31 Dec
LGBT and allied couples who use Magnificent Milestones for their stationery and invitation needs can receive a 10% discount with the coupon “engayged” (expires January 31, 2010). They also have an adorable boutique on the site!
31 Dec
Today is the last day to enter!
Have you tweeted and emailed your entry for the chance to win wedding photography by the amazing Holly from Cakes and Kisses Photography?
31 Dec
Isn’t it always a nice feeling when you can figure out how to spend less and still get what you want? Shopping the sales is one plan, but Alex and I prefer the creative, thrifty, what-skills-do-our-friends-have route. Oh, and Etsy. Here’s a few of things we’ve managed to come up with during our run at wedding planning that have been cutting some nice big numbers from our wedding budgets:
1.) Save-the-Date: Email it! Whether you make a picture file yourself, craft an elegant emails of words, or buy a digital design from an Etsy vendor, almost everyone on your guest list is gonna have email–and check it regularly. For those that don’t, print a few out and send via snail mail. With digital design + postage, our Save the Dates cost around $20.
2.) Wedding Website: A wedding website where you can provide all your guests the necessary additional information for your ceremony is golden. Money wise it means that when you go to buy invitations, you’ll only be looking at the invitation itself + RSVP card. No maps. No list of accommodations. Less info in the envelope = less paper + less postage. Also, you can opt for a cheaper postcard RSVP.
3.) Department Store Suits or Bridesmaids’ Dresses: My wedding dresses are just over double the price when they are sold in ‘white’ or ‘ivory.’ For two dresses, in ‘bridesmaids’ colors of champagne and red, I’m spending less than $700 for two dresses I absolutely love and can wear again. For the suit option, Alex is considering having a suit made for her, and if she options to just have the pants and jacket–buying or making the waistcoat somewhere else–it could save her around $300.
4.) In Season Flowers/Cut the Fancy Arrangements: Our first wedding is in April, in England, when tulips are so in season they are absolutely everywhere. We’re sticky to tulips anywhere and everywhere except corsages (to be replaced by in season greenery + heather). We’ll have between 3-5 tulips in varying shades of purple on each of our 10 tables at the reception, sitting in second-hand vases we’re collecting from thrift stores. A friend of ours is making the tulip-only bouquet, corsages, and boutonnieres, buying the supplies (pins, ribbon, wire) herself for around $2.
30 Dec
Kelly and I fell in love with Paula and Rick of Cronin Hill Photography when we saw their photographs of a same-sex couple. They do what many photographers struggle with – showcase each individual in the couple equally, not styling one as more masculine or feminine. We are so excited to showcase them! They specialize in destination wedding photography, so no matter where you are getting married, they can be there! (This is especially great for couples who are having one legal ceremony away from their celebratory ceremony!) You can check out their listing on So You’re EnGAYged here and their wedding photography portfolio here.
You would think our business would only be about taking incredible wedding day images, it’s a given. Our business is really about making couples feel comfortable in front of the lens, so their true personalities reveal themselves. If you can make a couple feel comfortable they will see themselves in a way they never have before. We always love the comment, “We feel famous!” or “We felt like movie stars!” There’s nothing better than sending out a couple’s slideshow and receiving an email just after they viewed it, saying “WOW! We look good!”
Since high school Paula and I have always been into photography. Photojournalists at heart, we cover news stories for our emergency services all over New England. We were always asked, “Hey, would you shoot our wedding?” Our usual reply was a giggle and really didn’t think anything of it… until that faithful day LOL! Paula was asked to help a friend of a friend cover a wedding his assistant bailed on. After a brief discussion with the Catholic priest, the main photographer found out he couldn’t use flash, Paula saved the day and shot the entire wedding, no flash, in dimly lit conditions. From that day on we said, we can do this! The rest was history!
Cronin Hill is “All Inclusive” No day or time limit. When the client books, we are theirs for the whole weekend. Our package coverage includes 2 Photographers, Pre-Wedding (engagement), Rehearsal, Preparation, Ceremony, Reception and Day After Brunch photography. All clients receive a Digital Negatives CD including all high-rez and retouched images.
For us, it’s the relationships we build and keep long after the “I do”. We stay in contact with many of our couples and we’re sometimes called back to shoot special family moments.
Paula’s favorite moment is capturing the couple on wedding day seeing each other for the first time and mine, listening to story of how and where they met and visiting those locations during the pre-wedding.
“Rick and his wife Paula are consumate professionals. They recently did a photo shoot with my partner and I and we could not have been happier with the results. Everything we wanted to convey was captured perfectly. Also, but not an aside, they are 2 of the nicest people I have ever met. I would never use any other photographer.” – David & Scott
30 Dec
If you plan on feeding your guests in any kind of manner, this will, without a doubt, be your biggest expense. If your having a wedding with a budget of $20,000 or less, this will probably be at least half your budget. Typically, if you invite more than 100 people, your looking at $10,000 minimum. That’s for tables, chairs, forks, knives, linens, food and serving. Obviously there are major exceptions, like if you have a potluck wedding or grill yourself in a park. Restaurants are also a lot cheaper option. But even the $10,000 Bride Blog had a to put a call out looking for caters who wouldn’t cost more than $10,000(she did have a 120+ people though). And that was previously her whole budget.
The biggest way to save a significant amount of money is to cut your guest list. It will possibly save you hundreds of dollars a person. Obviously some services are not affected by the amount of people to a certain degree(like photography or music, though if your hitting 200 people or more it starts affecting everything). But things like cake, food, reception space, ceremony space, transportation, diy projects, and more all add up very quickly per person.
Going back to the money part, a guest list may be hard to come up with especially if your parents or a significant person in your life is contributing money. So coming up with a guest list(just the two of you) and then talking to others in the family about it is the best course of action.
