The Money Subject

Mrs. Wallaby does this so much better than me, but let's talk about money. I've alluded to the fact that we're throwing a pretty low-budget wedding. (There's got to be a better way of saying that.) I'm gonna try to be pretty open here, even though yeah... it's a little awkward.

My parents and Mr. Lemur's parents have graciously offered to help us, and we're choosing to spend only the money that we were given. We could spend our own money over that—but it would mean things like less money towards student loan repayment and taking out a car loan instead of paying cash for the car I just bought. I'm not saying this is what everyone should do, but as a graduate student it was the best option for us! And I'm here to tell you that if that's what you're looking to do (I know there's some of you out there!), it's totally possible.

I want to do a pre-wedding budget post to let you know our general categories. After this all goes down I'll post again and let you know the specifics! A few things: My engagement ring, our wedding bands, and our honeymoon are not included in this budget. We are paying for those ourselves, as well as gifts. The rehearsal dinner is also not included, as Mr. Lemur's parents are covering that. Anything else? Uhh, hopefully I didn't forget it! If you see something you're not sure about, just ask.

Catering: $2000

I mentioned before that we're using the caterer from our venue, who is completely reasonable. She charges per item, so a menu of six to eight items for around 120 people is totally in our price range. We're having coffee, tea, juice, sweet tea, and water, but not serving alcohol—which keeps the price down. The cakes are also included in this total price. We're doing five simple round cakes with frosting in shades of the wedding colors. I'm so excited to see how this turns out!

Venue: $1250

In the beginning we set a max of $1000 for the wedding venue. This is possible! However, our original venues that fell into this category were all booked. This is mostly due to our short engagement. My advice: If you want to save money on the venue, book early so you can pick and choose! We were really limited, although I do love our venue.

Image via Pleasant Ridge Camp & Retreat Center

Photography: $800

This includes our engagement pictures session at $100 and a full day of wedding coverage at $700. We decided to book and up-and-coming young photographer with just a few weddings under her belt. Her original price was $1000, but we negotiated travel and lodging expense (not included), plus we're doing a separate couples session with her later in the summer (also not included) instead of taking extensive couples photos on the day of the wedding.

Image via Niki Marie Photography

Bridal Outfit: $250

Ok, at this point you might be like wait what? This girl is crazy. Hold on, I promise this is possible! I got the J. Crew Sophia for $150 online new with tags. This is a $425 dress normally—so already inexpensive but I managed to get a great deal. Check around online—my veil was $10 on eBay, in perfect condition. I haven't gotten shoes or a necklace yet, so those still need to fit into this category.

Paper Items: $200

This includes the mini Moo cards, 150 envelopes, ribbon, heart hole punch, and 150 invitations printed in color. It also includes 120 crossword puzzle programs and I Spys printed in black & white and color, respectively. I'll do a complete breakdown in my final post, but I will say we managed to do all of this with money left over—we got a great deal on printing.

Decorations: $200

The bulk of this is spent on books—which I don't feel bad about because we can have these for a long time. We did get a great deal on the ones we bought and are borrowing some so we can have more than we were willing to pay for. This is also $20 for tissue paper to make flowers and poms to hang throughout the venue and $30 to buy small Scrabble letters and make larger Scrabble letters. We're borrowing some glass from family and friends and tablecloths are included with the venue, but I still need to narrow down what else I need in this category!

Miscellaneous: $300

This includes anything we haven't bought or taken care of yet. There's a lot of little things that add up! We also have to include the marriage license fee, makeup, and who knows what else...

Total: $5000

This was the total I set from the very beginning, so I'm really glad to see that with less than three months to go we're still on target to hit it. I don't anticipate anything pushing us over this, but you never know!

Anyone have any other tips? Any other brides out there planning a low-budget wedding? Anything I forgot? (I sure hope not.)

Rehearsal Dinner Logistics

I can't decide if I'm really excited about figuring out all the logistics for the wedding or completely overwhelmed. The obsessive-compulsive side of me is screaming ORGANIZE ORGANIZE ORGANIZE THIS IS AWESOME. Whether that is a good thing for my sanity is yet to be determined...

