Invitations!

I have SO much to talk about, but I envision a super busy week ahead, and I promised an invitation reveal, so here we go! I'll do a full cost breakdown at the bottom.

Here's what our guests see when they open their mailbox...


The front of the envelopes have a Gocco-ed design in the left corner, and some faux-lligraphy for the names and addresses. We used the rings stamp, which wasn't my first choice, but that's a story for another day.


The back of the envelopes have our return address which came from a rubber stamp I ordered off Etsy.

When our guests open the envelope, they'll pull out the invitation suite...


The suites are wrapped in blue and white bakers twine and tied with a tag that says the guests' names. We went with first names to keep it a little more casual.


Our invitation was the thing that started it all. We used the font Pea Olsen, which I love...


On top of the invitation, our guests will find a card with reception information, directions, and our website...


On the back of that card is the map I designed...


Those were supposed to be two separate cards, but time, money, and Gocco issue prevented that. This card ended up being the only one we had professionally printed.

Next is the RSVP card...


We kept the wording pretty standard, but mixed it up with the food icons (which all our guests loved).


The back has some Gocco-ing, our stamped return address, and the polar bear stamp (of course). We chose to do a postcard to save on postage.

Here is the invitation suite all together...


Cost Breakdown
Gocco PG-10: $150.00
10 Screens and 30 Bulbs: $141.62
Cardstock: $30.96
Envelopes: $71.04
Black Light Pen: $6.62
Gocco Ink: $33.70
Return Address Stamp: $16.50
Stamp Pads: $5.98
Bakers Twine (250 Yards): $9.00
Blank Tags (150): $13.00
Professional Printing: $108.00
Postage: $72.00

Total: $658.32

I plan on selling the Gocco and extra supplies for $150, which would bring the grand total to $3.39 per invitation for 104 invitations.

Yesterday, when we got back from our weekend in Illinois, we had our first response...


I was so happy. We finally have some guests!

The Cost of Being a Bridesmaid

Welcome to my newest follower, Sassmeister!

Back when we first got engaged, I grappled a lot with who I should choose to be in my bridal party. I had to take a lot of things into consideration... my relationship with these ladies, how often I see them, how often I talk to them, and of course... whether or not they could afford it.

It's no secret that being a bridesmaid isn't cheap.

Source

According to this article, bridesmaids can spend anywhere from $500-$1500 in the name of the wedding. Here's an example:

Dress: $210
Alterations: $75
Shoes: $25
Strapless Bra: $40
Hair, Nails, and Makeup: $150, including tips
Travel: $300
Shower Gifts: $70
Contribution to Shower: $30
Bachelorette Party: $100
Wedding Present: $100

Total = $1100

The cost can be even higher if you're a Maid of Honor. But this girl? She's not a bridezilla. So what am I doing to keep down the costs?

• I'm asking my ladies to choose any dress they'd like, as long as it's navy blue and knee length. I would never demand they wear a $500 dress of my choosing.
• My bridesmaids will be wearing non-matching silver heels. I'm hoping they already own a pair... but if not, I've given them enough notice so they can score a good bargain before June.

Source

• Their wedding day hair will be paid for. My hairstylist will be doing everyone's hair, and is offering of a steal of a deal.... so covering their 'dos is no problem.
• Bridesmaid makeup will be 100% DIY. My girls are adults and have been doing their own makeup for over a decade. They know what looks good on them and what will make them feel the most comfortable.
• Travel is an unavoidable expense, but I'm trying to help out by having us all meet in the middle (that being Dayton, Ohio) for dress shopping. I will be paying for our hotel room while we're there. It's the least I can do.
• Lastly, I have requested (more like demanded) that none of my bridesmaids throw us a shower or buy us gifts for the shower or the wedding itself. Being by my side is gift enough.

Let's see how these little adjustments affect the cost breakdown...

