Post-Wedding Catch-up
So who wants to hear about my wedding and how I kept it on a tight budget? It's been almost a year now...so it's probably time to share the deets.
The date we chose for our wedding was December 29th, 2012. (Yes, less than 4 months after the day we got engaged). We chose a date close to Christmas because we thought it might be easier, since the family was already planning on getting together in Tennessee for Christmas anyway--this would save them another trip to Tennessee later. Also, we suspected there might be another family wedding during the summer of 2013--and it turns out we were right! One of my cousins was married in Pittsburgh in August.
First, let's get the setting...J and I picked the Belmont Mansion in Nashville for both our ceremony and reception. We had no connection to the university--we just thought it was a beautiful location, reasonably priced, and was available on the date we wanted. They even included tables, chairs, and table linens in the price. Plus, they had a beautiful grand staircase, and I fell in love with it instantly! And as an added bonus, the mansion puts up beautiful Victorian Christmas decorations each year, which we knew would save us money on decorations for our ceremony and reception. The only downside to the location was that we were maxed out at only 100 guests, so it was unfortunate that we weren't able to invite as many people as we wanted to, but it did help keep our costs down.
For our wedding colors, I went very simple: ivory and white. Because the mansion was going to be decorated for Christmas, I didn't want the wedding colors to clash with the decor. I also didn't want to go with the typical "red, black, and white" Christmas wedding colors, as I felt like that was too predictable.
I found my dress at a small bridal shop in Bellevue. I went in there on a whim one day when I saw a banner outside that said "1/2 off Bridal Sale." I had envisioned myself in a mermaid-style dress, but after trying a few of those on, I decided that style was too constricting and would be difficult for me to walk down the grand staircase. So the dress consultant suggested a fit and flare style, which was a nice compromise between a mermaid and princess style dress. I fell in love with an ivory Maggie Sottero dress, but felt bad buying the first dress I found that I liked, so I took a day to think about it.
It was all I could think about for the next 24 hours, so I went back the next day and bought the dress. The dress was a size 10 and the style had been recently discontinued (hence the 50% off price tag), so there was no way to order it in my size. The only option was to alter the dress down to a size 2. YIKES. So over the course of 2-3 months and many meetings with the seamstress, somehow she got that dress down to a size 2! She was a miracle worker, especially with all the layers and folds in the material. She actually "hemmed" the dress by raising the waist, since the bottom of the dress would be too difficult to actually hem. The silhouette of the dress changed from a "fit and flare" to more of a "princess" style, but I got used to it.
Some of my favorite accessories for the day were my shoes, fur jacket, and my hairpiece. My shoes were ones that I found on clearance from David's Bridal online, I think I paid $30 for them. Then I found an ivory fur jacket at Forever 21 for $20...it was all I could do to wait until the wedding to wear it! And also some cute ivory fingerless gloves for $5! And finally, my mom made my hairpiece using antique buttons (something old) from her personal collection (something borrowed).
My bridal party consisted of my sister, a coworker, and a former roommate. They each wore a simple black dress from Target.com. The reason I went with it was because I could get free shipping with my Target RedCard, and also free returns in store if we didn't like them or they didn't fit. And also, the dresses were only about $50 each, as opposed to $100+ from bridal shops. And since I couldn't ask my friends to buy expensive dresses they would never wear again, these inexpensive dresses were a great find, and they looked every bit as nice as a more costly dress.
The amazing and adorable Gabrael Dunham of Salon Bluebird did all our hair. She worked quickly and did such a great job on all of us, and was reasonably priced!
My handsome groom and his groomsmen all wore tuxes rented from Men's Wearhouse. I had a coupon for $40 off each tux rental, so I think they were around $150 each. We actually paid for all the rentals, since we felt that was a steep price to ask people to pay for a rented tux. I thought they looked so great!
Our flower girl was my 3-yr-old niece. Her dress was one I found online at the Children's Place and paid around $25 for it. Her mother found some ivory shoes and tights for her to wear. I bought her an ivory fur coat like mine, which she LOVED :) She even wore it throughout the whole ceremony. Mom also sewed some bows on the back of her tights, right above her shoes.
As far as flowers went, I wanted to keep things extremely simple. Since I
was doing all my own flowers, and fresh flowers usually have to be done the
day-of, I did as much artificial as I could. So my girls carried faux
flower balls, also called pomanders. I got them from Hobby Lobby when their wedding floral was 50% off, so they were $5 each. They were popular in Victorian
times, so I thought it was very fitting for the venue! We also used faux
flowers for the boutineers, which mom and I made in the days leading up
to the wedding (I don't think I have a close-up picture of those). I found some "real-touch" roses at Hobby Lobby and bought them when they were 50% off. They looked and felt like real roses!
