Bloggers beware!

...if you write about your venues, there is a chance that someone who works for the venue may see it.

This could be a good thing or a bad thing. In one of my most recent blogs (found here: The Situation) I wrote about how our reception location was perfect upon first glance but once we went back I found a few things that I didn't see at first - and they weren't pretty things.

The on site coordinator saw my blog at some point and offered to do some draping for our site to take care of the merman that hangs from the ceiling, for no charge! (Isn't that so sweet and kind?!?!) I was blogging about it though not to take a jab at our venue but more as lead-in to our amazing florist/event designer (who has some beautiful solutions to hide the stuff that I'm not to keen on, ie: Mr. P. (More to come on that in the future.)



The moral of the story: be careful about what you say on your blog if it's publicly available to all. Blogs, like email, are open to interpretation because you're missing key communication elements such as body language, tone, inflection, etc.

Now, a little bit more about our florist/event designer. I initially had received a quote from the same florist that Mrs. Lemon (over at weddingbee.com) had used for her wedding in Monterey (about 5 miles north of Carmel). And she gave me a quote that was around $4,500. Just for flowers. It was expensive. I looked around a little bit more and found another company in the area who does flowers as well as rentals and designing of event spaces. I had a phone conference with the owner and she just got me and really understood my vision. When you find THE vendor, you just know. And I knew that she was the one.

The best part - instead of pomanders for our pews, we'll be doing some possie pockets for the ceremony decor. I found a picture showed it to her and she knew what they were called and just had amazing ideas to dress them up.



I'm so excited.

And now, a sneak peak at my bouquet (via Martha. I'm. In. Love. Best part is that they're gardenias so it will smell incredible!! I can't wait to hold my Martha inspired bouquet in my hands!!):



Have you accidentally offended someone on you blog?

A what?!?!

Today I worked on getting room blocks for our guests for our quasi-destination wedding. The only time it's been suggested that I block some rooms off for our guests was by our reception site coordinator, and he suggested that to us the only time that we've met him. (Full disclosure, my DOC might have said something to me about room blocks when I met with her too, but I don't remember.) That was approximately 6 months ago.



Today, as I'm on the cusp of putting our STDs in the mail, I'm also spot checking our wedding website to make sure that all systems are a go. Upon inspection of the "Accommodation Ideas" tab I remember that I should get to those room blocks and update the site. The first call I made was to our reception venue, seeing as it is a hotel, they can only block off 10 rooms only 7 of them are at their lowest rate: $190, and all rooms require a 3 night minimum. The worst part, all of the suites are already booked and they will only give us a 50% discounted rate for our room. I thought they would comp our room considering the cash we're going to drop there in 6 months.

This is supposed to illustrate a pouting bride, she looks like she's pouting to me.

Majorly disappointed but not completely surprised (I knew that not many people would be staying at the reception hotel because it's expensive and in very high demand), I moved on to a hotel that we've previously stayed at that was quaint and affordable. They can only block 10 rooms and the most affordable room is going to be $179 (not including the 10.5% tax), 2 night minimum, and there will be a $1,000 deposit required by us right now.


Red lights are flashing in my brain, alarms are sounding. This. Is. A. Disaster. I don't have to worry about pleasing anyone anymore because no one is going to come to our wedding. For most people it's a 3 hour drive and they are going to spend at least $300 on lodging. No one is going to come. I freak out and call my honey. Thankfully, he came to my rescue and worked his magic reducing our reception site hotel's policy to a 2 night minimum from the crazy 3-day holiday minimum, as well as finding a few hotels that are willing to accept room blocks without putting deposits down or penalizing us if all rooms aren't filled.



I feel blind-sided. I honestly haven't read anything about this kind of practice about room blocks. I feel like our reception site should have given us a heads up that their suites were already booked at some point or that when I signed the contract that someone would have asked if we would like a suite to be blocked for us or that if we wanted a suite there we couldn't have one because they were already booked. Furthermore, in none of my wedding timelines or planners does it say anything about getting room blocks for guests.

I've been to at least 4 weddings that are quasi-destination, like ours, and we've always received group discounts. I wonder if they've been putting $1,000 deposits down all over town and it's just not a big deal and maybe I'm making it a big deal.

Are the hotel deposits something that are normally done through the course of business but not talked about? Did you book any room blocks for your out of town guests?

