Once Upon A Time.....

....there was a Thirty-Something Bride. This is the story of her wedding day.

I woke up early that day, but not too early as I had dosed myself the night before with two (count 'em TWO) Tylenol PM's (for those of you not in the know, The Thirty-Something Bride has serious sleep issues). The house was quiet as The Candyman was staying with his brothers. I got out of bed and walked over to the window. For the last 2 months Nashville had been plagued with torrential downpours, much to my planning chagrin as October is historically the driest month in Nashville. Keeping this in mind, crossing my fingers and squeezing my eyes tight, I grabbed the turny-thing on my blinds and opened them. I opened my eyes. I started to bawl - from sheer happiness! There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun was shining. I prayed to myself, "Dear God, I freakin' owe you one. BIG TIME."

I had planned for my mom, dad, brother and sister-in-law to come over for coffee prior to the start of the wedding day madness. I just wanted to spend a few minutes with the people who know me best. I wanted to be free to freak the fuck out, if need be. Happily though, I was calm. I was in need of some waterproof mascara though (what if I cry!) so made an early a.m. run to Kroger. I also swung by the drive-thru Starbucks and ordered the usual: Grande Skinny Hazelnut Latte, extra hot, no foam (it took me a about a year to figure out how to order it). I proceeded to tell the drive-thru barista of my pending nuptials. Um, duh. Like, I'm not going to freakin' tell every single person who doesn't already know?

As I was driving back to the house, a car flashed it lights at me for some reason. It was early in the morning, we were on a nearly deserted road - what the hell? I slowed and saw why: to my far right was a large group of deer. They decided to cross and were coming around the bend to do so (which is why I didn't see them and why the other driver "flashed" me). About 9 of them picked their way across the road while we waited. The last, a doe, paused right in front of my car and turned and stared right at me for about 3 seconds, then followed her team into the forest. It was like she was saying, "Yeah, I know it's your day, but you still have to wait for me. Have a good time." Seriously folks, I'm not making this shit up.

I had a lovely, but brief time having (more) coffee with my family. They calmed me, in their own weird way. I knew I had to be at the hotel to pick up my MOH at a particular time. For some reason, I equated the time I needed to be there, with the time I left the house. Um, duh! Already late! Happily, it was Sunday morning pre-church time in Nashville (trust me folks, you do NOT want to get caught in post-church traffic - it blows!) and I hauled ass to the hotel in no-time flat. My MOH was waiting outside (God love her!) and she hopped in and we were off - right on schedule!

We arrived at J. Bangs Salon and Julie arrived a few minutes later (yes, I was slightly worried for about a nanosecond) and we got to doin' the 'do! Jonathon, Sharon and Tabitha arrived shortly thereafter and we were off and running!

I had a slight amendment to the up-do from the trial and was just slightly nervous. No worries, Julie knocked it out of the park!

Hair done, sans make-up.

I just LOVE Julie's expression here!

The MOH in her active role as Social Historian.

DIY hair toys? Check!

Sooooooooooooo relaxing!

Julie's palette.

Once we had our hair and make-up done, we sent Tabitha (my planner) on a quick run across the street to Bread & Co. to grab us some grub! Seriously ladies, you MUST eat. If Tabitha had not insisted, I probably would have passed out from hunger later during the day! With to-go sammies in hand, we jumped in the car and headed back to the Hilton to finish getting ready!

Jonathon rode with us!

We look like a couple of hippies! Love it!

I know I mentioned this once before, but I felt so pretty the day of my wedding. I highly recommend a make-up artist if it's in your budget. As y'all know, I blew my budget in the beauty area. I. Don't. Care. I didn't care then and I don't care now. I was just soaring I felt so pretty.

I feel pretty,
Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and bright!
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me tonight.

Sorry. Channeling my inner West Side Story fantasy. Stay tuned for more!

Sportin' my Wedding Chicks t-shirt!

I will say this and I will keep saying it. I LOVE MY PHOTOGRAPHER.

The Ceremony, Part I

This is an auto-post. Just so you know. When you read this, I will educating others on the beauty and splendor that is my January 2010 release (home decor is like, so much later than RTW fashion). We can only hope that it's a smashing success.

In the meantime, there are things I have yet to share about the wedding. Big, beautiful, lovely things that you simply must know.

Our ceremony, if anything, was totally lifted from a host a resources. The Candyman, being the wordsmith in the house, had final say over the vows and I completely trusted him in this endeavor, even though I did fight with him on some things. With time, I saw he was right.

Th template we used came from our wonderful officiant, Minister Ralph Griggs. Minister Griggs is a wonderful, non-denominational minister. Since The Candyman and I don't belong to a church here but wanted to marry in a House of God, the combination of Minister Griggs with Owen Chapel was personally, the best for us. We could not have asked for more or better.

Minister Griggs has a wonderful (and easy) Ceremony Planner that covers the basics of any Christian ceremony. If he performs the ceremony, the guide is free. You can edit the guide at will to meet your religious and commitment needs (that sounds like a commercial, "to meet your commitment needs, call us!").

He also has at At-Home Marriage Preparation Course that comes free with his services. The Candyman and I found this course very interesting! If you take the course, you save $60 on your TN marriage license. Since The Candyman and I believe in counseling, we didn't have to complete the course, but we got through most of it anyway because it was so interesting. It asks really interesting questions that you don't normally think of. For instance, there was a question that asked us what we would each do if we won a million dollars. Like, for real. Don't be all, "Dude, I'd totally go to Vegas, and then Prada and then buy a phat crib." If you both say that, then um, you might have some issues later in life - I'm just sayin'. What was cool is that we both had the same answers - just allotted differently. My plan was to save most of it, pay off law school loans and help family members with the rest. The Candyman had pay off law school loans, help family members and then save the rest.