Easy people to cut:
Hard people to cut:
30 Dec
Like just about all Americans my life has been touched upon by the recessions in numerous ways. Whether its working in a deeply unstable work environment with very sometimes scare job security or enduring family financial crisis these turbulent times effect my day to day life and there for effect my wedding planning. When we first approached our families about our wedding budget and what they would be willing and able to help with both sides were generous to us and we planned an upscale yet modest small wedding. Our wedding budget was set for around $5000. I know that is pennies compared to national wedding average which skyrockets into the tens of thousands of dollars but for a small wedding it was more than enough.
Each family offered to pay for a selection of things and my parents offered to take the bulk of the costs. My parents would rent a beautiful cape cod style vacation home along California’s coast line which could accommodate the crowd of 70 people and provide rooms for some family members and friends to sleep in, and my mother and Cousin Michelle would self cater the event. On top of this my parents offered to give us a honeymoon to Paris using a variety of their reward points and benefits they had accumulated over the years couple with some expense of their own of course. All in all a very comfortable place to be financially.
Since then however both of our families have been hit with a variety of financial crisis, from medical bills to job loss. Their situations have changed and thusly so has our budget and plans. When we had to make a cut we made the hard decision to cut big so the first thing to go was beautiful Cape Cod vacation home. At $2500 for the week of the wedding this was always a bit of a strain on our budget and it sling shot our budget full force back into a comfort zone.
29 Dec
You’d think with two brides we’d have two families beating down the door to pay for our wedding. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. My mother has offered to contribute some money to our ceremonies, and we’ve agreed that we’d like to keep the entire budget close to that amount. Now, for a typical wedding, her contribution may not even cover the flowers and centerpieces at the wedding and the reception, but we’re going to make it work. Here are some ways we trimmed our budget.
28 Dec
Money is always a tricky subject to talk about. When it comes to a wedding, it seems like a lot of deep seated emotions, traditions, family values all get expressed through the topic of money. Traditionally, in Christian weddings, the bride’s parents pay for the wedding and the groom’s parents pay for the rehearsal dinner. But this tradition is rooted in the practice of dowry, a payment given to the groom from the bride’s family because a woman was considered property and a financial burden. Other religious and ethnic cultures have various traditions of who pays for the cost of the wedding, some similar and some totally different.
There are dozens of ways to pay for a wedding:
Parents accepting a gay wedding
Money in many parents and children’s minds in the ultimate sign of approval of their wedding. A parent’s unwillingness to pay for or even attend their child’s wedding because of objections to their child being gay or lesbian is something that can permanently damage a relationship. The issue of a child being gay is often not spoken about or avoided in a very tense relationship, so a wedding can force parents to not only talk about it but decide whether or not they will attend/endorse the union. A revaluation of the relationship often occurs in these situations and can sometimes put a cloud over the wedding because of one or both sets of parents reacting negatively to it. Often, parents each react differently and one bride or groom can feel sad/angry/upset that the other bride or grooms parents are more supportive.
Natalie’s parents were extremely supportive and as the wedding planning continued, I realized my mom was intentionally avoiding telling people about our wedding. She didn’t invite any family friends though I asked her several times. This in fact lead to a *really* awkward situation where a long time family friend found out I was getting married to Natalie and hosted a wedding shower for us. I felt like crap because my mom refused to invite her to the wedding previously because she didn’t want her to find out. So there I am at a wedding shower with a bunch of family friends who aren’t invited to the wedding- I felt horrible and angry with my mom. I then insisted afterwards my mom invite them and have her call to invite them. But it was so late in the game, all of them *knew* they weren’t originally invited and none of them came to the wedding because of other plans. I was so embarrassed and frustrated that she went to such lengths to hide my wedding.
In contrast, many parents who are supportive of their child finding the person the want to spend the rest of their life with will insist on contributing money. They see their contribution or complete financial support as a way to show everyone, including the couple, that they love and support their child. This can be very welcome or be complicate matters if the couple has decided to pay for the wedding themselves. Parents may find that the couple is insulting them if they don’t accept the contribution of money.
Money a lot of the time = Control (more…)
28 Dec
Budgeting for a same-sex wedding has been interesting. In some ways it’s exactly how I expect budgeting for any wedding would be—we set our priorities, try to find deals, and cut corners on the things that don’t matter to us while putting more towards the things that do. But there have been a few places where having two women has made it confusing. Lynn’s mom, for example, has decided that Lynn is the groom. Or at least that her family is responsible for the traditional ‘groom’ stuff. Which is very generous, because now she’s offering to pay for the rehearsal dinner and all sorts of other little things on top of the money she initially gave us to help cover the wedding costs. So we’ve had the pleasure of telling her that she doesn’t have to pay for anything extra and that if we go over we’ll be paying for it ourselves.
That ‘paying for anything extra ourselves’ part has been the ruling factor in our wedding budgeting. Our families gave us a set amount specifically for the wedding, and another amount for the honeymoon. Of course, spending that money has been easy—and quick! Almost all of it went to the food, venue, and photographer (and the honeymoon fund to plane tickets). But everything else we need to pay for ourselves, so we’ve been hunting for deals. We’re not exactly debt-free at the moment between a new house, student loans and some lingering credit card debt, so the plan is to keep our contribution low enough that we’ll have the cash on hand on the wedding day to cover everything.
28 Dec
You already got to see Brenda and Chris’s amazing wedding that Melissa Schwartz of Organic Photography shot and just totally rocked. So here’s a look at her amazing engagement session with them. This hammock engagement shot has me missing spring and the sun. I can jut feel the grass under my feet!
