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!

Wedding Lesson #8: Obligatory Invites...Don't do it

I'd hate to post something negative, especially since our wedding was such a beautiful, joy-filled day. Maybe I've got a grudge I have yet to bury, but I've got to get this off my chest: Don't fall victim to the obligatory invite. Nope. Don't do it. It's not worth it. If someone has to force you, I mean literally scream and pout about inviting someone who clearly was so far off your guest list you asked "Who?" when their name was suggested, then nope don't do it.

But we caved in. We only have ourselves to blame for that. So my only resolution is to make sure other couples don't make the same mistake. When the auntie and uncle who mom and dad insisted on inviting never responded to our invitation, I called. And I left a message. Two weeks before the wedding, auntie calls to casually say that they're coming after we had assumed they weren't. Oh, and their grown son who lives with them wants to come, too. Whahhh? Never mind they're totally being rude by responding a month late, but they're adding another person on the invite! But I cave in. Not only does said auntie and uncle pull this on us, but so does another aunt who insists her grown granddaughter who lives with her can't stay home alone. Another aunt who's been MIA in our family for more than 10 years inexplicably shows up two weeks before the wedding. Mom insists that we must invite her now. She RSVPs for herself and her two adult kids, only to find out through the grapevine two days before the wedding and after our meal count has been locked in, that her two kids are not coming. Mom tries to tell me that I shouldn't expect too much from our guests.

"Filipino weddings aren't like this. We don't do RSVPs," she says.

"But we're not paying for the entire village either," I say.

Come wedding day, auntie and uncle and their wedding crasher son don't even bother to show up to the wedding. Nope, no-show. So is the 20-year-old granddaughter who can't stay home by herself. MIA aunt shows up, but with two complete strangers in place of her kids. Yes, at least she brought people to replace her kids, but geez, did the two said strangers have to sneak out of our reception venue with two of our centerpieces (which were reserved for one person per table)?

We lost nearly $300 on guests who did not show up at the wedding. One table was completely empty. And nearly all (but one person) were obligatory invites, people who weren't on our list on the first place. $300 is not chump change for us and I'm still fuming over it. I feel really bad, especially since I justified to my already-annoyed fiance why they deserved to be added to the list. And they don't even bother to show up? Seriously, culture should not be a reason for your lack of courtesy. I don't care if the wedding cost $5 or $100 per plate, you don't tell someone you're coming and not show up.

So, couples, grow a backbone. Don't let people dictate your guest list. Guests, have some manners please. Don't insist on bringing along someone who wasn't on the invite, it's not your place, no matter how much you think this person should be there. And don't flake out. You might think we won't notice because of all that's going on, but we do.

Too bad. Your loss. Food was D-lish.

Wedding Lesson #7: No regrets

My friend's lovely wedding @ Irvine Presbysterian Church in Irvine, CA. (Personal Photo)

I apologize for the little break from blogging, but I had a busy Labor Day Weekend, which included going to one of my good friends' wedding. Let me tell you, I'm still so amazed about all the creativity that turned a regular printing warehouse into an elegant, contemporary, modern-chic banquet hall!

Please forgive my blurry photography! Long strips of white material (purchased at the LA Fashion District) covered up walls and printing machinery. Lighting and paper lanterns certainly did the job!

Another blurry photo. Amazing what you can do with some lemon, rocks and sticks!

Food (a mixture of Filipino, American and Korean food...an ode to their Filipino, Korean and American backgrounds) was yumm! Catering by LA Rose Cafe in Los Angeles. (Personal Photo)

This was the first wedding that I've attended since my own, and while I'm still ecstatic for my two friends' wedding, the inevitable comparisons come up. Their wedding was a fantastic, low budget DIY fair. It was an evening wedding where guests danced to the wee hours. I started thinking, gosh, would we have afforded a dinner wedding? Could we have done what they did? I started worrying that we had not done our best research, we hadn't fully explored our options. Perhaps we could have had a dinner wedding for nearly as much as we spent on a daytime wedding. I was wondering if I was regretting our decision.

I finally snapped out of my insane worry-wort ways, and realized, sure, we could have done what they did, but it would have been an entirely different wedding. We wouldn't have had the intimate vibe our smaller venue had, we wouldn't have had the rustic, vintage-y feel that was more us. And...I look back at our photos, and I loved the natural lighting only a daytime wedding could offer. And, sure we had a daytime wedding, and yes, the feel would be much different at night, but that didn't stop us from getting down!

My friends' wedding was gorgeous and lovely, proving you don't have to spend a lot to have a great, chic and stylish wedding. The artsy vibe was sooo them. But at the same time, our wedding was more us. It fit us. And I can't transplant what we had and try to fit it into what our friends had without coming up with something totally different. Not better or worse. Just different.