For some reason that small activity gave me a huge feeling of being bonded to The Candyman in a new way. It gave me such a comfort to know that while we may not have agreed on percentages, our priorities of what was important to us was similarly sound. The entire course was laid out in much the same way. Simple activities that gave you pause to think and compare. As I have mentioned before, I think counseling either by a priest, minister or counselor is always a good idea.

WEDDING TIP #9 - If you do decide to go to a counselor, therapist, shrink, guru, minister, priest or shaman - know this: if either of you are unhappy or uncomfortable with the individual chosen to assist you in your couple's training, you should choose another.

The Candyman and I had started counseling with an individual who was horrid. HORRID. I cannot and will not tell you the things this woman said to us. "Bu-bye" was what we said to her. Do not feel you have to stick with someone who makes you unhappy, simply because they are a professional in their field. Properly trained people in the field of therapy should make you feel positive after a session. They should encourage you to look inward, seek resolution, practice new behaviors and to be open and honest without being hurtful or unkind. Sometimes these practices are painful and difficult to work through. However, the person who is trained and who you pay to give you sound advice should prove trustworthy to you and your partner. I'm just sayin'....

Anyway, I can't gush enough about Minister Griggs. He performed our ceremony with feeling and with intent. Several people commented on the ceremony and how they liked how we incorporated certain elements. We are just so thankful that we were able to find a minister who was willing to give us the ceremony that The Candyman and I dreamed of having. We both had a little concern about that, living in what can sometimes feel like the buckle of the Bible Belt. The Candyman and I were raised with Christian backgrounds, but neither of us has ever found "home" in a particular church, so we don't go. The churches in Tennessee can often be a little conservatively aggressive to our more liberal thinking. Knowing that we could honor our God as well as ourselves and our beliefs was such a wonderful relief to us, a very natural and obvious choice.

Thank you, Minister Griggs for a wonderful service. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your role in our wedding celebration!

Coming soon - The Ceremony, Part II or How The Thirty-Something Bride and The Candyman Lifted Their Wedding Ceremony from Fellow Bloggers. It could go either way. Stay tuned!

P.S. I had some pictures planned to post with this, but Blogger is uploading black squares at this very moment. My apologies for lack of visual stimulus.

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Back to Budgets

Seeing that it's Monday (blech) and I have a cold (sniff/cough/wheeze), I thought I'd get back to the nasty task of budgets. So far we've determined this:

1. I was on/under-budget on the venue because I am an idiot.
2. I was over-budget on my dress because gown preservation is effing expensive.
3. I was under budget on flowers. Hooray!
4. I was over-budget on beauty because I am a vain, vain woman.
5. We were over-budget on transportation, but there were LOTS of factors that screwed that up.

Here are some quickies:

We were slightly under budget on the ceremony. Why? Because we saved $60 on our marriage license that we got by going to pre-marital counseling, which cost us $35 a visit. Hmmmm, wait a minute.....

WEDDING TIP #8: GO TO PRE-MARITAL COUNSELING! There is no shame in it. There is no admission of guilt that your relationship sucks. It means that you are a caring, thinking, committed individual who wants to have a successful relationship. Period.

I'm going to touch on this further. The Candyman and I are still going to counseling. Why? Because we care for each other. And because we totally don't know how to fight. I come from a non-confrontational, southern, white, Anglo-Saxon Episcopalian approach to arguing: never in public, never in private and only behind some one's back. The Candyman has a dad and four brothers: fight it out until some one's bleeding, then call a truce. You can see how our arguing styles differ. Neither is right, but it's what we know so we have to learn our way of fighting. That can be super-duper hard and it clearly takes lots of practice. Our therapist is our coach. She listens, tells us where we made mistakes and we practice again. Even Tiger Woods has a coach and needs to practice.

Groom's attire was on budget - that one was easy. Sadly, because our wedding party was not large, we did not get the groom's tuxedo for free. Whatever.

I guess were over on gifts. Sigh. Over budget again. I knew I would be getting presents for people who played a part in the ceremony, like our friend who read a poem (I'll talk about the ceremony soon, I promise!) and for our "ushers." I also got a gift for our planner. I intended to get her some token something or other while I was overseas. However, I saw an oil painting that I loved and bought that instead! It was the right thing to do simply because it felt like more of a heartfelt gift than some lame earrings or something. Tabitha ended up being such an amazing addition to the planning process and to our celebration, I couldn't have done it without her! I also spent a little more money on The Candyman's gift than I intended, but it was SO worth it!

The Candyman doesn't wear a watch (I have no idea how he does this) and I decided to get him a nice one, for when he goes to court to do his attorney-ing. I was looking all around and found nothing that really was him. Around that time, I was off having coffee with Tabitha and we were walking back to our cars and we noticed that something had moved into the abandoned gas station on 12th avenue. It was imogene & willie. If you are local, you must go here. Must. Cool stuff galore, including the 1974 Bulova Accutron watch. The Candyman was born in '74! Perfect! The version above is just slightly different than what I got him. It doesn't have the swoopy face frame - it's just plain. It does have the original leather band though and it was in perfect condition. It took me all of about 5 seconds to buy it.

What did The Candyman get me? Oddly, he bought my present right next door at Moda! He bought me an original Julia Martin painting. She is my most favorite local artist. The painting The Candyman got me is the second one from the left on the bottom row.

It was the most perfect present ever! Thanks hunny-bunny-puffin-face-schmoopy-pie! He thinks I knew what my present was. How? Because I just happened to run into Julia at my Girl's Night Out soiree. I was pretty sure I had convinced her to give me the last of her paintings in her Grey Garden series as a wedding gift. She was a little tipsy, as was I, so I think that makes the arrangement null and void. However, I mentioned it to The Candyman and he thought I was baiting him! How ironical.

What did you get for your hunny-bunny-puffin-face-schmoopy-pie? Are you giving gifts? No one say ya gotta, just so you know.

