Photographer research

So my current focus is to find a photographer.  My goal is to have one booked by the end of July.  I'm looking for a person that has a photojournalism  style and really has a great eye.  I want the photos to tell a story of our big day, and capture the fun energy that is carried along in our relationship and with those around us.  Of course there will also be those staged family photos as well!

Here are a couple of photographers that have a style that we like.  We're gathering their pricing info, then will schedule a meeting, and choose the photographer that we feel will do a great job.

 http://www.marklovettphotography.com/
http://www.graceandelegancephotos.com/
http://katesmithphotography.wordpress.com/category/weddings/

Program Fans

I've been in the mood to research some of the fun details of the wedding and saw these program fans and thought they can be useful for our ceremony... especially since we are having it on a June evening. We're going to be another DIY project. Above is the one we will be making! I found the template from Alyee Designs
and the original maker, Aylee, gives a "how-to" and even a template to use!

I plan on having the front and back cover in a summer green color... then the middle pages will be ivory/white. I'm now on the search for some heavy 100lb cardstock in those color choices so the program is sturdy enough to use as a fan. It's a hard search so far to find the heavy cardstock in light green! I've also purchased some stamps and an ink pad that I will use on these programs as well (kind of similar to that shown in the above picture). Once all the pieces are printed, cut, and stamped... I then would keep them together with a eyelet and have ribbon dangling from the bottom as well

I think these will turn out really nice!

Will You Be My Bridesmaid?

I know who I want to be in my bridal party. My Maid of Honor is going to be my older sister, and my bridesmaids are four of my closest girlfriends (3 from college 1 from high school). I've been a bridesmaid in all of their weddings too.

I wanted to find a creative way to ask them to be my bridesmaid rather than just call them up and ask. While browsing online for "will you be my bridesmaid cards", I fell upon this cute DIY idea. Anna from Rifle Design gives a "how to" on her cute idea so here's another project I'm going to try!

They are super cute and unique... and I think my bridesmaids will be super surprised... and they'll adore getting this kind of "be my bridesmaid" invitation in the mail.

why we started this wedding planning process

It just occurred to me that I haven't posted the reason why we are planning a wedding! Here is how my fiance proposed... and above you will see the picture of the beautiful bling!

Proposal Story:

Midway through a trip to Las Vegas, we decided to take a side trip to visit the Grand Canyon. We rented a car and left the strip early on Sunday morning. It was business as usual during the car ride... stopping for breakfast, belting out to the songs on the radio, and not really having a set plan for the day.

Once we arrived at the West Rim, we first headed to the Grand Canyon Skywalk. They were 70 feet over the Grand Canyon's rim and 4000 feet above the Colorado River. He was very quiet and seemed a bit nervous as we were strolling around the Skywalk, habits he declared was a fear of heights (which made me confused... I mean geez we both went skydiving out of a plane 13,000 feet in the air a year ago for crying out loud... how can a stable walkway structure cause so much anxiety in him?!).

After our visit to the skywalk we headed over to Guano Point and took a walk along the edges of the west rim. Again, he seemed very restless and concerned about what was going on around us. We wandered over to a cliff, away from people, and were taking in the breathtaking views of the Grand Canyon in peace. While looking around at the magnificent scenery, he stayed a little back behind me and said "Isn't this beautiful?" and I replied "yeah, the grand canyon is so beautiful". He then said, "No...turn around, isn't THIS beautiful?". I turned around and there he was on his knee holding out a ring and asked, "will you marry me?" I was totally taken by surprise and was immediately excited. He put the ring on my finger and I continued to jump around, speaking unclearly, and probably said "oh my god" for a minute straight. He had to eventually ask, "so, is that a yes?!"

After calming down from the excitement, we continued to roam around Guano Point. A friendly tourist caught wind our excitement and offered to take our first picture as a newly engaged couple. I then called her parents to share the exciting news, little did I know they already knew the engagement was coming since he sat down with them seeking their blessing for my hand in marriage prior to their trip.

For the remainder of the day he was back to his old self and felt very relieved after popping the big question and getting the answer he hopped for. I spent the rest of the trip starring and marveling at the ring... and continue to do so every day.

Venue

Now that we have an idea of how many people we would be inviting to our wedding, it was now time to choose what location would best accommodate all of us!

My vision is for a simple wedding that has indoor and outdoor capabilities. I also wanted the ceremony and reception to be at the same location. There have been so many wedding that I've gone to where there was such a long break in between the ceremony and reception... it was always kind of awkward for me as a traveling guest. We wanted to get married sometime between April-September... no date in particular, really our main focus was to find a great venue, then see what dates they have available and pick from there.

Since the majority of people attending our wedding will be flying in or driving in from a nearby state, we wanted to choose something that's lovely, but still convenient for everyone.

We decided to focus a venue in or near my hometown, Columbia, MD. I grew up there from age 6-18 and my parents still live there. My Fiance also lived there for a couple years too, so his west coast family has visited the area before and are somewhat familiar the area too. Columbia is also right between two major cities so our guests can have easy access to explore if they are planning on coming in for a long weekend. The venue location is 20 min south of Baltimore and 40 minutes north of Washington, DC. It's also just an hour from where we live now (in Northern VA) so it will be easy for us to keep up with planning.

