Attitude of Gratitude

Our thank you greeting cards from Uprinting.com

Whenever I think of our wedding day, I have an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. Truly, it would not have been possible without the help of our dear family and friends. So I was very excited to send out our thank you cards...but geez, who knew how time consuming they are!

Thanks to winning a blog giveaway, I won free greeting cards from Uprinting.com. I made a simple Thank You card design on Photoshop, and there you go, our Thank You cards were finished! We needed a few more thank you cards for our vendors, so I ordered several more postcards from Snapfish.com. I think Snapfish has the better deal  if you just want a few (like less than 25). I paid a $1 for each and a minimal shipping fee.

Our postcards from Snapfish.com. When you send out postcards, postage is just 28 cents!

We knew we wanted to hand write out each card with a personal message for our guests, but times that by about 60 cards...that's a long time at the desk...and potential carpal tunnel! So, we didn't get them out as soon as we wanted (yeah, nearly two months later is a wee bit late), but we got them out.

As an added bonus from our photographer at Bliss Imagery, we received little business card-sized photos from the wedding day. We put the photos in each of our cards to our guests as an another momento from the day.

We headed to the post office and sent out our thank you cards and, in a way, I was a little sad.

The last item on our seemingly never-ending wedding list was checked off. Well, there are still wedding photos to get printed, and other random items, but really...that's about it.

While we're happy the planning part is done and we're finally MARIEEED, the whole process was a fun, exciting, sometimes stressful and emotional ride, but truly memorable time for the both us. It was a project we both successfully completed together and it was a true partnership and team effort. We will always be grateful for the memories and every time I think of our special day, I'll always be reminded of how truly blessed we are.

Now it's time for an even greater team project...and this one lasts for a lifetime!

Real Wedding Budget: Under $12K in Vancouver

Some of you may have already seen this on Wedding Bee, but I just had to share: a $12K wedding, all inclusive (including honeymoon!) in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver isn't a cheap town and to score this gorgeous wedding for under $12K is amazing!

What seemed to really work in our bride's favor was finding true gems on Craigslist -- vendors who are just starting out and are willing work for pennies (or in her videographer's case-- FREE!) just to build their portfolio. She certainly struck gold because her vendors all did an amazing job!

Now. finding the same kind of deals on Craigslist is very possible. It's not guaranteed, but they are out there. But remember, trusting a novice at their craft is extrememely risky. I, sadly, had bad luck in that department. So, yes, definitely check out deals on Craigslist--you might score big like our Vancouver bride did, but definitely have some caution when dealing with newbies. If your gut says no, it's not worth it!

But on the upside, our Vancouver bride also scored huge on giveaways and contests (a free wedding band and a honeymoon!). As a winner of several giveaways, I say yes, enter those contests! The more you enter, the more chances to win...just use a separate email account for those potential spam messages!