Dress: $200
Alterations: $75
Shoes: $25
Hair, Nails, and Makeup: $15
Travel: $200 (on average)
Bachelorette Party: $100

Total = $615

It's still a good chunk of change, but we knocked off a whopping $485! And since I'm only having 3 bridesmaids, I'm hoping that they really grasp just how special they are to me. It's not one of those situations where they are one of twelve and don't feel appreciated.

Source

I love them all to death and am so proud to have them there for me during this time.

I've Been Bitten

... by the videography bug.

I've had a hard time writing this post because it means I have to come to grips with what has happened.

I wrote months ago about how Ryan and I had decided to not hire a videographer. We had discussed it up front, and our reasons pretty much boiled down to the following...

• We thought wedding videos were cheesy. I couldn't stand the thought of tacky transitions and horrible music ruining our beautiful day.
• If all you're left with is photographs, you can remember your wedding as perfectly as you'd like. But as soon as it's filmed, you realize just how terrible you sounded reading your vows, or how awkward you looked during your first dance.
• It's just one more unnecessary expense we'd have to work into the budget.
  

So the decision was made, and that was that.

... Until I started reading wedding blogs.

The first few times people posted their wedding teasers, and gushed about how fantastic they were, I intentionally avoided them. I don't want to see what I'm missing and regret our decision, I thought.

But one day I clicked that innocent little "play" button... and a whole new fabulous world was opened up before me.

Naked Opie, Julie Dots ... breathless from humanstory

To give you a little insight, I'll share with you that I do, in fact, shoot and edit video for a living. I edit video every single day at work.

But my video is blown out of the water by what these people can do.

Kim + Kyle // Wedding Highlights from Erika Rydell

And now I'm torn. A part of me is saying, Be sensible, Kelly... videography is a luxury, not a necessity. But the other half is screaming, I must have this! How else will I remember our wedding day?!

The hard part is, both sides are right. Videography is indeed unnecessary... but I've also heard that many people regret not having it once the wedding is over.

All Things Go. Video By BMP. from Video that rocks. The Weddings

Without a wedding video, you only get one chance to hear your husband recite his vows. You only get one chance to listen to your father give his toast.

You only get one chance. You either film it, or it's gone forever.

So what is "forever" worth to me?

(A few other fantastic companies that didn't have embed-able video (some of my absolute favorites!): LoudByte Cinematography, I Do Films, Delack Media Group)

My Hairstylist Rocks

Once upon a time, when I lived at home with my parents, I had a hairstylist that my mom and I regularly visited. She cut, colored, and styled my hair to perfection.

This is obviously not me, nor my hair.

But two things have happened since then...
1) I moved away.
2) My hairstylist quit her job.

Before my hairstylist left the salon, she gave my mom a lovely note saying how much she appreciated our business, and offered to continue cutting my mom's hair at her own home.

When I heard my mom would be visiting our hairstylist for a cut and color, I sheepishly suggested she might see if she was interested in doing my hair for the wedding. I figured it was a stretch because she was no longer in the "biz".


But when my mom asked, she accepted on the spot and added it to her calendar.

Score!


It's really the most ideal situation for us. Since she no longer does hair professionally, she won't be missing out on any Saturday income. Since she doesn't work for a salon, she doesn't have outrageous salon-set prices.

She offered to do 4 down styles, 1 bridal up-do, and 1 bridal makeup for $230.


Yeah... just writing that makes me feel guilty.

We will definitely be rounding up on that number when it comes time to write the check!

Cake Confusion

Welcome to my newest follower, Carli!

Our reception venue makes wedding cakes starting at $3 per serving. While we haven't yet tried their cake (we'll hopefully do that at our tasting on Sunday during our WOW), we like to keep our options open... just in case it sucks.

So I found a few bakeries in the area that seemed within our price range. I emailed them, but only got one real response back.

