New Vendors Join the Team

I have very few vendors taking part in my wedding in comparison to most weddings, I suspect. That's not to say I'm forgoing the services provided by these vendors, but I've delegated to friends and family or taken on these projects myself. My brother's the DJ, my cousin's the ceremony musician, I'm the florist, my grandmother is one of the bakers, my sister's making the edible favors, etc.

Well, within the last week, I've added 2 vendors to the uber-exclusive little group of vendors we are hiring.

I had previously arranged for a friend (AKA "ex-boyfriend") and his fiance to shoot our wedding with my equipment with the understanding that I'd feed them, give 'em some cash, and edit the photos myself. And then I fell head over heels for the work of the photographer who shot my bridal portraits for free when she was just starting her business. We're talking madly in love here. And not only is her work great, but she's an absolute sweetheart to boot. The only problem? Her ridiculously incredibly absolutely reasonable or rather, cheap prices (Only $600 for high-quality professional wedding coverage? Unheard of!!) were about double what I had budgeted for photography, being the cheapskate, err.. budget-conscious bride that I am. Nevertheless, I managed to finagle (by which I don't mean "trick, swindle, or cheat", Mr. Webster) my way into affording to hire this lovely lady for the big day itself.

By the by, she just posted a blog entry about my bridal session.

Thus, Jenna Cole is our wedding photographer!

And for my next magic trick, I started browsing through some of the classified ads on Weddingbee, looking for reasonably priced (or more honestly, next-to-nothing or free, given my budget) day-of-coordinators in the Dallas area. While I absolutely want my mother involved in the day of my wedding, and the planning thereof, I don't want her to end up worrying herself sick over every little detail that I can't personally attend to while I'm busy being the bride. My wedding planning is very much a labor of love, but it would be quite a relief to hand the reins off to someone in the few days leading up to the wedding itself.

Enter Chrishawn Sontia. She's just launching her wedding planning business and is advertising free planning services to build her portfolio. [raises hand] Yes please!

We met up at Starbucks (my life revolves around Starbucks, I swear) just to make sure our personalities mesh before I entrust her with the details of our day, and she passed inspection with flying colors. She's super organized, gregarious, outgoing, and I have to say, I admire the woman's clothing ensemble color coordination. Just sayin'. She was rockin' the purple like I rock the brown and/or green 90% of the time (hence my wedding color palette).

Chrishawn will be helping me pull together a day-of timeline, run the show at our rehearsal, help decorate on our very time-constricted wedding day, organize vendor payments, and all that other coordinator-y jazz. She's also super willing to help me with my million & one craft projects, if I'm ever organized enough to decide in advance that I'll work on something at a particular time and place.

I'm very pleased I've found these ladies. I know our wedding will be even better thanks to them!

Somethin' Old Bracelet

I've been pondering whether or not to buy a bracelet for the wedding since I'm planning to forgo wearing a necklace. I spent quite a while window shopping for delicate little pearl bracelets on etsy. Then I decided to go shop in my own jewelry box instead.

I found two bracelets with potential, but they both needed some cleaning up. The top one had a bunch of gunk on the mother of pearl, and the bottom one had a nasty green patina. Either of them could serve as my "something old" for the wedding.

I like the art deco nature of this one a lot. I think it goes well with my finger wave hairstyle and vintage-inspired gown. If memory serves, my mom bought this at an antique store for me. I wore it to prom. It appears to have been well-loved by a prior owner. A chain link that I need to remove anyhow to make it fit better is almost worn through.

This bracelet was some of my maternal grandmother's "junk" jewelry. The clear glass beads were actually painted to look like pearls. When I started cleaning off the patina, the paint started chipping off with it, so I just went ahead and removed all of the paint. It has a really pretty clasp and I love its delicate nature. I also think it hangs better on my wrist than the alternative. The only downside I see to this one is the color of the metal. All of my other jewelry for the wedding is white gold or silver toned. I'm tempted to ignore that little detail so that I can wear something of my grandmother's for the wedding, even if it is just some of her "junk" jewelry. I guess it's been a little over 4 years now since she passed away. I'd like to include her and my grandfather in the day in some way. I miss them.

The Immortal Bouquet

Y'know how I said I was curious how long the Baby's Breath bouquet would last? Well, we made it on Monday, and here it is Friday. I took it out of the beer fridge (oh yes, we're all classy people here) in the garage today, and it looks just as fresh as it did the night we made it! I took photos galore as proof.