Let's talk facts. The week of the wedding is going to be insanely busy—there's no way around it. The original plan was to hold the rehearsal dinner out at the venue. They have a number of pavilions available for rental around and near a lake and walking path.

Personal photos

This would have worked perfectly for us because it's a simple picnic-style setting. The menu for the rehearsal dinner is going to be pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, chips, cookies, and sweet tea—so it fits.

The problem is the logistics of getting everyone there. Everyone is staying in Greenville (30-40 minutes away). The drive isn't awful, but there a few things to consider:

1. Greenville 5:00 traffic is horrible. The highways slow down, the stoplights back up, and it's just generally a mess. You don't want to get caught rushing to get somewhere at 5:00.
2. There's a 5K in Traveler's Rest (mid-way between Greenville and the wedding venue) that evening that draws 3000+ people. Traveler's Rest is a tiny town and they close down roads to handle the 5K. Mr. Lemur & I ran it last year and it took us 45 minutes to make the 15 minute drive.
3. Everyone's going to be crunched for time all day long. Do we really want people rushing to get there, rushing to get back, hurrying around the whole time? What we're actually going for with the rehearsal dinner is a laid-back time for family and close friends to mingle and talk.

In my mind, I think I scrapped the rehearsal dinner at the venue plan a long time ago. But it wasn't until last night at 11:00 when I couldn't sleep that I came up with an alternative.

Image via SC Great Outdoors

Cleveland Park is three miles away from graduation and two miles away from the hotel where I reserved rooms for guests. It's a big park with eight shelters, several miles of inter-looping trails, a zoo, several playgrounds, tennis courts, and the Reedy River down the middle of it. It's also home to Rock Quarry Garden, which I happen to be very partial to, since we got engaged there.

Image via Rachel Hughes Photography / A wedding in Rocky Quarry Garden—I'm kinda jealous!

I think all around it just makes more sense. It's a lower-key evening and (hopefully) everyone will love the park as much as we do!

Anyone else do a really casual rehearsal dinner? How did you decide on a venue? Any other sentimental brides out there who want to pull in the proposal location to the wedding?

The Guests Need Somewhere to Stay Too

Who would have thought, right? I've been so busy thinking about where to hold the wedding, where I'd stay the night before, where I'll get ready, where we'll go on our honeymoon—that I completely forgot about reserving blocks of rooms for our awesome guests.

But no big deal, the wedding is still three months away, right? Plenty of time to book a few rooms, since even though it's a nice area to visit there's not a huge demand for tourism in early May. We're not having a huge wedding plus a lot of people know friends in town to stay with, so we'll only need 10-15 rooms maximum.

Well. There are two private universities in the Greenville area, and both of them have graduations that weekend. They're not huge schools, but it definitely causes an influx of people.

Which didn't hit me until I clicked on the website of the hotel I planned to reserve rooms in from the beginning and saw that they had zero rooms available the weekend of the wedding. Zero rooms? In a tiny town like Traveler's Rest? Except... it's five minutes away from Furman University. Duh.

That would have been the best option since it's just fifteen minutes from the venue, but I immediately rebounded and told myself "That's ok, I'll just reserve rooms in Greenville. It will be an extra fifteen minutes of travel time for my guests, but they'll get to experience the area." On the plus side it is a pretty neat city. I've grown quite attached in my five years here!

Downtown hotels are really pricey, I mean I never would expect my guests to pay $319 a night, even if it's for a hotel that looks like this:

Image via Uptake

Go east of the downtown area though and you run into more booked hotels. And even if they have rooms available (there are some, although you're limited), the prices have been jacked by at least $20 because of the higher demand from local graduations.

Fortunately I found a hotel with availability that's near downtown—close, but not so close that it's wicked expensive. Rates are reasonable and the hotel looks nice without being overly ritzy. The downside of course is that it's a longer drive to the wedding venue—thirty minutes instead of fifteen. Remember though that we have a morning wedding, so guests won't be traveling late at night after a long day.

It goes both ways, you can stay close to the venue and have nothing to do or you can stay further away and have a beautiful city right there. I'm really hoping people take advantage of these kinds of sights just a mile away.

Image via City Data / Our cute Main Street

Image via Black Olive Photographic / Riverwalk along the downtown area

Image via Forbes / Listed as a top rejuvenated area!

