LONG POST Lessons from our wedding and vendor reviews

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LONG POST Lessons from our wedding and vendor reviews

posted 3 years ago in Beehive

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111 posts

Blushing bee

DrB November 1, 2008 Maryland

Hi Bees! We had our wedding on November 1st and had such a wonderful time! I wanted to take a chance to share some of the things I learned in doing our event in the hopes that it will help everyone else out. I also want to review our vendors, which is mostly helpful for brides in Maryland. So, this will be a really, really long post. The details:We got married on a chartered yacht from Pintail Cruises in Annapolis, MD. <cite>www.pintailyachts.com/ </cite>We had the ceremony, a seated dinner, and reception all on the boat. Our wedding was small. We ended up with around 35 guests, even though we invited like 65 people. At first I was upset that so many people could not come (it was all people from my side, so I felt a little lonely at first), but in the end I had a wonderful time, and it was nice, intimate affair. I’ll start with the things we feel we did correctly: Most of the credit for our event should go to the great people we hired. Krystal, our wedding coordinator from Pintail is wonderful and all of the staff and caters too. She arranged all the food through Company’s Coming Catering, and the full bar. It was nice having her as the only person we needed to talk to regarding the reception and the food. The food was great, especially the Asian mushroom spring roll appetizers! We were busy taking photos during the cocktail hour and would have missed out on the appetizers, but our awesome caters saved a plate of them for the wedding party so we would get to have some before dinner. Krystal kept everything running smoothly and on schedule during the event, including calming down the ring bearer (my 3 year old nephew) who had a melt down right before the ceremony. We were completely able to just relax and enjoy our friends and family. Our photographers, Melissa and Sean Mune from Munelit Photographic were equally amazing. http://munelitphotographic.com/ I found them online, and we had talked on the phone but did not meet in person until the wedding. They posted some of our photos from the event on their blog, if you want to see http://munelitphoto.blogspot.com/. I can’t say enough awesome things about our photographers, but in addition to great photos, they were so much fun to work with and very professional. They are very affordable and willing to work with you on a package that fits your price range. I did a poor job of telling them which posed shots we wanted, but just said, Oh, shots of the family or whatever. Melissa completely took charge of the situation and got everyone lined up in all the various family configurations. They also did an excellent job of using the natural light during the sunset to get some amazing photos of us, as well as a lot of great candid photos of all our guests. Melissa was also really good with our ring bearer, who did not want to stand around for photos. At the end of the night after the guests left, we had a few minutes on the boat alone and they had us do some fun, sexy poses near the bar, and I totally felt like a fashion model. Money: We set our budget low in the beginning, and after looking around and doing our research, we adjusted the budget upward to accommodate the things we wanted, and excluded things not important to us. We paid for it ourselves, so we made sure that we could pay everything off as we went, so we ended up with no debt at the end. But once the budget was set, we really did stick to it, so there was no sticker shock at the end. We devoted about 70% of the money to things that all our guests would enjoy, such as the boat cruise, dinner, full open bar, and we also had a huge rehearsal party the night before (it was Halloween, so we had a costume party) with lots of food and drinks. We also made room in our budget to give generous tips to the staff, and after receiving such excellent service, we were happy we did. Everything else, I really tried to save money on. I bought a dress off the sale rack at Macy’s, and we bought a new suit for the groom because he needed one anyway for work. I did a lot of DIY things. I made my own veil for about $5, and did the flowers for the wedding party. I used roses and various fillers, and I made everything on Thursday night for the Saturday wedding. I put the corsages and bouts in gladware containers in our fridge, and left the hand tied bouquets in vases on the counter, and all of the flowers kept well. We didn’t have any other flowers and used the silk centerpieces that came with the venue. I bought $100 worth of flowers from a local floral warehouse, but I could have saved even more money by not buying so many varieties, and I had enough extra flowers I could have made another bouquet. In the end I was really happy with the flowers. I loved our cake, which we ordered from Graul’s Market, a local super market in Annapolis. It was a 2-tier, marble pound cake with white butter cream icing, and we picked the decoration pattern from a book the bakery had. We topped it ourselves with fresh berries, and it looked amazing and people gave us so many compliments on it. We had extra fruit we gave to the caterers and when they served it, they put a strawberry and blueberries on each plate. The cake was so good, everything they do is made from scratch, and Graul’s has really reasonable prices. Ours was $180 including delivery, and it was enough to feed 50-60 people, so about $3 per person. We did our own invitations and programs using our home printer and in all, we spent about $150 for the stationary (from Paper Source), and all the stamps, etc. I accidentally ordered too much stationary, so I have a lot left over. Doing our own programs allowed us to also put in some