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I feel like I just took the blue pill (or was it the red pill) and I now see a whole new truth about weddings and the "wedding machine" While answering questions yesterday morning I came across a person who asked how they could plan a wedding under $1000. I laughed, and so did others, at the idea of planning a wedding under such a strict and tiny budget. there would be no way in hell that anyone could plan a wedding under $1000. then someone answered that may have changed my whole idea of what I think I NEEDED to pull off a wedding. She shared a link.
2000dollarwedding.com/2008/07/fro…
I was blown away! Her wedding felt so real. it wasn't about napkin colors, personalized cake cutters, the finest china, useless favors, huge centerpieces, ect.
Every bridal magazine makes you feel like you are missing out on something when there are articles that basically say, "If you want to be cheap and tacky, have a buffet instead of a sit down!" and you end up stressing over what your guests think of everything you put together. is Aunt Norma going to be offended if we offer a buffet instead of a $150 plate meal? are people going to think we are cheap because we don't have the most expensive wines and liquors?
TV shows like "four Weddings" make weddings under $10,000 look so cookie cutter. And the $30K wedding is so lavish and fun. (And usually the one that wins)
I need to ask a question. ^_^
I'm thinking about growing our own gerbera daisies for the wedding. do you think that's crazy? And how many should I grow? when should I plant the first batch?
Also I never wanted the whole big white princess gown. I'm thinking of following my hearts desire for 1950's white satin dress. vivienofholloway.com/en/categ…
Maybe with a red pettiecoat and red flat ballerina slippers.
*I'm not worried about the fit. we do pin up shots for hobbies and I almost own all the dresses on that website. so I know I will look great in the full circle skirt.*
And how would you feel about writing your own ceremony from scratch? we aren't religious so we don't need the "under God" stuff.
I realize now that the most important thing I want is for this day to feel like us. I don't want to just be "another Saturday night wedding at the hotel ballroom" I no longer want to spend $$$$ on a wedding gown. I don't care about what kind of font goes on napkins.
Good for you. your Common sense will go a long way in your life.
why is that even remotely crazy? the way i look at it, you could spend 10k on a wedding, or you could do a smaller simpler but just as pretty wedding, and look at all the left over money you have to spend on stuff that lasts more than a day. you have money towards a house! a second car! a nice trip that you have been wanting to take!
i dont think you are crazy at all. if anything, your smart. so many people go so over the top planning weddings, just trying to make it the biggest and the best and then it just winds up feeling impersonal. if you had bill gates money, and 10k was literally a drop in the hat for you, then i might not mind as much. but if you are just an average person and you can pull off a pretty wedding that actually has meaning to you and not just crap you pulled out of a bridal magazine, then more power to you. because honey, those napkins with the font you spent so much time picking out? just going to end up in the trash. why waste money on stuff you KNOW is getting thrown away?
and i know there are people out there who are going to defend big weddings. thats fine. i dont care. if you can have your ginormous wedding without going into debt, more power to you as well.
but the asker has realized you can do just as nice of a wedding with way less money. i say go for it
I applaud your revelation. I'm a fan of the back-to-basics wedding myself. I don't understand why some people drive themselves crazy in the time leading up to the wedding obsessing over every minuscule detail. What matters is you're getting married, if the flowers aren't the right shade of pink to match the bridesmaid dresses, well that should be a non-issue, you're getting married!
I'm not much on gardening, but if you know what you're doing, and want to take it on, go for it!
The dress is nice, but I'm worried the material might be cheap and cheap-looking. But, if you already own dresses from the site, you know better than me. I just love the pin-up style dress! I would love it with a peek-a-boo petticoat and matching coloured shoes sounds fabulous!
Writing your own vows is a great idea. we have considered it, but I think we'll probably stick with a secular script. We'll see…
Good luck with everything!
When we were planning our own wedding, the first thing we said was NO to the church/ballroom wedding. it just has nothing to do with who we are as a couple, or as individual people for that matter. In examining the things that were important to us, we decided we'd focus only on those things and leave the rest behind. I really wanted the whole wedding dress shopping"wearing experience-so I did that, adn I'm so happy I did. I also was really focused on having an orange wedding cake with pineapple filling. we got that. we wanted a small wedding-33 people including us counts, I think. In the end, we did observe many traditions, but we ignored others-there was no bridal party, no garter, no programs or favors. there WAS a great beach setting, a fun steel pan band, great food, and lots of drinking and dancing. when I think back on our wedding day, I can't think of a single thing I would change, even if I could.