The Piggy Bank Effect

Source

OK, before I totally get back into the budget recaps, I'm going to share with you a little Saving Secret. Now, The Candyman wasn't quite on-board with this process until the week before the wedding when I showed him all the cold, hard cash. 'Nuff said after that. As unconventional (or perhaps old school) as this may seem in today's world of ATM's and on-line banking, it really did work. Here's what I'm talking about. I'm going to call it The Piggy Bank Effect.

As I'm sure a lot of you who are paying for your wedding yourselves know, ya gotta save a lot of money. That's hard, especially in today's bullshit economy, right? To save the big dollars, I set up two automatic transfers with my bank that happened once at the beginning of each month and once in the middle. The first transfer was a large one and went along with my mortgage and such. That's always a sparse time of month anyway, so I just made it worse - on purpose. Money is a mind game - make sure you play with yourself. *OK, just typed that, realized what I typed and am totally not changing it. I totally advocate play-dates with yourself.*

The second transfer wasn't as big, so when that payday came around, I felt sorta rich and not so poor. That was nice.

Now here's where The Piggy Bank Effect took place. In addition to the above savings, I played another little game with myself. I took out about the same amount of money I did every week prior to financial lock down (anywhere from $40-$100). I took HALF of that money every time I did and distributed it into envelopes that were going to be the CASH payments that were due the day of the wedding. I had envelopes for the officiant, the DJ, our Packard driver Reggie, the chapel, the ceremony guitarist and Julie at J Bangs Salon.
By not having as much cash in my wallet, I spent less. I gave up Starbucks, pedicures and recreational shopping (this was some what replaced by wedding shopping so I didn't feel deprived at all).

The other thing I did was steal money from The Candyman. Yes, ladies - it's true. Whenever I did his laundry, I'd check all the pockets for loose change and bills. The bills went into the envelopes and the change into a big glass jar on top of the fridge. The Candyman caught me doing this and started sneaking in money himself! It was awesome! Team effort! The weekend before the wedding, we took all the change down to Publix and put it in that change machine thing. The Candyman and I made a pretty serious bet on the total. He won. I have yet to make due, but I never back out on a bet. I can't remember the total, but it was around $80 or $90! Sweet!

By doing this over the course of 10 months, we saved over $1000 in those stupid envelopes! And, all my payments were ready to go, labeled to the appropriate vendor! I think that made Tabitha, my planner, happy.

Don't trust yourself not to tap the envelopes of the change jar? Appoint a trusted source to hide the money from you, if you can. Or count the money together as a team and promise not to touch it, week to week. That way, you are both accountable. If you need to tap it for an emergency (this does not include the new Jimmy Choo collection at H&M), make sure you talk about it first.

I'm going to guess that most financial analysts would not condone my savings methods, suggesting I transfer that money into an account on a weekly basis. But seriously, I had a lot more fun this way. I could see the dollars adding up and it gave me GREAT pleasure and satisfaction to seal up each completed envelope one by one. Even The Candyman was surprised at how much we had saved by pilfering from ourselves!

The great thing about this now is that we can continue to do it. I'm allowing pedicures back in the mix, but it doesn't have to be bi-weekly, as was my prior addiction. The Candyman and I go out to eat again, versus tuna casserole and my "pasta bake specials" that we seemed to live on during our engagement. We allow ourselves trips to Publix instead of Wal-Mart, because Wal-Mart sucks (but damn it, it's cheaper!), we like the produce better and we can dance in aisles to the music. It's fun.

Transportation: Another Budget Blower!

While the spaghetti sauce de-frosts downstairs, I'm going to start my blog about our transportation. If any of you read with any regularity, you'll know that The Candyman was truck-challenged the month before our wedding. You can read about it here, if you forgot.

As y'all know, I was so excited about the sweet ride we rented from Owen Chapel to Mere Bulles. Our man, Reggie Slaughter, owns a 1939 Packard. Our service was what you call a "transfer." A transfer is a one-time fee to pick you up and drop you off. No paying for hours while the driver sits and waits while you dance the night away.

Photos courtesy my friend Scott!

Our original plan was to pay for a transfer with Reggie from Owen Chapel to Mere Bulles. We'd get some hot pics with the car from JCP and have a fun ride as newly marrieds!

Well, as the wedding day continued to approach, The Candyman's truck was still in the shop. It was going to be our "get-away" car after the reception. It's big. It's white. It would be fun. At the time he was driving some little rental POS. I was NOT going to be driven away in that thing. I was sure to have issues getting in the darn thing with The Dress and all.

We were seriously just 2 or 3 days to The Big Show and we had no ride. In a total awesome turn of fate, I happened to get a congratulations card from an unexpected source. That card contained $200, cold hard cash. And, thank you very much for the well-timed cash advance!

What I did was I called Reggie at the last minute about doing another transfer. He agreed and even gave us a discount on transfer #2. So, instead of paying something crazy like you might here, we just paid for the transfer twice. Since he wasn't booked, it was last minute, and we had a fun time on the phone together, he cut us a deal.

WEDDING TIP #6: Be pleasant to ALL vendors you encounter, even the ones who try to screw you. Why? Because you never know. Vent later to the hubs-to-be, but never be mean.

WEDDING TIP #7: It can never hurt to ask, so ASK! I got lucky with Reggie and didn't have to pay an hourly rate for 5 hours.

However, as lucky as I got, we still went over because we needed transportation! I could have sucked it up, but by this point in the game, I was like, "Fuck it. We're spending the money." Seriously, be careful here my beautiful little brides-to-be. That "fuck it" attitude, if used without discretion, can bite you in the bridal booty. We got lucky though and I only really had to pull the "fuck it" card once. Oh, OK twice if you count the Beauty Budget. Sheesh.

