A great find!

In the spirit of trying to pay for things now so it is not such a huge cost later, I have been on the hunt for my invitations. There are two ways you can do invitations:

1. You can order them from a place like David's Bridal or Michael's and pay for them to print them for you (I haven't found this option for cheaper than $350.00 for the 150 invitations I need) or...

2. You can buy a DIY kit and print them at home or somewhere else. Obviously since DIY is my middle name I decided to choose this more cost effective method.

I searched at David's Bridal, Michael's and other places and the general consensus was that a DIY pack of 40 invitations would cost around 40 bucks and I would need at least three of them so that would be around $150 with taxes in. I decided to hold off and keep looking. A friend of mine told me she saw invitations at home sense so I decided to go and check it out. I found three packages of 50 invitations, envelopes, response cards, and thank you cards for 9.99 each and they were in my colors. So for $34 I bought all of the stationary and envelopes for my wedding other than programs and I am delighted by this!

So brides go to home sense if you are looking to save some money on something that most people are just gonna throw out anyways!

The Initial Costs You May Not Think About

One part of this wedding planning process that I was not prepared for were the initial costs to get started. Initially this wasn't a concern of mine because we were planning on taking two years to get married and if you are not in a stable financial situation taking more than a year and a half to plan would be very smart. When we switch out date to be in a year and a few months, we immediately needed to start booking stuff. Depending on where you plan to get married you may have a little more leniency in when you start booking depending on if it is a tourist destination, the time of year, the amount of wedding venues etc. But, if you have a specific idea of where you want your wedding to be and which photographer, videographer etc you want, you should plan to book AT LEAST a year in advance. All of these services require deposits, unless you get seriously lucky. Here is the breakdown of what we have had to pay this month to get everything booked:

Hall Rental- $500.00 deposit
Photography- $200.00 deposit
Jack and Jill- $150.00 deposit.

Keep in mind that I am doing most of my wedding myself. Decorators, Videographers, DJs, Florists, Wedding Planners, Bakeries etc all typically require a deposit. We are getting married in a church so it isn't costing us money but if you were getting married at a private venue that would probably be another couple hundred dollars. The amount of money we would have to spend this early on had never even crossed my mind, so hopefully this will help you be a little more prepared than we were.

Rolling With The Punches

The last week has been crazy. As crazy as it was, it made me realize how flexible you have to be when planning a wedding. We thought we had our date set in stone, however, unfortunately when booking our hall we found out it was already booked. This sent up red flags for Josh and I because its a pretty small community and chances are we would know who booked it. So we put the question out there and found out that one of Josh's good friends had booked his wedding that weekend.

So started the scramble. We had to look for another weekend, we had to call everyone back and rebook everything. I seriously considered eloping at this point, it still goes through my mind every once in awhile, but it will all be worth it once it is the big day.

We rescheduled everything for October 26th, 2013. Ceremony at St. Joseph's in North Sydney, Reception at Sydney Mines Fireman's Centre.

Hoorayyy!

The Torturous Guest List

The guest list has been our task of the week. We haven't stuck with a perfect number yet but we are looking at between 180-220 guests. We started by simply writing down, in a perfect world scenario, ever person we would want at our wedding. Be prepared, that number will be massive if you have large families and friend groups. The first round of cuts is easy and yes I know this sounds like a cruel process and for the most part it is, you basically are evaluating all of your relationships and ranking them. We all know that there will be about 20 or so people that you really dont need at your wedding. 

The next steps were challenging our list was at 170. This would be ideal if not every person technically gets a plus one. Then I go go gadgeted into Bridal Bitch mode, where, I came to the realization that I am not paying for random people to be fed at my wedding. New plan: If someone has a significant other, by all means they are invited as your plus one, if not, do not plan to seek out a date for my wedding. People tend to forget that for every person that comes into that reception hall, I have to feed them a three course meal and they need to have wine available to them on the tables. I am not paying $20 bucks a person for some random date. SO here is my best piece of advice, if they have a significant other send the invitation to them and their plus one, if not, you need only put their name on the invitation.

This still makes it difficult because I have no idea who will be in relationships in a year from now. So I continued to cut. I am inviting none of my good friend's parents except my best friend. I cut out childhood friends. I cut out some university friends who I dont hang out with often. I kept cutting until I couldn't rationalize why I was cutting these individuals anymore or until I felt extremely guilty. We are now down to 130 invitations being sent out (doesn't include wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, kids). So there will be a butt load of people there still, which is fine by me. I've always said I wanted a big wedding, but I also need to not go over the capacity of the hall. 

If I were to assume something very prematurely, it would be that this is probably the least fun part of wedding planning. It sucks to have friends that you love, that will not be invited to the wedding because you cant afford it or because there isn't enough room but, C'est La Vie. 

The Date Is Set/ The Church Is Booked/ The Dress Is Bought

The most exciting things have been happening the last couple of weeks.

First of all, we booked our church and now I may have to change the URL of the blog because SURPRISE, we are getting married in 2013. Long story short we figured out we could afford this wedding sooner than we had expected. So we are getting married on OCTOBER 12th, 2013, which is the long weekend. I was somewhat hesitant about booking my wedding on a long weekend, however, I, personally, dont feel that many people care too much about Thanksgiving and the wedding is on Saturday so they could be back for Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday or Monday. The other nice thing about having it on a long weekend is that it will be a lot of our guest's first time in Cape Breton or they've only been there a few times and fall in Cape Breton is breath taking so it will be nice for them to be able to have a mini vacation there. It is also extremely convenient for people travelling, which there will be a lot of.
We booked the church that I mentioned in a previous post and we are so excited! I'm still working on a reception facility.

