What I Learned About Money While Planning My Wedding

I wrote this post for Dana to run on Broke-Ass Bride a few months back. Then I sort of modified it for the new Offbeat Bride book. But I've never run it on APW, and I think it deserves to be here. It's one of the most packed-with-useful-to-me stuff posts I wrote after our wedding. Because learning about my and our relationship to money, ohhhhh boy. That's applicable to marraige. So, long overdue, what learned about money when planning our wedding.

First of all, I have to say that one of the reasons that I started my blog is because I felt like the only bride in the world with a sensible approach to money when I read wedding media. It sucked. While my partner and I are no longer broke (though, *boy* have we been) we still are fairly cautious with our money. Add to that the fact that we're a one bread-winner household at the moment (my husband is in law school) and, well, we don't have a money tree in the backyard. So we figured we'd throw together a nice wedding on a oh-dear-god-it-feels-expensive-to-us-but-I-guess-we-can-do-this kind of budget. Ha. Well, about two seconds into wedding planning I started to feel like the poorest and saddest bride on the planet.

I finally hit the wall when I read about a 'budget' wedding on one of those big-shiny-wedding-blogs. It read something like this: "Well, since we were doing a wedding on a budget, we obviously had to be very selective in our choices, and limit what we spent money on. That's why we decided to really limit things when it came to our music choices. In the end, we decided to only hire a string quartet, a gospel choir, and a rock band, to keep things simple and affordable."

After I finished slamming my head against the table, I think I sent my then-fiance a link to this wedding with an email along these lines, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS? If this couple HADN'T been on a budget were they planning on also hiring a 100 PERSON OPERA CHORUS? WHAT THE MOTHER F*CKING F*CK? I. Hate. Wedding. Planning."

Right. So I started my blog. Turns out I wasn't so alone after all.

What I mean to say is this: when you do not have unlimited resources and you are planning a wedding, sometimes every moment feels like a painful negotiation. You can't afford the things that it seems like everyone else has, shopping for a wedding dress can feel like h*ll, and finding a venue can become you're worst nightmare. If you're at all like me, planning a wedding can feel like you are thinking about money all the time, and learning to hate it.

So here are my very best wedding graduate tips about money and weddings. Here is what I learned, and what I wished I known at the beginning:

• Weddings are not about money. They feel like they are about money when you're planning, for effing sure, but in the end, money is not going to matter. At all. Weddings are are about love, plain and simple. On your wedding day you could be getting married in your backyard with not a single pretty detail to be found, and you wouldn't care. The hugeness of getting married, and making this huge commitment in front of family and friends will surpass every single thing around it, and what you spent will disappear.
• As one of my wedding graduates said, "You don't have to spend money in ways that does not feel right to you, or that makes you feel financially uncomfortable." There were many times that I started feeling backed into a corner "But that is just what getting my hair done is going to cost, no matter how crazy it seems!" And I thought back to this advice and just said, "Nope. Not going to do it." Every time, that ended up being one of the best decisions we made.
• Forget DIY. The wedding blog world can make you feel like you have to be a crafty, crafty goddess if you want to save money, and that's enough to drive anyone over the edge. Start thinking about DIT - doing-it-together. Each time we asked a loved one to contribute to our day - from the girlfriend that did my hair to the girlfriend that managed the weekend - it added a depth of joy to our celebration that no money could have bought. On top of that, it gave each friend a way to show their love and feel like they really contributed to this monumentally important moment of our lives, and that turned out to be a gift in and of itself.
• Once you make a financial decision that feels right to you - stick to your guns. Wedding planning can be a constant pattern of second guessing - "Well, so and so self-catered, maybe we should do that?" This. Will. Drive. You. Mad. If your choice was right for you, that's it. You're done, and you're fine.
• Your budget is your business. Make sure you're spending an amount of money that feels good to you. Then ignore what other people think. Big-wedding-media can consume you with guilt about not spending enough. Indie-web-media can consume you with guilt that you are spending too much. You know what? If you feel good about it, what you are spending is just right.
• Spend your money on things you care about. We didn't have lots of 'must haves.' We didn't have a DJ, a florist, favors, or matching bridesmaids dresses. And we didn't miss them. But you know what we did have? Amazing gourmet food, that we splurged on. We're foodies, we cared about food. The food at our wedding was staggeringly good, and to us, it was worth every penny.
• Don't be afraid to say no. If you don't care? Don't buy it. If someone is making you sign a contract that doesn't feel right? Don't sign it. If it doesn't feel right? Put away your wallet. If you do this, things will somehow fall into place. I could not find a single wedding dress that felt right, even if I was willing to spend $1,000. In the end, I said no to all the options that felt awful, and I found the worlds best dress for me, buried in the corner of a vintage shop, for $250, just a few months before the wedding.
• Sometimes it is worth it to pay full price. As a bride on a limited budget, people will tell you to bargain, to barter, to do anything to pay less. Sometimes this is the right thing to do, and it will all work out. But there are other times when you don't want to think about something anymore, and you're willing to throw money at the problem to make it go away. Do it. Sometimes bartering will make your relationship with a vendor so complicated that you're uncomfortable. Pay full price. It may be worth it.
• Try not to become obsessed with your target budget. Pay what feels right to you, and what you feel like you can afford. If you end up a little under or a little over budget? Its fine. Because guess what? You don't have to report your budget to anyone. So be kind to yourself, and remember that you did your best.
• And finally: Remember, one day the spending will all be behind you. The best part about spending money on your wedding? It happens once, and then you NEVER HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN. The last months before our wedding, I felt like I was taking out my checkbook every two seconds, and I hated it. But on the morning after the wedding I realized it was done, it was over, and I never had to spend that money every again. And that, my friends, felt like freedom.
  

From one practical bride to another - I wish you thoughtful careful spending, and the nerve to say no. But more than anything, my wish for you is that you learn as much about your relationship to money as I did planning my wedding. Because that was priceless.

Tips For San Franscisco Buget Weddings, Part II

I was wandering around this weekend being busy like a bee, and I happened upon two amazing low-key low-budget wedding ideas. So, please use them, and then send me pictures. (Tomorrow's wedding was inspired in part by Part I of this series).

