Wedding on a budget - Three days later

The wedding went off surprisingly well this weekend and I am now officially married. I'm completely exhausted, but here's how we survived without going into a complete financial hole.

Flowers: They came from the local supermarket floral department. I worked with them just as if they were a legitimate florist. We went with carnations for the bridal party flowers so that the bouquets would withstand the heat. We spent a little under $250 for all of the flowers.

- Cascading bouquet of daisies, carnations, mini carns, ivy, and babies breath (with a blue accent spray)
- 8 red roses and babies breath (for the other ceremony that we did)
- 3 bouquets of carnations with blue accent sprayed babies breath
- 11 white rose boutonnieres
- 4 double white rose wrist corsages

Centerpieces: The centerpieces were all handmade. The local crafts stores have coupons for 40-50% off one regularly priced item, so I signed up for their "shopper club" card and got additional discounts. You can print off as many coupons as you want and rope in a few friends to help you buy the pieces that you need.  I bought bunches of silk Gerber daisies and put glass stones in them to weigh down the vases. The vases were from Freecycle. I asked for the vases that come with floral arrangements and I received them in abundance! I then covered them with tulle and tied them with simple satin ribbon.

Photos: Two girlfriends helped with this. One has her MFA and the other is trying to get a photography company off of the ground. The friend with the MFA took the abstracts. The friend with the photography business focused on the other shots. We were thrilled that she agreed to take the pictures - in lieu of a gift, being that we already have two crock pots - and she was thrilled to have a wedding to add to her portfolio. Win-win.

Food: At the reception hall for the small wedding, we went with a buffet. That worked out incredibly well, since one of my peeves about weddings is that there's rarely enough food on the plate. A buffet allows people to take what they want. We also went with a sparkling juice toast instead of a champagne toast. We did this partly because there are several family members who don't or can't drink. In addition to being more cost efficient, it tasted pretty good. I can't remember ever going to a wedding and thinking to myself "Heavens to Mergatroid! This champagne is delicious!" More often than not, the mostly full glass of gross champagne sat on a table until it got cleared or a boozey relative poured it off to drink.


 Favors:  I've got a personal stash of nice, but useless wedding favors that I've received over the years. Even the personalized seed packets were a bust, since they didn't actually produce any flowers. Since we had two ceremonies, we needed two sets of favors. We used beer steins from the dollar store and we put two blueberry flavored candy sticks (like candy canes sans the hook) in them. The candy sticks were tied with blue ribbon and the steins were put into cloth bags. We gave out playing cards in plastic boxes for the larger wedding. The cards came with personalized stickers that we put on the cases. The cost for the cards came out to 89 cents a piece. I'm still getting messages from people telling me that these were the best favors ever.

Dress: I purchased my dress from David's Bridal. Got it for a really good price since that style was being discontinued. By good price, I mean $150.  And make sure you ask them to clean it if it's a floor model. They should clean it for free, no hassle. Make sure they write that the cleaning is free on the receipt...

Headpiece:  This was my "something borrowed". My sister was more than glad to lend it to me and it looked absolutely stunning. She purchased it on eBay for a great price. :)

Shoes: Those dyeable shoes are only great if your wedding is on a completely dry day and there's no chance of them coming in contact with water. You can have them dyed down after the wedding, but let's face it... Unless you can find them on sale, they cost the same price as a good pair of regular shoes. I went with a nice pair of white sandals from the Clark's Outlet store by my home. Now I have a pair of comfy sandals that I can wear for some time to come.

That's about all that comes to mind for now. I will say that getting married takes a lot of work. If you're not planning on taking a honeymoon right away, do consider taking a day or two before going back to work. Trust me on this...