Image via Greenville Daily Photo / Falls Park Liberty Bridge—the coolest park in the area!

Anyone smarter than me out there who anticipated these kinds of problems and booked hotels early? If it was an option, would you rather stay as close to the venue as possible or be able to check out local areas? 

Invitations Part II

It's about time I continued my previous post about invitations with an aptly named Part II.

Remember, we had nixed the full invitation suite in favor of keeping costs and effort down, but I still wanted to do something casual yet fun. I googled "free wedding templates"—no shame, guys—and found Wedding Chicks, who has some really awesome custom wedding printables and downloads. Take the work out of it and get something personalized for free! Granted, this does not mean you're the only person to ever use that invitation. I know that—although I figure the chances are slim that someone would receive two invitations using the same template, so I decided to go with it. 

I wanted something casual and cute that was at least vaguely in our wedding colors. I think the bunting invitations were instantly my favorites.

Image via Wedding Chicks

Of course, we're not doing RSVP cards so all I downloaded was the invitation template. They had escort cards and table numbers in the same theme though, along with more in other themes.

They have a fun coral and yellow vibe to them and preserve a little bit of traditional wording and presentation along with a casual feel with the fonts and design. After messing with the wording for forever, we came up with the following. (I'm not showing a picture of ours because it would be so blurred, but it looks just like the one in the pictures with our names and information.)

Miss Lemur's Parents

Along with Mr. Lemur's Parents

Invite you to share their joy at the marriage of

Miss Lemur

to

Mr. Lemur

Saturday, May xx, 2013

at 11:00 in the morning

Pleasant Ridge Camp & Retreat Center

Address, Marietta, South Carolina

One other note on wording—I left this up to my parents. Because they're technically hosting the wedding (paying for most of it), tradition dictates the invitations should come from them. However, Mr. Lemur's parents are also helping us, and they're just a huge part of our lives, so we decided on essentially a joint invitation. My mom nixed wording like "Request your presence" because she felt it was too formal—they eventually decided on "Invite you to share their joy," which was actually my favorite from the beginning. So simple and happy!

A note on printing—we had ours done at my campus print shop and got an incredible deal on it. They also did a really great job. Breakdown on costs turned out to be $0.47/sheet for color printing plus $0.04/sheet for the ivory card stock. For 75 sheets (150 invitations) that was just under $40, but we got a 30% wedding discount, which put us just under $27 for all of our invitations. I'll add this and more information to our budget post at the end!

Also, I now need to have bunting somewhere at the venue. I'm thinking draped along the mantle? For real, how perfect would that be? I can match the colors pretty closely with tissue paper I'm thinking and pull in the invitations to the decorations. That's a huge victory for an obsessive-compulsive bride like me.

Don't worry, we still have to discuss assembling the invitations and printing the envelopes. Much more to come, so stay tuned for Part III!

Anyone else go the simple free route? Anybody go the opposite direction and order custom design? Those invitations are always so pretty and I love the customization! Tell me about your experiences with wedding invitations—sending and receiving.

Dressing Up the Dress

Remember when I introduced my dress and said I was excited to make it my own? Well this post is just about that! I also posted about shoes and whether or not I should splurge for expensive heels or go with a simple sandal. This girl is still undecided! But today let's talk about wedding jewelry.

I've seen a lot of pictures lately with necklaces that look something like this and they kind of make me swoon. Especially the ones with birdcage/short veils because that's what I'll be wearing!

Image via A Low Country Wedding / Photo by Tamiz Photography

Image via A Low Country Wedding / Photo by Brooke Courtney Photography

Image via A Low Country Wedding / Photo by Tec Petaja Photography

Image via A Low Country Wedding / Photo by Erich McVey Photography

Image via A Low Country Wedding / Photo by Stay Forever Photography

Because the dress is so simple, I think I could get away with a bigger necklace, although maybe not something with quite that much bling even though I love them. I'm thinking a chunkier necklace that still fits the whole casual theme, maybe even something in coral.

Image via A Low Country Wedding / Photo by Cameron Ingalls Photography

I think this image says it best. Look at her—she's stunning. I'm absolutely loving the double strand with the hint of color that matches her sweater. Umm, can anyone find me a coral sweater please? And then let's have the weather be cold on my wedding day!