quotes we liked, and we even included an inside joke that our friends would get (a referrence to The Simpsons). We used mywedding.com for our website, which is free and very easy to use. We did our own music with an iPod that we plugged into the boat’s sound system. We chose songs that we liked, but in the end people didn’t really dance that much. The older guests didn’t care for our music (even though I included a wide variety of classic rock, country, alternative, and dance music). The reception had a great cocktail party vibe to it anyway, and we were able to talk to everyone. But, the music was free! I don’t think having a DJ would have encouraged people to dance more, it just wasn’t that kind of crowd. We wrote our own ceremony and vows, which made everything very special to us. I looked at ceremonies posted online and especially those posted by weddingbee bloggers, and took a lot of inspiration from those, (OK, some things I just copied) but also customized things to us. The groom’s father performed the ceremony, even though he is not ordained, so we got officially married at the court house. I was happy to have a family member do it, and we didn’t have to hire anyone to perform the ceremony. We also did favors for about $100, which made enough for 60 people. We picked four kinds of Eastern Shore Tea Company teas (which is a local company) and placed one tea bag of each flavor in pillow boxes tied with ribbon and labels I made myself on the computer. We didn’t get any photos of those, but they were cute and I was able to make them way in advance. So, the things that I learned from all of this: <ol style="margin-top: 0in"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">Hire a day-of coordinator! I would have thought it an unnecessary expense, but our venue provided one as part of the contract and it is invaluable. We didn’t have to do anything the day of other than have a good time. She was also the only point person we had to deal with for all of the catering, etc.<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">Have a day-of emergency kit that includes superglue. Two of the beads on the comb to my DIY veil broke off and I had nothing to reattach them with. <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">Have a final dress fitting right before the wedding. I bought my dress off the rack at a department store, and about 1 month prior to the wedding I went to a tailor to have it taken in in the bust (it was a strapless dress). I didn’t try to lose weight, but in the last few days before the wedding I think I did shrink a little with all the activity and family stress, so my strapless dress kept slipping down and showing my bra.<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">Watch out for extraneous expenses. Little things you buy for your DIY projects really add up, so watch out for all the little extra expenses. For example, I bought ribbon for the favors and flowers, but ended up buying some different kinds trying to decide which ones I liked, and so I spent more than I should have. If I had been smart and saved the receipts, I could have returned the unused ribbon, but I didn’t. So, little things like that. <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">Have a card box. Since our wedding was so small, I didn’t think we needed a card box and just asked the groom’s father to collect cards from people. This caused confusion, and it would have been better if I had just brought a shoe box wrapped with pretty paper.<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">Practice the ceremony and any special rituals before hand. We wrote our own ceremony script and the Groom’s father performed it (he is not ordained, so we got married at the court house officially by a judge). We never officially practiced the ceremony, so while everything went OK, we were a little unprepared, and not sure where to stand at first, etc. <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in"> I also didn’t get important info about the day of schedule to people early enough so that the night before the wedding, my brother was still unaware that he was part of the processional (he seated my mother). So, keep everyone informed early. The best man also claimed he didn’t know he was giving a toast until 2 days before, even though we did tell him earlier than that.<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">We did a hand tying/ hand fasting ceremony as part of the ceremony, but didn’t practice it before. We had the best man lay the cords on our hands while the officiant read the script, and then the MOH did a reading while the best man tied the cords in a knot. My first mistake, I didn’t make the cords long enough. I bought upholstery cords in 4 colors, 1 yard of each, and that was not long enough to tie around our hands. So, the best man sort of just wrapped the cords around, causing us all to laugh hysterically, and we were able to tease him all night long about having been in the Navy but not being able to tie a knot. So, it was my fault for not having long enough cord, and we should have practiced it with the best man. <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">Save money by borrowing or reusing things you already have. We borrowed a nice cake cutting set from our family, and instead of a ring bearer’s pillow, I just tied a ribbon around the ring box from my e-ring. We didn’t actually give the rings to the 3 year old, just the box.<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: list .5in">Have fun! Leading up the wedding, there was all kinds of family drama, and I even spent the night before the wedding sobbing about it, and wishing we had never bothered to have a wedding at all. But then somehow, the day of, everything was perfect and we were all able to just put it behind us and have a really nice time. OK, thanks for reading my really long post, and I hope there is some useful information here.