JC and I are practical people and we set a limit for what we wanted to spend on our wedding. It is a small wedding and a second wedding for both of us but we also wanted to have our close friends and family here to celebrate. It has been a roller-coaster of planning and I've been thinking that writing about it might help those future brides who find themselves in the same situation.
First, be prepared that things are going to pop up and things are going to end up costing more than you think. It seems like every time we turn around there is something we hadn't thought of or something that has a higher price tag than we thought. If you are determined to keep costs down then you have to trade off time and creativity.
The photobooth is a huge example. We've done this thing by the skin of our teeth. JC did a fabulous job pulling together the frame, we were lucky to find a printer at the thrift store, but when I went looking for fabric or sheets or shower curtains to use it was just one more expense that was adding up and pushing us to and over our limit. So I went searching around the house and managed to find a favorite Ralph Lauren flat sheet in a muted paisley pattern, a couple of curtain panels for the doors, and a duvet cover for the front of the booth. It sounds funky, but it is going to work and it doesn't look half bad.
The stools in the booth came from our dining room and we're making the props using downloads from "Oh Happy Day", collecting some fun hats from our Halloween stash, the thrift store, and where-ever else we see something with potential. I think all in all we've spent about $200 on the photo booth so far, and an additional $140 on ink and paper. A far cry from a photobooth rental. But we're using my laptop and we really lucked out with the printer, a Canon Pixma iP2600.
Last weekend I went for help with the flowers as I just had all kinds of ideas and pieces and parts but nothing was really coming together for me. I've spent many an hour making the t-shirt mums and realize I have to spend more evenings at it in order to have enough for a bouquet and the tables. You also can't just have a handful of knit flowers in your hand so I've had to get creative, open my eyes and search for things around here to collect and put in the arrangements.
On a walk yesterday morning I finally collected some of the rusty red flower that has been a part of the color palette from the beginning but I never really considered "in" the arrangements. I think they are a type of buckwheat or sage and, although fragile, they'll look great both on the tables and in my bouquet, in the guy's boutonnieres and whatever else. The flowers were an area where I really needed someone to say - "What about here? What about there?" and guide me. What a relief to know that someone else is on that detail.
It can get stressful and we've had to really work at not letting that stress turn to resentment. Resentment that we just can't hand this whole thing over to someone else. Resentment that much of our free time is consumed with some sort of wedding detail, whether it is cleaning up the place in preparation of our guests, or making something that has to do with the wedding, or meeting with people about the wedding, or searching for something for the wedding. It becomes the topic of most of our conversations and we each carry around lists every day.
I'm going to add everything up eventually and get a price tag on it... because it is pretty incredible how quickly it adds up. And we're not doing a bunch of fancy stuff. And we've been amazingly blessed with our DJ, friend-photographer, minister, and all the other help we're getting with favors and flowers (bless you SF and VR!).
The main thing is to not let the wedding planning get in the way of the wedding. Or overshadow the reason we are doing this, which is to celebrate our love for each other with our friends and family. We're down to the wire now, with just 10 days to go, and trying to keep our eye on the prize, all the balls in the air, and for goodness sake - just don't forget anything!
Oh, and the upside to doing a budget wedding? We'll walk away without any debt from this day and be able to start the rest of our lives together with a fresh slate. We both get a lot of satisfaction from problem-solving and thinking outside the box, and we've done quite a bit of that lately. We are bargain-shoppers, scavengers, and makers, and get a kick out of finding a good deal. We like that our wedding is ours alone, not some designer's idea of our wedding. And we'll end up with a photobooth, some fancy clothes for future events, and boatload of memories.
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