Inspiration Sensation!

My recent research has shown that a wedding on a budget seems to have more personal details, no?

Since I've gone over my budget with everything for the wedding so far, I've been doing some research on ways to incorporate fabulous ideas for less than our budget to try to compensate. What I've been coming across has been really wonderful. Allow me to show you what I'm talking about:

Non-floral centerpieces:





Non-flora church pew decor:





Handmade envelopes:





And I've just started looking at alternative methods of decor than what I had originally planned. Two of the areas that I was going to bust my already busted budget were on centerpieces for the cocktail tables and reception tables. I really want to do pomanders on our church pews but instead of using real flowers I think I'm going to research and use an equally fabulous non-floral method.

Where have you pulled your wedding project inspiration from?

And then reality sets in

... and you have to face the fact that you're planning your wedding within a budget.



I haven't blogged yet about our budget, and that's mostly because I've been trying to avoid thinking about it. Mike and I will be funding our wedding. All by ourselves. In cash. People that have asked about how we're paying for everthing have basically given the same response: "that sucks." While at first sight it does "suck" I think it's not so unusual. I'm an accountant, Mike is in sales, we're both college graduates. There's no reason that we can balance a budget and negotiate the items that we want to fit within our budget, furthermore, we make enough money and have enough in savings to pay for this wedding and our honeymoon in cash. I think the reason that people are surprised that we're paying for our own wedding is because we're still fairly young, I'm 24 and Mike is 28, but again, we can afford to do it ourselves.



In the beginning, I set our budget at $20,000, then $25,000 until people kept telling me that $30,000 was the national average spent on weddings so I thought that $30,000 was reasonable for our wedding. Then I slowly realized that the $30,000 budget didn't include our rehearsal dinner, the day after brunch, or our honeymoon. Now our budget is slowly going back down to $20,000 and considering items that have already been contracted...I'm not doing such a good job. Here's where I am so far (on a $20,000 budget using theknot.com's wedding budgeter tool):

Guest list count: 75; I bumped it up to 100 but seeing as how we haven't sent out our STDs yet (doh!) I can still trim it back to 75.

Reception Venue & Rental: Budgeted: $1,600, Actual: $1,900



Ceremony location fee: Budgeted: $200, Actual: $1,800



Photographer: Budgeted: $1,200, Actual: $3,200



Invitations: Budgeted: $500, Actual: FREE!!! Thank you WeddingBee!!



Wedding Coordinator: Budgeted: $0, Actual: $1,500 (I only booked her this weekend, post to come!)

The remaining large budget items are flowers, music and attire. Catering, alcohol and the cake are all being coordinated through our reception venue, so we can keep those costs within our budget. Everything else I plan to do via DIY and try to make up for the overspending that we have already committed to.

Looking at our budget has been a sobering (read: frustrating) experience this morning that makes me want to run away and elope even more (I would rather spend $20,000 on a incredible European honeymoon!) than I did before.

How well have you done staying within your budget? How much funding are you receiving from your families?

To hire or not to hire, that is the question

The other night I was reviewing where I am (and where I'm supposed to be) in the wedding planning. I was pretty pleased to find that for the vendors we have booked so far, we've come out a little under budget. Hip-hip-hooray! AND I even have more cushion in some areas than I thought I did, such as a flower and stationary budgets. For some reason I thought I had $500 budget for out stationary but it's closer to $750. Yippee!



Where this brings me to is trying to jusify a day of coordinator when both our ceremony and reception sites have their own coordinators. My MOH's boyfriend's friend's girlfriend (you following me here???) is an event planner and my MOH and I are going to go meet with her this Sunday to see if she can give us some ideas for lighting, flowers, decor, etc for our sites. My MOH thinks that if we like her I should consider hiring her for my wedding, at which her services would start kicking in 2 - 3 months before the wedding (awesome becuase I will be STRESSED OUT, can you say prime tax season!! not to mention prime wedding DIY & decision time!) but it's another expense that I wasn't really planning on having. So I need to determine whether it's something that I should consider spending our money on. I feel that it works out this way - $1,500 for a sane period before the wedding or $1,500 extra for our honeymoon...tough decision right? Well at least I feel it's a tough decision.



Have you decided to go with a DOC? If you have already used one for your wedding, did you think it was worth it?