Ceremony Spot: Eagle's Point at Lands End (full list of amazing outdoor rentals, yay parks and rec!).
I stumbled on this on a early Sunday morning hike (yes, yes, living in the city is an embarrassment of riches). This round deck on the cliffs edge has 108 degree breathtaking (I'm not using that word lightly) views. Rocky Beaches, Golden Gate Bridge, Eucalyptus, a lighthouse on an outcropping, open ocean, and the wind whipping through your hair. I think it's a little more raw and beautiful then the more well known (but larger) inspiration point. San Francisco being the kind of city it is, you can rent this for $400 for 3 hours, for up to 50 people. Oh! And you can have champagne. Hooray! Who's doing it?

Reception Spot: Back room of the Irish BankA back room of an Irish Pub, at the end of a dingy alley in the tony Union Square area. You know, the kind of Irish Pub that makes you feel like you're actually in the UK (or Ireland I suppose, but I've never been there). The kind of place that makes you feel like you found someplace secret, wandering down an alley. Exposed brick walls, cabaret tables, beer, whiskey, fish and chips, dark paneled wood corners to kiss in, bride in a mini-dress.

I think I'd like to be invited.

Ask Me: How Do You Solve A Problem Like My Mother?

So, I know you're not exactly an advice columnist, AND I know you're on blogging break right now and are probably backed up with emails anyway just because you're fabulous. But just in case there happens to be a spot for this anywhere...I don't know where else to turn to out there in the wedding community (because I refuse to write to theknot) when I'm a crying mess of bride-to-be. I tried to bring up wedding budget to my mother and all she did was ignore me and change the subject. She started talking about how she's going to go get a new cell phone. So now I'm a crying mess because my mother doesn't seem to want to talk about wedding stuff at ALL, and I know most girls are frustrated because their moms are over-involved, but y'know, I'd like mine to be involved just a LITTLE bit. I'd like her to at least pretend to care that her youngest daughter is getting married. Point of all this being, my mother and I don't talk. Not about anything serious, anyway. We get along for the most part, but there's a REAL problem area when it comes to real life situations. And this is a real life situation. Before I was engaged, she made a joke about how she hoped I eloped so she wouldn't have to shell out money for a wedding. This is my mother's inappropriate way of hinting that she IS planning on pitching in for the wedding. So, since I was never taught how to HAVE a serious conversation with my mother, I tried to get her to confirm she was contributing the only way I know how - through joking. I went to her saying, "I'm running away! I counted and we have 110 FAMILY members to invite - not even any of our friends, not even the bridal party, JUST family members. I can't afford to feed all those people!". I was hoping for something along the lines of, "Well, you don't have to pay for it all, we're helping." And...I got a conversation about cell phones in return. Long story short, I can't figure out how to find out how much my parents are planning on contributing. Which is going to make a big difference in what we can and can't have. I don't want much. I want to make my own bouquet, I'm making my own dress, our friends are photographing, we're serving a finger food reception. I just want to know how much we can afford to spend on the venue and the finger food, really. I know if I get any advice at all, it's probably going to be a lot of people advising me to just sit down and talk to my mom one-on-one. And I know that eventually, I'll have to. But I don't know how. I doubt very many people understand how INCREDIBLY hard that is, since it really seems like most brides either have wonderful, supportive mothers, or mothers who are way TOO involved. Not mothers who think they're mentally ill if they try to have a normal breakdown. - Mandy

Ok lady. First things first: Not all moms are awesome when it comes to weddings (even normally wonderful moms) and not all families are awesome about weddings (even normally wonderful families). It's just that, um, people lie. It's that simple. It's hard to tell the internet (especially if your not anonymous, achem) about the times that your family is made you mentally ill during wedding planning. So lets just disabuse you of the idea that you're alone on this: you are NOT. (Feel free to raise an anonymous hand in the comments if you feel me on this).

Second of all, there is this wedding planning myth that planning a wedding is a wonderful mother-daughter bonding experience, and its a powerful marketing myth, not so much a reality. I can't tell you the number of fights I had with my mom about wanting her to be more involved, because I did want that. But the reality was, my mom was seriously ill, she was over stressed, and she doesn't like throwing parties. There were still lots of things she was good at - listening, say, and backing up my crazy choices without blinking an eye, but she was never going to be the magical Mother of the Bride I hoped for. She was just going to be herself. In those moments I had to be reminded to rejoice in what I did have (and in my case that was a terrifically involved partner and some fabulous friends). So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Your relationship with your mother isn't going to magically change during wedding planning, no matter how much you wish it would. And that is NOT YOUR FAULT.

Now, on to the issue at hand - parents helping out financially. Ah. Good times, that. First of all, you need to have a serious talk with your fiance, and give some serious thought to deciding if you want your mother to help pay for the wedding. Because here is the thing - if she contributes financially , she is automatically more involved, for better or for worse. (This is fair, by the way. When I give large sums of money I want my opinions heard too.) I am not one of those bloggers that is going to argue that your parents shouldn't pay because it's your day, because bullsh*t. It's everyone's day, no matter what. But think carefully in this case. Very carefully.

And finally. Getting family to talk and think realistically about money (and worse, getting them to believe the astronomical costs of today's *modest* wedding, when even we don't believe it). The best I can recommend is something along the lines of what we did when money conversations got complicated: we calculated and offered two rough budgets. Budget A was how we would throw the party on our own dime in our own un-compromised style (never, never bluff here. This should be an option you are totally comfortable with actually following through on). Budget A often includes things like fewer people or less expensive food (maybe you still invite the 110 family members but just serve them cake and punch on the church lawn, or maybe you only invite 20 of your closest friends and family and take them all out to dinner.)

Budget B is a sensible, realistic plan for meeting family wishes (110 family members and dinner in a traditional venue, lets say). It includes the amount you can contribute, and then the amount family would need to contribute to make the plan feasible. It's still a plan that you are comfortable with, and reflects who you are, but in clearly gives the cost for whatever XXX thing parents *really* want you to have/provide. The great thing about this plan is it lets everyone figure out what their priorities are. Your mom may say, "Heck no. I'm not willing to pay $10K to feed those family members! I don't even like most of them!" and done, courthouse wedding it is. Or, she may say, "It would make me really uncomfortable if you just served family members cake and punch, so let me help pay for the dinner" and done, simple dinner wedding it is.

