I’ve invited my friend Erin to do some guest posts on the site as she plans her upcoming wedding. Please welcome her in the comments and tell us about the wedding your planning (or had) on a budget! What I appreciate about the perspective Erin brings to the blog is the question, “How can I get the most for my money?” Although like many brides, she realizes she’s capable of DIY-ing the entire event, but is that the best idea? Follow this blog as Erin shows how she finds the balance as a budget bride.
I’ll start off by introducing myself to everyone out there: Hi, my name is Erin and I am a bride-to-be. Officially! Anyone who knows me could tell you that I started planning my wedding about 6 months (and 12 years) ago. Just a couple weeks ago, I was proposed to by my boyfriend of 7 years. I kind of knew it was coming – I had even bought my dress! I can’t stop staring at my ring; diamonds really are a girl’s best friend…
By the point of official engagement, I had already made the biggest decisions with regards to The Wedding:
- Location: Black Bear Golf Course in Parker, Colorado
- Type of Event: Ceremony with dessert reception and exclusive dinner reception to follow
- Dress: Found discontinued floor sample at a high-end boutique that I could actually afford and needed no alterations (buying this dress was possibly the most stressful event in my life.. but I’ll write about that at a later date)
Now that I am planning an event that will actually happen, it’s the little details starting to drive me crazy… My biggest question is constantly, “How can I get the most for my money?” The answer is usually “do it yourself.” And I really could cook the food, decorate the space, arrange the flowers, and make everything perfect myself. I’m thinking I will be kind of busy though, the day-of, marrying the love of my life. I’m hoping my bridesmaids will be willing to spend their time off of work in sunny Colorado making thousands of paper-mache flowers. Kidding, of course. Kind of…
One other thing haunting my mind is the upcoming engagement photo session with my good friend and amazingly talented photographer, Olivia Ginn of Olivia Marie Photography.
- What do we wear? I am slightly picky about fashion. And my fiancé won’t care. So it’s up to me to make us look like we just stepped out of Vogue… in nautical stripes. Or all white. Or all black… or looking slightly cool in vintage teal?
- What do we want to do in the photographs? I literally just had a conversation with my photographer where my answer went something like this: “Ummmm. I don’t know. I like pictures with cool architecture. Oh, and nature, I love the way an open sky or huge tree looks in a photo…. I guess I don’t care.” Ha. No matter what, I like fun and playful and am not much for anything that looks too posed.
- Then Olivia asked me a question that was hard to answer (which is kind of scary?): “What do you two like to do together?” Uhhh, yikes, we’re really not very interesting. I answered, “Is eating an activity?” Seriously, we’re total chill-out people. We spend our time together eating (well, me cooking, him eating), watching basketball games religiously (Go Magic!), and going to eat at restaurants with our friends to watch basketball games. Oh wait… We do other things, but seriously, going to the movies and browsing Sam Ash music store isn’t so photographable.
I will leave you with a picture of my fiancé and I enjoying a friend’s wedding last year. Happy planning, everyone!