So don't worry about what's done already. There are no do-overs when planning your wedding...unless, of course, you want to do a vow renewal ceremony but for us, that would be way down the line. Yes, you might see something in the future that, had you known about it before, you might have done things differently. It's inevitable. But don't beat yourself up over it. The fact that you didn't have "Mrs." and "Mr." signs on your chairs wouldn't have made a huge difference in your wedding. What matters is not how much money you spent or if you had it during the day or evening, or if you could have afforded those favors instead of the ones you actually did hand out. Honestly, the best memories I have of our wedding are not the things we ended up buying or making, but the joy, the laughter, the love and loved ones, and the opportunities to share our love with the people close to us, that truly made our special day. For that, I'm truly grateful for our own amazing wedding!

So no regrets...Ok, maybe except for caving into obligatory invites who insisted on adding more people to their RSVP and never even bothered to show up! But that's another post....

Wedding Lessong #6: Let Go

Me actually dancing at the reception! Photo by Don Le of Bliss Imagery

People used to always tell us that the wedding day would go so fast we would never remember it. But what I loved about the wedding day is that I did remember everything. I had time to actually enjoy everything, soak everything in.
Not that I didn't have anything to worry about (oh, yes, there were more bombs thrown at us through the day, but none half as bad as the MIA hair and makeup stylist!), but once the ceremony started there was always at least one person I could hand over the reigns to, giving me time to just...enjoy!

Earlier in my blog, I pondered whether or not hiring a wedding coordinator or a Day of Coordinator was necessary. From my own experience, I would have to say, no you don't need to hire a day of coordinator... but you do need someone who will be the point person and who will coordinate the day. Someone you can had over the reigns and say, "here, it's all yours!" It may be a family member or a friend. But keep in mind, someone who's involved in the festivities and also wants to enjoy in the day, might not be as attentive (read, might not do as good of a job) as someone whose main purpose and job is to make sure things are running smoothly...not how Aunt so-and-so is doing cuz you haven't seen her in so long!

We had a wonderful DOC and she came to us like a blessing. We knew we couldn't afford to hire a DOC, but she offered her services to us for free. My MOH just happened to have a friend who was looking to break into the wedding coordinating industry and wanted to take on our wedding to build her portfolio and references. And she was wonderful to work with, very organized and on top of things! She grabbed all of our reception items and set up the room (saving us money on the room setup fee). When we arrived at the venue 15 minutes late from taking photos after the ceremony, she brought our schedule back on time. When the Samoan dancers arrived, she welcomed them and showed them where to get ready.

The whole time, my fiance and I could chat with our guests, we can laugh, we can enjoy our yummy food (oh yeah, the food deserves a post of its own!) and we could dance...and dance we did!

mmmhmmm, that's my new hubby gettin down!!! photo by Don Le of Bliss Imagery

Wedding Lesson #5: You're not Martha Stewart

As you know, I'm all for DIY, or even better -- DIT (Do-it-Together). But as we got closer to the wedding date, I started to get real with all of my crafty, DIY ambitions. As I've said before, I'm a crafting wannabe, a complete novice. I've had some successes that actually turned out pretty nicely, and then some fails. Ummm, the flower girl baskets I was determined to make? Ultimate fail!!!  If you're not the crafty type, don't take on projects you know you don't have the skills or time to accomplish. Be real with what you can do amd you'll save yourself a headache.

One area I knew we had to be real with ourselves were our centerpieces. I met with different florists, but I was pretty unsatisfied with what our budget could buy us: a few flowers in a vase and a ribbon. yippee. Forget about orchids. They were too expensive. Needless to say, we skipped the florist. But with our wedding in the morning, we knew we had to come up with centerpieces that didn't require a whole lot of time, work, and of course, money.

Then we saw our inspiration while walking through the Asian Mall in Westminster, CA: a display full of tall, potted purple orchids. They were gorgeous, made a great impression, and yet so simple! We loved the idea of a potted centerpiece instead of cut flowers. These were centerpieces we knew our guests would want to take home with them, and they would last long after the wedding. Put them in nice pot, top the soil with moss, and they're good to go!

Potted orchids can be kind of pricey depending on where you buy them. We decided to order our orchids, moss and pots wholesale from the LA Flower Mart. We wanted double stem orchids as they looked more lush than single stems. We went through a vendor who offered us $13 for each orchid and we ordered our pots from another vendor for $4.50 each.  We purchased all 12 of our centerpieces for less than $20 each.

The Friday night before the wedding, we were in a time crunch and with me fighting through a migraine, the last thing I wanted to think about were centerpieces. Luckily our centerpieces were so easy my husband-to-be put them together.

And I must say, they turned out nicely.

