wedding fatigue = potential $$
Many wedding books and articles warn that as the wedding gets closer the bride/couple will start to hit a wall. This is the time when all of the hard work, all of the budgeting and cost savings could go RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW. It is also the time that unscrupulous vendors could take advantage of the unsuspecting couple. So be careful.
I can attest to the fact that once you hit the wedding wall, you do not pay as close attention to things. First of all, I don’t really have time to find a better deal and second, I have been finding a better deal for 7 months now. It is tiring. I have found myself willing to just pay a little extra to have the box checked. Most of my financial decisions have been made, so there is nothing too big, but there are little things. And as we all know, little things add up.
I hit the wall on Thursday. Now, I am sure the straw that broke the camel’s back was the Jordan almond debacle that had happened earlier that day, but the ramifications were far reaching. Thursday, I had a meeting with my event coordinator and the florist (the meeting had been set the day before in a rather harried manner). My florist wanted to show me the chair covers and sashes and we had to decide on the vases that I wanted for the ceremony flowers (I decided to outsource the ceremony flowers because it was too overwhelming to figure out how to balance a larger arrangement - I attribute the outsourcing to fatigue, my fiance attributes it to wisdom). My florist had also kindly let me chose a fabric from a fabric store for the chair sashes because she did not have a color that I REALLY liked. She had new sashes made- all for the same price as if I had picked one that she already had. So she wanted me to see the sashes to make sure they were okay. As we sat there and discussed the chair covers, the florist asked if I wanted table runners. They were a nice addition of color; they had tassels; they had a modern flair; they were only a small addition to the bill. This was the decision that I made that was not based on any past rationale I had applied to planning the wedding. I agreed to the runners. But even as I made the decision, I knew that it had been made through a cloud of fatigue. I couldn’t picture how the tables would look with the runners, but I said yes anyway. Now, I should have known that if I couldn’t visualize it, I didn’t want it. But I was tired of making decisions, so I just went with it. To be clear, I don’t believe that my florist was trying to sneak something in. She was giving me an option that was completely normal. As a matter of fact, before I changed the chair covers business over to her, the event coordinator had asked me the same question.
The next day I IMed my best friend to ask her opinion. I described the runners and the way they would be on the table. She was not for it. She thought it would be too much. We have colorful enough flowers. She was right. Anyway - who is going to miss them? They were an added expense that was not necessary. I canceled the runners. I needed the sanity check and my best friend provided it. I just hope nothing else comes my way, because I am not making totally logical decisions anymore. From now on, I will just refer people to my best friend. She is the decision maker for the next week.
2 weeks before "W" Day, Wedding planning | Comment (0)Bridal Fair Hell
There is nothing more overwhelming and eye-opening than a bridal fair. The Sunday after the Friday/Saturday bridal shopping extravaganza, my best friend and I went to our first, and last, Bridal Fair. First of all, you actually have to pay to get access to all of the people whose job it is to get the most of your wedding budget. For our $6 ransom, we got a bag to put all of the wedding brochures and propaganda and we got a “free” Brides magazine. We were then ushered in to two large rooms full of caterers, photographers, djs, wedding destination travel agents, bakers, florists, make up artists, videographers, favor creators, and anything else wedding related you could think of. We could taste anything from cake to beef stroganoff. We must have killed at least a tree worth of paper. I came home with videographer samples and dj samples. It made me realize all of the different vendors that went in to a wedding. I think the ones that most shocked me that day, were the photographers. Pardon me, the “artists”. For the price of some of their packages, you would of thought they were selling you a hand painted Monet of you and your betrothed. While I understand that photography is an art and that you should pay for the skills that the photographers have honed, please! I do not think that 10-20% of my wedding budget should go to photos. I think the big issue I had was with the negatives (or jpg files, I should say). In my mind, they are my photos, I have paid for them to be taken and they should belong to me. This is not the case. Some photographers will not give you the files. If you are allowed to have the files, you have to pay for that privilege, and often, you have to pay a healthy price. One guy said he would release the files to me for free after a year. My pictures should not be held hostage, especially for the price of the photographers. I should not be forced to purchase a wedding album at exorbitant prices. THEY ARE MY PHOTOS! I was going to have to find a photographer that perhaps was not a “wedding” photographer. They were a bit entitled.
On a positive note, I found my DJ there. His name is DJ Earl. I liked him because he ran his own shop. He was who you hired, not some guy who works for him. He has been doing it for 25 years and had a very warm friendly personality. We have a winner in DJ Earl.
Every other aspect of the bridal fair just reinforced my desire to not get ripped off by the bridal machine.
Wedding planning | Comment (0)Lists, Lists and more lists
I feel like all we do is make lists of to-dos for the wedding. This morning we compiled all of our past To Do Lists into one big one. There were three old lists to merge. My fiance takes great pleasure in crossing things off of the list. So much so, that if he does something that is not on a list, he will actually write it down on the list just so that he can cross it off. So this morning we began the task of writing yet another master list. #1 on the list - find him a ring.
So that was today’s big journey. Off to the mall we went in search of a perfect ring. We now know more about platinum (heavy and pricey), white gold (better price wise, but discolors and has to have something done to it every 2-3 years to get rid of the discoloration), Palladium (light and doesn’t discolor, but strong), tungsten carbide (strong, heavy and cheap)& sterling silver (didn’t even bother) than we ever wanted to know. We walked around the mall and as it got more and more crowded, we got less and less interested in being there. I think we did drive-bys in the last few jewelry stores that we went to because we just wanted out. So we did find a ring and it should be in 3 days before the wedding. Too close for you comfort? The manager at the jewelry store was nice enough to offer to lend us the floor model (which was a tiny bit too big) for our wedding if the real ring was not in. Is that service or what?
Wedding Planning for Beginners
How on earth do you plan a wedding? This is not something that you do every day. I went to the bookstore to find some help. Funny enough, there are tons of books written on this subject. It even has its own section in the bookstore. So, I dutifully looked through all of the wedding planning books and binders that were there. They came in all shapes, sizes and prices. I chose one that was a three ring binder style, figuring that I could add to it if I wanted to. It also had pockets on each divider tab so that I could tuck papers into and a business card holder in the front. It had budgeting spreadsheets and questions to ask each person you would be interviewing for your wedding. Sounded like all I would need. On my way out of the wedding section, I ran into a table display dedicated to wedding books. This was the first hint that weddings were BIG business. Fortunately for me, on this table, I found the book that has become my wedding planning bible. It was called Bridal Bargains.
This cover stated “Secrets to throwing a fantastic wedding on a realistic budget. The Book the Wedding Industry Does NOT Want You to Read!” Woo-hoo! That sounded right up my alley! Plus, the authors offered a money back guarantee. If you didn’t save at least $500 by using the techniques in their book, then they would refund the cost of the book to you. It sounded like a no lose proposition. I have saved far more than that using this book, let me tell you.
THINGS I LEARNED: There is no need to buy a pre-made wedding binder. You can make one yourself with stuff from an office supply store. You definitely need pockets to hold pictures that you rip out of magazines and a place to store business cards. Everything else, is optional. I have many friends who bought a special wedding book from a store who only filled out a few pages of it.