Preparing for the Wedding

Well I finally convinced Travis to let me set up a blog page and he decided I should start a blog about planning for our wedding. I'm pretty excited so hopefully I can help give people helpful hints for planning their weddings as well.

We are planning on getting married May 23,2009 in Hidden Springs,Idaho at a really neat community building. (Building shown in picture)

I've set up a $1,000 Budget to cover the main costs of the wedding & reception. It's broken down like this;

Location $50
Wedding Arch $30
Wedding Attire Bride/Groom $310
Bouquet $20
Invitation/Thank Yous $230
Decorations $50
Wedding Cake/Food $310

So far I've done really well in the things I've bought. Last weekend I went with two of my friends; Kelsey & Jenny and bought a lot of things. We went to D.I. and I was able to get a gorgeous wedding dress for $65! It's perfect and besides a few dirt marks it looks brand new. Nothing that taking it to the dry cleaners won't fix. It almost fits perfect but is about 1/2 inch too tight in my rib cage section so I'm going to try and lose a little weight. If that doesn't work I figure I'll just get it altered and that will still be cheaper than buying a new dress.

Michaels has been a saving grace in costs. I found each time I go to Michaels and I buy something with my receipt I get a 40% off coupon. The only main regulations on it is 1 coupon per customer per day. They have just plain make it yourself invitations a pack of 100 envelopes/100 blank card stock sheets for $14.99 so with the 40% off I got 2 boxes for just $19.06! Then I can just design them whatever way I want.

JoAnn Fabrics has 50% coupons that you can get in the mail if you subscribe for free to the mailing list. So I bought my wedding arch for $14.11 by using one of those.

The flower I've chosen for my wedding is sunflowers. To cut on the cost of flowers I just have bought silk flowers. I got a whole bunch on clearance from various places because they are out of season...JoAnns had a heck of a deal online 3 huge pots of sunflowers (picture to left actual picture of what I bought) for $20.23 (shipping and handling included in that price)the total usually it is almost $15 a pot plus the additional shipping & handling. I figure I'll just cut the flowers the length I want and use them as needed. I'm making my own bouquet as well so that will cut on the cost a lot. I bought everything I'll need to make it and it totalled about $21.00. Travis has asked against having boutonnieres so that really will cut my costs too even though I was just going to make my own of those as well.

At the dollar store I was able to find glass vases in the shape of old glass milk containers. I plan on buying 10 or so and using those to put water in. (It'll be used in place of a pitcher of water for each table)

Well those are just a few of my good findings I've got so far. I hope you'll continue to read along on this wedding planning journey and maybe get some helpful ideas for yourself.