We also had another transportation issue that came in a little higher than we expected. We knew for the last half of the planning that we were going to need to rent a handicap van to help out some family members. That ended up being a lot more expensive than we thought, but was a necessary evil that we just accepted and moved on from.

So, all told, we went over in our transportation budget by 25%. Yup. That's right. But, if you don't count the magical $200 cold-hard-cash we got, we only went over 10%. Give me a calculator and I can justify anything! :)

How to Blow Your Beauty Budget

I want to preface this blog post with this: I felt absolutely STUNNING on my wedding day. I think I might have mentioned this fact once or a bazillion times, but seriously, I felt soooooo good. Like, I feel like I knocked it out of the mother-effing park. I cannot remember an occasion in my life where I felt I looked as good as I did on my wedding day. My body felt good (no weird, last minute bloating), my skin looked good (thank you, prescription zit cream) and my hair was exactly as I had envisioned it. I can only hope that all you brides out there get as lucky as I did in regards to feeling so wonderful.

Now, let me tell you about how it cost me an arm and leg to get that way. And, let me also tell you that it was worth EVERY DAMN PENNY.

So y'all know that I had a couple of trials that just didn't work out.

WEDDING TIP #4: If you don't like the end result of your trials - SPEAK UP!

For some reason, when it comes to my hair and my make-up, I am just so unsure about it all. I mean, I wear make-up and I can do my hair to my satisfaction on a daily basis. But when other people do it, I am just in a state of shock or something where I can't speak my mind. I know, hard to believe, right? I think it's why I pay an amount just short of my mortgage to get my hair cut and colored. I trust my stylist because she's really really really good. I just hand over the cash, because I know I won't walk out looking like a total tool. Sadly, my stylist is so good that she doesn't do wedding hair any more. Why work weekends when you don't have to, right? I wouldn't.

So after two failed trials, I was getting desperate. And scared. Tabitha helped me out by suggesting I go to Julie at J.Bangs Salon. Tabitha set up the appointments and really handled all that for me, which was a huge relief. The trial went much better than the other two. You can read about it here.

After the trial, I knew I liked my hair, but it wasn't just exactly right. Tabitha told me not to worry, that we could revise the day of. She was right! It was exactly how I wanted it! I did bring in a final picture to discuss the small changes. Julie was totally down with it.

Hi! Nervous much?

I just love my DIY hair toys.

So here's how the $ all shook out in the end. My first failed trial was free (whew!). My second failed trial was $100. Hm, bummer. My third trial was $130. So now, I've paid $230 to figure out how I want to look. That does seem excessive, yes?

I knew how much the day-of would be (sort of). I know Tabitha told me and I know my heart skipped a little beat when she did, but like any good bride on her third trial, I ignored it. I was happy with Julie and I wasn't going to think about hair and make-up for one second longer. I was planning on having my MOH's hair done too and I knew that would be added on top. I still didn't care.

I had initially planned for all sorts of beauty treatments: facial, massage, all that stuff! Sadly, I just ran out of time. Probably a lot better for my budget in the end. Check it out.

The Mani/Pedi was for both me and my MOH, which I knew I was going to do, but forgot to put in the budget. Oops. Same with including her hair in the mix. I knew I was going to pay for it, but just forgot to budget it in. Oops numero dos.

WEDDING TIP #5: If you have a small wedding party, don't forget to talk to them about day-of beauty way in advance and hold everyone to those decisions. You don't want last minute additions to blow your budget.

I totally didn't do this at all. My mom starting talking to me about having her hair done on the day-of, about a week before the wedding. I just about fainted in the car when she said this! Not good, because I was driving. I was nervous about fitting it in timing-wise and well as budget-wise. I know that she'd end up picking up the tab (or try to) and I didn't want that to happen either. I just didn't want to think about it at that point since the schedule had been made and all that. I assured her that her own skills and the timing of the pictures would be wonderful. On that fact I was absolutely right because my mom looked like a million bucks (no pictures of her yet without the tinted spectacles. Ugh.). Her dress was the most perfect color brown (she matched our color palette!) and she even found great shoes (a challenge for her)!

I never even really talked to my MOH about hair or make-up either. Like what we were going to do and that I was going to pay for it. I should have done that!

So yes. I went WAY over budget on the beauty. Like, 56% over budget. Ouch. But like I said, it was worth every penny for how I felt that day. If you think you might have an area that is going to go over budget - don't kid yourself. Pad the hell out it. If you come in under, sweet.

So, where are you (or did you) pad the budget? Did you need it all or did you save?

The Bloomin' Truth - Flower Budget

I'm not big on flowers. I knew this wasn't going to be a huge chunk of my money. Don't get me wrong, I love flowers. But they are so expensive. And they die.

On top of it, I used to work for FTD. I was the Product Development manager for their floral containers. I know a lot more about the inner workings of flower shops, florists and floral wholesalers than the average bride, in my opinion. I certainly know what I don't like:

Leather Leaf (hello, 1985)
Plumosus (it sheds little tiny green needles - like a mofo!)
Bear Grass (hello, 1997)
Baby's Breath (unless you are doing an all Gypsophilia thing like these:)

From The Martha, of course.

Found this on The Sweetest Occasion. Never knew about this blog. It's AWESOME!

I found this on Weddingbee (God, how I hate that site), but don't know the original source. If ya know it, lemme know!

I am not a big rose kind of girl. I like some weird flowers, most of them happen to be cheap. Lucky me! Now, I don't know if this was the smartest thing for me to do, but I only interviewed one florist. Yup. Just one. And I have no recollection as to how I found her. I think I was just hunting on-line, found a link to her on some seriously obscure wedding web-site and then found examples of her work on Flickr. I made an appointment, talked to her about what I wanted and what I knew about flowers. I was up front about flowers not being the bulk of my budget and that I wanted to trim the fat at every possible turn. She was totally down with it. Her name is Angela Sadler.