When you plan your own wedding, think about the things that truly matter to you. it sounds like the dress you have planned to wear makes personal sense for you-so go with that. as for vows, either rite your own or seek online for vows that are personally meaningful-our vows were not the traditional ones, but they hit all the right notes and made sense for us. as for anything else, I'd just keep asking myself why I wanted that–you'll find often that you pick something because you feel like you should-its sometimes hard to break away from. The more the wedding feels like YOU, the more you'll enjoy the day and the more fondly you'll look back on it later.
you should have the wedding you want its the pledge to love honor and cherish that's important not do the napkins match the bridesmaids or whatever hear is a site on some tips for writing your own vows I would grow more daisies then you think you would possibly need double the amount for each bouquet your going to have that way you can pick the best your wedding dress is cute personally not my pick but the important thing is its YOUR wedding and I think its great to be sensible and not spend thousands on a few hours
I don't know about planting your own daisies, but I definitely see your point. although, I did plant 200 tulips as the centerpieces for my April wedding. we had a hard cold snap about 2 weeks before the wedding, so my tulips did not bloom until we were on our honeymoon. I went with 5 bunches of tulips from the local grocery store. LOL. They looked fine.
When I was getting married, I stayed away from the Knot, the wedding magazines, and even most of the unsolicited catalogs that came in because they had me worrying that ice sculptures or signature drinks were actually important and they were things I didn't give a rip about. I even called the banquet manager at our reception venue and asked "do I really need to bring our own champagne glasses or have an engraved cake knife?" She laughed and told me that those things were completely unnecessary.
So, I focused on the things that I wanted to focus on. Saved myself a lot of stress and money. And I don't think that our guests even noticed that we didn't have singing waiters.
You are not crazy at all.
Early on in my planning, it occurred to me that so many people go out of their way to "one up" other weddings so people think of theirs as special/unique/different and I saw that as pointless because when it comes down to it all weddings are the same: vows followed by a party. it occurred to me that what people will remember is #1 the couple, followed by if the food/drinks and party are fun.
While I still spent a good amount on my wedding, it was "budget" for my area — I went with the church I had been attending (I don't need to rent a mansion/castle/garden), sought out a nice and affordable reception venue with good food, and made sure my guests were well cared for: good food, free beverages, yummy cake, no long wait between ceremony & reception, and a good DJ to make things fun.
I would definitely have called my wedding a "cookie cutter" at the time I was planning it — other than a few personal elements (custom wedding cake & we drove our '65 Fairlane), it was the same as other weddings. But at the end of it all, my guests were happy and they're STILL talking about how nice our wedding was. it makes me glad I didn't set out to "out do" anyone else.
Wow! I love your spark about this. I can tell that planning your wedding is something that you have a passion for, but you have an open mind about it and I think that's wonderful!
There is no reason to conform to the standard rules of planning a wedding. I agree 100% that it shouldn't matter what any of the guests at a wedding think about you or why their food is on a buffet table instead of being served on a platter.
I thought that the dress you're thinking about getting is VERY CUTE! I wish I had the body to pull that look off. Let us know how this progresses. as for planting your own flowers, I think that's a great idea if you live in a climate that is consistently the same temperature. Otherwise. I don't know enough about gardening to help you there. Good luck.
Honey, if the Wedding Industry knew where the flowers for my wedding came from they would have had a collective heart attack…..
I had my bouquet, button holes for the best man & my groom & son….corsages for my three adult daughters and my mother. Since I had an outdoor ceremony in a big white gazebo on the grounds of Town Hall conducted by the town judge, I let Nature's fall colors in the trees, shrubs and flowers surrounding us be my decoration. Can't beat Mother Nature.
We had a small intimate cold luncheon buffet for 20 at my sister's beautifully decorated home (it sits on three picturesque acres)..just immediate family. we let the wedding cake that my second eldest daughter made (she learned at my bakery) be the centerpiece..the dinning room table was dressed in her best linens which happily matched my colors and set the buffet selections around the cake. I used high quality paper and plastic ware to make clean up easy.
Everything from the license, the judge's fees, my outfit ( a three peice formal beaded and lined chiffon pants suit in deep garnet red that I got on 1/2 price sale at Macy's) the food, the plastic/paper ware, our simple polished yellow gold band rings, the filling fees for the marriage, the beverages & champagne, the two nights at a local hotel…it all cost 2,000.00. Since I owned a home at the time we 'honeymooned there' and spent the days on day trips into NYC and other local places of interest….a winery festival, Museums, quiet romantic dinners, etc.