Since we couldn't have anything on the floors in our venue, our flower girl couldn't drop any flower petals as she went down the aisle, so I just kept it simple and gave our flower girl a pomander as well (you can see her holding it a couple pictures up). I did end up using fresh flowers for my own bouquet. I picked up a dozen white roses at Kroger the day before the wedding for about $15, gave them a fresh cut and wrapped them up with ribbon the day of the wedding. Mom helped me make it look legit.
I ended up tying my promise ring into the ribbons of the bouquet as my "something blue". My dad gave me this ring on my 16th birthday, when he took me on my first date and I promised to remain pure until my wedding day. It just happened to be a blue sapphire, so that worked out pretty perfect!
We didn't do any other flowers as decorations. The only real decorations we had to come up with for the venue were table centerpieces. Since it was a December wedding, we wanted something wintery but not overly Christmassy. Mom had some vases left from when she used to do weddings, so we didn't have to buy any. I found some inspiration on Pinterest and we went from there. So mom spray-painted some branches from her yard white, and also glued glitter on them. Then J and I found some battery-operated light-up branches on sale at Target in the Christmas decorations, so we picked up enough to put one on each table. I think they were $6 per branch. Then I also grabbed some pearl branch stems from Michaels for $1 each. Then we just had to put some glass beads in the bottom of the vase to cover up the battery box, and we also wrapped some wide ivory ribbon around the vases to help disguise it as well. Here's what they looked like all assembled:
As you can see, we put each vase on a mirror and lit a couple of votive candles. Mom and I
actually glued glitter on the votive candles to make them look more
wintery. I also painted some wooden "M"s ivory and placed one on each
table. I had picked up the M's for $1 each at Michaels. You can see in the full table setting photo that there are chargers at each setting. These were also left over from when mom did weddings, and she had enough red and black chargers that we didn't have to rent any.
We didn't have ushers for our wedding, mainly because we didn't want to burden anyone else with renting a tuxedo, traveling a long way, etc etc. I had seen something on Pinterest that inspired me to come up with an alternative to ushers, so I painted a sign that basically invited our guests to sit wherever they like. I just bought a cloth canvas from Michaels when they were on sale and painted it with black acrylic paint. Then I found a font I liked in Microsoft Word and a size that worked and printed it out as a template. I cut out the letters (SO TEDIOUS) and traced them in pencil onto my canvas. Then I simply painted it with white acrylic paint, and voila! We put it out in the front entrance next to the "guest book," which was one of our engagement pictures and people could sign the matte around it. We bought the frame and matte with coupons at Michaels.
Our programs for the ceremony were ones that we printed ourselves. I found the program kits at Michaels marked down to $10 per kit. Each kit contained enough supplies to make 50 programs, so I picked up 3 kits in case I messed some up. When I got up to the register, they rang up as $3 per kit! So I ended up paying less than $10 for supplies to make 150 programs! The most expensive part of that was the black ink I had to buy for my printer, but altogether it was still cheaper than having programs professionally printed. The program kit even included a template with beautiful fonts, so the process was very easy. My family helped me assemble the programs in the days leading up to the wedding. Here's a close-up of the front cover:
This picture also shows the favors that we gave out to our wedding guests. Since we had a winter wedding, I thought hot chocolate would be a cute favor. This was especially meaningful since my father works for Nestlé and can get hot chocolate in bulk from the company store! So I purchased 2 boxes of 50 icing decorator bags at Michaels using 40% off coupons. Then my parents brought a case of hot chocolate with them, and a few nights before the wedding we made an assembly line for the favors. My mom was trimming the icing bags to be shorter, dad was measuring and scooping the cocoa into the bags, I was adding the mini marshmallows and closing the bags with clear rubber bands, and my sister was tying ribbons and tags that said "Baby, It's Cold Outside" onto the bags.
Now on to the most important part of the night: the FOOD! We had the wedding catered by a wonderful company called Carolyn's Homestyle Kitchen. She was reasonably priced, her food was delicious, and their service was great! I highly recommend them if you need catering in the Nashville area. Then for our cake, my mom actually baked and decorated our main wedding cake. I found one I liked online and then she recreated it. Because we did a somewhat small-ish wedding cake, we also ordered our 2 favorite flavor cakes from our favorite bakery, Nothing Bundt Cakes. They were $30 each, but they were gorgeous and so delicious! My mom also made a groom's cake that looked like a tuxedo. She is so talented! And from what I hear, the cakes were all delicious! (We had 4 wedding cakes and I didn't get a single slice that night! I'm looking forward to our 1-year anniversary when we get to bust that top tier out of the freezer and finally have a piece of our wedding cake!)
