Budget/DIY/Minimalist Wedding Theme! :D

Before I begin, sorry (but not sorry) about the lack of posts in the past couple of weeks. I was finishing up a final project in summer classes and then was on vacation with my husband. Priorities called, then leisure called. That being said, I’m back and with some very exciting news and the start/continuation of a series….

We picked our wedding theme/colors!!!

(Coastal) Beach themed!

We are both super excited about this theme for so many reasons that I’ll try to list below. Here we go….

My husband and I both love the look of beach cottages. While looking at Pinterest this past weekend I saw a pin for a “Beach Themed Wedding” and casually/jokingly mentioned it aloud. After 5 seconds my husband and I looked at each other and knew it’d be perfect. Here are just a couple of pictures that we plan to put our own twist on:

I love the two beach chairs on top and how elegant this still looks.

These will be extremely similar to what we do for our table numbers. How easy is that?!

For the head table. Looks like a very simple DIY.

My husband can easily make something like this, and it could be used as a jewelry box or small storage box after the wedding.

I do have a couple of Pinterest boards dedicated to this but they are both secret. I’ll be adding pictures into posts on here as we do DIY projects along the way. Again, since the color scheme will look better with a mixture of “sea glass” type colors (light blues, seafoam/mint greens) we can do a lot of things separately and very far in advance.

Also, this theme is very casual in comparison to how the wedding was beginning to be planned thus far. In the area he is form, weddings are extremely important, and are meant to include friends/family. Everyone has their idea of what a traditional wedding should be like and it was becoming overwhelming for me. I’ve never wanted a huge wedding and when we were talking about things prior to this theme it just seemed stuffy and old-fashioned, and expensive! I felt like I was losing control over the day and it was more of a headache. Now that we have made some decisions I am excited and feel in control and ready to go! =)

Being a little more casual is great because

• If you didn’t know, we are already legally married, so this “wedding” is for our friends/family to share in the excitement and love with us. It is being held on our 1 year anniversary so the date is still very important to us.
• This theme makes having a buffet dinner seem obvious because a plated served dinner would be too formal.
• It takes so much pressure off! I don’t have to worry about anyone’s expectations of what a wedding “should” look like.

Another huge area is cost! Thankfully my husband was realizing that there isn’t any reason we should be dropping a lot of $$$ when we have student loans and a baby on the way. This theme gives us room to have a day everyone will love and still keep costs low.

This theme will no doubt save us a LOT of money because:

• Mentioned already, but a buffet dinner makes more sense, and will save us more than $3 PER PERSON.
• Almost no flowers! The decor will include primarily sand, shells, starfish, glassware and candles. The only flowers I foresee using are possibly baby’s breath for bridesmaid bouquets, and maybe a bit within my bouquet as well. My bouquet will be primarily seashells, and I plan to make it myself.
• DIY items: so much of the decor can be easily done by DIY to match the theme, and things don’t have to match! Cottages and coastal table decor tend to look better with mismatched items. This means if I find a piece for a great price, I can purchase it and know that it will look wonderful. Also my husband is excited to do some DIY things too, like a stage for the head table that will have a beach fencing around it.
• Bye-Bye chair covers!: at $2 a chair this was something I didn’t really want to do from the beginning, but would’ve looked better with our original plan. Now the chairs at our venue are PERFECT because they are the simple white folding chairs that look like they belong on a beach!
• We can use the venue’s linens! Our venue offers a few colors of linens, and baby blue is one of them. So that will be completely covered which is awesome and leaves us with plenty of room to decorate and still be saving a lot of $$$.
• A good amount of decor we will use in our first home. As I mentioned, we really both love the look of coastal beach cottages, and we would love to give our first home the same feel. In addition, those decor/functional pieces will have even more meaning because they came from our wedding day!

Other things that makes this theme perfect/awesome.

• The floor of our venue is rocky/cobble. It already looks sandy, and now it won’t be as odd if anyone ignores our note that says not to wear heels. Barefoot wouldn’t be odd if the theme is beach!
• My husband’s best friend gets married two weeks before our wedding ceremony. Inevitably, a lot of the same people will be attending both events. This means that our event will definitely be compared to theirs, and they are putting a LOT of money into their event. Money that we do not have that would not make sense for us to spend. Another thing we ran into was trying not to make the themes similar or anything. There were so many ideas we had both already found on Pinterest, but because their wedding will come first, it makes it look like we copied them. I understand that this might sound super petty, but it would definitely annoy me to no end. We changed our ideal colors TWICE to try to accommodate them, which was just beyond frustrating. The day is about celebrating in our love and family, not to be compared point by point with an event that happened two weeks prior. This theme is so different that it would actually be hard to compare the two!
• My dress can be simple and flowy: I’ve never liked the idea of spending a large amount on a dress that is used once. I am also not into extremely glittery/lacy/big dresses. I’ve always loved the look of a simple, flowy chiffon dress. This now fits into everything perfectly.

I’m SO excited to get started on everything!

-Rachel

Making a Tiny Wedding (Elopement) Special.