Or, she may continue to avoid the topic. And if that is the case, let that be your answer. Throw the party that is right for you and your partner - what you can afford and what makes you happy (which you should of course be thinking about anyway) and let the rest go.

Good luck, my dear! Just remember, all those stories about mother daughter bonding over wedding colors? They may be true for someone one, but for most of us? Family remains its sometimes wonderful sometimes difficult self (just amped up) when we plan a wedding.

But at the end, you are rewarded with a brand new family of two. A family that you chose.

xo
Meg

The Lazy (and possibly cheap) Girls Guide To Have A Blog-Chic Wedding

I've been hearing a lot of you stress out about having a blog-chic wedding. You want it, you think, maybe, but you're a little unclear how you get it. It seems stressful, and like it probably involves a lot of crafting, and you're not even sure what else, so you're going to put a bunch of things on your to-do list, and maybe rent a barn and hope you cover the bases.

Right. So, I don't care if you have a blog-chic wedding. Aesthetics are just aesthetics, not ethics. But. I thought I'd break it down for you, in case you've been stressing. And are lazy. And maybe broke, or just cheap. (I was both) Here we go:

• Marry someone you like. This is key. A wedding where the couple looks like, "Seriously, on further thought, this was sort of a dubious idea..." Not chic. Well, until it becomes wedding industry chic, but thank god that innovation has not yet hit the market.
• Get a stylish photographer. Not an expensive photographer necessarily, but a stylish one. A talented photographer can make a hot mess look like the most stylish thing you've ever seen. For reals (see: stunning pictures of me having a meltdown at our pre-wedding picnic) Alternative: Give your friends Polaroids or Holgas or other weird cameras.
  

Ok. Unless you're type-A, you can take a nap from now till the wedding. Yes, I know you've been taught to think that you have to *craft* and *think up cleaver details* and *have innovative save the dates* but you don't. Your wedding is now blog-stylish. Poof!

Buttttt for the type-A's out there (hey girlfriends!), I'll continue.

• Get an interesting dress. Or pants suit. Outfit, I mean outfit. Notice I didn't say 'wedding dress' or 'expensive dress' or even 'white dress.' It can be any of these things or none of these things, but the key is that it's interesting. It can be any dress that makes you say, "hummm. Now that is something interesting." But if you want to go the extra mile, make women look at it and starting pulling out handfuls of their hair while they wildly search the internet trying to discover a dress like it (Been there. So. Many. Times.) Bonus points: vintage, so there is no way for anyone to ever find a dress/outfit quite like it (cue: hair ripping)
  
• Get an interesting venue. Affordable options: guerrilla beach weddings, guerrilla park weddings, cool court house weddings, weddings under overpasses, near taco trucks, in a parents backyard, in fields, in someones house. Slightly more pricey options: in restaurants, non-guerrilla places in parks, the zoo, a circus, a castle (cheap in the right countries), old churches. Possibly wildly expensive options: Barns, museums, summer camps, farms, the family estate, a schooner in the middle of the ocean. Bonus points: having a wedding someone has never had a wedding before.
• Have fun.
  

And that's it. Seriously. You can chuck the crafts, the invitations, the details, the flowers. You can chuck it all. The real secret is that confidence makes you the coolest, and a hip photographer makes you look hip.

Now go forth and have a blog-chic wedding. Or don't. Who cares. But stop stressing about it, because I just told you how.

In Praise Of The Slow Wedding (And A Slow Life)

Kathryn of Snippet & Ink is back to posting inspiration boards again after a long break, and she is creating little works of art (yay!) But, what's been more moving to me is that as her own wedding inches closer, she's been focusing more simpler smaller weddings, and on the fact that simplicity does not have to sacrifice style. This week, she posted a link to Gia Canali's post 'Notes Towards A Slow Wedding,' where she said "Let’s take it easy. Do a few things well. Make your wedding one where you can enjoy good food and the company of good friends and family. After all, that’s why you’re having a wedding with people attending."

Ahhhh.... a slow wedding. Now that is something important. For those of you who are not familiar with it, the Slow Food Movement was born as a reaction to, well, the FAST food movement. It brought focus to the means in which we produce food, it's quality, textures, and tastes. It focuses on food as pleasure, food as a central part of our lives, food as quality not as quantity.

David and I literally had a slow food wedding. Our caterer is part of the slow food movement, in our food was local, organic, and cooked with care. I don't know if food was central to the experience of our wedding (though everyone still talks about how good it was), but food is central to our lives together, so it seemed only natural that we would focus the bulk of our wedding resources on food. That's just us. But this post isn't in praise of the slow food wedding. This post is in praise of the slow wedding.

I have a really hard time summing up what I write about here. Sometimes people try to pigeonhole me into writing about budget weddings, but that's not really it. I don't even like the *term* budget wedding, for goodness sakes. What I care about is that each of us to feel empowered to have weddings filled with simplicity, grace, and joy. I want us to feel empowered to have weddings that are focused on love, on why we are all gathered to celebrate. And it's incredibly important to me that we ALL feel that this is within our reach, whether we have $500 to spend, or our parents are insisting that we spend $50,000. No matter what, that grace and that singularity of purpose should be available to each of us.So it may be that what I'm really writing about is Slow Weddings. Take a look at this definition of Slow Food from the movement's website:

We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible. Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.

I believe the same things about weddings. I think we each have a fundamental right to joy at our weddings. I think that joy is about the simple things, and about paying attention to what you have. I believe that it is more important that we work with producers (in this case vendors, or wedding elves) that we respect, and that we treat them fairly and compensate them with a living wage that reflects the fact that this is their life's work. It's more important to me to pay people that I fairly than to make sure I get the best deal. And for us, with the resources we had, that meant picking a few things and doing them well.

We had amazing food.

We had a carefully crafted ceremony.

We have exquisite photography.

And we had joy.

And with all of that, it was impossible to notice the flaws in my homemade bouquet, the way my dress wrinkled under the bust line because I hadn't sent it off to a professional seamstress,the fact that we had our yichud in a parks & rec bathroom, our ipod play list, our simple cake, or our lack of favors.

