We had a beautiful day, although the weather was a bit chilly this late autumn wedding turned out great. Lets start with the basics, we originally were planning a summer wedding (next summer). For several reasons we made the decision to move the wedding up about 6 months which of course made everything into a bit of a hurry, and a giant prayer for good weather.
I had of course been crazy about pinteresting everything I could find that we wanted to make the wedding day perfect. This wedding was pretty much all a DIY project. The wedding dress and suits were about all that wasn't made. So lets go through this in steps.
The first thing I did was pick out my theme I had it set in my head gray and yellow with some country flare but not all cowboys. So I ran with it, I swear my plans changed probably 100 times and I'm not exaggerating, the things I did know is I want to marry this man!
I bought my dress on a discount store online, as well as the accessories. We purchased our rings, and picked out the style of bridesmaid dresses. Awesome right well now comes the tricky part.
We needed to decide on an official date, and get our pastor to cooperate. Our original plan was to have it done inside the church so we would not be concerned with weather, our pastor was ready and said that the date would work we just had to do a meeting of the minds, awesome so we let all of our family know, (after deciding that a small family wedding was what we wanted we did word of mouth invites).
Then came the meeting with our pastor, we left feeling a bit disappointed. He wanted to be very traditional, things like personal music or writing our own vows were out of the question. So what do two adults who want what they want do? Well a drastic change with only 2 weeks left till the wedding. We found a pastor who was willing to do a small service outside on a local island! So we called everyone and let them know of the new plan as soon as we had it set in stone. Yes we changed a venue last minute and lucked out that we were able to get the game fish and parks to stream line the paperwork so we could have the wedding we wanted.
So the ceremony date and time and location was set, but then there was so much else to do. In between all this I was planning the reception, my now father in-law had an in with a venue and we got that for free as well as him gifting us the catering. Great so no we know where and what we will eat.
Now for décor. I home made mason jar center pieces and we so very proud of them I can't even tell you. We also used Trevor's work to make a nice banner for our head table. Used caramels around the center pieces and threw a few random cameras around to try to capture some funny pictures. The venue had twinkle lights all over the ceiling so our simple reception was beautiful. A very personal notebook as our guest book on the gift table, and an awesome picture display, and slid show put together by my mother and we were done, simple and beautiful.
The bridesmaids and groomsmen were responsible for getting there outfits, most of the guys had a black suit so that wasn't a problem but, the bridesmaid dresses got tricky, shipping was delayed and extremely expensive, but I found a pattern for the same dress we had picked (an infinity dress) and decided maybe we could make them. We did the flower girls dress first as a test (less fabric) and wouldn't you know it, it worked out great. So a few measurements and stitches later we had our brides maid dresses!
Flowers? Well the local florist was way way way over our budget so what to do? Well we actually found that Wal-Mart has quite a selection of flowers, I know your saying ummm that's a bit crappy right, but you know what they turned out great take a look at the pictures. So we spent the night before the wedding putting together bouquets, boutonnieres and corsages. I did the bouquets and Trevor did the corsages and boutonnieres (I think he did better than me honestly).
Well now most everything is done right? NO NO NO what about cake, music, and pictures? Well the cake was a gift from my Maid of Honor and turned out amazing!! The music that was a bit tricky but I downloaded hundreds of songs off of Rhapsody and set them in playlist the way we wanted them played and we purchased a ion sound system, and it worked amazing! Our song is the song Bonfire Heart by James Blunt, you can listen here. As for a photographer we had decided that just wasn't in the budget... BUT it was gifted to us and our amazing photographer was Christa Campbell! The pictures turned out amazing and best of all didn't eat our budget, we have a CD full of pictures and can order the prints we want.
Now the drama of pulling this all off got pretty tricky but below you can see some of the ceremony pictures and I will have reception picture coming soon with some DIY instructions on how to do what we did.
I had of course been crazy about pinteresting everything I could find that we wanted to make the wedding day perfect. This wedding was pretty much all a DIY project. The wedding dress and suits were about all that wasn't made. So lets go through this in steps.
The first thing I did was pick out my theme I had it set in my head gray and yellow with some country flare but not all cowboys. So I ran with it, I swear my plans changed probably 100 times and I'm not exaggerating, the things I did know is I want to marry this man!