I’ve mentioned my big wedding previously, but here is what’s happening: my fiance and I are getting married at a courthouse with our parents this Thursday! 😀 This has been planned for a few months (my parents are traveling thousands of miles). That being said, we ARE having a larger ceremony and reception on our 1 year Anniversary, Saturday June 18th, 2016.

Here’s the small bits we are doing this year to make our teeny wedding (I hate the word “eloping” because his has been planned), special.

• Dress: I got a white cocktail length dress yesterday from Nordstrom Rack for $45. It’s very simple but so pretty, and having a white dress makes it seem more real! I will be wearing white sandals that I already owned.
• Suit: My fiance was actually able to BUY a tailored suit and matching tie for $125. It’s hard to find rentals that cheap normally! We will definitely suggest to the groomsmen to actually purchase their suits because this place was so great. He also purchased dress shoes for $35, and he will need these for work anyways so it was perfect timing. (Don’t feel the need to buy a suit if that’s not in your budget! We had planned on a dress shirt/tie and black pants. His mom really wanted to do this for him, which was so sweet and very appreciated.)
• Flowers: Okay this was a bit expensive because we don’t have time to DIY, but we ordered a bouquet and boutonniere and the cost was $60 total. However the company was lovely and didn’t mind that we just showed up on a busy Saturday. From what I have heard we actually managed a good deal anyways!
• Cake: We will be ordering a simple small cake (6-8in round) from a local bakery. We don’t have a cost yet because we are doing that today, but I would hope that at the MOST it would be $30.
• Photos: As I mentioned in my DIY vs Not DIY post, my fiances brother does photography. He’s not professional but he has taken several classes in college and is a graphic design major. He’s going to take pictures of us at the ceremony and after with our parents. I am so happy that we will have these to cherish, and that they will be free! =) I’d really recommend asking a friend to take pictures, even if you don’t have a professional.

I hope that give ideas if you need a very simple wedding idea!

-Rachel

Wedding Planning: DIY and Not-DIY. (Minimalist-ish)

I am currently in the process of wedding planning, and boy is it annoying! To be perfectly honest, I am doing this mostly for my fiance and his family. I do not personally care about a wedding, I want a marriage. However, my man has a large extended family and they want to share in our love and celebration. So here I am, planning a wedding that could potentially be for 250 people, yikes! I am trying to keep this relatively low budget, but seeing as we are getting married on a Saturday in June in a large city area, it’s getting difficult. My ultimate goal budget is $10,000, but we do have a budget of $15,000. This price may seem very high to some, but the average wedding costs over $25,000!!!

I have a VERY detailed budget on what can be spent broken down into more than 50 separate expenses. If you want to see this let me know! Some of the budget savings will come from DIY items.

These are some items I plan to DIY:

• Hair and Makeup: I do not see the need to hire anyone to do my makeup when I love doing makeup myself! I will also expect that the bridesmaids do their own or have a friend help if needed. I don’t think it’s anything crazy to ask. I might ask a friend to help with hair but there’s a strong chance I’ll be doing that myself too.
• Flowers: This includes all arrangements, bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and decor flowers. My future mother-in-law actually made my fiances boutonnieres and corsages for his high school dances so she is willing to help which is great! I plan to buy all flowers in bulk from Costco, Sam’s Club, or a different bulk supplier.
• Decor: I have looked up buying jars and candles in bulk and it’s actually amazing how inexpensive these can be! I won’t be truly making other decor but I’ll likely be putting out prints of us and other fun, DIY decorations. Pinterest is my BFF.
• Favors: As a bridesmaid I helped my cousin make a TON of DIY favors for her wedding, so I plan to DIY these too! I do not know what the gift or theme will be, but I’m confident we can come up with something classy and inexpensive.
• Prints/Slideshow: The prints I referenced in decor, but by this I mean using costco to print photos and then putting in second-hand picture frames at various tables. The slideshow would be either a slideshow of us to be shown at the wedding, or a slideshow of pictures from the wedding itself. Or both! I’ve had to do so many presentations and slideshows that I enjoy doing this and see absolutely no reason to pay someone to do this when I possess the skills myself.
• SOME Photography: My fiance’s brother is very talented so we are going to hire him to do photos for our save the dates as well as the photos that will be decor at the wedding. We will pay him, but it will be much less expensive than professional.

These are some items I will not DIY:

• Cake: Oh goodness no. I love baking and actually have done an ice cream wedding cake before (which was SO hard) but I would not attempt this at my own wedding when there will be a million other things on my mind. However, I have a friend who is an amazing baker so I’ll likely be hiring her!
• Dresses/Tuxes: No way. I do not posses those skills. I’ll definitely be looking for a reasonably priced dress…..but I will not be making a dress. The same goes for bridesmaid’s dresses and men’s tuxes.
• Food: Every location we have viewed for receptions has required in-house catering so I wasn’t even left with a choice there. That being said, I probably would’ve opted to cater the food either way.
• Photography: For actual wedding photos we will very likely hire a professional photographer. This is not set in stone and will depend on prices, but pro is currently the plan.
• Invitations: I will be doing these through Costco though so hopefully they are much cheaper this way! =)

I hope that gives some ideas or was at least mildly interesting;)

-Rachel