It's all about the people, NOT the fluff. BTW when you reach my age (57) you have learned what is important…china, linens, matching napkins, fine crystal does NOT a marriage make…the people do.
BTW my flowers were gorgous…big showy tiger lillies in russet reds, oranges, wine reds, yellow
coupled with brown mini cat tails and golden yarrow in a bundle tied with garnet red velvet ribbon….the buttonholes & corsages were mini callas in fall colors-cost me 88.00 dollars total….from the floral department of a local grocery store!
Screw the wedding machine, Hon they only care for profit and the end result is expensive put on manufactured shows that loose their intimacy and close sense of FAMILY…good luck.
I don't know beans about planting a garden, so your best bet would be to talk to someone who works in a landscaping or gardening business. Utilize local businesses for information and if you like what they offer you, buy your seeds from there.
I have no desire to attempt to plan a wedding for under $2,000 — not because I want to spend $20,000 (the average cost) but because I am NOT a DIY person and I don't want to be. there are things in that blog that do not interest me whatsoever, so I wouldn't do it that way. I absolutely applaud that couple and everyone else who makes it work, but it's not for me.
That said, I am not a traditionalist. I'm wearing a $60 dress I bought from Amazon and getting married on a beach in Hawaii with 7 guests, all but two of them family (and the 2 who aren't have been friends for so long, they pretty much are!). I'm the one who suggested we get married, lol.
I think your wedding will look fabulous whether you're wearing a billion dollar ball gown or a 50s print pencil line dress. It's about your marriage, not the amount of money you'd like to be in debt when you say your I Dos.
To me I've only briefly sampled west coast/CA, but have enough experience from the suburbs and manhattan, and wanted to hear from you guys what the differences are culturally,fashion wise, lifestyles wise, education wise, expectation wise, pace wise between the places?
Personally from my experience, suburbia on the east coast is cookie-cutter, more reserved, education/work oriented for the most part, but surprisingly closed-minded, conformist, and not open to change. The whole abercrombie thing, hollister,etc. It's actually like a mini-wannabee LA.
Manhattan on the other hand, if you're an Abercrombie flake, or your aspiration in life is to look cool or what you did on your college spring break, you'll get eaten alive and won't make it. It's shark central, and busy, and it seems to be faced paced/business wise, but also alot more stuck up, fashion-forward, tolerant, accepting, "anything goes," and also values education, and constant bettering yourself, competition, opening your horizons, etc. It's like two different worlds.
In Manhattan people don't judge you, there are so many people, they're there to get what they wan't and have fun doing it, there are also dreams and even if people don't make it, you're right in the middle of one of the most happening spots ever.
Then as soon as you step into suburbia NJ and Long Island, etc, you get backwardness, the hick element arises, the homophobia, and the repression arises too,and it's unfortunate,but that's what I see. The intolerance, conservatives who desperately want to cling onto their old-school ways and small town judgemental ideals. It's just crazy and I personally hate it, but at least it's not as competitive and you can have some peace and be left alone from the "big City."
NYC is all about being sophisticated, well-off, smart, but unfortunately, it's also a sociopath's dream because it seems to have a "Game" element to it. Everyone puts on a front and plays a game.
The suburbs at least offer something more real, and to raise families wtih kids.
Now, LA..west coast is a totally different ballpark.
Over there, the people really don't seem to give a sh9t about anyone or anything but themselves, and are alot more evil and use people and all about image, fashion, and phoneniness, and pretending like they're famous or being in the business. They're also alot more stupid over there and non-intelligent, ageist, and obsessed with themselves. People seem to have alot more issues, and go psycho over there, and god only knows what else. It has its positives, it also has its car culture, and people seem to obsess over everything from hair to makeup to god knows, and there's the whole sexual freedom aspect to it, but it seems like a very superficial and slutty place. also a non-serious place. to a large degree.
In San Francisco they have a "national Margaret Cho day."
I mean..is that REALLY necessary? (as cool as that lady is?)
I mean we have starving people here.
To me, NYC is about being real and being fierce, where NJ and the rest of the suburbs have those elements but are more watered down and kind of pathetic really in their attempt to emulate the big city and their superiors, but always falling short,
whereas the west coast is faking it till you make it or don't, but faking it all the way, and being superficial/shallow/godless/lost and loving it.
But fashion wise, the west seems to be more about color/anything goes/
1st of all, Manhattan is not the only part of NYC
but East Coast fashion is way better, we don't wear that Abercombie crap unless it's to work out or something simple, we take fashion seriously here in the tri state region NY/NJ/CT
