In case you didn't see it...the paper crane chandelier

Yes, our cranes made it safely north to Canada. Yes, they joined thousands of other cranes from around world in a gorgeous paper crane chandelier.

For each crane 50 cents was donated to cancer research.

Beautiful

*All photos from the Wedding Co.

Real Wedding in MN

 What a pleasant surprise it was to see Kayla's photos of her lovely MN wedding waiting for me in my inbox after returning from the Thanksgiving weekend. The lovely ceremony, the adorable details (those cookies with the couples' names are steal-worthy), the bright purple color scheme -- and  everything was $11K! But the best thing about these photos? The look of pure joy on Kayla's lovely face! So how did Kayla pull off such a gorgeous wedding on a modest budget? Take it away, Kayla!

My husband Elliott and I were engaged December 21st, 2009 (more on that at my blog www.elliottkayla.blogspot.com - with a video that will make you cry!) and one of the first things we did was sit down and make a VERY comprehensive and detailed budget, and then we STUCK TO IT!  Our budget included wedding bands, thank-you notes, all postage, deposit on our new apartment together, and our honeymoon - some things that other couples budget for separately. 

BIGGEST MONEY SAVER: involve friends and family every step of the way. Our pastor was also one of our closest friends, and his wife is a phenomenal wedding photographer (www.emilysteffenphoto.com).  Elliott's dad made our cake stand, my hairstylist was a good friend (and professional!) Elliott's sister made the flower girl dress, family and friends rallied together to decorate the reception hall (with many homemade decorations), we borrowed, borrowed, and borrowed some more.

The Dress - we started shopping for the dress early, because if we couldn't find something wonderful (and I was limiting myself to only $600 - INCLUDING alterations!!!) my mother and I wanted lots of time to start creating one ourselves.  Mom did make my veil, but at the very last bridal store we went to (which also carried stylish consignment dresses) we found THE ONE!!!  Our best decision: be very upfront with the salespeople and tell them your absolute budget.  Our saleswoman (HIGHLY recommend www.bridesoffrance.com) treated us with the utmost respect and was able to give us extra discounts, bringing the total to $400!  A friend altered the dress as a wedding gift to us - we were thrilled!  Elliott bought his suit for $100 and his vintage tie for $3!  Our bridesmaids dresses were on sale for less than $50 at Ann Taylor Loft, shoes were $20 from Rocketdog.

 

Flowers - our photographer recommended a fresh, innovative young florist. Met with her and FELL IN LOVE!  Gave her pictures, we talked colors, and then gave her our very small budget $300 - she said yes!!!  The boutonniere were made out of quirky, cute supplies that were on clearance at JoAnns.  Our centerpieces were also clearance flowers, pieces we borrowed, and wine glasses/mason jars we had been saving all year.

Stationery - my sister, a scrapbooking-fiend, helped us create invitations and programs that we created from supplies we only bought with coupons from Archivers.

Food - we wanted a "down-home" feel, so decided on fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Called around for prices and the local grocery store's deli quoted us a price that was less than $4.00 a person!  We had tons of food left over, and it was absolutely delicious.  My sisters and I spent a lot of time over the summer baking food for the dessert table.  We included lots of family recipes, and asked grandmas to bring something to share. 

 

Cake - a friend's mother makes wedding cakes as a side business.  For $100, we had a beautiful chocolate with peanut butter filling cake that we COULD NOT stop eating!

DJ - We created the playlist ourselves on iTunes and asked a friend to DJ for us - he also brought lights and a sound system that he was able to borrow for free!

Honeymoon - we drove to Door County (drove because we wanted to take our bikes with us) and stayed in an absolutely adorable and SUPER afordable suite (complete with kitchen, so we saved money by making some of our own meals) www.cornerstonesuites.com Total cost: about $1100 (including spending money!).

Our Purple Table Linens -  I spent time all summer buying purple fabric when I saw it on clearance - we turned these in to table runners, over "linenlike" tablecloths, which were great because they looked MUCH better than plastic AND kids could color on them (we put crayons on every table!).

