Have you seen the price of invitations lately! Holy cow! I didn't realize that I would need to budget so much for these little things. You can buy them online or you can buy them at the store and print them at home/store. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I was going to do nice invitations. I found a few online websites that had decent prices, but still expensive if you are planning a budget wedding. I am a member of a wedding Facebook group. One of the members added a Groupon they found - $17 for $70 at Vistaprint. That website was actually one that I put as one of my options. They have some good invitation designs, but I was looking for something a little different. For $17 I decided I would get my invitations there. I bought one for myself, and one for my fiance. Now we can book 2 orders and get $140 worth of products.
A while ago my fiance told me about Vistaprint and that he could design them if I wanted him to. I took him up on this offer yesterday! I showed him a few styles I liked and he designed them amazingly! The invite has the map on the back. The RSVP cards are actually adlip style. I saw this on Pinterest and wanted to do something like that! He actually spent 6 hours yesterday designing them, but now they are done and how cool is it to say that he designed them?! He had to design 2 invitations and 2 RSVP cards - one for the church ceremony/reception and one for the second reception.
Because we are inviting more guests, I ended up ordering 90 invitations and 90 RSVP cards to the church ceremony/reception. I also searched online for free Vistaprint products - they have several. I got a free rubber stamp with "Ashley & Jesse" with our address, so we can stamp them on the invitations and RSVP's! This order actually came out to $46. So I spent $63 on the first order including the amount of the groupon.
When we know what the second reception will be, we will order those invitations and RSVP's through his account. As well as another free stamp that say "Mr. & Mrs. (Last Name)" with our address to add to the thank you cards. Looks like this order might cost us $33 + $17 Groupon = $50.
It sounds like I am spending so much on my invitations. That is 150 invitations and 150 RSVP cards. If I spend $113 total, that's $0.38 per item. That doesn't sound too bad, but it was more than I planned on paying originally... but we are inviting a lot more guests now.
Estimated Price Tag: $113
Monday, May 20, 2013
Ceremony & Reception Venue
I had looked for about two weeks after we got engaged to find a very, very inexpensive venue. We wanted an outdoor wedding, and it seemed that even the city/state parks were still expensive (they would require fees as well as table/chair rentals). We thought we might just end up doing a backyard wedding to keep it almost free.
Lucky enough, Jesse's mom told us to think about doing it at the church she is a member at. In the back, there is a little building with a nice garden area. They have chairs and tables. The best part - she told us we could hold a ceremony/reception there for free! It holds at the most, 100 people, if they all were in the building because of rain. His mom called them one week ago, and they told her August was probably all booked, but she would look at the calendar. I thought for sure we would have to wait until September to do the wedding. On Wednesday we all found out that they had August 24th available all day! BOOKED!
Now we have a free venue!
We originally thought about doing 30-40 guests and doing a catered dinner. However, we decided to do hors d'oeuvres so we could invite more guests. We have a food budget, but if we can invite more guests with our budget, then that is most important. We have a lot of family and close friends we want to share our special day with. We have our list basically all ready to go, but we wish we could invite more friends than we have room for. So we are in the process of trying to figure out how to do a second reception off site... Our primary plan was to do it at our house, but the list is already at 50 and we have one bathroom. Either we find another free place for this party, or we think of something else.
Price tag: FREE
Lucky enough, Jesse's mom told us to think about doing it at the church she is a member at. In the back, there is a little building with a nice garden area. They have chairs and tables. The best part - she told us we could hold a ceremony/reception there for free! It holds at the most, 100 people, if they all were in the building because of rain. His mom called them one week ago, and they told her August was probably all booked, but she would look at the calendar. I thought for sure we would have to wait until September to do the wedding. On Wednesday we all found out that they had August 24th available all day! BOOKED!
Now we have a free venue!