Seeeeeee?!

Click on any o' the above to enlarge.

This is very exciting news. That's not to say I plan on making the bouquets 5 days in advance, but I could make 'em maybe 2 or 3 days in advance, stick 'em in the fridge and not fret about it. Yay for fewer last minute projects!

The Budget

I was a little wary of sitting down and really assessing where we stand with our wedding budget. However, I needed to figure out if we could expand one section of our budget, so I couldn't put it off any longer.

I know a number of little purchases here and there for crafting projects and such aren't completely accounted for in my assessment, but I'm still really pleasantly surprised to see we're still well within our budget!

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I know money is often a bit of a taboo subject, but I figure I'll go ahead and come out and say what the budget is that we're working with. It puts the need for do-it-yourself projects and family involvement into perspective.

We're planning a wedding in the Dallas, Texas area with roughly 130 invited guests for $5000.

I don't so much feel constricted by our budget as I feel liberated. I'm free to edit out details I don't really care about, with the very valid excuse that our budget won't accommodate these items. Also, I'm totally addicted to bargain hunting, so planning a pretty large wedding on a budget which our society defines as very small (though it strikes me as a very significant chunk of change, thank you very much!) is providing ample opportunity to flex my deal-finding muscles.

Technically speaking, we have money in savings that we could also allot for the wedding, but we could not really do so in good conscience. I want to have a lovely, enjoyable, memorable wedding, but not at the expense of our financial well-being. I think $5000 is ample funds with which to throw a nice party, despite what the wedding industry may have to say to the contrary.

I know that some guests may find elements of our "budget" wedding tacky or distasteful but I suspect none of the people whose opinions I really value will fall in that category. I'm not willing to shell out the extra dough to impress everyone, which wouldn't be possible anyway.

There are some song lyrics I took to heart long ago. They go a-like this:

"But it's all right now, I've learned my lesson well. You see, you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself"
-Garden Party, Ricky Nelson

And that's exactly what I aim to do! This wedding-in-the-works pleases me so much. It makes me giddy every time I think about it, not stressed about the reception it may or may not receive from my guests. I wish every bride could feel this way.

Bridesmaid Bouquet Trial Run

Ta dah!

My buddio and bridesmaid Kelsey is finally back in town for the summer, and we've been making up for lost time by hanging out into the wee hours most every night. Today, she accompanied me on a very exciting Sam's Club run. At check out, my grocery cart contained: pudding, a whole baked chicken, string cheese, Member's Mark Ensure equivalent, blackberries, and Baby's Breath. That's just how I roll. The cashier told me that he thought only weight lifters drink Member's Mark Nutritional Drink, and then asked me how much I bench. Silly me.. I thought Old People predominately drink Ensure.

Then we went back to my house, I guzzled down an oh-so-nutritionally-balanced meal of chicken and "nutritional drink" (I feel *stronger* already), and we set to work on a trial run of the Baby's Breath bridesmaid's bouquets.

Kelsey models the bridesmaid's bouquet. Imagine she's wearing a chocolate brown dress. Note the approving smile. Yay, bridesmaid bouquet gets bridesmaid's approval. Maid of Honor, what say you?

With 2 bouquets under our belts now, we make a pretty good bouquet-making team. I'm curious to see how long this bouquet lasts, to see if it'd be possible to make it 1 or 2 days in advance, rather than the morning of the wedding, but either way, we can knock out the 2 fresh flower bouquets in no time.

I may also use fresh flowers for the mothers' corsages, but I have time to figure that out.

Marginally successful boutonniere

I also tried to throw together a Baby's Breath boutonniere, since my male attendant won't be carrying a bouquet, but I'd like to distinguish him from the groomsmen while also linking his boutonniere to the bridesmaids' bouquets. I obviously need to refine my stem wrapping technique, and I think it needs some long leaves or something as an accent behind it, but at least I know it can be done. It seems like a pretty hardy little boutonniere, too.

All in all, I deem the bouquet trial a success. It's currently hanging out in the kitchen, looking pretty in 1 of the 16 vases I bought 2 days ago at Ikea for about $2 each. These vases will ultimately be used as part of our centerpieces.