So figure out what your doing with your wedding, what simple elements it boils down to, and then do those things well. Take a deep breath, slow down, pay attention. Put care into the things you value, and no one will ever notice the things that you don't have. Or to put it simply: you have what you need.

Pictures: Important slow small moments from our wedding, as captured by Heather & Jon of One Love Photo, fittingly on their slowest of slow manual focus Hasselbald medium format camera.

Your Wedding, Your Budget

Ok, off you go. Time to read East Side's little rant about how judging people because you think they spent too much on their wedding is just as bad as judging them because you think they spent too little. She says exactly what I think, and clearly. Best post I've read quite awhile.

People often take the title of this blog (which was, for the record, a happy accident,* not a manifesto) as some sort of statement that you have to have a "budget" wedding (whatever that means) or else. But your budget is different from my budget. It's based on a million factors: what you make, what you have saved, what your jobs are, if your family is contributing, how many people you're inviting, your free time, your location, your and your family's health, and just what you feel like spending, all of which are NO ONE ELSE'S BUSINESS. Period.

Because here is what this blog is really about: being grounded, being sensible, being thoughtful. And you cannot put a price tag on that.

Now GO. East Side says it better than I do.

*David had a political blog called Practical Progress. And I was starting to think much of the wedding stuff I had access to was capital C Crazy.

Something Old, Something Borrowed

When I first started wedding planning, I'm not sure I consciously realized how much pressure their was to buy All New Things. I mean, I'm not dull, I was aware that the pressure to spend was unhealthy, but there were things I took for granted. Wedding shoes, for example. Every blog I read, every magazine I read, every thing I read no matter how indie or how mainstream talked at length about wedding shoes. I obviously was not going to wear some traditional ugly-as-sin white 'bridal' shoes, but, considering I was wearing a short dress, I figured shoes would be key. And *everyone* cares about wedding shoes, right?

But here is the thing. I've been keeping my eye out for fantastic wedding shoes for six months now. My requirements were that:
1) They could be expensive-ish as long as they were still in my realm of spendy-but-sane.
2) They had to be fabulous.
3) They had to make my dress look even hotter than it already did.
4) If they were spendy, they had to be something that I would realistically wear again.

Reasonable rules, no? Well, here is the thing, six months later, I still haven't found anything that fits the bill, or even comes close. My dress is hard to match, I'm very particular, and I'm a terrible shoe shopper because I have no patience.

I didn't have a big lightbulb moment, over the past few weeks the light slowly started to turn on. "What if," I thought, "What if I wore those fabulous silver shoes that finally found after years of looking… the shoes I've been wearing every time I try my dress on. What If I just wore those?" So I asked my friend Lauren, indie-bride-extraordinaire, and her advice was basically this 'Wedding shoes are overrated, and any shoes that I would like to love and cherish for the rest of my life are not the kind of shoes that would go with a wedding dress. Just wear the shoes you've got.'

Right. (Shakes head hard as if getting water out of ones year). Yes, that makes SENSE.

Once I crossed the Rubicon and considered wearing *shoes* to my *wedding* that I already *owned,* was like there was no looking back. Dress for our Aufruf? Well if I happen upon something cute, great. If not? Cute black dress in the back of my closet. Outfit for our welcome picnic? If I find something cute, awesome. If not? Cute top I got on sale for 60% off. And clearly, if I find the worlds most awesome shoes between now and August, we will become friends, but until then, I'm not worried. I've got a killer pair in my closet.

We all know the rhyme about our wedding day, "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." But I think most of us think about it as, "Well, everything will be new, so I need to figure out my something old/borrowed/blue." But maybe we need to reconsider the order of things. Maybe lots of things will be old or borrowed, and we need to figure out our something new.

I'm not a martyr (trust me!) I just happen to have a closet full of things that I've painstakingly selected over the years because I love them. Why let all that sense of SELF go to waste so I can have the hot shoes of the moment? There are advantages to shopping my closet - I already like what's in it.

And heck, we're already letting our attendants shop theirs.

Picture: the shoes in question at David's brothers wedding. And yes, I wear vintage 50's cocktail dresses everywhere. The short wedding dress was a obvious choice, no?

How To: DIY Wedding Photography

I've been meaning to write about alternatives to professional wedding photography for ages, but this week I got two emails on the subject, and I decided it was time for us to chat. Here is the thing: I love photography as an art form, and wedding photography was really high on my list of priorities. BUT! I do not think that professional wedding photography is for everyone, and I don't think it needs to be. Here is a snippet of an email I got this week:

We're getting married in 4 weeks, and yesterday I made the daft mistake of going for lunch with a lovely friend who is getting hitched in a few months. We're having very different styles of wedding, but both really excited for each other. Here's the problem: over a cup of green tea, she confided in me that she is really worried about our decision not to have a professional photographer. She has a couple of friends of friends who did the same and now regret it. She was dead serious, very concerned for me, and encouraged me to reconsider, and even though I was sure we'd made the right decision for us, I'm now fretting. We decided not to have a wedding photographer because:

• We have loads of friends who are handy with a digital SLR. We've put together a list of important shots for the big day, and will divide them up, so nobody has to take more than 5 key shots (they have already agreed). Is this a mad idea?
• The cost of the photos would add an extra 10% to the wedding budget, and we don't want to get into debt. And frankly the average price of wedding photography makes me feel unwell.
• We're applying the infinite monkey theorem, whereby if we have enough people taking photos, we're bound to get some album-worthy shots.
• My parents' photo album is really 70s, only has about 30 photos in it,* but is beautiful, and to be honest that would be good enough for me.

I think this bride's reasoning is great. You don't need tons of photos of your wedding, and you can absolutely ask friends to take each take some shots. I think that all of us (myself most definitely included) put way too much emphasis on chic wedding pictures. In the end, wedding pictures stand is small documentaries. We frame a few, we put the rest in an album. Our lives move on, and the album goes on the shelf where it will one day get pulled down by a tiny daughter, or niece, or granddaughter who will peer at the dusty pages admiringly. It won't matter to her how much you spent on those pictures, just how happy you were, and how pretty you looked.