I bought my dress on a discount store online, as well as the accessories. We purchased our rings, and picked out the style of bridesmaid dresses. Awesome right well now comes the tricky part.
We needed to decide on an official date, and get our pastor to cooperate. Our original plan was to have it done inside the church so we would not be concerned with weather, our pastor was ready and said that the date would work we just had to do a meeting of the minds, awesome so we let all of our family know, (after deciding that a small family wedding was what we wanted we did word of mouth invites).
Then came the meeting with our pastor, we left feeling a bit disappointed. He wanted to be very traditional, things like personal music or writing our own vows were out of the question. So what do two adults who want what they want do? Well a drastic change with only 2 weeks left till the wedding. We found a pastor who was willing to do a small service outside on a local island! So we called everyone and let them know of the new plan as soon as we had it set in stone. Yes we changed a venue last minute and lucked out that we were able to get the game fish and parks to stream line the paperwork so we could have the wedding we wanted.
So the ceremony date and time and location was set, but then there was so much else to do. In between all this I was planning the reception, my now father in-law had an in with a venue and we got that for free as well as him gifting us the catering. Great so no we know where and what we will eat.
Now for décor. I home made mason jar center pieces and we so very proud of them I can't even tell you. We also used Trevor's work to make a nice banner for our head table. Used caramels around the center pieces and threw a few random cameras around to try to capture some funny pictures. The venue had twinkle lights all over the ceiling so our simple reception was beautiful. A very personal notebook as our guest book on the gift table, and an awesome picture display, and slid show put together by my mother and we were done, simple and beautiful.
The bridesmaids and groomsmen were responsible for getting there outfits, most of the guys had a black suit so that wasn't a problem but, the bridesmaid dresses got tricky, shipping was delayed and extremely expensive, but I found a pattern for the same dress we had picked (an infinity dress) and decided maybe we could make them. We did the flower girls dress first as a test (less fabric) and wouldn't you know it, it worked out great. So a few measurements and stitches later we had our brides maid dresses!
Flowers? Well the local florist was way way way over our budget so what to do? Well we actually found that Wal-Mart has quite a selection of flowers, I know your saying ummm that's a bit crappy right, but you know what they turned out great take a look at the pictures. So we spent the night before the wedding putting together bouquets, boutonnieres and corsages. I did the bouquets and Trevor did the corsages and boutonnieres (I think he did better than me honestly).
Well now most everything is done right? NO NO NO what about cake, music, and pictures? Well the cake was a gift from my Maid of Honor and turned out amazing!! The music that was a bit tricky but I downloaded hundreds of songs off of Rhapsody and set them in playlist the way we wanted them played and we purchased a ion sound system, and it worked amazing! Our song is the song Bonfire Heart by James Blunt, you can listen here. As for a photographer we had decided that just wasn't in the budget... BUT it was gifted to us and our amazing photographer was Christa Campbell! The pictures turned out amazing and best of all didn't eat our budget, we have a CD full of pictures and can order the prints we want.
Now the drama of pulling this all off got pretty tricky but below you can see some of the ceremony pictures and I will have reception picture coming soon with some DIY instructions on how to do what we did.
The Cost Break Down
Yes this really is our break down, and I am almost positive that I have included EVERYTHING at least everything we purchased, throughout the entire process I kept record of every dime so I could report back and let you guys and let you know how things went.
Dress $100 Shoes $10 Lace arm Cover $26 Underwear $42 Fabric for Bridesmaids & Flower Girl $35 Groom Suit (used the one he had) Groom Shoes (used the ones he had) Two Toddler Suits $51 Two boys shoes $29 Music download $10 Sound System $125 Cake $0 (gift) Guest Book $7 Banner $5 Flower girl shoes $5 Picture slide show $0 (gift) Ties $40 (total of 4 ties purchased) Grooms vest $30 | Mason Jars $10 (12 purchased also added ones from around the house) Fake Flowers $14 Live Flowers $57 Paint for jars $5 Table Cloth $5 Rings $55 Shawl fabric $6 Bridal Hair $65 Food (gift) Photography (gift) Extra Cameras $36 Flower girl Basket $2 Ring barer pillow (borrowed) Caramels $10 Ceremony Chairs (gift) Makeup (done myself) Transportation (gift) |
The grand total...... Drum Roll Please
$780
We also made a donation to the church as thanks.
$780
We also made a donation to the church as thanks.