I think we went through about 6 or 7 quotes until we got to where I wanted it. The thing is, I had a hard time deciding what I actually wanted to do with the flowers at the reception. You can read about that here. I finally decided, bit the bullet and went for staggered bud vases scattered on the tables, mixed with small votives (provided for FREE by Mere Bulles!). I got my bud vases on sale at Crate and Barrel, Target and Ikea and had a total of 5 different shapes and styles. I bought WAY too many. The good thing was that I was able to return ALL the vases to Target (I did get a merchandise credit because I had purchased them long ago), and I sold a good chunk of the C&B bud vases to Angela. I still have the Ikea ones and some of the C&B ones that I will offer to sell here as soon as I can get my act together.

I met with Angela a few weeks before the wedding at the local wholesale florist place to review and pick out flowers as well as to show Angela the bud vases. Apparently, most brides don't do this. Angela made a comment about how involved I was! I'm not sure if this was a good thing or what, but I like to see what I'm buying. Anyway, you can see what we did here.

We kept the ceremony flowers super-simple since I knew it was going to be a short service. Why pay tons of money for something people are going to see for 30 minutes, tops? Owen Chapel has it's own unique charm, so I didn't want to over-do it. We had wreaths on the doors, a large wreath inside and two large alter arrangements.

How did I save? A few ways:

1. I saved $25 on the large wreath by purchasing the wreath myself. It was about $13 with tax and coupon use at JoAnn's, so it saved a little over $10. Hey - every little bit counts!
2. I saved $5 each ($10) on the door wreaths. I bought those on sale at Micheal's for $3 for both.
3. Going the bud vase route versus centerpieces saved me about $500 from the original quote! Angela had really affordable arrangements using BIG flowers like hydrangeas, football mums, gerbers and stock. We used really beautiful variegate pittsporum and snow berries as the filler, both affordable.
4. We had one large corsage for my mom and then smaller corsages for the other females in the group (no MOG for us, so no need).
5. We used really big, really inexpensive flowers in my bouquet: gerbers and football mums. The most expensive flower was a garden rose that we added, just to make it a little different than the MOH's bouquet.
6. I had my go-to girl Alecia take one of the alter arrangements as well as the door wreaths to Mere Bulles to add to the ambiance there.
7. I chose teeny tiny little button mums with fern curls for the boutonnieres. The guys really liked them and they were CHEAP!

Here's the budget breakdown.

The delivery and set up was "free" - I just took out the bud vases Angela bought in trade. The total here doesn't count the $60 I made back from the returned Target vases. Hopefully, I'll get a little more back if I sell the remaining Ikea and C&B vases. I was really hoping to come in under $1500 on this and I might in the end. Who knows.

There was one thing that I didn't like about all of the flowers and that was the handle on my bouquet. Again, I blame no one but myself for not being more specific. I had wanted the stems of my bouquet wrapped in the left over lace from my mom's mantilla. I mean WRAPPED - like how they do it with the ribbon. I also had a pearl pin I wanted put on. Well, she used just the teeny-tiniest piece of lace, I think to preserve the lace usage, but that's not what I wanted. She could have used it all! At any rate, the lace shifted around as did the pin and looked a little tattered at the end. I assumed that the bouquet stems would be wrapped all the way down to their ends. That wasn't the case. I was afraid that the stems would touch my dress and leave a mark during photographs!


Wedding Tip #3: Be as specific as you can. Assume nothing. If you don't ever ask for it, you can't be sure of what you are going to get. If a vendor gets snippy because you're asking too many questions or giving lots of direction, let them or move on. You have a right to know exactly what you are paying for.

I really enjoyed working with my florist. She was happy to give me references, even one who had a wedding at Owen Chapel before! I contacted everyone and they sang Angela's praises and were straight up about her short-comings, the only one being that she wasn't one to reply immediately to emails. Knowing this bit of information saved me a lot of worry. Since I knew she would eventually reply, I could contact her in advance of needed info and wait out the response. She knew if I called, I needed her and she would call back in a jiffy. She was a great vendor to work with. I liked her personally and kinda wanted to get to know her more and just hang out. I think because I was around her age, she got me. That's how it all ended up though - we hired the vendors who understood The Candyman and I as people and treated us that way. That makes it all good.

The flowers were simple and beautiful. Mixed with the candlelight at Mere Bulles - they were STUNNING! The good thing about using the bud vases was that we were able to add them to different areas in the venue without a bunch of extra arrangement costs. We had some added to the fireplace mantel, the place card table and the cake table.

Gorgeous!

Budget ReCap -o- Rama: The Reception Venue

You guys know that I was totally in love with our reception venue, Mere Bulles from the moment we stepped inside. The brown walls and ivory crown molding are accented by amazing artwork all over what was once the grand manor house of Maryland Farms (horse breeding country, back in the day). Right when you walk in, there's a killer spiral staircase with a gorgeous chandelier. The main dining room has a gorgeous old mantle and fireplace. There are built in bookshelves all over the house and it's just so damn inviting.


This feeling was extended to us by the fabulousness of one Carlin McQuiddy, their kick-ass events coordinator. I mean, she fed us their famous Charleston She-Crab Bisque the second we came in for our appointment. I mean, damn. She'd never even met The Candyman and she knew the way to his heart - straight through his stomach!



I have nothing but good things to say about Carlin and the fine people over at Mere Bulles. They took care of us. The treated us with respect and were attentive and responsive to every single thing we requested. We made one mistake though. Ooooops. Here it is:


WEDDING TIP #2: It's possible to get too distracted by the details. Don't forget to double check your budget. You might be really far UNDER.