This is a short post because I really don't have anything else to say! You can say it for me, what do you think I should wear? Go with a larger necklace or stick to a traditional string of pearls or pendant? What kind of wedding jewelry did you wear?

Let's Talk about Rings

I've already talked about my perfect proposal and the jealousy that inevitably creeps in when you compare yourself to others. Because what's right for you is almost certainly not right for someone else. Even when someone tells you "Oh, that's the exact ring I want!" (that happened this weekend), it doesn't mean their story is anything like yours—or should be! So this post is about my ring, but I want to make a few extraneous remarks too.

Miss Jackrabbit has a really awesome post on her moissanite ring and just rings in general, so I won't repeat her here! But it goes without saying that if you have a huge diamond or a small diamond or a colored gem or a scientifically-created stone (umm, cool!), the most important thing is just that you rock the heck out of that thing.

I already mentioned Mr. Lemur and I picked out the ring together, but during our the summer when we were also long distance (ugh) I wanted to get an idea for what kind of ring I liked in person, not just from pictures online.

Side note: This is how I found Weddingbee! I was searching for rings online and came across threads in the ring forum, which led me to the blog eventually.

So way back in June I went and tried on rings with a friend. For girls who want to go ring shopping but don't want to drag their significant others along: Just do it. Take a girlfriend and say "I want to look at rings to get an idea of what I might like!" They'll let you try on as many rings as you want. I told the lady at Kay's I was looking for a princess cut solitaire with a cathedral setting, and she showed me this ring.

Personal photo—The ring I preferred is on my right hand. In the second picture I'm wearing a similar but slightly bulkier ring on my left hand.

The jeweler wasn't pushy necessarily, but she definitely encouraged me to try on some other rings. I did, and each time I kept gravitating back to the simple solitaire. For me, once I figured out what I wanted, trying it on didn't make that much of a difference. It simply solidified how I had felt while looking at rings online, on other people, etc. So I sent the pictures and a link to Mr. Lemur—not subtle at all, huh?

Mr. Lemur ordered the diamond and band separately from a jeweler friend, and I may have gotten some pictures along the way. Shh. I don't think people are supposed to know he sent me the original ring pictures!

Somehow, though, when I first saw the ring I wasn't thinking "Yep, this is the one I picked out." I was thinking "We're getting married!" And having a gorgeous ring was pretty cool too.

Personal photo—I think this picture turned out pretty well for a quick shot on my iPhone in front of the waterfall where we got engaged!

So tell me your ring stories! Anyone have a really unique ring or ring story out there? Do I have any ring twins? Did you pick out your ring or did your significant other surprise you?

Heel Height

Mr. Lemur is definitely taller than I am. In this shot from our engagement pictures, you can see he easily has four or five inches on me—taller but not towering over me.

Image via Niki Marie Photography / Photo by Niki Marie Photography

If I wear a normal-sized heel, I'm just shorter than Mr. Lemur by an inch or two. I'm totally comfortable with this, and wear heels often. Would I wear a pair of shoes like this with a 6 and 1/2 inch heel?

Image via Zappos

Well, probably not. It's just not my style! And I mean, I'm not even sure I could walk in those, but that's beside the point!

Now look at this picture of my whole family at Lake Superior this summer...

Personal photo / Mr. Lemur, me, Sister E, Sister E's Boyfriend, Sister A, Brother D

Ok, so maybe it's a slight incline. But it gets my point across—I'm definitely the shortest in the family! And Mr,. Lemur is pretty close in height to both of my sisters.

In fact, throw a pair of three or four-inch heels on either Sister E or Sister A and I'm pretty sure he'd be looking up at them. Mr. Lemur's brothers (the groomsmen) aren't necessarily tall either. Now, I'm not saying it would be a huge deal if they wore heels, but we're definitely thinking of going with a flat sandal. I'm pretty sure they'd be more comfortable like that anyway!

If they wear a more casual sandal, what should I wear? I was leaning towards heels at first, but now I love the idea of being able to walk around all day no problem, not trip on my dress, be comfortable, match my sisters... Did you wear heels and love it? Regret it? Wish you had worn the shoes of your dreams? DID wear the shoes of your dreams?