Wedding stress. Are you feeling it yet?
I personally felt it the second day after John and I got engaged. I came back to work and was bombarded by questions from my coworkers. I absolutely loved that they were so excited for me as I was excited as well. The man of my dreams asked me to be his forever, so I was obviously ecstatic!
The unfortunate part of getting engaged is that you will be ask the same few questions by every person:
- When are you getting married?
- How big of a wedding are you going to have?
- When are you going to have kids?
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Yesterday Violet Dude and I, along with our mothers and his grandmother, went to visit the place that I thought might end up being our reception venue. We toured the place, and although there are a few things we’re going to have to do to make it all come together (i.e., chair covers and replacing styrofoam cake plates with china ones) I am really excited about it.
We only went to two places in our search for a venue because there were only so many places within our budget and within the area we were looking. We have to not only stay within budget, but we also have to be in a fair location where the distance is the same for both of our families. My mother-in-law-to-be actually sent me an e-mail with a link to SYB Party Center in Stow, and at first I was a little skeptical because I wasn’t really sure about the location. Fortunately it turned out to be half-an-hour for us, my family, and his family…all coming from different directions!
So, we went to visit the hall and after seeing it and their prices, I had my mind pretty set on what we were going to do. The “nail in the coffin” so to speak was when the woman showing us the hall uttered four words…”Tax and gratuity free.”
SOLD!
I had never really thought about it, but after I got home and added up the numbers, an 18% tax and gratuity fee can add upwards of $1,500 to an otherwise “cheap” venue. Fortunately for us, our hall is owned by a not-for-profit organization which means that our reception would be almost like a “donation” and thus tax free! We’re also helping out Stow Youth Baseball (I always wondered what SYB stood for!) which is awesome as well.
So, a warning to those of you just beginning to look at venues…don’t forget to add in that 18% because that can be a huge budget buster if you forget about it like we did. And be sure to see if there are any not-for-profits in your area with halls like ours!
So, our long search for a venue is over…now on to the less stressful parts of wedding planning!
I’m sure EVERY bud on here has come across this problem…. The dreaded +1 debate.
MG Bear and I had quite a hard time dwindling down the guest list to 130 people. We started out at 180 and managed to get down to about 135. If it were up to my parents and they had unlimited amounts of money, we would probably be inviting 200+ people. Unfortunately in the real world, it doesn’t really work that way.
One way we were able to cut down the list was to eliminate +1′s. People who didn’t have serious girlfriends/boyfriends or fiance’s at the time are unable to bring a date. They weren’t informed of this unless they asked. It’s a difficult situation especially when now, four months later, they are serious with someone. So, how to approach it? MG Bear doesn’t even know etiquette when it comes to this because when we first started dating he tried to tell me he was going to a wedding and would probably be able to bring me. I automatically said “Did your invitation say ‘MG Bear and Guest’?” and he tried to argue with me and say it didn’t matter. Men, I swear!
I guess we can call this “the calm before the storm” or just hope that no one gets upset about our decision. We are hoping we don’t have to make phone calls when someone RSVP’s that they are bringing a date when their invite is addressed to “Mr. So-and-So.” The planning for me has been too easy, so I’m waiting for something to stress me out 
Has anyone had to deal with the +1 debate? If so, how did your guests react?
I seem to be on a roll here …. but Garden, if you saw my house, I’m sure you would understand. Today, my online wedding tracker is reminding me that there are 125 days until my wedding. Seriously? It honestly feels like yesterday when I never thought I’d make it to double digits and now I am barreling toward them at a rapid speed and there is nothing I can do to slow down time. And there is SO much I still have not shared with you! So much that still needs to be done. So today we are going to play some catch up, shall we?
I’m really proud of our wedding. I’m proud of it because I know that everything our guests see and touch will be something that I have personally made or selected or done myself. I wanted it to be incredibly personal.
In my intro post I shared with photos of our dog, Gunner. He really is the love of our lives. He’s our little furbaby He is more spoiled than probably any other dog we know. He sleeps in our bed, he goes to daycare, etc., etc. All of our friends and family know how important he is to us.
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Hello! I am Daisy Bud! I am so excited to be writing for Bridal Buds. I should start off with the fact that my fiance and I are very broke. We get by with the conveniences of life, and we can pay all our bills, but there is little to no money left over for frivolity that costs any cash. So when it was decided that there would be a wedding in our future, I did a lot of math. It will take us two whole years to save for the wedding I dreamed about. I am not comfortable taking on more debt than we already have, (who would in this economy?), so here I am, waiting for a beautiful ring to be paid off so there can be a formal proposal, and trying to pay the day-to-day bills while squirreling away extra money for the wedding.
My finance and I met a year ago through a mutual friend. At the time I was dating someone else, so we remained casual friends. I ended up getting a better job offer further down state, and when I moved the relationship I had ended. My fiance-to-be was not going to let me go that easily! He created a Facebook account just to get in touch with me, and we talked and Skyped for several months long distance, slowly building up a relationship. This was the time that I really felt that I loved this man. The question of him moving down here was eventually brought forward. I intimated that if he were to do that, that there would have to be some real commitment here. I wasn’t willing to move in with anyone I wasn’t going to marry. He assured me he had no other intention. He is the most wonderful person, made perfectly for me. He is my best friend and I couldn’t imagine anyone more perfect if I tried!
I wish I could tell you our engagement story…but that post is going to be epic when it arrives! Expect a lot of !!!!! and OMGs. I guess I will just have to keep you all in suspense like me!