Yes, UNDER. Here's what happened. Again, I can only really blame only myself for this. Carlin said she should take a little of the blame, so I'll give her some too. If you have a band or DJ at Mere Bulles, you have to do a whole house buy out because it's a house and you can hear the music throughout. At our first meeting when Carlin told us the price of a whole house buy out, I put my spoon down (remember, she was feeding us) and was about to bolt. She quickly informed us that a whole house buy out on a Sunday was HALF THE PRICE of a Friday or Saturday. I picked my spoon back up and said, "Carlin, please tell me more." The Candyman was oblivious to this. There was food.

You can also bring your own wine into Mere Bulles even though you have to pay a cork fee. I knew I could get budget savvy with the booze so opted for this as well.

Here's where I fucked it all up:

See, I had this AMAZING spreadsheet, y'all. Seriously. Formulas and links and all that crap. I love Excel spreadsheets. Like, love them. My dad is the Master of Things Excel and I call him all the time for advanced workshops via the phone. Anyway, I had this kick-ass spreadsheet that linked the booze tally page to the Mere Bulles tally page, that all linked up to the total page. Sweet, right? Right.

One day at work, I found this other formula and format that I thought was uber-bitchin' so I did that during my lunch hour. I sent the spreadsheet home to myself and did a little copy and paste into the Master of All Mack-Daddy Spreadsheets. Yeah. When I put the new format into one of the worksheets, I erased the link that went from the booze tally to the Mere Bulles tally and NEVER fucking noticed. NEVER.

As the RSVPs came in, I updated both worksheets and the totals went down on their SEPARATE pages. However, I didn't really look at those pages individually because I had already set up all the functions, so all I had to do was update the number of people. The overall total was going down but not by NEARLY enough. And again, I NEVER fucking noticed. Yes, there are a lot of "fucks" in this particular blog. You'd drop the F-bomb a lot too if you were $1000 UNDER the house buy-out.

Here's what this means. I started out with a total of 88 people and 21 kids invited to the wedding. I allotted total food and alcohol for that many people, erring on the high side for booze. As the numbers went down, the food and liquor pages went down, as did the total, but it was only pulling from the food tally. I basically had budgeted that 66 adults would drink 200 beers and six cases of wine. Yeah, sure. Maybe if those 66 adults were 21 years old at a freakin' South Padre Spring Break wet t-shirt contest. WTF?

I want to know when exactly I got so stupid. Was it the diamond on my finger? Was I constantly distracted by the shiny things? Or just constantly distracted? Oh, who knows. So here's what happened....

I come cruising into Mere Bulles (gushing, mind you because everything looked so damn pretty), the DJ is announcing us and I see people standing around with cocktails. Not cocktails in the generic, I'm-offering-beer-and-wine, but like scotch on the rocks and martinis. Lots of them. Um, what? I can't see THIS many people ponying up for cocktails when there's FREE beer and wine. I desperately make eye contact with Tabitha and she pulls me directly over and starts talking. Fast.

Tabitha: Don't freak. You're under budget. The manager opened the bar.

Me: WHAT?!?

Tabitha: Dude, you're UNDER budget. The manager ran the numbers and he says that every person in this room can have 6 drinks and you will still be UNDER budget. He opened the bar.

Me: WHAT?!? No. That can't be right. I ran the numbers too (and I did, just not the way I thought I had)! No. No. No.

Tabitha: Yes. I swear it's OK.

In my head: Do NOT let this freak you out. Do NOT let this freak you out. Trust the manager. Trust Tabitha. Let it go.

Me: OK, fine. But I swear, if we go over budget because the bar is open.....

Tabitha: You won't.

Me: OK. I need a drink.

And guess what? We were still WAY under budget. I could have served prime rib. I didn't have to buy all my wine and worry about having good wine and not going over budget. I didn't have to mess with all of that.

The thing is, I am so okay with everything. People enjoyed the food. People enjoyed the drinks. Everyone had what they wanted and that was perfect. I still don't care about prime rib because I think it's disgusting. Our wine was yummy. And I could return the unopened portion, which off-set the $1000 under budget by $300+.

And here's the BEST part. Mere Bulles did not have to open the bar. I had a signed contract that stated wine, which would be provided by me and beer, provided by them. They, by all legal accounts, did NOT have to open the bar. And they did. Because they are cool. Because they are fair and because they are a classy establishment who cares about their clients. Period. They were going to get paid regardless of what they served and they went above what was legally and contractually required. How often do you hear about THAT in the WIC (Wedding Industry Complex)?

On top of it, Carlin sent us some gift certificates that we can use at Mere Bulles. Again, she didn't have to do that. It was a super-nice perk.

Here's some other fabulous things about Mere Bulles:

1. The staff was top-notch. People commented frequently to me that the service was great.
2. The food was top notch. I heard "best wedding food" several times.
3. The staff participated in an impromptu group dance during the reception. Fun!
4. The staff loaded all the presents for me into my parent's car.
5. The staff had all of our chargers and bud vases cleaned and cleared and packed up and ready for us to pick up the next day.
6. Carlin's immediate responses to any and all of my inquiries.
7. They were concerned that my cake plates were a little wobbly. The cut all the cakes so people could just pick up a piece and enjoy! Nice. No stupid cake cutting fee (clearly the dumbest up-charge in the world).

Thanks to everyone at Mere Bulles for a wonderful reception! Regardless of where I came in, it was the most perfect evening ever and worth every penny, spent or not!

I'm sure there will be more pictures to come. I pulled these of Mere Bulles from their website gallery.

Budget Breakdown - Invitations

So little did I know about paper. Oh, so little. Card stock weight, letterpress, metallic versus matte. Good God, what a cacophony of primal fear it can bestow upon the innocent of wedding planning brides. Oh, I fell in love with some invitations. Oh, the gorgeousness of them. Stunning. Works of art. For $4000. For 100 invitations and envelopes. That didn't even COUNT the RSVP card. It really stressed me out because when you look at all this crap (and it's JUST paper, people) on-line and in stores, there's this push that you must have the most fabulous of all because it tells your guests what kind of wedding you're going to have. Really? Really? No it doesn't, you do. Who you and your groom are tells everyone they need to know. And if you can't do that then why are you inviting then to your wedding?

