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You might have noticed that throughout my wedding planning, there has been one (pretty huge, if I do say so myself) thing missing:
We are not going on a honeymoon. Not now, anyway. 
For some reason, this doesn’t bother me at all, and I am still super excited about our day. So why no tropical sun? There are a couple reasons, but this is the main one:
So wayyyyy back when I first got it in my head that we I wanted to DIY our invitations, I figured it would be cheaper than buying them. I knew it would take LOTS of man-hours but I figured the end result would be pretty inexpensive. Well, I was wrong. I was also right. You see, we ended up spending WAY more than I thought but significantly less than we would have for similar purchased invitations.
When we last left off talking about my love of spreadsheets, I was explaining how my OCD kick-butt organization skills manifested themselves into this wedding spreadsheet.
We left off with this list of all of the spreadsheets:
1. Budget
2. Guest List
3. Guest Addresses—Checklist
4. Projects
5. Attire/Beauty
6. Ceremony
7. Flowers/Decor
8. Photography
9. Music
10. Stationery
11. Cookie Bar
12. Cake
Since I’ve already gone over budget, I’ll start with 2 and 3, Guest List and Addresses. You might be wondering why I have two guest spreadsheets, but it’s really worked out well. My first guest sheet is a “his and hers” list of all the people we want to invite!
Above is a quick shot of the first. This is your basic list of who we want to invite, and it is a good way to see our numbers. We also have a third list, as you can see, of people who we would like to invite but who we are not sure if we can money-wise. This is a great tool that we constantly go back to to figure out numbers.
When I first started wedding planning, I quickly became completely overwhelmed with the amount of work there was to be done and all of the information and choices out there. I am a big organizer by nature, so I knew I would need to be just as organized in wedding planning. After attempting various methods I have found what works best for me, so I thought I’d share in case it should spark any ideas in others’ planning. After searching over the pricey “to do” lists and organizers, I decided that a Google doc with multiple sheets would work best for me.
Paper or computer?
I’m a paper-organization girl at heart and, although I have a paper wedding binder, a computer spreadsheet just seemed the easiest and quickest route for me. It was easier to change any information on it, I didn’t have to remember to bring my binder everywhere, and it was neat. Computer it was.
What program should I use?
I started off just using Microsoft Office Excel for my spreadsheet. This worked out pretty well, but soon it became tedious for me to find in the computer. Also, I work at many different computers in my life—mine, Mr. WP’s, work, my family’s—so I kept having to email the document to myself. I am horrible at saving the correct document, so I could never find the same one. Honestly, I wasn’t very much into Google Docs until I found out I could do multiple sheets in one doc. Now I love it. I can change it from anywhere, and changes save instantly.
Where to start?
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Tell it to me straight, hive. Do you find yourself spending more money on certain things and then justifying it as being “for the wedding?” Even if the objects you are buying are only tangentially related to the wedding?
Man, I have to answer yes to both of those questions. I just got back from Nordstrom Rack. Again. I know, I know. The store is way too close to where I am going once a week now for wedding dress alterations. I ended up finding another dress to be part of my “other wedding dresses” collection. I am justifying this purchase in my head for three reasons:
1. I will wear it to our rehearsal dinner, thus making the original rehearsal dinner dress into a honeymoon dress. And, seriously, can you have too many honeymoon dresses? (Rational Brain pops up to say, “Yes. Seriously. You can. You are getting preeeetty close to that point.” Wedding Brain quickly shuts her down, though, by humming along with “Somebody’s Getting Married” from Muppets Take Manhattan.)
Read more…
Right after getting engaged I was on cloud nine. I spent the first month of our engagement skipping around singing, “I’m getting maaaaaaarried!!!!!”, staring at my shiny new ring, and watching about a hundred reruns of Say Yes to the Dress.
Image via TLC / C’mon, Randy, you know you want to help me find my perfect dress!!
To be honest, I didn’t know the first thing about planning a wedding. I have not been to many weddings in my lifetime (which is surprising considering my huge family), and I pretty much thought that planning a wedding consisted of buying a pretty dress, saying “I do,” and dancing the night away with friends and family.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Mr. Hyena and I had always intended to combine our bank accounts after the wedding. At that point, it seemed like a “what’s mine is yours” situation—there was no legitimate reason to not combine accounts.
Except that we got married almost eight months ago and never got around to merging anything before now. We knew that it was something we both wanted. It would allow our household to run more efficiently and allow us to take control of our future in a more proactive way.
And yet I cried on the way to the bank, clinging to my measly checking account tighter than Gollum’s grip on the Ring.
No! You cannot have the Precious!
Image via Fanpop
It’s been quite difficult for me to reconcile that what’s mine really is ours.
Read more…
Now that we are about two months away from the wedding, the reality of how much we are spending is finally starting to sink it.
Eight months ago, $2500 did seem so bad for photography. Now that we have to pay it, I’m in full-on freak-out mode.
My parents have been very gracious and have offered to pay for most of the wedding, but even though it’s someone else’s money, I can’t help but think of all the other things we could use it on.
Most people I have asked have been in favor of having the wedding of our dreams. After all, it only happens once, right?
Read more…
While deciding whether or not I was actually engaged, I jumped full force into wedding planning (better safe than sorry, right?). So about a month after our trip Vieques, I planned a fun day with the girls—we would eat some free cake samples and take silly pictures at a big bridal show in San Juan. But things did not go as planned; I was overwhelmed by all the detail that goes into weddings and got a real bad case of “sticker shock.” Wedding stuff is effin’ expensive! Five to eight dollars per slice of cake, $800 for a four-hour photo booth, $3,000 for decorations: there was no way I could afford any of that on a zero-dollar budget.
