...reception venue search...

Obviously an outdoor reception is a bit of a risk. What if it rains? What if it's sweltering? No one wants to be uncomfortable on their wedding day, and clearly, our quirky little picnic reception is SUPER dependent on fantastic weather. Thus began the search for a venue that offered the atmosphere of the outdoors without leaving us completely exposed.

The first venue I fell for was this fantastic pavilion at the Hermitage Golf Course.

Just enough cover to shelter us from the sun and rain if necessary. Still plenty of outdoorsy-ness to enjoy.

Beautiful area next to the pavilion where we could set up all of our lawn games.

We really liked this place. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too far out of our budget. The rental fee for the pavilion is $1,200, which I thought was pretty reasonable. However, because we are getting married at the height of wedding season, the venue requires a $5,000 spending minimum…which means we'd have to rent more space and spend much more than we'd budgeted for their in-house catering. My heart was a little sad, but we had to give up on the idea of doing our reception there.

Next came this beauty…The Patio at The Mill at Lebanon.

I loved the rustic, industrial sort of feel.

It holds about 150 people seated…which would have been a pretty tight squeeze for us. And the rental fee is $1,800 for the patio. Again, a bit of a stretch to our budget. I loved the atmosphere, but DG was convinced that it was too small anyway.

After we visited with The Mill, I was really discouraged. Don't get me wrong…it's a lovely venue. It just wasn't going to work for us. And I felt like we were running out of options. How in the world would we afford to pull off the wedding that we wanted? We put everything back on the table. Were we sure we wanted to do it in Nashville? Maybe we'd look into getting married in my hometown. Were we sure we had to have a fancy reception? Maybe we should just scrap the whole outdoorsy idea, take advantage of the free-ness of the venue where DG works, and compromise. I hated the idea of have a reception that feels like everyone else's, but it would still be "nice", right? So then I looked at DG and said, "What if we just bring the outside indoors?" The wheels started turning. What came next was a conversation that evolved over several days about just exactly how we'd pull this off. It will be different. It will be creative. It will be cleverly ironic. And it will be perfection. J I can't wait to elaborate on all of the design and lighting elements and all of the splendid little personal touches we've come up with. This is going to be the greatest reception ever…at least in our eyes. And that's what counts, right?

So, yeah. Venue? Check.

…our wedding vision…

Ok. So. Before I get to our personalized budget ideas, I suppose I should let you in on some of our plans.  DG and I started talking seriously about what we wanted our wedding to be like back in March.  At that point, we were just dreaming, but some very concrete ideas were born out of that conversation.  We knew we were faced with a bit of a challenge.  Neither of our families drink and we knew that the presence of alcohol at our reception would make most of our loved ones feel offended and uncomfortable. At the same time, we wanted our reception to have a fun and interactive type of atmosphere, so we knew we had to get creative.  Sadly many of the dry wedding receptions we've been to have been sort of ho-hum.  Everyone stands around waiting for the bride and groom to cut the cake, and once they have, the guests have a slice and peace out. The whole shebang lasts about an hour. That scenario is pretty much the opposite of what we're going for. His family is from Florida. Mine is from Missouri. If our guests are going to travel all that way, we'd really like to be able to hang out for a minute. I mean, how often are all of the people you care about in the same place at the same time? Thus…we started talking about how to creatively encourage our guests to cut loose and have a good time…without the liquid courage. We want people to be engaged and relaxed, not bored.

Our first real conversation about the wedding took place over coffee at a Dunkin Donuts while I was in town visiting DG. (Up until about three months ago, DG and I were playing the long distance game. You'll learn more about that later.) We were contemplating what kind of reception we wanted to have when DG spoke up and said, "What if we do it like a tailgate?" Interestingly, DG has a bit of a man-crush on Jimmy Buffett…and thus, tailgating is a bit of a vice for him. (I know. Who knew?) As a beach bum wannabe, this type of atmosphere for our reception would make him a very happy groom come wedding day. At first, the whole idea seemed absolutely ludicrous to me. I enjoy a classy affair. But after further discussion, I started to get it. The more we talked about it, the more excited I became. We'd tame it down a bit. Yard games, barbeque, a kids table, sweet tea and lemonade, dancing…and lots of sunshine. We'd encourage our guests to bring a change of clothes and plan to stay a while.

We knew we'd have to do it all the way to pull it off, but I loved the quirky charm of the whole idea. I've always pictured a very formal, reverent, and sentimental kind of ceremony in a beautiful church. So we decided the ceremony and reception would be like opposite sides of the same coin. We'd find a way to pull it all together thematically.