When our wedding first came about, John and I had differing views of what size the event should be. I never wanted a gigantic wedding by any means, but I also wanted to make sure I invited all of my dear friends who are in my present and were from my past. I thought I would want to invite some old high school friends and teachers, as well as friends from college. John, however, was not stoked on the idea of having so many random (to him) people coming to our wedding. Neither John nor I are keen on being the center of attention, and in John’s eyes, a large wedding sounded completely uncomfortable. To me, I remembered thinking of when I was young and couldn’t wait to have basically every person I ever cared about in my life to be a part of wedding celebration. I guess I wanted a big wedding by default. This created friction in how we approached the subject of the guest list.
Time went on. My thought process changed, luckily for John. As you begin to plan your wedding more, you begin to see that there are certain ways of thinking of your wedding that don’t apply to when you’re about to have one. I realized that there are so many of those people who I thought I wanted to invite that I have not kept in touch with nor heard from in several years. It really had me thinking of what it would look like to have a wedding filled with guests with whom I didn’t really know anymore. And if I was going to be busy catching up on several years with these people, I would miss my entire wedding reception.Of course, there is something to be said about reuniting with people from our past and how these occasions are perfect for bringing reunion about. I absolutely believe that. I also know for a fact that our budget is minuscule, so it’s difficult to squeeze all of those bodies into our money waistline.Every person invited is more money spent. Realistically. This may be tactless to say, but it just so happens to be a fact.
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Well, I hadn’t really intended on writing a part 3…until this past weekend. Now, I feel obligated to tell the rest of the story that hadn’t happened at the time Part 1 and Part 2 were written.
Last weekend I went in to get measured for my dress with my mother. When we found the dress, the consultant was new and didn’t want to take the risk of measuring it herself because it was a hollow-to-hem measurement and she had never done one before. She didn’t want to make the mistake of messing it up, so she suggested I come back when their seamstress was in so she could measure me. I decided that was a wise decision and left without ordering the dress.
About 3 weeks later, I went back to order it. When we got there, she suggested trying on the dress again so they could measure me properly, and she went to look for it on the rack. She couldn’t find it, and she assured me that if she had sold it, it would be fine and I wouldn’t need to worry because they could still order me a new one. While she was looking it up in the computer, I walked around looking at other dresses. Then, I saw my dress on a different rack than where I had found it before. Thinking it had been misplaced, I told her that I had found it. The other sales-woman standing next to me looked at me and said “Oh no, that rack means it’s been discontinued.” My heart dropped, I looked at my mother and started crying automatically.
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In a previous post, I talked about my choices for seating cards. I left you with the escort card I had chosen, as can be seen here.
I ended up buying four, white shadow boxes from a fellow bride on another wedding site. Seriously, what did brides DO before the Internet? How on Earth did they plan weddings??
I plan on filling the boxes with sand, and standing up my escort cards in them.
Making these cards was actually very easy, but it did take awhile because I had to make 175!! I think all in all, I spent almost seven hours on them. But I am so happy with the way that they turned out though, so no regrets here.
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Disclaimer: this post is chock-full of information! So grab some coffee or tea and a comfy chair.
Exactly twenty days after John and I were engaged, we signed the contract for our venue and put down the deposit. In fact, we had a walk-through of the location nine days after we decided to get married. It is an absolutely gorgeous space and I still have glorious dreams about it. But I must make a disclaimer with all honesty, now that we are almost seven months removed from when we signed the contract.
John and I were too hasty in choosing our venue.
We wanted a location that was unique, beautiful, and had a barn. A barn? Yes, I said it, a barn. Does a place like this exist in Colorado that isn’t a several hour drive away and isn’t run down by time and neglect? Yes!
Our ceremony will be held at the Botanic Gardens at Chatfield. Without further ado, I present the barn! We won’t be getting hitched in the barn, but it is going to be wonderful for some photos.
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After trying on probably 30 or so dresses and never having one that even came close to the image in my head, I knew I was going to have to get serious.
I was scheduled to go home for a bridal show at a local winery and I thought that maybe it would be the perfect time to go to a dress shop that I should have gone to from the beginning.
I have had a special bond with that dress shop, Linde’s in Massillon, Ohio, since high school. I purchased both of my prom dresses there, and the owner was such a sweet man. When we walked in and asked if we could just take a look around at wedding dresses, he actually remembered me from purchasing my prom dresses almost 6 years before! My mother had been telling me “You need to go to Linde’s and look…just to see,” but I never really had time to drive all the way back down to my hometown unless I already had plans made.
We went into the store and I started pulling dresses. I found a few of the dresses that I had seen at other stores that weren’t the right color or size and I wanted to try them on again. As I was getting ready to finish, I stopped at the middle rack at a dress that had been pulled out but wasn’t hanging for us to take back. I said that I really liked the dress and my mother looked at me like I was crazy. “That’s way too poofy! You said you didn’t want poofy!” Apparently the consultant had already pulled out the dress but my mother had vetoed it because the picture of the dress was very full. I reminded my mother that you can always take out a few layers under the dress to make it less full, but that I really liked the dress itself.
We went back to the fitting room and that was the first dress I tried on. As soon as I put it on, I knew it was the one…my mother started sobbing automatically. I didn’t want to declare it the one until I tried on the other dress (the last one in the 1st post of this series) to be 100% sure. So, I took it off and tried on a few other dresses..but none of them seemed to match up to the first one.
I finally agreed to put the dress back on and the consultant went out to get a veil and a headpiece and put it on me. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my mother sobbing behind me…and I knew that this was the dress I had been dreaming of since I was a little girl.
She looked at me and said “Is this your dress?” and it was all I could do to keep my voice steady and not cry when I said “yes.” Continue Reading
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