"What is the date of your wedding and how many guests do you need to feed? Are you looking for a stacked 3 or 4 tier cake or something smaller? Pricing varies according to how large of a cake you need as well as how much artwork you would like on your cake. A rough estimate is $2.50-6.50 per slice for budget purposes."

Okay, so that sounds reasonable. I emailed them back with: June 25th, 200 guests, 3-tiered would be fine, supplemented with some sheet cake, not a lot of artwork.

Something like this...

OMG, isn't this cake gorgeous?

This was the response I received:

"You have time to plan. The best thing to do at this time is to look for pictures of wedding cakes that you like on the internet and send it to us. The pricing is not final unless it is 3 months from your wedding date. "

Hmm...

I was a little confused by their email, but Ryan and I are thinking what they mean is that we won't know the actual cost until 3 months before the wedding.

That just won't work for us.

What if, come next March, they inform us it's going to cost $1,200... when we could have had our reception venue make our cake and only paid $650?

The cake just isn't that big of a deal to us. Yes, we want it to taste good. Yes, we want it to look good. But we're not going to break our budget over this (or cause unwanted stress).

Floral Consultation

Let me start by saying that I'm much more excited about our flowers now that I've had an actual discussion with a florist.

We haven't officially signed the contract yet, but I'm sure we will. I knew I liked this company before I spoke with them. But talking to the owner on the phone last night just solidified what I already felt.

So here is what she came up with (complete with photos of similar arrangements)...

Bridal Bouquet: Mostly pink flowers with white accents. Dinner plate size. Handle wrapped in navy satin with pearl detail. Ranunculus, peonies, roses and spray roses, and silver foliage accents around the rim.



Groom's Boutonniere: Double pink ranunculus with silver wire accent.

Alterpieces: Tall, showy rectangular vase with hydrangeas, peonies, silvery culry willow branches, dark blud delphinium, pink stock, pink snapdragons, and roses with minimal silver foliage accents. Navy band of ribbon around the rim.

(This was the closest thing I could find.)

Centerpiece #1: Square vase with mostly pink flowers and some white. Silver foliage accents with navy ribbon around the vase. Flowers include roses, spray roses, peonies, ranunculus, asiatic/oriental lilies, stock hydrangea, and silver sage/dusy miller.


Centerpiece #2: Trio of rectangular vases. Mostly pink flowers with navy ribbon around the vases. Flowers to include hydrangea, lilies, roses, possibly peonies, and stock.


Ryan's thoughts on flowers? Meh.

I said, "Are you okay with a pink ranunculus boutonniere?"

He said, "I don't know what that is."

Well, I guess that answers that. But I'm perfectly happy dealing with the flowers myself. As long as he doesn't think they're ugly, we'll be fine.

The estimated total of all that (plus more) comes out to $2,200. So pretty, but sooo expensive!

Honeymoon Surprise

After spending at least 3 days straight telling Ryan how we were $10,000 over our budget, he pulled out a huge surprise... As our wedding gift, his parents have offered to pay for our honeymoon.

Wha?! ::double take::

That's thousands off our budget! Thousands of dollars that Ryan and I would be paying out of our own pockets. Just... wow.

We have been truly blessed with incredibly generous parents.

Now where should we go... St. Barths? Belize? Costa Rica? Dominican Republic? Jamaica? Mexico? Aruba?


So many options! Planning our honeymoon will be so much more enjoyable with this enormous weight lifted.

Meals, Money, and Confusion

Ryan and I sat down and went through our budget yesterday. He wanted to calculate the cost of food and alcohol, because he thought my estimate was too high.

Fine.

So I went through the menus and read him the prices...
$5.25 pp - three hors dourves per person
$3.00 pp - giving our guests a choice in meal
$55.00 pp - chicken or steak
$31.00 pp - basic open bar
$5.00 pp - cake

All that for our required 200 guests = a lot of money.