Now, I'm lucky that I didn't have to invite my Dad's boss's cousin. Perhaps if you're having that kind of wedding, the invitation means more. For us though, it just wasn't like that. I also thought through all the wedding invites I've ever gotten in my life. I remember one in particular because it was purple. All of them ended up in the trash, even the purple one. I have no idea if they were letterpress or what they even looked like. NO ONE DOES. Not really, not in the end. In my opinion, if you need to save someplace, do it here. It's paper, people.

About the time I was in the invitation process, I found Jessica, The Budget Savvy Bride. She is one talented lady and I almost used her to do my invites. I did a lot of research and I realized that I could DIY my own invites easy enough, just as she did. For me, time was a big issue, so I went the Michael's route and gave some pre-fab invites my own twist. In fact, I was able to get nearly every single bit of paper product from Michael's and it all coordinated. I used lots of coupons and got creative.

Here's my original breakdown and the final numbers. When I filled in my budget, I really didn't have a great idea of what things cost. I also forgot to add in the postage for RSVP cards, which is why that number is double the budget! Now, I have to admit that I am missing a few things on this template because I had a whole different page that I did some budgeting on that linked over. Below is what I paid for all the paper for my invitations, table numbers, glue dots, programs, ribbon, etc. For just the invites, they were $2.13 a piece including postage. Without postage, they were $1.26 each. Not too shabby, right?


What was nice about all of this is that I got to customize everything I did with my own font and wording that I carried throughout the wedding - from menus to table cards to place cards to programs. I'll betcha people who don't read this blog had no idea I got all that stuff at Michael's or that I did it all myself.

If you click on the above mosaic montage of mega-hot detail shots that my oh-so-fabulous photographer took (like you don't know JCP already), you can see all the printing I did myself on my little $150 HP printer. And you know what? I am not a graphic artist. I am not an artist. I am a product developer, but I don't know how to work in Photoshop. I introduced myself to Publisher for my OOT letters. I do know how to work in ACDSee, but that's it. You just have to know what you want and how to go about ripping it off and making it your own. ;) The web has a crap-load of free templates and clip art and patterns and all sort of stuff you can manipulate to make your own. It's awesome. The resources are there, it just takes a little time to find it.

Try not to get caught up in WIC (Wedding Industry Complex, if you're not down with the lingo yet) on this one. Get caught up in your creativity.

Tell me, are you stressing over invites? How did you get creative? How did you save $$$?

The Budget Breakdown - Attire

Decisions, decisions. You people totally want me to show you the money. And I will - on some things, but not everything. That's what I've decided. If you're really looking for budget breakdowns and help in doing it, convo me privately and I'll give you the lowdown. I created a very detailed spreadsheet with links and formulas and equations - oh my!

So let's get started, shall we? Let's talk about the dress, OK? It's really the best part of any wedding planning process, right? Y'all know that finding my dress was definitely a pain in the ass. I talk about it here. And here. And here. And even here. The original budget for my dress was $800. Uh huh. That's right.

God, I love JCP.

Early on in the game, my Mom gave me a little monetary sumpin'-sumpin' to supplement the dress fund (thank you, Mom!). I basically just took that money and added it on top of my budget because I quickly realized that $800 wasn't going to cut it. Keeping that in mind, I only went $142.50 over budget on the dress. See how I rationalized that? Instead of being $642.50 over budget, my creative math skills keep it all good. Right? Right?

Here's my final break down of all things fashion related.

The budget column is where I really wanted to be. I was a little over on few things but way under on others. Since I made my own veil, all I had to purchase was the tulle (which is super cheap) and the comb. I already had the lace and thread and all that. I went a little over on the lingerie only because I counted in the multiple pairs of panties I bought at VS during tax-free weekend that I wrote about here. If I take out the cost of all the stuff I bought and just what I wore on the day of The Big Show, then that price would go down. However, I left it all in 'cuz it was money spent.

I don't believe in wearing stockings unless they are cotton tights in the dead of winter, so I knew I wouldn't need any budget there. We didn't do a garter or bouquet toss so I didn't need any cash allotted there either.

The thing that killed my budget was the gown preservation thing. I took it to the best place in town for gown preservation, Oakwood Cleaners. Their reputation is really good and I was just so nervous to take it anywhere else. I didn't call ahead of time. I didn't ask for the price. I just took my dress and veil there. I dropped it off. I walked out and then was like, "Hey, I wonder how much that's gonna cost." I walked back in and asked. The very nice lady went into the system and pulled up some pricing and then her computer locked up. Seriously, I saw it happen. I was running errands, getting ready for the honeymoon and didn't want to wait, so I just asked around how much it would be. She said around two-something for just the dress. I'm thinking it was going to be around $250 total and I was OK with that and went bouncing out of the store. They called me to tell me the dress was ready and informed me that the total was $359 and I almost had a coronary. STARTING prices on any wedding dress is $279. "Two-something" was actually closer to three. I have no one to blame but myself for not inquiring into specifics. I was still floating about 3 feet above the ground, so didn't quite have my senses about me.

WEDDING TIP #1 - Don't even think about thinking about things that are of any importance whatsoever until a week or so after the wedding. You're head is still up your ass.

There are lots of wedding budget calculators out there. I've seen some that say "attire" should be 5% of your budget. I've seen others that say 12% and others that say 18%. The difference between 5% and 12% and 18% is HUGE. Let's say you're planning a $20K wedding. You're dress can be $1000 or $1666 or $3600 based on those "average" percentages. That's the difference between trotting on down to your local David's Bridal versus Monique freakin' Lhuillier. Big dif. Huge.