Secondly, we booked our photographer. We went with Shoshanna Fraser Photography and Shoshanna is an amazing photographer in Cape Breton. She has shot many of our friends and Josh's sister's weddings. She does fantastic work and I would highly recommend her if you are getting married in Cape Breton. Her prices are also very reasonable and her excitement for photography shows through her pictures. Here is her website http://www.sfraserphoto.com/index.html

Lastly, I BOUGHT MY DRESS. My mom, sister and three of my bridesmaids set out with me to, what was supposed to be Winchesters and a return trip to Felicity, however, we ended up only needing to go to Winchesters. I tried on about seven dresses but ended up buying the first dress that I tried on. It was only $1010.00, which was heavenly because my second favorite dress, which I will post a photo of, was like $700.00 more than that. I'm not going to post a picture of my dress because the surprise is more fun, but here is a picture of what was my second favorite.

 This is the one at felicity I was thinking of buying as well

Being a Miss, while planning to be a Mrs

I know, I know; I said I would stay on top of this blog and alas, I have failed the last couple of weeks. BUT I have an excuse: For the past month I have been on practicum (i'm doing my teaching degree for those of you who live on another planet). I've been teaching sixty 17 year olds during that time and needless to say, I've found myself only having time to eat, sleep, shower (occasionally) and teach.

My kids have been very enthusiastic about helping me plan my wedding, sometimes a little to enthusiastic. I had a girl today tell me I should wear a hot pink wedding dress, I told her I wasn't auditioning for my big fat gypsy wedding and that I'll probably stick with white or some variation because of that!

What I've learned is that I should probably do the bulk of my planning before I start teaching again next year for four months, because I am way to exhausted to plan or blog about planning. I hear the word "miss" at least 300000 times a day usually in the form of "Miss, if I punch so and so will you kick me out", "Miss, how do you spell this", "Miss, I DONT WANNA DO THIS, ITS STUPID"; This has made me never want to hear the word "miss" or "mrs" for a very long time!

So as much as I have been thoroughly entertained by this practicum and my kids wacky wedding suggestions, needless to say I am pretty excited to not suffer from exhaustion any more and to get back to planning! One more week... I think I can, I think I can!

Choosing The People You Want By Your Side

I have no idea how this is such an easy task for men to complete, but Josh literally has no issue with choosing his future groomsmen. I, on the other hand, had a very difficult time choosing my bridesmaids because girlfriends are like gangs and when in a gang you get close to a lot of different people and then they get territorial over you and it becomes no fun anymore to have to choose some of them to be your bridesmaids. We decided on five maybe six in the future, for our bridal party, this was mainly Josh's choice because he has a very tight knit group of friends, whereas I have a few super close friends and a lot of good friends.

I wanted my bridal party to be made up of people who have been important to me at different stages in my life but that I haven't really lost touch with. Obviously my sister was the easiest pick, it would be pretty hard to find anyone who has cared about me longer than her, but the next easiest choice was my best friend Courtney who i've been best friends with since we toddlers. We've been planning our weddings, kids names, and dream homes since we were little girls and it wouldn't be my perfect wedding without her standing beside me. I had thought about adding more people from home, but truth be told, my life has changed drastically since I've lived at home, most of them have either never met Josh or dont know our life together very well so it just didn't make sense to me.

The Mount on the other hand was the birthplace of our relationship and I have met some of the people who I REALLY grew up with at the Mount. During my first two years at the mount Jenny, Sarah and I were completely inseparable, which was not always beneficial to our grades or the health of our liver, In my third year when we stopped living in the same building we weren't quite as inseparable but they were still the two people that I confided in, that I got silly drunk with and that I needed in my life to keep me sane. Britt and I didn't become overly close until our third year of university. I like to call Britt my easy friend (not that way, mind out of the gutter). She has this totally laid back and easy going personality, she is so fun to be around, always available for a talk or a beer and I am always happy and calm when I am around her!

I chose these girls because they are the friends that I never want to lose touch with, that I can trust with anything and everything and that will put my best interest first. What I've noticed over the past month is that the three or four people that deserve to be in my wedding party just as much as the above mentioned girls have been so unbelievably supportive towards me because I think that they know that it was a difficult decision for me and that I still want them to be a part of the planning and everything like that; whereas, there is another small group of girls who probably will not understand or be okay with the fact that they are not on this list and ironically enough they aren't people that I think deserve to stand for me.


I ALSO OBVIOUSLY CHOSE THEM BASED ON THEIR ATTRACTIVENESS AS YOU CAN SEE BELOW:

So future brides, here is my best advice on how to choose these important people: Choose people who actually care about you, who you dont want to lose touch with ever, who you think will put your opinion above their own when it comes to your day, who will wear a smile on their face no matter what dress you put them in and who will help you organize your special day with excitement. I also tried to focus on where people would be in a couple of years. If I wasn't going to see someone for two years, chances are we might grow a bit apart, that's life, so distance and the likely effort I would put into seeing them factored into my decision making.