For our ceremony music, I hired a friend from college that is an amazing pianist. Since another one of my friends from home was coming to the wedding, he was able to ride along with him. Originally I was going to play tracks for all of the ceremony music, but having Ryan play the grand piano live really was the best choice. For our reception music, I hired one of my bridesmaid's brothers, who has his own DJ business and was able to give us a great discount. He and his friend came down from Paducah with their equipment, got a nice dinner, and some $$ out of the deal. Our reception was only a couple hours long, so I'd say they had a pretty easy gig!
I think perhaps the most expensive thing of the whole night was the venue and the catering, but I'm sure that's pretty common. We had no alcohol at our reception, so that also helped keep the cost down. We did all the decorations ourselves (not including the decorations already in the venue) and I used a LOT of coupons at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, and JoAnn's.
We pulled the whole thing together in less then 4 months, engagement to wedding, and for under $10K, which I'm pretty proud of. I would have been happy going to the courthouse, but I must admit that I did love getting dolled up and wearing a gorgeous dress! Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our special day...
Thanks for taking a look at our special day with me! It's been almost a year already and time has flown by!! I look forward to seeing what the next year together will bring us!
The date we chose for our wedding was December 29th, 2012. (Yes, less than 4 months after the day we got engaged). We chose a date close to Christmas because we thought it might be easier, since the family was already planning on getting together in Tennessee for Christmas anyway--this would save them another trip to Tennessee later. Also, we suspected there might be another family wedding during the summer of 2013--and it turns out we were right! One of my cousins was married in Pittsburgh in August.
First, let's get the setting...J and I picked the Belmont Mansion in Nashville for both our ceremony and reception. We had no connection to the university--we just thought it was a beautiful location, reasonably priced, and was available on the date we wanted. They even included tables, chairs, and table linens in the price. Plus, they had a beautiful grand staircase, and I fell in love with it instantly! And as an added bonus, the mansion puts up beautiful Victorian Christmas decorations each year, which we knew would save us money on decorations for our ceremony and reception. The only downside to the location was that we were maxed out at only 100 guests, so it was unfortunate that we weren't able to invite as many people as we wanted to, but it did help keep our costs down.
For our wedding colors, I went very simple: ivory and white. Because the mansion was going to be decorated for Christmas, I didn't want the wedding colors to clash with the decor. I also didn't want to go with the typical "red, black, and white" Christmas wedding colors, as I felt like that was too predictable.
I found my dress at a small bridal shop in Bellevue. I went in there on a whim one day when I saw a banner outside that said "1/2 off Bridal Sale." I had envisioned myself in a mermaid-style dress, but after trying a few of those on, I decided that style was too constricting and would be difficult for me to walk down the grand staircase. So the dress consultant suggested a fit and flare style, which was a nice compromise between a mermaid and princess style dress. I fell in love with an ivory Maggie Sottero dress, but felt bad buying the first dress I found that I liked, so I took a day to think about it.
 |
| My dress before and after alterations |
My bridal party consisted of my sister, a coworker, and a former roommate. They each wore a simple black dress from Target.com. The reason I went with it was because I could get free shipping with my Target RedCard, and also free returns in store if we didn't like them or they didn't fit. And also, the dresses were only about $50 each, as opposed to $100+ from bridal shops. And since I couldn't ask my friends to buy expensive dresses they would never wear again, these inexpensive dresses were a great find, and they looked every bit as nice as a more costly dress.
The amazing and adorable Gabrael Dunham of Salon Bluebird did all our hair. She worked quickly and did such a great job on all of us, and was reasonably priced!
My handsome groom and his groomsmen all wore tuxes rented from Men's Wearhouse. I had a coupon for $40 off each tux rental, so I think they were around $150 each. We actually paid for all the rentals, since we felt that was a steep price to ask people to pay for a rented tux. I thought they looked so great!
Our flower girl was my 3-yr-old niece. Her dress was one I found online at the Children's Place and paid around $25 for it. Her mother found some ivory shoes and tights for her to wear. I bought her an ivory fur coat like mine, which she LOVED :) She even wore it throughout the whole ceremony. Mom also sewed some bows on the back of her tights, right above her shoes.
 |
| For privacy reasons, I am not showing her face |
Since we couldn't have anything on the floors in our venue, our flower girl couldn't drop any flower petals as she went down the aisle, so I just kept it simple and gave our flower girl a pomander as well (you can see her holding it a couple pictures up). I did end up using fresh flowers for my own bouquet. I picked up a dozen white roses at Kroger the day before the wedding for about $15, gave them a fresh cut and wrapped them up with ribbon the day of the wedding. Mom helped me make it look legit.
I ended up tying my promise ring into the ribbons of the bouquet as my "something blue". My dad gave me this ring on my 16th birthday, when he took me on my first date and I promised to remain pure until my wedding day. It just happened to be a blue sapphire, so that worked out pretty perfect!