Now, if you can't afford a wedding photographer (or don't care to have one), but want a few chic pictures, some ideas:

• Buy up some Polaroid film, and a cheap Polaroid camera (I know, it's more expensive than it used to be, but you don't need that much film). Ask a few of your friends to pass around the Polaroid camera during the wedding and take shots. You'll have instant, stylish, and personal photos. We're doing this (we were given a gift of Polaroid film) and we have a photographer.
• In the same vein, if you want Polaroid style photos but don't want to pay for film, do what this bride did and have friends and family take pictures, and then use this free software to turn them into fake Polaroids (I use this on the blog all the time, it is awesome).
• Buy a Holga camera or two (you can't get much cheaper than that) and have your friends pass it around. Enjoy the dreamy and surreal results.
  
• Look into hiring a photographer who will do post production on your photos. Then shoot away and hand it over to a pro who will edit your shots to chicness.
• Or, the most obvious answer: Let your friends and family take photos for you, and have faith. You'll have simple, personal shots to remember your simple personal day. Done and done.

Other thoughts or suggestions? Supportive thoughts for the bride in question? Dish!

*Mine too! Remember, in the end you probably only really need one or two really great shots. That's what the generations to come will latch on to.

Photo via Snippet and Ink

Or White, In This Case

Team Practical: We're in style.

Via The New Yorker, of course

A New Way To Think About Wedding Budgets

If you are on any sort of a budget (which in the common parlance seems to mean that you don't have a money printing press for your wedding in the basement), the minute you get engaged people tell you that you need to prioritize what's important to you at your wedding, and build you budget from there. This seems like such deeply sensible advice, that I never gave it a second thought. It seemed so obviously true that I took it as gospel.

But here is the thing. I don't think this is helpful advice. Not really.

In some ways I *do* think it's a good way to think about things. If you have a limited amount of money to spend, it's smart to do one or two things well, instead of doing everything in a way that leaves you feeling over stretched. Maybe this means that you hire a great bluegrass band, but then have a potluck dinner. Maybe, like us, you hire a great organic and local food caterer, but then do your own flowers and have an ipod playlist. Maybe this means its all potluck, and there is no band at all, but you get to invite everyone you love. All of these plans are smart.

But. But. What the idea of priorities assumes is that things that are "good" or "of more value" to you cost more money then things that are of less value to you. And this is false.

When we sat down at the beginning of planning to talk about priorities for our reception they went something like this: I cared about a dress, flowers, good photography, and dancing like crazy. I did not care much about food, because I figured the real importance of food was just to refuel your guests so they could keep on dancing. David thought my priorities idea was nuts, so he only participated by sighing deeply, and saying "Sure."

Turns out he was right. This is how spending money has played out for us:

• When I said I cared about a dress, it turns out I meant that I cared that I had a wedding dress that reflected who I am and didn't look like every other wedding dress in the world. In the beginning I figured this might mean I needed to spend more, and I was ok with that. After trying on a million and one dresses at a million and one salons, from Lazaro to David's Bridal, it turned out that no amount of money could buy me the dress I wanted. A dress that was a powerful ritual garment for a important milestone in my life was not something I was willing to outsource to the wedding industry. So, we're making the dress. It's costing a fraction of what I thought it would, and its still very important to me. Yesyesyes, if I had a bajillan dollars, I might have gone with a lace dress, but even making a lace dress was out of the question because well, my taste in lace runs towards the French.
  
• Turns out when I said I cared about flowers, it meant that I cared about *having* flowers, period. More to the point, it meant that I cared about having flowers that didn't look like standard issue wedding blah. So, we're doing the flowers ourselves, at a fraction of what I thought it would cost.
  
• But now we get to the food. The food that I had dubbed as not important at all. Well, it turns out when I said that food was not important, I meant that I didn't want to spend money on expensive steaks and trendy appetizers so everyone could be impressed at our fancy food. But after talking to a few caterers we discovered that, in our particular situation, we could pay less and get standard issue wedding food that didn't taste like much, or we could pay a little more and get simple local organic food that tasted like heaven and reflected our values. We chose the later option. It's simple food, we're paying more for it, and we're happy.
  
• And then there was the photography. It was something that was important to us, so we found a photographer who was very talented and experienced that would give us a simple package. We paid about what we had hoped to.

I tell you all this not because I think your values should be our values, or our choices should be our choices. They shouldn't be. The whole point is that your choices should reflect who you are as a couple. But, be wary when you set your budget based on your priorities. Sometimes you find that the way you care about things is more important then how much you care about them.

There are times when things that didn't top your "priority" list end up being things you spend more on, and that is fine. It seems to be a common mis-perception that I think that the "practical" option is always the cheapest one. Heck no. There are times in wedding planning where you will think, "I do not care about this thing, and I will rip out my eyes if I have to think about it for one more second. Hence, I will throw a bit of money at the problem to make it go away." And you know what? That's the sane part of my mantra.

And sometimes, as each of the wedding graduates have reminded us, the things that you care the most about are the things that cost the least. A dress that you made yourself. The toasts people make around the table. The time you spent with your mom putting together your flowers.

So, think about your priorities with your wedding, think about what you care about and what you don't. But be very careful when to assign a dollar amount to those values, because that just may miss the whole point.

For Example:

While we're on the subject of the how you spend your wedding money, lets talk about supporting what we want to see more of in the world. Here is my vote:
If you are going to spend $1010 on a wedding dress, it might at well be hand-stitched. No, I don't mean handmade, I mean Hand. Stitched. (Worth every penny.)
And gorgeous. I'm just saying. Yum, Sarah Seven yum. (and for sale on Etsy, natch)
Or how about this to die for dress, in white? For $118. I am. not. joking. Miss Branches is under-charging for sure, so get it while the going is good.

Because here is the thing. You know about how hippies/me talk about manifesting the things you love in the world? When you choose how you spend your money you actually, literally do that. And personally, I don't need to manifest more bridal salons, I just don't. I need to manifest more women owned small businesses. And talent. Pure, raw talent.

If you rock these, you'll send me a picture, right?
Sarah Seven via everyone, Miss Branches via etsy wedding, of course

Why I Dislike The Term "Budget Wedding"

I've noticed, over and over again, that out here in the indie wedding world, brides still a tremendous amount of pressure to fit in. It's like when we get rid of all the crazy WIC rules (favors! matching dresses! chicken or fish! limos!) we want to substitute a bunch of other rules to live up to.