What you've got to do is look at your budget break down areas and decide what is most important to you (oh yeah, and the groom). Is it the dress? Or is the food? Must you have Lily of the Valley dripping from every pew, chair, centerpiece and bouquet for your December wedding? Then you need to be putting all your cash into flowers child, because that's going to be one costly decision.

In the end, I was happy. I felt like I looked like a million bucks. You guys saw my dad's face when he saw me, clearly I shocked the hell out of him. The Candyman said he's never seen me look so beautiful. I loved my dress. It was totally comfortable (although I did have some boob issues, more on that later) and I seriously felt stunning. It was worth every damn penny. All 213,201 of them!

What area are you dumping all your cash into?

"I Wish" Wednesday

I so wish that I could stop obsessing about the things that went wrong at the wedding. Really, only two things sucked and everything else was over-the-top fabulousity. I think I’m just going to vent those things now and be done with it.

First, y’all know that the bartender thing at Aloft Hotel was a bust. I have heard back from them. They sent me a Starwood Hotel Preferred Guest card with 20,000 points on it. The card they set up for me was a new card. If they had thought to check, they would know that I’m already a Starwood Preferred Guest and I already have a card. So now, I have to go through the process of changing the card numbers over to ONE card and transferring the points, blah, blah, blah. More of a pain in the ass than it’s even worth. Aloft Hotel – YOU FAIL.

Source

The other thing that I didn’t like was the DJ. At all. I met her at one of the bridal shows and thought that having a female DJ would be cool and different and un-cheesy. I left the music management up to The Candyman. He met with her, discussed our music tastes and he was happy with the meeting so we hired her.

Months before the wedding I sent her the Martha Stewart list of songs that I blogged about here. She emailed me saying that adding the songs we liked wouldn’t be an issue and she thought the songs were cool. A few weeks before the wedding, we sent her our full list of songs we wanted. It was very specific. This is what she received from us:

For the Atmosphere

Anything by Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, The Drifters (Think Myrtle Beach Shag/Beach Music Festival)

Classic Country (Nothing recorded after 1980)

Bluegrass

Anything by Mahalia Jackson

Early Slow Dances

Givin’ Him Something He Can Feel/ Aretha Franklin

You Send Me/ Sam Cooke

At Last/ Etta James

Jet Lag/ Joss Stone

Picking up the Pace

Do You Love Me/ The Contours

Hallellujah, I Love Her So/ Ray Charles

Fell in Love with a Boy/ Joss Stone

Rasberry Beret/ Prince

Higher and Higher/ Jackie Wilson

Forver/Chris Brown

Getting the Way Down and Dirty

Rock Your Body/ Justin Timberlake

Goin’ Down/ Freddie King

Nothin’ but a G Thang/ Dr. Dre

Gett Off/ Prince

Sexy Back/ Justin Timberlake

Blame it on the Boogie/Jackson 5

Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)/ Beyonce

Candyman/ Christina Aguilera

Mellowing Out

Destiny/ Zero 7

Every Morning/ Keb Mo’

Pretty specific, right? We had also sent her a time line of the evening and what kind of music we wanted during dinner and the cocktail hour. Well, when we walked into Mere Bulles, the first thing I noticed was the blaring music. I think the first thing I told Tabitha (who was standing right at my elbow – God love her) was (in somewhat of a bridezilla manner that I must now apologize for), “The music is WAY too loud and what the hell is she playing? Light cocktail/dinner music now and have her turn it down!” Within nano-seconds the music was lowered and more appropriate. But I swear, I thought I was in a freakin’ dance club when I first walked in. Not a good start.

And as an aside, I have to say that whenever I needed Tabitha, I looked up and there she was. She was always at the ready and that was so comforting. The fact that the music changed instantly (I swear, it was like a light switch it happened so fast), I knew I could relax and that she would handle everything. I knew that at the church too, but Mere Bulles is where it set in. I think I was too busy with the whole “getting married” thing at the church to worry.

I barely noticed the music during dinner, as it did remain low and unobtrusive. However, I don’t remember hearing anything that we requested. I’m not going to bitch too much about that though because she may have played it and I didn’t notice or hear it.

After we cut the cake, we had out first dance and father/daughter dance, which were fine. The music that she started playing after that was questionable. She really could not and did not read the crowd. We had told her that our guests were a tad older. I mean, we’re in our thirties, our parents are in their fifties and sixties as our many of our older family members. All of our friends are in their thirties and up, for the most part. I have to think hard about who was under thirty! So, playing all sorts of club music straight out of the gate? Not smart. I mean, some of the songs I liked and requested, it was just her timing sucked. Bad. Out of the entire list above, I remember hearing three songs. Three. We really wanted our guests to dance and have fun, but that really didn’t happen. Both of our families are from the South. They all dig beach/shag music and most people enjoy dancing to that style of music. I can’t remember hearing one song that fell into that genre, not one. On top of all that, other than the scheduled dances with The Candyman and my dad, I don’t think she played one slow song. Um, what? Seriously, I danced one kinda slow song with my brother and that was it.

After the wedding, I polled some good friends and they all agreed that the DJ sucked.

While I don’t think it ruined anything, I don’t think it was all that it could have been. I think people still had fun, but it really kind of pissed me off that after all the information we shared with the DJ, she just played really standard, blasé wedding music – which is what we really did not want. I guess this is a perfect example of how the best laid plans can go awry and that there are just some things you have to let go, deal with and make the best of. I think I did that during the wedding. It’s just now that I’m obsessing over it, which is so incredibly stupid. Let me repeat. So. Incredibly. Stupid.

So my wish for Wednesday is layered:

Stop obsessing over the damn DJ.

Find the positive in the fact that you can share this info with fellow brides – so that they too will know that things won’t be perfect, but that it will not affect how you feel unless you let it.

Make sure you’ve got a kick-ass day-of planner.