give you the model number of the dress. And they don’t let you take pictures of the bride in the dress. Now to be fair, not all shops stuck to all of these bridal shop norms. The more high end stores were far more informative (I guess they figured if you were willing to throw down $3K on a dress, you weren’t the type to shop around for the best deal).
To combat this, we brought a pencil and my Wedding Book and my best friend drew the dresses with descriptions and occasionally a designer name, if I could remember what the sales lady had told me. We were going to find a way to foil their attempts to keep us from saving money!
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Quick disclaimer about me
One thing that you need to know, that I am most likely NOT your average bride. I have not had a “vision” of my wedding since I was 12. I do not need the perfect dress, I just need a dress that works. I do not need to the perfect bouquet, any flowers that are in season are fine. I have definitely developed opinions as I have gone along, but I did not start with an adolescent dream to which I was wedded. I started from scratch and built up. I find that if you are willing to be flexible and creative, planning a wedding can be fun, a challenge, but fun none the less.
Uncategorized | Comment (1)prioritize, budget and prepare for heart failure
For most people, wedding planning, at least a large wedding, only comes once in their lives. The bridal industry knows this and realizes that they must squeeze every last penny out of you because this is most likely their only shot. Keep that in mind when you start pricing things. At least here on the west coast, the word “wedding” or “bridal” alone can cost you 30% more. Having never shopped for anything wedding related, I considered eloping soon after I started pricing the wedding. This is why you need a budget. The cost of a wedding can get out of hand quickly if you don’t have an end number in your head. All of the wedding books that I read said to start with a budget, and while it seems impossible at first, it is a very important step.
Step One: Prioritize. My fiance and I looked through all of the potential expenses and decided which two were the most important to us. I also took into consideration that my parents were paying for the wedding and made sure to as them what their important items were too. It broke down like this… #1 on the list:Food & drink. We were throwing a huge party with all of our friends and family and we wanted them to be well taken care of. Plus, we are Italian. Food & drink is central to our lives. That was an easy number one. #2 Music. My fiance wanted to make sure that there was good music served up by someone who knew what they were doing so that the party would be jumpin’. So we had our top two. Now we knew where, if extra money was to be spent, we were going to spend it.
Step Two: Get the overall budget written down, then break it out into the main sections, Ceremony/Reception, Clothing, Flowers, Music, Invitations, etc. This will at least give you a starting point. Because I am an accountant, I could hardly stop myself from creating a spreadsheet to track everything. It has been very helpful, since I have had to move things around in the budget to keep everything on budget.
Step Three: Take a deep breath and get ready for some serious sticker shock. Remember, this is the only time many of these vendors are going to see you. You are most likely not going to be a repeat customer. On your side though, you are a walking advertisement for them. Your recommendation has some value. But be ready, you are about to enter a whole different world.
Uncategorized | Comment (1)What is all of this crap on our tivo list?
I got home one day, flipped on the TV and saw a list of wedding shows a mile long on our TIVO list. Bridezillas, Who’s Wedding is it Anyway?, Ryan and Trista’s Honeymoon spots on the Travel Channel, Wedding Bells, A Wedding Story, and more.
“Uh, what’s all this?” I asked my fiance, who had a big smile on his face.
“I recorded everything that had to do with weddings to get us started.”
Oof! That was very nice of him, but wow! Wedding overload. We quickly weeded out the shows that were too sappy or that made me cry. Brizezillas is a train wreck, but it is strangely intriguing. Who’s Wedding is it Anyway had some great wedding planners and tips on it. All and all, I have found myself watching way more wedding shows than I would have anticipated and I figure that after my wedding, I will have no interest in any of them. But for now, they are good places to learn what to do and most of the time to learn what NOT to do.
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Okay, I am Engaged, Now What?
Day One: I woke up after the “big engagement night” and put on the ring. Called Mom. Called Sister. Called Best Friend. Not necessarily in that order, but for not wanting to irritate anyone unnecessarily, I will leave it at that. I walked into work and faced the question that had been the standard question every morning for a few months… “Has he proposed yet?” I smiled because I knew this would be the last time I heard that question. I flashed my new ring. There were squeals of delight from my friends at work, demands to know the whole story (a story that I told over and over for the next few weeks) and the dreaded next question… “Have you set a date?” The ring had been on my finger for less than 24 hours and already the stress of planning the wedding had started.
Beginnings of a wedding blog
“You need to start a wedding blog.”
This came out of my fiancé’s mouth last week.
I need to what?! There are 4 weeks left until “the big day” and I still need to meet with the event co-coordinator at the reception site, meet with the minister to discuss the outline of the ceremony, make the wedding favors, meet with the florist, find and order the wedding rings, arrange the seating, pick the music for the ceremony, not to mention answer innumerable questions about minute details that I had no idea even existed. I am not sure where on earth this man thought I could find time to cram anything into my already packed schedule that was not VITAL to the major event that was in our not too distant future. I told him he was nuts.
Imagine his surprise when I told him that I thought he was right… I should write a wedding blog. I am not sure if he was more surprised that I was taking on a blog or that I admitted he was right. Either way, he kindly got me started on my first sojourn into cyberwriting and here we are.
I decided to write this blog because ever since the ring hit my finger, my life has been consumed with wedding planning: bridal magazines, bridal fairs (which led to tons of bridal spam - more on that later), bridal books, wedding websites, wedding TV shows and totally non-wedding related: more than a few not so subtle hints from my mother that she is ready for another grandchild and she is requesting a girl. Whoa Mom, let’s get the wedding over with first, okay?
My parents generously offered to for the wedding, up to a certain amount. I told them that there was NO way I was going to spend up to their budget. NO WAY. After all, I was an accountant. If I could do anything well, it was manage expenses and cash flow to meet a budget. This would be a piece of cake! Then, I started pricing things. GASP! It soon became apparent that what I thought a wedding should cost and what a wedding would actually cost were two radically different things. I was HORRIFIED at the prices. I soon figured out that it was going to take all of my budgeting and cost cutting skills to keep this wedding under control . And thus the quest to have a wedding that I could feel good about (read: not feel ripped-off) began.
My goal is to share with you what I have done and learned thus far, and hopefully keep you updated on my trials and tribunes up to “W” day – which as of today, is officially 4 weeks and 1 day away.
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