But then came our debate. I told Ryan that it didn't matter what meal people chose... we would be charged for the most expensive of the two options. (For example, if 50% of the guests chose chicken, and 50% chose steak, we would still be charged for 100% steak.)


Ryan asked "why?" I said, "that's just how receptions work."

But he didn't believe me. And when I tried to find proof amongst our contracts and information packets, I couldn't.

Did I just make that up? He made me start to question this little thought that had been ingrained in my brain all along.

Sure, it would be greeeeat if we actually got to pay for what people ate. That would save us over $500. But I somehow doubt that I just fabricated this idea all on my own.

Gocco, My Love

I am dangerously close to purchasing a Riso Print Gocco PG-10 on Ebay.

Did I lose you?

For those that don't know, this is a Gocco...


It is a magical little machine that makes beautiful prints like these...




It has become really popular in the past 10 years for DIY brides who want to save money on invitations.

It essentially works like screen printing. You can use any design you want, then the image gets burned into a screen, which you then ink and press onto your paper (yeah... that's the way condensed version).


Why do I want one? A) Because I don't like Kinkos. They are expensive, it's not as pretty, and I don't trust them. B) Because I've convinced myself that DIYing my invitations will save money.

Will it really? I have no idea. Which is why I'm stuck hovering my mouse over the "Buy Now" button on Ebay.

Let's break it down... The Gocco costs $145 used. Then I have to buy paper or cardstock to print save-the-dates, invitations, maps, information, menus, rsvp cards, etc etc etc.

If I knew how much all that paper would cost, and if I knew how much it costs to print at Kinkos, then I could do a lovely comparison right about now. But, alas.

I have a feeling the DIY, Gocco-loving, money-saving bride inside me will win this battle.

What's Next?

As soon as we picked our venue and booked the ceremony site, Ryan said, "excellent. Now we can just relax for a while."


Yeah... riiiight.

For him, this may have been a cue to sit back and wait, but for me, it was just the beginning. Now the planning can really begin!

The first thing on my mental list was a photographer. Being that photography is one of my favorite hobbies, and that photos are all you really have left when your wedding is over... I knew this was an important decision. I wanted to spare no expense!

But our budget had other ideas. Once I sat down and calculated it all out (ceremony and reception sites + projected food and alcohol costs + projected photographer costs), I discovered that we had hit our budget.

Yes, hit. Done. Completely maxed out.

What?! How could this happen?! We still have a whopping thirteen months until the wedding! There are a lot of things that still need to be factored in (ahem... wedding dress, transportation, music, flowers... and what about my beloved photo booth?!).

I quickly came to the realization that having the wedding of my dreams (even... the wedding slightly below my dreams), would cost way more than anticipated.

So I made a call to my mom. I confessed our budgeting sins, and tried to explain how this had happened. I told her I thought we could maybe take care of everything else for only $9,000 more. Ouch.

So the pressure is on. And I still haven't found a photographer I like for a price that's doable. More to come on that.

The Venue Reveal

In case you didn't figure it out from my earlier post, Ryan and I decided to have our reception at the Patrick C. Haley Mansion in Joliet.

::Cue the Applause::


After our obnoxiously long weekend touring venues, we had it narrowed down to the Haley Mansion and the John Hancock Center. But we found it extremely difficult to decide between two very different spaces.

Ultimately, it came down to logistics. It would be a huge pain to plan a wedding atop the John Hancock building (although... um, gorgeous much?!). Would we have enough room? Where would the photo booth go? Would our guests get claustrophobic? What if they're afraid of heights? How would we decorate around the conference-room vibe? Where would everyone park?

The Haley Mansion had everything we wanted except location. So I shed one small tear for my dream Chicago wedding, and we signed the contract.

But it wasn't until after we decided on the mansion that we really hashed out what it would cost. And let me tell you... a 200-person minimum can seriously kill your budget. On the plus side... I no longer have concerns over who will and won't be invited. Everyone's invited! I figure if we have to pay for 200 people, we might as have 200 people! Take note, future brides... do your research on the cost before you sign the contract! Our budget was more than blown.