We originally thought about doing 30-40 guests and doing a catered dinner. However, we decided to do hors d'oeuvres so we could invite more guests. We have a food budget, but if we can invite more guests with our budget, then that is most important. We have a lot of family and close friends we want to share our special day with. We have our list basically all ready to go, but we wish we could invite more friends than we have room for. So we are in the process of trying to figure out how to do a second reception off site... Our primary plan was to do it at our house, but the list is already at 50 and we have one bathroom. Either we find another free place for this party, or we think of something else.
Price tag: FREE
The Dress!
While waiting to figure out the venue, I decided to go dress shopping. It's one of the things you can do without knowing the exact date of your wedding. I decided to just go down to David's Bridal and see what styles I liked. I had my appointment booked for May 15th at night. I invited my sisters, then my mom, well, if I invited them I should invite my grandma, then my fiance's mom, and of course my matron of honor. I was just planning to go there with my sisters or my mom, but then I managed to invite all the other people who I thought should be there, even if I was just looking for a style.
I got a lot of "oh that looks great" or "eh, it's okay..." The first sets of dresses I tried on, I went around with the store employee picking them out. After I found some dresses on my top 3 list, I ventured out with my sisters to look for more dresses. I tried practically every style of dress - mermaid, ball gown, sleek, lace, A line, etc... I grabbed dresses with my sisters from all over. I originally went in looking for a lacy/chiffon simple kind of dress, as we wanted an outside wedding.
The very last dress I tried on was everyone's favorite. Even mine. It was light weight, super small train, and it looked slimming. I thought that my favorite would obviously be the most expensive dress I tried on! It was not! This dress we actually pulled from the clearance section. It was 499 on sale for 249. I didn't have the $250 for a dress at the moment, but I put it on hold for the 24 hour hold policy to think about it and see if I could afford it. I thought that was a pretty good sale. The employee who helped me out all night, called me back and let me know that the dress was actually on sale for $99! Um, okay! Sold! :-) No need to look for another dress, when this one looked great on me for only $99!
* I'll upload the picture later when I am not on my fiance's computer.
Price tag: $109
I got a lot of "oh that looks great" or "eh, it's okay..." The first sets of dresses I tried on, I went around with the store employee picking them out. After I found some dresses on my top 3 list, I ventured out with my sisters to look for more dresses. I tried practically every style of dress - mermaid, ball gown, sleek, lace, A line, etc... I grabbed dresses with my sisters from all over. I originally went in looking for a lacy/chiffon simple kind of dress, as we wanted an outside wedding.
The very last dress I tried on was everyone's favorite. Even mine. It was light weight, super small train, and it looked slimming. I thought that my favorite would obviously be the most expensive dress I tried on! It was not! This dress we actually pulled from the clearance section. It was 499 on sale for 249. I didn't have the $250 for a dress at the moment, but I put it on hold for the 24 hour hold policy to think about it and see if I could afford it. I thought that was a pretty good sale. The employee who helped me out all night, called me back and let me know that the dress was actually on sale for $99! Um, okay! Sold! :-) No need to look for another dress, when this one looked great on me for only $99!
* I'll upload the picture later when I am not on my fiance's computer.
Price tag: $109
Introduction
My name is Ashley, and I got engaged on May 1st, 2013 to my fiance Jesse. We were on our budget friendly vacation to Europe - used miles for the flight, very inexpensive meals that we would split, and only using the subways for transportation. He proposed to me on the last full day at the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was romantic and sweet.
We originally planned to do a summer 2014 wedding and save up all year to pay for it. However, we talked it over and decided to just get married this coming August. It forces us to be as budget friendly as possible.
Why did we choose to do this?
We originally planned to do a summer 2014 wedding and save up all year to pay for it. However, we talked it over and decided to just get married this coming August. It forces us to be as budget friendly as possible.
Why did we choose to do this?
- It's just one day out of our whole lives.
- We would rather take that whole year of savings and use that for part of a downpayment on a house (or maybe pay for a house in cash!).
So, we have things to do and not so much time to do it in!
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