Wedding on a Budget or the DIY Wedding

First Things First

Shawn and I are pleased to announce our ring bearers. No, that S was not a mistake, there are going to be two. Both of us have young men in our family who mean a lot to us. My cousin Austin will be 14 at the time, and Shawn's nephew Landon will be just over 15-Months old. We have yet to work out all the details, but we do know that Austin and Landon will walk up hand and hand and / or Austin holding Landon. As I said, we have not worked out the details. This all, of course, is pending any tantrums. That's right Austin, we mean you <winks>! Landon will probably go sit with his mother after the procession, which gives us a grand total of four people on each side. Everyone will look great, I'm sure.

A Word on Budgets

Shawn and I are not starving students, and in an attempt to keep it that way, we have a very strict budget for our wedding. We both agree that with rent due every month and two sizeable car payments that we would rather not have to pay off our wedding as well. The wedding industry is trying to tell us that we have to spend thousands of dollars on decorations, limos, photographs and more in order to have the perfect day. Shawn and I are going to prove them wrong. We are going to have our perfect day, and it is only going to cost us few thousand dollars. The majority of our budget is going to food since both of us saw ourselves having a formal wedding with a sit down dinner. It's what we want, so it is what we are going to get. This makes planning the rest of the wedding a little bit harder, but we have a way, the DIY way.

What is DIY?

For those of you who do not know already, DIY simply means: "Do It Yourself". For us, it means making centerpieces, decorations, invitations, and favors from scratch. It means using our friends and family to find a photographer rather than Wedding Magazines and the Yellow Pages. It means a lot of hard work, but there is a reason we are starting a year in advance. Shawn and I are very crafty people, and Shawn comes from a crafty family. We have friends and family members who are willing to help, and the end result will be a wedding that doesn't come from a box, but one that represents us. It might be easier to go out and buy candle holders, or use the centerpieces Gold Country Casino can offer us, but we would rather things look just the way we want them. It would definitely be a lot easier to go out and buy engraved candle-holders to use as favors, but it would be too expensive and wouldn't be what we wanted. So, with all of your helping hands, Shawn and I can stay on time and under budget.

Call to Action

Finally, Shawn and I would like you to be our eyes for excellent deals. We need to get everything we need at the best prices possible. We plan on incorporating several Origami elements into our wedding, as well as making our invitations ourselves. If you see a good deal on origami paper, cardstock, stationary or very thick wrapping paper in our colors let us know what store you saw it in so that we can go and get some. If it is somewhere you think we can't get to, such as a chain that doesn't exist in Chico, we would be happy to reimburse you for it if you picked it up. The colors we are looking for are wine red, periwinkle blue, midnight blue, and silver. There is a bonus prize for anything with a snowflake motif. Thanks everyone!!

Getting Started -- Lacey

Welcome--

As Shawn said in his post, this blog is an attempt to centralize the wedding effort. Furthermore, it is a place where we hope to share our ideas, get advice, and delegate tasks throughout the entire process. We want everyone who is involved in the wedding, all of our family, and all of our friends, to be included every step along the way. We also understand that everyone has a busy life, ours is busy as well, so we want to make the planning as painless as possible for all. I want to thank all of you who have already offered to help and those of you who will help in the future. We appreciate every single one of you! It is going to take a lot of work to make this thing go off, but we are up to the challenge and couldn't be more excited!

The Basics --

Every wedding has a few basics such as the colors, theme, location... You get the picture. I could almost call this section "Frequently Asked Questions" since most of the questions I get involve these basics. I will do my best to outline what we are thinking below, and hopefully go a bit more in depth in future posts as we get closer to the date. We are one year out, after all. So, without further delay, here are the basics.

Date:
If you could not tell, the date for our wedding is November 27, 2010. We chose the Saturday closest to December 1st, a date that was chosen to honor my grandparents. On December 1st, 1991 my Grandfather drove eight hours from Apple Valley to Modesto to come pick my sister and I up to come stay with them for six months. He then drove us two girls, five and six at the time, back down to Apple Valley. 12-Years later I moved away, fully grown.

Venue:
As Shawn mentioned above we won a free rental of the conference room at Gold Country Casino. The room is beautiful. The outer wall is rounded and covered in tall windows that overlook the hills at Kelly Ridge. The room is all inclusive. The tables and chairs are included, as are the linens. Clean up and set up are also included, which makes life easier on the two of us and our families. There are so many options for decorating! When we go to sign the contracts we will take pictures of the room for everyone to see.

Food:
We are planning on having a sit down dinner. The casino mandates that you use their catering if you are using their room. The menu is extensive, and compared to most of the caterers around, their prices are reasonable, so we don't mind. Spaghetti is Shawn's favorite food, and on the night my grandfather brought my sister and I home my grandmother had spaghetti waiting for us. Needless to say, spaghetti, along with a couple of other pasta choices, will be on the menu. The rest of it is still being hammered out.

Fire and Ice or A Winter's Night:
As you can probably guess, this section discusses our theme. It is purposefully general to allow flexibility in decor and was decided on after we listed our favorite colors. Shawn loves the color blue in almost every shade, and I love the crimson, burgundy, and wine shades. Blue is my second favorite color. So we decided on a combination of midnight blue, periwinkle blue, and wine red. We plan on using an ice motif throughout the room and lighting it with both Christmas lights and flameless tea-lights (an open flame is not allowed in the room). I have posted pictures of the our colors above and will go into more detail about how they will be laid out later. We also want to incorporate silver and crystal accents to make the room shine.

My People--

Last but not least, it is about time I announce my people since Shawn announced his.

Matron of Honor: Bethany Flicker
Maid of Honor: Sabrina Cavitt
Bridesmaids: Katelyn Hays and my junior Bridesmaid Brianna Compton

Other people who have offered their help and deserve notice is my wonderful aunt Pam Compton who will be taking me out to get my dress and helping out with the wedding, Shawn's mother, and Bethany's mother Janet Doyle, who makes some of the best cakes in the world and has offered to make my cake for me as well. Once again, I thank everyone who has offered their help! We definately appreciate you!

Next Post from Me: Wedding on A Budget or the DIY Wedding
Tune in next time for a discussion on how we are going to tackle our budget and what a DIY or Do It Yourself Wedding means for us.

Welcome to the Blog - Shawn

Hello Everyone!

This is an attempt to centralize the things that we are thinking for our Wedding, and have an open forum for the discussion thereof. I'm sure Lace will get on later and post the things she's been thinking, and some Basics, but I figured I would start off with Some of the Groom's Side things.

Best Man Choice:
To be announced after I ask him!

Groom's Men
Daniel Silva
Andrew Flicker

Potential Outfits For the wedding:
http://www.2suitsfor99.com/productcart/pc/catalog/07.jpg
http://www.2suitsfor99.com/productcart/pc/catalog/linrdolapel_r.jpg

Other thoughts:
We won a gift certificate for a free rental of the Conference room at Gold country Casino, which is very nice and has a pretty view. It's perfect for the indoor wedding we're planning and now it's free, aside from the catering that we have to pay for anyways.

Right now, We have a guest list of about 80 folks. It's gonna be mostly family and friends, not just anyone who wants to show up.. But we like it better that way.

Anywho, Feel Freeto discuss as It's time I pay attention to finance class!