How I did it: I got engaged on March 8th and started preparing in April - because my fiance's family would be coming from Turkey, we had a very narrow time frame in which everyone could get together.  I also wanted to have the wedding in my home town, but I was living three hours away.  My mom helped me look for venues for the reception, and I came home for a weekend to have a look at them.  I settled on the old Elk's Club that was turned into a reception hall - it was a Victorian building with a lot of character.  Since my fiance and I come from different religious backgrounds, we decided we to use the park across the street from the reception hall for the ceremony.  The park was once the town square, and it provided a nice setting - there is a large fountain that is lit up at night, and a small domed stage that worked perfectly as an alter.  Our town's mascot is the black squirrel, and there are a few giant squirrel statues scattered throughout the park - we decided to embrace the fountain and squirrel themes.  I asked my friends who studied art and graphic design to design the invitations for me, and they came up with a fitting and unique design which I then took to a printers to make into a card and fill in all the little extras.

Once I had the place and the invitations, and a good idea of my concept, I spent a week at home looking for all the extras - the photographer, caterer, d.j., florist.  I literally had one week to put it all together before my fiance and I went to Turkey to visit his family.  I worked at it every day, and got it all done.  I had spent a lot of time worrying between the time I got engaged and the week one month before the wedding in which I had to complete almost everything, but once I really got started on it, I found I didn't have time to question my decisions, or fret over the invitation list - my main concern was that I was inviting too many people - I just did it, and when the day came I decided I would just go through the ceremony and the reception and not let all of the little concerns going through my head get to me, and it was fabulous - everyone had a great time.

Lessons & tips:

1. Invite everyone you want to, unless it's a family only affair, not everyone will come.
2. You don't have to spend a lot of money to have a big wedding - I had 150 people on my guest list and the wedding cost just around $7000.  If you are creative, you can do a lot with a little.
3. If someone close to you has a special skill that can be useful to you, use it.  They will be honored to be involved, it will make your wedding all the more special, and it could save you some money.  My mom is an excellent seamstress, so I had her make my wedding dress, and, like I said before, I had my artistic friends design my invitations - I was so proud of every one's work, and my wedding was much more unique because of their efforts.
4. Set a budget for every aspect of your wedding and let the vendors know up-front, they'll be willing to work within it if  they can.
5. If you can find a place that can do more than one thing, try to work out a discount for using one or more of their services - I went with a grocery store that provided the catering, cake, and flowers, and received 10% off my total for working with all three departments - when your talking about a few thousand dollars, it's significant.
6. Decide what is really important to you and your fiance and place most of your energies on those places.  Unless you really want to spend months agonizing over every little detail, just pick your most important points, and go with whatever is standard or easiest for the rest, your wedding won't be any less interesting.
7. Most importantly - have fun!  Don't let stress ruin what is supposed to be a fantastic day.

Resources:

1. The Everything Book to Weddings Planner - really any book will do, but this is the one I found on sale.  It's meant to be a guide, so don't take it too literally.
2. Hy-Vee - for catering, flowers, and cake.  It's a local grocery store chain, but they did a really fantastic job for an extraordinary price.
3. CK Images - a great photographer.
4. Complete Music - a great D.J.
5. Sophia Hsu of the Etsy store sophiasworkshop who made me an absolutely darling cake topper.
6. Google for helping me to find all the services in my area.
7. My family.

Nov 21, 2008, 09:47AM PST | 0 comments | 2 cheers