Look for tablescape test runs hopefully sooner rather than later. I'm supposed to meet with someone about buying table linens tomorrow, and I've found the fabric I want to make table squares out of.. I'm just waiting for it to go on sale, and hoping it isn't discontinued first.

Lack of Officiantiness

Well, we met with the officiant on Tuesday, as planned. It wasn't until the day of our meeting that I bothered to ask Opie what denomination this preacher is. As soon as he said, "Baptist", I instantly became apprehensive. I try to be as open-minded about religion and religious sects as possible, but a large percentage of my negative experiences in regards to religion have come via Baptists. That's not by any means to say that Baptists are bad people! I've just encountered fewer open-minded Baptists than open-minded "insert-other-Denomination-here"s, and am therefore sometimes wary of interactions with Baptists where religion will dominate the conversation.

As we pulled up to the church, my apprehension developed into a heavy stone in my stomach. I've seen a lot of huge churches, but this one is pretty uber-huge, without becoming the stereotypical concrete super-church you run into on the highways of Texas. Beautiful traditional brick architecture, but seemingly the size of an airport, and with an underground parking garage to boot. Eep. As an agnostic with somewhat atheistic leanings, I felt rather like I was entering a trap, while driving into the underbelly of this enormous church, with the express purpose of explaining my religious beliefs to a minister.

I think Opie was (understandably) a little amused by my palpable fear, but in the moment, I was far from amused by his amusement. I hadn't had a one-on-one meeting with a minister since I went through confirmation in 6th grade, and I was even nervous then! Despite the fact that I've attended copious amounts of churches since going down a "wayward" path, out of respect for the other attendees of the church, I always keep mum about any issues I may find with the religious proceedings. It's certainly not my place to come into their place of worship and question their beliefs. Which is exactly what I felt like I was preparing to do. Whee!

We wound up having to employ the help of a security guard and some sort of church employee to guide us to the minister's office, which happened to be as far from where we parked as humanly possible, with a never-ending labyrinth of stairs and hallways in between.

And you know what? All my fears were for naught. The minister was one heck of a nice guy, and completely respectful of our beliefs, as we were of his. I think all 3 of us enjoyed the open-minded religious philosophical discussion that ensued. If anyone wants a religious officiant in the Dallas area, I would gladly pass you his information.

Unfortunately, just as we would feel insincere having a religious ceremony when we are nonreligious, the minister would feel insincere in performing a nonreligious ceremony when he believes that God is an important part of marriage. We completely understand, though it is a little disappointing, since he's a really great guy and the only officiant we have any personal recommendation for thus far... but we'll figure something else out.

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Since I assigned finding an officiant to Opie, I'm doing my best to stay out of researching it too much, but I'll be somewhat surprised if we don't end up using a Justice of the Peace. I don't know what rates they charge, but I'm sure it can't be worse than the cheesy wedding officiants we've found offering their services online.

Officiantiness

One of the things I've delegated to Opie is to find the officiant for our ceremony. I initially started researching it myself, but the prices and cheesiness of everything I was finding was just.. toooo much. The average rate for a ceremony in Dallas appears to be around $200, $250. That's ridiculous in my opinion. What all do they do? They show up in somewhat nice attire, read a few lines aloud from a binder, sign some papers, and skedaddle. That's a pretty sweet hourly rate for them, eh?

We thought we had a good solution to this problem. Opie's uncle would make a great officiant! Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons that I can understand, his uncle declined our request. Back to square one. I have a few family members of my own that would probably play the role well, but we think the wedding is probably already a little too focused on my family, so we're exploring other options first.

Opie's mom suggested a pastor from her church, with the recommendation that he's really good with young people. That kind of scared me off a bit. Despite my lack of religious affiliation, I've attended a lot of churches of numerous denominations over the years, and I normally can't stand youth ministers. Nevertheless, since we have no other recommendations, Opie called the guy up today. Apparently he's actually the minister for 30 & 40-year-olds. I didn't even know they had specializations like that, to be entirely honest. I haven't talked to him yet, but Opie laid out our requirements (no premarital counseling, at most only minimal mention of God in the ceremony, respect for our personal beliefs, no church ceremony) and he was pretty pleased with the guy's openness to our wishes, so we have a meeting with him on Tuesday. We don't know yet what he charges, but at least we've found a possible contender.