We didn't do any other flowers as decorations. The only real decorations we had to come up with for the venue were table centerpieces. Since it was a December wedding, we wanted something wintery but not overly Christmassy. Mom had some vases left from when she used to do weddings, so we didn't have to buy any. I found some inspiration on Pinterest and we went from there. So mom spray-painted some branches from her yard white, and also glued glitter on them. Then J and I found some battery-operated light-up branches on sale at Target in the Christmas decorations, so we picked up enough to put one on each table. I think they were $6 per branch. Then I also grabbed some pearl branch stems from Michaels for $1 each. Then we just had to put some glass beads in the bottom of the vase to cover up the battery box, and we also wrapped some wide ivory ribbon around the vases to help disguise it as well. Here's what they looked like all assembled:
We didn't have ushers for our wedding, mainly because we didn't want to burden anyone else with renting a tuxedo, traveling a long way, etc etc. I had seen something on Pinterest that inspired me to come up with an alternative to ushers, so I painted a sign that basically invited our guests to sit wherever they like. I just bought a cloth canvas from Michaels when they were on sale and painted it with black acrylic paint. Then I found a font I liked in Microsoft Word and a size that worked and printed it out as a template. I cut out the letters (SO TEDIOUS) and traced them in pencil onto my canvas. Then I simply painted it with white acrylic paint, and voila! We put it out in the front entrance next to the "guest book," which was one of our engagement pictures and people could sign the matte around it. We bought the frame and matte with coupons at Michaels.
Our programs for the ceremony were ones that we printed ourselves. I found the program kits at Michaels marked down to $10 per kit. Each kit contained enough supplies to make 50 programs, so I picked up 3 kits in case I messed some up. When I got up to the register, they rang up as $3 per kit! So I ended up paying less than $10 for supplies to make 150 programs! The most expensive part of that was the black ink I had to buy for my printer, but altogether it was still cheaper than having programs professionally printed. The program kit even included a template with beautiful fonts, so the process was very easy. My family helped me assemble the programs in the days leading up to the wedding. Here's a close-up of the front cover:
This picture also shows the favors that we gave out to our wedding guests. Since we had a winter wedding, I thought hot chocolate would be a cute favor. This was especially meaningful since my father works for Nestlé and can get hot chocolate in bulk from the company store! So I purchased 2 boxes of 50 icing decorator bags at Michaels using 40% off coupons. Then my parents brought a case of hot chocolate with them, and a few nights before the wedding we made an assembly line for the favors. My mom was trimming the icing bags to be shorter, dad was measuring and scooping the cocoa into the bags, I was adding the mini marshmallows and closing the bags with clear rubber bands, and my sister was tying ribbons and tags that said "Baby, It's Cold Outside" onto the bags.
Now on to the most important part of the night: the FOOD! We had the wedding catered by a wonderful company called Carolyn's Homestyle Kitchen. She was reasonably priced, her food was delicious, and their service was great! I highly recommend them if you need catering in the Nashville area. Then for our cake, my mom actually baked and decorated our main wedding cake. I found one I liked online and then she recreated it. Because we did a somewhat small-ish wedding cake, we also ordered our 2 favorite flavor cakes from our favorite bakery, Nothing Bundt Cakes. They were $30 each, but they were gorgeous and so delicious! My mom also made a groom's cake that looked like a tuxedo. She is so talented! And from what I hear, the cakes were all delicious! (We had 4 wedding cakes and I didn't get a single slice that night! I'm looking forward to our 1-year anniversary when we get to bust that top tier out of the freezer and finally have a piece of our wedding cake!)
For our ceremony music, I hired a friend from college that is an amazing pianist. Since another one of my friends from home was coming to the wedding, he was able to ride along with him. Originally I was going to play tracks for all of the ceremony music, but having Ryan play the grand piano live really was the best choice. For our reception music, I hired one of my bridesmaid's brothers, who has his own DJ business and was able to give us a great discount. He and his friend came down from Paducah with their equipment, got a nice dinner, and some $$ out of the deal. Our reception was only a couple hours long, so I'd say they had a pretty easy gig!
I think perhaps the most expensive thing of the whole night was the venue and the catering, but I'm sure that's pretty common. We had no alcohol at our reception, so that also helped keep the cost down. We did all the decorations ourselves (not including the decorations already in the venue) and I used a LOT of coupons at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, and JoAnn's.
We pulled the whole thing together in less then 4 months, engagement to wedding, and for under $10K, which I'm pretty proud of. I would have been happy going to the courthouse, but I must admit that I did love getting dolled up and wearing a gorgeous dress! Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our special day...
Thanks for taking a look at our special day with me! It's been almost a year already and time has flown by!! I look forward to seeing what the next year together will bring us!
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