I know this, because I regularly get emails from people assuring me that their wedding was practical because they spent "under $10,000" (we've put a lot of pressure around the arbitrary $10,000 number for some reason) or because they only spent $4,000, or because they spent $16,000 but that included their rings and their honeymoon. But here is the thing: I don't care. I really, really don't care how much you spent. You can spend a tiny bit of money and still drive yourself mad trying to live up to all the wedding industry standards, but at a lower price point. Or, you can spend a pile of money and still have a amazing laid back generous wedding that reflects who you are. So let's re-think this. Here are some things that I think are important:

• That you have a honest wedding. That your wedding budget (whatever it is) reflects who you are, and what you feel you can afford to spend. That when you think of your wedding budget you don't feel ill and wonder, "oh dear god, how are we ever going to pay off this party?" I mean, in my experience *any* wedding budget will make you feel ill now and then, but most of the time it should make you feel confident like, "Hey, it feels like a lot of money, but we're spending smart, and we can do this thing."
  
• That you tried to spend less then you can afford. At the end of the day, it's nice to know that you have a little in the bank in case of an emergency, and you didn't blow it all on one day. (I'm aware that this is not always possible. In my most broke days a marriage license would have felt like more then I could afford!)
• That you have a laid back wedding where you care more about having a wedding that reflects who you are then meeting some arbitrary criteria, whether they are set by a wedding magazine or a blog.
• But there is one thing that I care about most of all: I think how you spend your money is more important than how much you spend. When I look back at what we've spent our money on, the decisions I feel the best about are the ones where we put our money towards things we believe in. I don't feel best about the affordable wine we bought at Bevmo (though I think it was a smart choice), instead I feel the best about the wine that we bought on sale from Meeker - our favorite funky, low brow, small, local winery. When we bought Meeker wine, we helped support a business that we want to thrive in a difficult economic environment, and I feel great about that. I've tried to look at our wedding budget as money we are going to spend regardless, and tried to allocate it to people, businesses, and local artists that we want to thrive.
  

Drea, who's amaaaazzzzziiinnngggg wedding I posted back here summed it up well on her blog:

We wanted to keep the focus on friends and family and each other. That said; things still cost money. We decided to spend money in a way that made sense to us, on goods and services from local vendors, many of them friends, and many of them Josh's clients. I believe that these decisions, the energy we put out into our community, and our little bit of local economic stimulus are the reasons we had such a beautiful, and authentic-to-us wedding. Go karma!

So: PLEASE stop obsessing about if your budget meets some arbitrary standards, and start thinking about if it feels honest. Start thinking about where you are spending your money, and if it reflects your values and makes you feel good. And forget the phrase 'budget wedding', because it's meaningless. My budget is not your budget. My wedding is not your wedding. And if you are reading wedding sites that are making you feel sad because they are suggesting that the budget alternative for invitations is a $2,000 letterpress package or some nonsense, just stop reading. Their budget is *clearly* not your budget.

Keep it simple, keep it sane, keep it honest. And go karma!

Thoughts On The Economy And Weddings

I know that many of you are struggling these days with planning a wedding in the most painful and uncertain economy in a generation. If you are like me, you're feeling mild envy at last summer's crop of brides, and wondering why us? Why now? Some of you have just been laid off, some of you are afraid that you might be laid off soon, some of you are just sad about the myriad of ways the terrible economy is going to impact your celebration. So for all of us today, I have two kindnesses:

1) I read this week that one of the many beautiful pieces of symbolism attached to the breaking of the glass at the end of the Jewish wedding is an old saying from Moroccan Jewish villages that "A difficult beginning is a good sign." You can't say it more beautifully than that.

2) I was worrying out loud recently about all the people who might not be able to afford to travel to the wedding. A much older friend pointed out that because of the economy our guests would be thinking through why they wanted to come. Did they feel they should go out of obligation, or did they have an emotional need to come celebrate with us? And that in the end, with times being as tough as they are, the less people would make the trip out of obligation, leaving us with guests who had a strong emotional tie to us. And I realized I'd been thinking about it the wrong way, that in some small ways having our wedding this year was a blessing.

Marriage isn't easy or perfect. Our weddings are not the day of our dreams. They are a real personal emotional moment when we make one of life's most serious commitments, followed by one heck of a good party. And if that day is infused with reality, this is a good thing.

So chins up! My grandmother says, when she looks back at the 80 years of her life, she sees that all of the hardest things ended up allowing something surprising and good to come into her life. Maybe getting married in 2009 is a bit like that.

A difficult beginning is a good sign.

Negotating With Wedding Vendors (achem, Elves)

I've been asked several times if I could write a post about negotiating with your wedding vendors, and I haven't, because in the end it was something I didn't feel qualified to write. I don't provide wedding services as part of my livelihood, so I didn't want to recommend ways to negotiate the cost of that service. But, into that void has stepped Jocelyn Mathewes at Studio Mathewes Photography. She's written two very informative articles, one about what to do if you can't hire a professional wedding photographer, and one, excerpted here, about negotiating with wedding vendors.

I have a few words of advice to add. David and I have done some negotiating and bartering with some of our wedding elves, and there are a few things that I think are important:

• Listen to what your vendors need, and respect that. Maybe there is a price they can't go below. Maybe there is something they are not willing to add to a package in trade. That's fine. Remember that they, like you, have to pay their bills this month, and this is how they do it. But at the same time, communicate with them clearly. Maybe it's not that you want a much better deal, but you want access to all of your jpg files after the wedding (we did). If you tell people clearly what you need, they often will work to accommodate you.
  
• Just like you should NEVER hire a vendor who you feel is ripping you off, you should never offer something in trade where you feel like you are ripping off your vendor, or getting a deal that is 'too good to be true.' Likewise, if someone is totally out of your price range (a photographer who's packages start at $10K, and you want to pay $2K), skip it. Remember, if you are doing this right, you've got collaborative wedding elves, not icky WIC vendors, and you should never, ever, mistreat an elf. (Right? We all know how well that turns out.)
• Try to stay emotionally uninvolved with the negotiating process. This bit can be hard for me, but, remember, this is a business transaction. If they can't afford to give you the price you can afford to take, it's not that they don't like you, it's that they have bills to pay and a business to run.