We started our venue search about 3 weeks after getting engaged. The second and only other venue we visited was the Historic Oakland Manor...and this became the venue winner! Here is a link: www.historic-oakland.com in case you want to check it out. It's an old mansion kind of hidden in Columbia. I went to a wedding here once and absolutely fell in love with the place. It has gorgeous landscaping that is always kept up so nicely, and the whole place has a lot of character to it... and it really goes along with the traditional/simple but elegant feel that I'm looking for. We get a discount on the price since my parents are part of the community association... so we're saving $500 off the price from the get-go. If you go on the site, take a look at the facility tour! Our ceremony would be held outside in the bishops garden... then cocktail hour would be inside the mansion in the foyer/banquet room... then dinner and dancing outside under the big tent. I like the idea of having different areas for each part of the wedding. That way people can appreciate and get a feel of the entire place. This venue is only a mile from two nice and convenient hotels... one of which actually has a free shuttle that would transport people from the hotel to the venue if needed.

Another spot that we were looking at but nixed was a hotel venue. We thought that way people don't have to worry about driving around in an unknown town and it would be super duper convenient since they would likely stay there for over night accommodations as well. The one thing that intrigued me about a hotel wedding was that they had wedding "packages" that included the reception hall, food, alcohol, tables, linens, centerpieces for one set cost per person... basically a one stop shop for planning a reception. I thought that may have relieved some of the wedding planning stress.
The hotel that we were possibly interested in, but passed on was the Columbia Town Center Sheraton. It's right on a lake, near a popular mall and lots of restaurants for guests to even walk to, and has gone through updated construction recently too. The ceremony would have been outside near the lakefront and the reception would be in the ballroom. The only thing that I did not like about this site was that the outdoor landscape was nothing to write home about...and the ballroom accommodates up to 300 people, so since we were only expecting about 100 people, that large room would have looked a little empty and we'd have to do a lot of decorating to make it feel more full. I mean it wasn't a super bad... but we didn't have a good "feel" from it.

So... the venue was set and confirmed for the Historic Oakland Manor. After we fell in love with the venue, we talked to them to see available dates. Luckily since we are planning so far in advance, they had a handful of awesome dates available. We chose a late June date... so I'm officially a June Bride!

Guest List

The guest list has really been one of the easiest steps so far. When thinking about who we wanted to be at our wedding, it was no problem rattling off the people that we wanted to attend. We just whipped out microsoft excel, typed away, and plugged in names.

What we realized is that 90% of the people that will be attending our wedding will be from out of town.
We live in Northern Virginia... my immediate family is in Maryland... extended family is in New Jersey and Pennsylvania... and my friends are scattered all across the country. My Fiance grew up on the west coast and all his family and friends live near Seattle, WA. How will these large travel distances will effect our RSVPs? We have no idea. I guess we'll find out in April when invites go out! All in all we have 150 people on our list... we are thinking about 100 people would probably RSVP yes. We have a handful of names on a "B" list as well in case we get a low response and have room to fit other people.

Our next step was to fill in our excel sheet with everyone's addresses. Even though we were not planning on sending anything out for months... we just wanted to get all this research out of the way while we were putting together "the list". My Fiance got kind of annoyed that I kept badgering him for names and addresses so early in the game... but why not get it taken care of while we're on the guest list subject... right?! My Fiance's brother is getting married 10 months before us, so it was really kind of easy for him to just to copy his side of the list from his bro's list.

So now that we have an idea of the amount of people that we will have at the wedding we can now think about where we will host everyone!

Budget

So the first step to our planning process was to talk about our budget. I'm not going to state what that budget is on here, but I will tell you that we did want to keep it WAY below our regional average. Curious what the cost average is for your area? Check out www.costofawedding.com or a quick reference.

Luckily my parents have stepped up and stated how they want to be supportive and help. They volunteered to pick up the tab for the reception (venue, food, alcohol, tent, tables, linens, chairs, centerpieces, misc rentals) which really helps cover the big ticket needs and over 60% of the budget.

My fiance and I will be in charge of the photographer, DJ, officiant, stationary, attire, rings, and other misc needs.

My future in laws mentioned that they would like to contribute as well with some money or possibly pay for the honeymoon which will also help.

Amazing help from parents. Even though we have financial support to the big day, that in no way alters our thoughts of keeping the day budget friendly. Again, we really don't want to go overboard on budget for this big day. The twelve months of planning is just for one event... on one summer evening.... for a total of five hours. The most important thing is that we are gathering our friends and family to witness our life long commitment to each other... then we're just having a party to celebrate afterwards That's how I like to think of it :)

So now that we know the breakdown on who's covering what... it's time to dig in to all this planning!

Here we go...

Post #1... BRING IT ON!

So we are now a year away from the big day. Twelve months seems so far away, but really when I look at the time line and the needs and tasks leading up to the day, wow that's like in no time!

I've been engaged for a month and a half now and already have had a breakdown from the stress of planning this wedding. Holy moly there is a lot that goes in to the big day. I've been to like 10 weddings in the past 5 years and I guess I have always been oblivious to the fact that someone actually had to plan and pay for every single detail of the day.

We all have heard stories of brides to be blowing budgets, going way overboard on silly unnecessary details, or not even putting much effort in it as well. I do not want to be one of those girls. My goal is to have a simple yet elegant, fun, traditional, personal, happy, and cost effective wedding. Is it possible to have all that and keep it at a reasonable budget? Let's see how I do...