It was such a fabulous day, and we're so excited to share it with others! 

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 #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....

Go Lakers!!!!

Awww, yeeeahh! Our Lakers are the NBA champs! Just basking in the afterglow of victory!!! As you might know, our wedding colors are Lakers-inspired - purple and gold. But I thought the actual Laker shades were, well, not exactly what I had in mind for wedding colors, so we decided to go with a plum purple and a more subtle gold than yellow. But when I saw photos of this wedding at the Turnip Rose in Orange County, CA, I thought...wow, these colors might actually work! BTW, loving her shoes!!!!

Photo by Hoffman Photography

Real Wedding: Krissy and Eric

Location: Orlando, FL

When I first stumbled across Krissy’s blog, I was instantly enamored with her super-adorable, DIY wedding. Krissy and Eric were married in Lake Nona VillageWalk in sunny Orlando, Florida (home of where fantasies live—Disney World!). Krissy took charge of every cute detail, from the storybook-themed programs to the cake toppers (how freakin’ talented is she???), but I was doubly impressed when I heard she did all of this on a very modest budget. You might have caught some of Krissy and Eric’s wedding on Wedding Chicks, but Krissy was so gracious in sharing the details of her wedding on my blog!

What was your budget?
Our budget was $5-7K (that included our honeymoon!)

How many guests did you have? 65

What vision did you have for wedding as you began planning?
Our vision was - haha, who am I kidding? My vision was a 'timeless' feeling with a blend of both vintage and modern elements for a broad appeal. I was most guided by the artwork of Mary Blair and whimsical details of classic Disney attractions and artwork.

What was the most creative detail?Believe it or not, I think the most creative detail was the one major project I had my hubby collaborate on - our RSVP postcards. I already designed the invitations, but wanted to get him involved somehow creatively and showed him a picture of old Disneyland tickets, and asked him if he could come up with a design inspired by them...I think he did a great job!

In what ways did you save money?
I could really go on for days about this, but here are a few biggies:

Our venue choice - we visited two venues (both area golf clubs) early in our planning process that were reasonably priced for some pretty nice packages, but as we began our correspondence and negotiations, we realized that what we wanted was very simple: an outdoor setting for a ceremony, a clubhouse for our reception and gorgeous surroundings for pictures. Ironically enough, it dawned on us one evening as we were taking a walk around the neighborhood that we had what we were looking for right under our nose! After speaking with the town center staff, we were excited to find that the room rental was only $500, and that included free use of the lawn for our ceremony - and that $500 had a built in $300 refundable security deposit!

Dress - I surprised even myself with this one - my beginning budget was $600 max, as I really couldn't imagine spending a penny more, no matter how gorgeous a dress might be! To my own budget-happy heart's surprise, I found the dress on eBay of all places, for just $100 plus $25 shipping! After alterations (I switched the dress back to a corset from zipper, and had about a foot cut off on the bottom!) and accessories like crinoline and undergarments, it was still less than $300 altogether.

Bridesmaid attire - over the phone, my sister and I looked 'outside of the box' for bridesmaid dress inspiration and happened upon gojane.com, a low-priced online clothes retailer and decided to look at their formal dresses - we found one we loved for less than $60 - such a bargain that the hubs and I bought the girls' dresses for them and just had them wear gold or metallic shoes of their own.

Paper Products - I designed and created our Save the Dates and Invitation Suites; the STDs were a steal I happened to discover at OfficeMax of all places - it was an outdated magnet pack, that included envelopes for $3.50 (50 pack) so I bought two, created the design and printed on our home printer. The invites were paper packs from JoAnn, embellished with scrapbook paper bellybands and DIY maps printed on creme coverstock from Staples. We also used faux-lligraphy to address the envelopes to alleviate that expense.

Cake - we used a local grocery store bakery and just customized one of their stock designs to our wedding colors! It was tasty and gorgeous!