And with that, I offer up a portion of Jocelyn Mathewes' article on negotiating with wedding photographers:

Lately, everyone's been tightening their belts, even when it comes to once-in-a-lifetime events, like a wedding. In the past month or so a number of hopeful couples have contacted me, only to discover that I am outside their budget. When we discover this, two things can happen: negotiation, or we part ways.

It's painful for me when we're forced to part ways. One of the most charming things about each couple who contacts me is that they all have a wonderful story, and they all absolutely deserve to have their event photographed beautifully. I'm frustrated when economic realities prevent this from happening, since I absolutely love what I do.

If negotiation opens up, fun, fruitful, frustrating, and futile things can result. Both sides suggest possible solutions, with varying success. Admittedly, I have spent very little time on the couples' end of the negotiating table. When I first realized this I paused to think: was there something that I knew, something about the way I worked, that might help couples find good compromises with the photographer they want to hire?

So here I am, offering what little nuggets of advice I have. Please keep in mind that I speak as a professional photographer, from my own experience and perspective; my opinion is decidedly shaped by being on "the other side of the table." Also, I am only one photographer; most likely my opinion and approach differ from that of others.

Things To Try: Cutting Back & Bartering

This is tricky, even if you put it nicely. I personally love the idea of negotiation, but some photographers see it as a threat to their professionalism. Even with photographers who are open to a little negotiation, it's important to communicate to them that you think their services are worth what they're asking. I love to be told that I'm valuable; don't you?

Offering to cut back or barter right off the bat, or simply saying "I don't want to pay the full amount," can sound an awful lot like "I don't think your work is worthwhile." In which case, I start to wonder if you enjoyed my work in the first place and why you would want to hire me; perhaps I'm not for you!

A good way to start is by saying, "You do wonderful work, and I'd love to be able to hire you, but I can't afford $____. Is there any way you would consider ____?" As with all communication, the how you ask is as important as what you're asking.

1. Cutting Back: Ask to reduce package options, or go a la carte

If the photographer you're looking at has packages with lots of extra do-dads that you could personally do without, it can't hurt to ask politely if they'd be willing to scale down a package for you.

Be aware that some photographers won't budge on this, as they consider the packages they offer as an integral part of their client experience. Even though it may seem superfluous to you, those packages are carefully thought out, and are a part of the attractive image they work hard to maintain.

But some photographers will be willing to trim things a bit for you, and that's great! And while I offer several scaled-down options there are still a few things I provide that I just won't cut back on, because to me it feels like I wouldn't really be doing justice to my clients.

2. Bartering: Trade your skills or trade your stuff

If I need brake work, a new couch, or someone to design a website for me, I will (and have) bartered photography for those necessary things! The art of bartering is a lost one, and I'd love to see this come back into play. It can't hut to ask politely and generally about bartering as an option for payment, and find out if it's even a possibility.

You can read the rest of the article at Studio Mathewes Photography. Maryland couples, keep Studio Mathewes in mind!

Your tips on negotiating with Vendors (or being negotiated with, if you are a Vendor/Elf) are welcomed in the comments. And keep in mind, as my friend East Side Bride told me, "Sometimes it is easier to just pay full price," which is 100% true.

Affordable Centerpieces: Harvest Bowls

Normally I don't post about little details, because BOY do we have enough places telling us that details are the focus of our day, and I for one have latent anxiety issues. But, every so often I get requests for affordable centerpieces, and I'm usually clueless. I spent years working as a professional non-profit event planner, and I would have paid cash money for good cheap centerpiece ideas.* But low and behold, fabulous reader Rebbecca sent me this idea.
We did "harvest bowls" (I made that name up) for our centerpieces and scattered copper-colored leaves on the tables. I didn't think that the tables needed a runner after those additions. Putting gourds and fruit in a bowl was incredibly easy -- it was finding the bowls that was the challenge.

I'm firmly in favor of centerpieces that can be eaten (and if you pick your fruit well, they inevitably will be, after some amount of drinking). My great aunt, who has Thanksgivings for 70 in her barn* does centerpieces like this on long tables with piles and piles of fruit and nuts. She would tell you that the key is to polish your fruit to a shine with rags. Which should give your flower girl a way to feel included.

*I can tell you what does not work, from first hand experience. Do not try pairing candelabras with red and black Mardi Gras beads, silver lame, and red roses unless you are intentionally going for a you-might-actually-catch-your-hair-on-fire-1984-phantom-of-the-opera-look.

*One of the many things I hope for out of a long and married life. First I need the barn.

PS - I am totally aware that I am now posting about bowls of fruit, but for gods sakes people, its two weeks before Christmas! Help!

DIY versus the WIC

A commenter wrote this on my recent post on economic uncertainty:

I definitely have made sure not to buy into the WIC, but at the same time I don't think I can do the DIY route either. My new career is more travel intensive (and 8 weeks before our wedding it will be at its most intense period). I don't craft. I'm not a designer (I can barely sketch!) and I don't have friends or family who are designers or seamstresses. While I really like this post, I feel like the opposite of the WIC is the DIY movement. I guess I don't really feel part of either.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since.

First of all, I don’t consider myself to be part of the DIY movement. I’m part of the do-it-together movement, but do-it-yourself? No way. I’m always reading long little essays about things people lovingly crafted by hand for their wedding days, and I’m fascinated, and then tired by the end of the post. I work really long hours, and have more than a few side projects (achem, blog, achem), so I just don’t have that much time to get things done. We’re taking on projects for our wedding, selectively. We pick projects based on what we care about, what we like to do, and what we can save a bunch of money on. Basically, we have no time, but we’re really cheap. Since David and I produced theatre together before we started dating, much of this feels natural. We designed our Save The Date’s, sure, but we used found internet images, and we’re printing them at home on our color printer. It’s creative, but not very labor intensive. My mother, sister, and I are going to attempt to sew my wedding dress, but we’ve been sewing for years, we’re keeping it simple, and we have relatively low expectations. All this helps.