Hello, big wedding!

The Great Venue Drama

This past weekend was a whirlwind to say the least. We visited six venues in one day… spread out all over the greater Chicagoland area! As soon as I get my pictures off my digital camera, I promise to post full reviews of each of the finalists.


I won’t give it away just yet… but I think Ryan and I have decided on our reception venue. It wasn’t one of those “omg, this is it” moments like you often hear about. Our decision was based on price, convenience, and logistics mostly.

Now, only 2 days into the big decision, we’re already having venue drama.

First of all, we haven’t booked it yet. Doesn’t seem like a big deal on the surface, except that apparently all the other 2011 brides are way more on top of things than I am, because Saturday evening reception venues are being booked up left and right!

I have one weekend in June which we can’t have the wedding due to a conflict. On top of that, I can’t do any weekends in May because I work in television, and May is a sweeps month! So we are looking at 3 weekends in June. And our future venue only has one of those weekends available.

So why haven’t I booked it yet? Because I’m waiting to hear back from the ceremony site. We’re having the ceremony at my home church. I have called (probably more times than is socially acceptable) and emailed the coordinator at the church asking if that date is available, but she hasn’t responded.

I kind of want to stop and yell, “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?” for making me wait… but I know I’m just being a typical stressed-out bride. I have to keep reminding myself that the world won’t end if we can’t have our wedding in June. So what? We’ll push it back to July. (Gurr… we better not have to push it back to July…)


The next issue we’ve discovered is the cost. Yes, that makes us sound like idiots who didn’t do proper research. But when you’re browsing dozens (ok, hundreds) of potential venues, you tend to do a super quick rough estimate of the cost.

Well, my “super quick rough estimate” for our future venue did not include things like a $4 per person charge for cake, or a $3 per person charge to give them an entrée option. Or… oh, I dunno… our venue’s 200 person minimum. That’s 60 or 70 more people than we planned on inviting. So if we don’t make 60 or 70 new friends in the next 13 months, we have to pay for imaginary friends. Joy!


So add all that up, and you come up with a cost that is 67% of our total budget (instead of the recommended 45%). Eek! Yes, my parents are paying. And yes, my mom says it’s no big deal. But in my eyes, that is a lot of money… and it only means one thing for the year ahead: a lot more DIY projects.

Marital Finances

"Ryan, what are your thoughts on... Marital Finances?"

That was how the conversation began last night. We were driving home from Bed Bath & Beyond, and I was hung up on how tedious the "are you paying or am I paying?" conversations were starting to get.

After all, it didn't really matter. Ryan and I had been keeping a running Excel spreadsheet of all shared finances since the day we moved in together almost a year ago. So if one person spent $300 more than the other person one month, then we would just even it out the next month. It never really mattered that much.

But recently I've been thinking about the whole "joint account" thing. It's something that's assumed of most newlyweds or soon-to-be-weds. I had always thought whoever I married and I would have a joint account, along with our own separate accounts.

Reasons: So birthday and Christmas presents would stay a secret, so I could go on the occasional shopping spree without guilt, and so I could feel like my job and my paycheck really meant something.

But Ryan had some valid arguments in the separate accounts "cons" column. Mainly: "What's the point?"

Logic: 1. Kelly: 0.

I guess when it comes right down to it, you're going to spend the money whether it comes from a joint account or a separate one... so it doesn't matter much. Plus, Ryan and I make essentially the same amount of money at our jobs, so there aren't any "I earned this money" fights.

And as for secret presents... I guess I could always just use cash. (Or rob the store?)

I wonder what most people do with their finances once they're married. I think having separate accounts is becoming more popular. People like the illusion of having money that is "all theirs".

For the time being, we'll keep our money separate. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that my mom is still a co-signer on my account! That's definitely something that needs to change after the wedding.