What was your most favorite detail of the wedding?
It's hard to nail down just one, but if I had to, it would probably be our candy buffet! I embellished the apothecary jars with ribbon and button details, designed the tags, and featured candies from Japan, which were hand-picked by my mom and hand-carried here to Florida for the wedding. It was a twist on what's become quite a popular trend and was very popular with our guests!

What advice can you give brides trying to stay on budget and sane during the wedding planning process?
The best advice is the hardest to follow - just keep positive! While you're busy trying to get all your colors to match, and your vision to come together, it's easy to forget that you're your own biggest critic and after all, it's just a day. A wonderful, important day, of course, but just one of many lifetime memories to come.

Anything you splurged on and don't regret?
This probably won't sound like a splurge to most people, but our DJ was a splurge of mine - I found him online after countless searches, for $399. See, we intended on doing an iPod wedding, and I even had all our playlists mapped out, but as we drew closer to the wedding, I was wavering. Hubs didn't see the need, but we compromised on this decision once I showed him the low price tag! This turned out to be one of our best decisions, as we got tons of compliments on the music and flow of the event from all our guests.

PHOTOGRAPHY! - I cannot stress enough how much I love our photographer, Amanda McMahon. She is so talented and sweet, and I literally teared up when our photos arrived. If you love a photographers work, don't hesitate on this expense because it's the one thing you'll cherish forever.

Food/Drink - We loved our food, and even got to eat a little of it at the wedding, hehe!! Our catering team was outstanding and if your budget allows, please be kind to your guests and have an open bar - we did the standard, sodas, beer and wine all night which kept the price affordable.

All photos by Amanda McMahon

Photographer: http://www.amandamcmahon.com/
Venue: http://www.divosta-lakenona.com/
Catering: http://www.kahunagrill.net/
DJ: http://www.zachscottproductions.com/
Cake: http://www.publix.com/food/catalog/Bakery/WeddingSpecialOccasion/Home.do

Real Wedding: Flights of Fancy

*Sigh* Oh, how I try not to be so envious. But it's hard after seeing weddings like this -- Brian and Ngoc in Nebraska. It's a wedding that seems to have it all -- style, class, creativity, gorgeous details, incorporation of culture and, well, love. The bride's not wearing all white, but she's looking too cute with that baby blue bolero! Who needs conventionality when you're looking this hot?

Ngoc's whole ensemble is beautiful, but daaayum, those Badgley Mischka shoes and her baby blue bolero...perfect!

I love the "Bird/Asian" theme goes seemlessly together with the soft blue and green color schene. Perfect! The lanterns and the origami paper cranes are a very nice touch.

All photos by Ling Photography

A Yacht Wedding in Orange County

Just wanted to share a wedding shot by our photographers at Bliss Imagery. I love the soft, almost dreamlike quality of the photos. Peggy and Alee chose shades of pink as their colors and I think the photos brought out those colors very well. Gorgeous! I'm very excited to have the guys at Bliss Imagery shoot our wedding!

All photos by Bliss Imagery

Real Wedding: It can be done!

This is giving me a whole lot of hope! I found this wedding on Weddingbee and I had to share. This couple from Finger Lakes, NY had their rehearsal dinner, Catholic church ceremony, outdoor reception for 120 people and honeymoon for under $15000 -- $13,264.02 to be exact!

They seemed to save a lot by going through their local grocery for catering, help from friends and family and DIYing their floral arrangements. I'm not sure if cost of living in Finger Lakes, NY is much different from the Los Angeles area, but they sure seemed to have stretched their buck to have a really awesome wedding!

Looks familiar...

From Turn Loose the Art

When I saw this locale, the deja vu feeling hit, until I realized...hey, I have been here before! Right where that random woman with a suitcase is sitting! Really?! At Los Angeles Union Station? That is so cool! I never knew you could rent out space there! Not every venue will advertise itself as a wedding venue. If you know of a place that you adore, it doesn't hurt to ask, right?

Fierce

This is what I call an unconventional wedding with attitude, style and sophistication. Very beautiful!

One of the most beautiful photos of a wedding dress!

Check out more photos at snippet & ink