 

 

All photos by our coordinator, Regina Bunye

Wedding Lesson #3: Forget DIY, Be a DIT Bride

(personal photo)

The boutonnieres my aunt and cousin made as I nursed a migraine

So when I last left you, I was stressing out big time over my last minute Taualuga dance and my DIY flowers. By evening time, when I planned to work on the bridesmaids' bouquets and flowers, my headache had gone from bad to worse. I was feeling nauseous and dizzy. I couldn't stand up upright without feeling like I would puke. We decided to work on the flowers in the hotel where everyone was staying in the night before the wedding. My MOH, Matron of Honor and even one of our groomsmen came to help me cut the leaves, stems and thorns from flowers. Thank goodness our potted orchid centerpieces were pretty much already done. My FH simply put them all in their pots and covered the soil with moss and voila! Our centerpieces were taken care of!

But by the time I had put together one bridesmaid bouquet, I decided to give up. My head was pounding and my body was telling me to get some rest.There was no way I could finish the rest of the flowers. I needed to go to bed.
But then my aunt and cousin came knocking on our door. They had just come to see how we were doing and bless their souls, they took on the rest of the flowers! They knew exactly what to do because they've done bouquets and corsages for church-related events before. They did an absolutely beautiful job--even better job than what I could have done without a migraine! My aunt and cousin used several leftover roses from the bridesmaid bouquets, baby's breath and purple orchids to make the bouts. I was able to get the sleep I needed while they made the rest of the bouquets and all the pretty bouts for our groomsmen, sponsors and parents.

My aunt scolded me by saying I should have asked her earlier for her help. There's no reason for me to try to do it all on my own. She's right.

My lovely bridesmaids with their bouquets (photo taken by a friend)

So don't be afraid to ask for help. Forget being the super-DIY bride all the time. You can't do it all on your own. Do-it-together -- with friends and family who really do want to help -- and take some of that load off your shoulders. A bride needs her beauty sleep you know!

Wedding Lesson #2: Get organized in advance

Source

We didn't have a main coordinator taking charge of the entire wedding. We had a church coordinator and a reception coordinator, but the FH and I were responsible for everything leading up to the day of the wedding. In the months of planning, the guest room in my house had become stacked with wedding items. Our table runners, our ceremony programs, our birdage cardbox, our guestbook, the DIY coloring books for the flower girls...every little random item I had acquired. But all of that doesn't mean anything if you can't get all of your items organized so they can actually be used the day of the wedding.


I needed to separate all ceremony items from reception items. I needed to make a list of items as well as instructions for our church and reception coordinators of what to do with them. I didn't realize what an undertaking it was until I found myself at the wee hours of the morning trying to organize everything. We had 50 palm weave fans my aunt brought from her trip to the Philippines to pass out during the ceremony. We even took time to decorate each one with a purple ribbon. These nearly weren't used when I almost forgot to put them with the items labeled "Ceremony." I bought a cute little wooden sign that said "Forever and Always, No Matter What," at a thrift store. I wanted to display it at our guestbook table. But, alas, I forgot to put it in with the reception items, so it was never used.

So definitely, don't wait until the final stretch to get your wedding stuff organized. As soon as you acquire something for the wedding, start organizing them by places of where they should end up. Start keeping notes of where the items should be and how they should be arranged (because you'll definitely won't be doing it all yourself the day of the wedding!) You'll save yourself a lot of headache in the end.

Wedding Lesson #1: Conquer the Flower Mart Mad Grab

Photo by Bliss Imagery

We woke up bright and early Friday morning to pick up the flowers for the wedding. After visiting the LA Flower Mart several times already to scope out vendors and pick out flowers for tester DIY projects, I thought we had this Flower Mart thing down real good. I had a list of everything we needed. Easy Peasy, right? Well, try shopping at the Flower Mart on a Friday morning, along with hundreds of other DIY brides and florists with the same mission in mind -- must. get. flowers. for. big. day!!!!!

So what rules should you follow when getting your flowers at the Flower Mart?

Rule Number 1: Want first dibs on your flower selection? Arrive early. The Flower Mart opened at 8 a.m. We arrived at 9 a.m. It was grab what you can find by then.

Rule Number 2: Have a list of flowers you need and the quantity you need. This is what we did right and fortunately we found almost everything on my list.

Rule Number 3: Can't find what you need? Have a list of backup flowers ready. I couldn't find billy balls for the bridesmaids' bouquets! Every vendor was out of them! I had to scour the Mart trying to find a reasonable alternative. I found some flowers that looked somewhat like billy balls, but I still have no clue of what they're called.

By the end of the Flower Mart excursion we purchased:

1. Our centerpieces: Purple double stem potted orchids. We ordered these 2 weeks in advance from our favorite orchid vendor. Along w/ moss and the pots, our 12 centerpieces came out to $233

2: Bridesmaids' bouquets, boutonnieres for the groom and groomsmen, sponsors and parents, as well as cake flowers and extra decorative flowers: $100

So all together, our flowers cost us $333 (not including the flower girls's petals which had to be silk per church policy, my bridal bouquet -- won through a blog giveaway, tester flowers or ceremony flowers -- a gift from a friend).