The title of this post is a misnomer. The Pin Cushions didn’t actually budget for our wedding.
That’s not to say we were throwing money around willy nilly. We tried to keep costs down and had a general “around twenty thousand” goal, but we did not budget out every item from the get-go. I admire couples who sit down with a notebook, or a Google doc, and chart out what they think each purchase will cost, plan accordingly, and change their future habits based on past purchases. Truly, truly impressive.
We couldn’t do that. 1) We’ve never been budgeters. I think my “being cheap” gene has helped me to not need to budget too much. (Plus, I’m lazy!) And 2) We had no idea about the cost of ANYTHING related to a wedding, so trying to guess numbers would have been fairly pointless.
So, we had a general goal of $20,000. (When it’s written out, it sure sounds like a whole lot of cash.) We tried to make money-conscious decisions but weren’t ever sticklers about one item being “over budget.” If something seemed too expensive, we didn’t use it. Though Mr. Pin Cushion may be a scientist, we didn’t go about the process too scientifically.
Enough with the gabbing, here is the Pin Cushion Wedding Cost Breakdown:
Before we realized it, the end of our wedding day had arrived. We had an early start to our wedding (3:0 PM), and the party ended at 9:00 PM. While we were planning, I was super concerned that it would feel as though we were shutting the fun down early. But on the actual day, I was so exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and physically, I can’t imagine wanting to keep partying. I was more than ready to hit the hay come nine o’clock.
We gathered everyone and took one huge guest photo.
If our wedding photos had a theme, I think it would be laughing. Which ain’t too shabby, if you ask me. We got some awesome eyes-closed, mouth-wide-open, leaning-over, cover-your-mouth laughing photos.
I applaud couples who are organized enough to start dance lessons months before the wedding. The Pin Cushions were not nearly this with-it. In fact, not only did we not take any dance lessons, we 1) didn’t even rehearse once and 2) didn’t pick our first dance song until a few days before the wedding.
Perhaps that lack of preparation led to us looking a bit bewildered on the dance floor.
Despite making a lot of crazy cakes with Mr. Pin Cushion, I wanted a not-too-crazy cake for our wedding. After gazing at hundreds of cakes online (why are cakes so beautiful?), I started digging the rustic buttercream look.
At our cake tasting, the bakery consultant seemed perplexed by what I wanted. She bewilderedly asked, “You mean, you don’t want the icing to be smooth? You want it to look…messy?” Even the cake base befuddled her (which I wanted to just be white) How could I not want the base covered with their gold or silver foil?
The Pin Cushions are cookie freaks. Freaky for cookies. To satisfy our freakiness, we had a cookie table at our wedding. You guys (or Weddingbee peeps from many years ago…) helped me pick the cookie flavors.
Our guests could choose between: chocolate chip cookies, brownies, Russian teacakes, Nutella blondies, and chewy gingersnaps.
Some people chose to eat one (or more) of each option.
Sadly, I only have one photo of the entire table. I’ve looked through all of our professional photos, as well as all of the photos sent to me from friends and family, and this is the only one that I can find. Which is a bummer, considering we spent a LOT of hours baking those cookies. But people definitely enjoyed them, and (I suppose) the point is not to have great photos, but to give people a good experience.
After the drinks and snacks and catching up had concluded (much too fast), it was time to sit down to eat. Mr. Pin Cushion and I chose to have a buffet-style dinner and it was mighty tasty.
As people were being seated after the extra happy hour ended, the cafe lights above us started to glow.
Our tables were set up just like I had pictured. No huge view-obstructing centerpieces here (which I didn’t want and would have looked ridiculous at our venue).
Mr. Pin Cushion and I couldn’t have discussed wedding favors more than once or twice during our entire planning process. They were never a high priority and very easily could have gone the way of out-of-town guest bags (as in, never thought to make them and never did). With that sentiment, when we did finally discuss what our favors should be, neither of us wanted to spend much of our budget on them.
I wanted something edible, and Mr. PC wanted something more long lasting. We found something that fit both our criteria when my mom suggested strawberry plants.
We wanted our guestbook to be fun and filled with more than just people’s signatures (25% of which we probably wouldn’t be able to read anyway). So we asked people to be a bit more artistic, poetic, and imaginative than would have been required by a normal guestbook. Or wise. Being wise was an option too.
We asked our guests to write, draw, rap, sketch, or use a pencil in a way yet unknown to us on a card and to place that card in an envelope. (The envelope portion of our guestbook was inspired by a favorite kid’s book of mine, The Jolly Postman.[Does anyone else remember that book?])