First priority? Venue. We knew we'd have to find the perfect space for the perfect price in order to bring our imagined celebration a reality. This proved to be more a challenge than I'd expected. We'll get into that tomorrow…

(to be continued)

…wedding budget…

DG and I finally sat down to take a look at the numbers last weekend, and I have to say, I was surprised. All this time I have been utterly shocked at the idea that anyone could spend $25,000 on a wedding. Seeing as it is ONE day out of an entire lifetime, that extravagance just seemed completely unreasonable…but after sitting down with my nifty little wedding binder and going through all the suggestions for how much to allocate for this and that, what seemed like tons and tons of money began to feel like only a handful of pennies. It's already starting to stress me out just a tinge.
So here's the basic breakdown…
Where the money's coming from:
My parents have graciously offered to contribute about $7,000. Between a few investments DG is planning to cash in and the money we've already been stashing away from each paycheck, we have about $7,000 to chip in ourselves. So the grand total…to include wedding bands, our honeymoon, and the rehearsal dinner…is $14,000
When you filter out the $3500 we've budgeted for our honeymoon and the $750 we'd like to have for the rehearsal dinner (We're hoping to include all of our out of town guests.), there are 965,000 pennies left for the wedding itself. In an effort to keep a little reserve for any unexpected expenses, we're planning with a budget of $9000. So when there's something extra we just have to have, as we all know there will be, we'll have a few dollars to pull from. Hopefully with the cushion, we won't end up spending more than we intended.
Where the money goes to:
According to our wedding planning buddy, The Knot, here's how it all shakes out…


It's not hard to see that we have a challenge ahead of us. Some of those numbers are frighteningly small. Luckily, there's some wiggle room in there because all of these categories don't apply to us. For example, neither of our families drinks, so we can allocate $720 reserved for beverages to other areas. I'm going to get to work customizing the budget to fit our needs. For any of you who need a good starting point, I'd definitely recommend this little exercise on The Knot. (Just sign in and click "My Budget.") You can play with your figures according to your budget, guest list, and number of attendants. It will even let you add and eliminate categories to fit your needs. Since I am a bit of a spreadsheet queen at work, I'll be working up some Excel magic to help us figure out what we want to spend and how to stay on track…specialized just for us. This wedding is going to be an awfully creative venture. I have a feeling it's going to include a whole lot of DIY trickery…but I'm game, and I know DG is too. I hope we can pull it off!!

...he's got skills...

So I might be getting a little ahead of myself here because I haven't yet told you about the reception or the venue, but this made me smile, and I have to share. DG and I spent a good part of our weekend road trip talking about the layout for our reception. I worked on this for a good two hours of our time in the car...

His version is a little prettier...

Don't you love him?

...wedding on the brain...

Let's just be honest. Pretty sure my productivity has just been reduced by half. I have wedding on the brain. It's a bit of a natural phenomenon. For instance, I have a birthday coming up and a co-worker brought these guys in this morning...


My first reaction? Not, "Oooh, yummy!" but, "Wow, those are cute! I wonder if the bakery has a website?! Maybe they could do the wedding cake!" Next thing you know, I'm scouring the interenet to look at cake pictures. Do you see how this is not a natural progression of thinking???

I'm that girl. Awesome. I do have a couple of things going for me:
a. DG, the future-fiance, is in event production, so he's just as into this as I am. (Ok, close.)

b. My best friend and MOH is in the thick of planning her very own matrimonial soiree to take place in October...so she's right there in the trenches with me.
Lucky for me, nobody is terribly annoyed by my constant interest in The Knot.
My head is a mess with the endless ideas and and possibilities. I'm realizing very quickly that I need to focus...and prioritize. We're still about nine months out, so DG and I have only just started to look into venues and try to finalize a budget. More to come on that! We're taking a quick little road trip this weekend, and I'm really hoping I come back with some rough figures of what we want to spend, how we'll come up with it, and how to make it STRETCH. So there it is. Goal one. Figure out the money.

Stay tuned.

...welcome...

I've taken cues from the many, many creative and inspiring brides out there on the world wide web and decided to create my own little corner of the internet for all things wedding-related. My future-fiance and I are planning to get married next spring, and though I don't have the jewelry to prove it just yet (Don't worry about it. Just go with it, k?), we are trying to get a tiny head start on the planning of our lavish, and hopefully reasonably-priced, affair. He's an events guy. I'm a singer/songwriter. We tend to dream big. Still, at the end of the day, the dollars will determine much of what we can and cannot do, and like everyone else, we are on a tight budget. We're counting on a little creativity to make the difference when the money falls short. Yes, we want a beautiful, fun, and imaginative wedding...but we'd also like to be left with a little change to get us into the ever after...so I'm hoping that through a little virtual thinking out loud, I can start to form some ideas to help us achieve just that. Input from all of you ladies who've been where we are, and all of you who are right there with us, is more than welcome!