Yes, you read right: zero dollars. Some might think we are doing the impossible (or something just plain unhealthy to the psychotic bridal brain), but planning a no-budget wedding happens to work for me. You see, I was basically the anti-Bridezilla; I never dreamed about my wedding as a little girl. (Who in their right mind would be crazy enough to marry me?) I had no preconceived notions of what I wanted, something that has turned out to be a blessing in my wedding-planning journey.
I thought I would squeeze in a budget post now that we have made our way through a good chunk of my recaps (tear!).
There were four groups that contributed to paying for our wedding. Mr. HW and me, my parents, my grandmother, and Mr. HW’s parents. Originally, I had assumed that each of those four parties would contribute about 1/4 of the total cost. However, my HW’s parents wound up contributing the most, hands down.
When we first started planning, I guessed that our wedding would cost somewhere around $15,000. I was wrong. I’ve had a hard time deciding whether or not to share this post because I’m a little embarrassed, but hopefully some others can relate to the lack of sticking to a budget.
So here’s the breakdown:
Date: September 24, 2011
City, State: Weatherford, Texas
# of Guests: 140
Wedding Day Costs
Ceremony Site Fees: $4,950 + $1,000 refundable security deposit (not included in final total)
Included: Ceremony at Rose Pavillon, reception at West Tent, tables, chairs, white linens, set-up, tear-down of those things (we were responsible for set-up/tear-down of everything else), alcohol service fee, venue coordinator on-site, 5 hour event time
What is the number one rule of wedding planning? Any wedding planner will tell you: “STICK TO YOUR BUDGET!”
Well…we didn’t set a budget.
Canada’s New PLASTIC money! / Image via The Huffington Post
This may have been due to our naivety about how much a wedding really costs, and because we had set ideas about what sort of vendors we wanted to work with and what details we wanted at the wedding. I also planned to DIY a ton of stuff for the wedding, so I really didn’t know how much everything would cost. When we were looking for a venue and photographer, we had a few thousand bucks saved up as a couple, so we were all set (and then some!) for vendor deposits. We then made a savings plan that required both of us to save up a certain amount each month. With that plan intact, we would be able to pay for everything (we thought).
I’m writing a disclaimer to this post because it’s a personal topic. My opinions about the cost of a wedding are based on my current financial situation. Each person that plans a wedding has a different financial situation, and my intention with this post is NOT to pass judgment on anyone who spent or plans on spending more or less than us on a wedding. I recognize that everyone has different priorities, and I completely respect each person’s right to those priorities. I firmly believe that every person should have the wedding of their dreams within their personal means.
Let’s get real for a second. Weddings cost money. LOTS of money.
According to the costofwedding.com wedding-cost calculator, the average amount spent on a wedding in my area is $27,338. That. Is. Insane. Because I don’t have that kind of money. If I did, I’d probably be buying a house right now.
My parents do have that kind of money. But my dad wants to retire eventually…and even if he were offering that amount of money to me I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to take it from him. I’ve been blessed with awesome parents who have provided me with more than I could ever need for well over 18 years, and I can’t personally justify demanding any more.
Weddings sure can be expensive sometimes. The Funnel Cake wedding, as you might be able to tell from our planning, was not easy on the bank either. So what did that mean for *my* personal budget?
Well… just the act of getting married civilly in Switzerland changed my financial situation for the worse. In 2010 I lost 11% of my annual income when I switched to my new married tax status. 11%! The change was less of a shock for Mr. Funnel Cake, who as a Swiss citizen already “enjoyed” a much higher tax rate than foreigners here. (Don’t even try to make sense of that.)
With the loss of my income to the tax man, I also was disturbed to learn at the beginning of 2011 that as a citizen-level taxpayer you are supposed to pay your Swiss taxes for the year before you earn that money. So as this year began, I scrambled to gather my funds together to pay the upcoming taxes I would owe on money that I would be earning this year. Instantly I missed my monthly taxes I’d enjoyed as a single foreigner! Mr. Funnel Cake was used to this method, so of course he was all set to pay his part of the taxes. Hmmph.
It was this awful tax change that stopped my savings dead in its tracks.
Read more…
It was never a question for me whether or not I would design our invitations. My job is very logical and so any creative outlet I can utilize, I do. Client presentations have become very colorful, just to appease my creative urges. Our budget also had something to do with it; as much as I would kill for a custom illustrated suite, it wasn’t in the cards for us.
I started brainstorming in the first week we were engaged and over the course of the year I slowly created our invitation suite. Having time on my side was a huge advantage; I was able to take my time and when I would reach a point of frustration I could walk away and (hopefully) come back more inspired.
So, just how much did our DIY suite come out costing?
A Sweet Price Tag:
I know I mentioned here that my first wedding purchase was shoes. Technically that is not true. It was my first big purchase, but truth be told my first purchase for the wedding was actually a piggy bank.
Yes, a piggy bank. Two days after our engagement I was at the Hallmark store and I found this:
You know that phase you go through soon after your engagement where you buy ANYTHING that might say “wedding,” “bride,” or “groom” on it? Yeah, I was definitely in that phase. I bought everything. (Because apparently I really needed that Bride key chain? I know. Lame.)
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