As the DIY movement has reached new heights of coolness (hello etsy!) the bar keeps getting higher and higher. It’s important to remember that we can do things on our own without being professional crafters. The tips I talked about when I did my DIY flower dry run help. In sum: think about what you like, don’t follow the rules, and just go for it. Everyone is going to be far too nice to tell you that you screwed it up, and the aura of confidence covers up a world of flaws.

Which brings me to my second point: Maybe we should all just lower our expectations on this wedding stuff. I was pondering DIY vs. WIC and it occurred to me that there is a very real third option – it’s the old fashioned route. Yesterday we talked about smaller and simpler weddings of a generation ago. I don’t think our grandmothers would tell you that their wedding was DIY (though some part of it probably was. Weddings had been less professionalized a few decades ago). I suspect our grandmothers would tell us that they just worked with what they had, and made do. My paternal grandmother took a taxi from Alabama to California to marry my grandfather when he was released from a prisoner of war camp after WWII. She told me that he told her to get a white satin dress, so she bought the only one she could find and refused to let it out of her sight the whole trip. The only wedding picture we have up in our home is theirs. It was a really meaningful wedding, but I can tell you right now that they didn’t think about colors, let alone favors.

So. Where does that get us? Bride in Exile made an excellent point yesterday when she pointed out that weddings are more complicated today since most of us have people flying in from all over. For us, this meant that we really wanted to feed everyone. But, that said, regardless of where people are traveling from I think we need to lower our standards. Our guests want to see a wedding that genuinely celebrates who we are. Just because they bought a plane ticket doesn’t mean they expect us to throw them a party just like the last 5 weddings they attended. What is important is that your wedding day is really happy, and is the start of a fantastic lifelong partnership. The trick is figuring out what will make us happy, and what is just extra fluff. If you can’t DIY your dress, can you buy a white suit off the rack? If you can’t DIY your Save The Dates can you skip them altogether, and drop people a note or a give them a call? If you don’t have time to DIY confetti packets, can you just let people throw confetti by the handful?

What do you think? How can we collectively ratchet down wedding expectations? What is the middle ground between DIY and WIC?

Picture: Me rocking my DIY bouquet

On Economic Uncertainty, Fear, And Changing

Normally I don't repost pictures of weddings, but I'm making an exception this time. Many of you have probably read all about Kimi & Paul's wedding and Kimi's stunning handmade dress on A $10,000 wedding, and if you haven't go look. Now. I'll wait.

I'm reposting pictures of this wedding, because it set me free. Wedding planning has been awful and scary for us of late. Well, more precisely, life has been awful and scary for us of late, as we've been thrown emotional curve ball after emotional curve ball, and having the wedding on top of everything else has felt like too much some days.

The hardest part over the past few weeks has been dealing with, well, money. As the economic uncertainty around us has gotten more and more intense, the idea of spending money on a wedding has gotten scarier and scarier to me. I'm a money hoarder by nature, and I hate any kind of spending, so spending money on the wedding was always going to be tough. On top of all, lets just say that I have a very clear and data driven perspective on exactly what is going on in this economy, and frankly, its terrifying.

So, after a budget put together with much thoughtful consideration and discussion, we're now looking and finding more ways to simplify. We still have a very large family that we want to include, and we have a venue booked, and lots of things that we can't change much, but we've been trying to evaluate and re-evaluate things. And I was getting absolutely frozen with fear. How do you change course mid-stream, especially when you'd thoughtfully and lovingly picked the course you were on? How do you find new creative ways to make things work for you? Add to that the fact that as much as I write and think about new and interesting ways of planning a wedding, sometimes I feel trapped inside this crazy box of "how things are done" and I feel like I'm fighting for my life trying to get out.
And then I saw this wedding. Maybe it was that it took place in the Prospect Park Audubon Center, a place very familiar to me, and very close to my heart. Maybe it's that the bride clearly made simple but wildly creative decisions like making her amazing dress out of a simple sheath from Target. I don't know quite what it was. But suddenly I felt like the world cracked open for me. Of course we could do this. Of course we could throw out the way things are done (like, say, buying a dress) and figure out something new that worked for us. Of course we could simplify and streamline even more than we already had. Then I started looking at things we've already done. We have a venue we love in a public park. We've designed Save The Dates together that we adore. We've designed invitations that I love so much I have no words for that my sister will letterpress. We're excited by doing our own flowers. So we can do the rest of this. We can figure it out.

And for starters, I'm going to start asking for more help. So I talked to my sister, and we decided that we're going to attempt a wedding dress together, with her in charge of the technical aspects and me in charge of the endless pleating. If nothing else, we won't be bored over Christmas. And that's a start. And we're going to figure out the rest, somehow.

And at the very least, at the end, we'll finally be married. Dealing with economic turmoil, like dealing with everything else, is so much better when there are two of you.

As always, I welcome your stories and perspective. This is a h*ll of a time to be planning a wedding.

The rest of Kimi's amazing pictures are over here

Professional Photography Alternatives

This week a reader emailed me and pointed out that a lot of the weddings I feature have gorgeous professional photography, and that I have a lot of photographers as sponsors. This is true. I admit to being a sucker for beautiful photography, and having a soft spot in my heart for indie photographers as wedding elves*. However, writing with a eye to the practical, I'm well aware that not every couple can afford, or wants to pay for, pro-photography. Lots of the weddings that I've featured have gotten photography for free, from a pro or semi-pro friend or family member, and I think that's great. In fact, inevitably, some of the coolest weddings I receive are ones where a pro-photographer shot their best friends wedding for free - like Ember and Ben, or Kate and Colemine. That said, not everyone had a talented photographer friend. So! I can only blog about weddings people send me, so I would love for readers to email me weddings where the pictures were taken by family and friends, and stories of not using a professional photographer, and other tales of photo mischief.

When I asked for stories about affordable wedding dresses, you all blew me out of the water, and we ended up with the tale of the great wedding dress hack. So, team practical, what have you got in the way of photography hacks? Email me your stories, and leave your tips in the comments.

*Full disclosure: before I found a pack of indie photographers, I was in photographer hell. I've gone to weddings that were ruined with a photographer screaming orders "Cut the cake now! Kiss the bride!" I've interviewed photographers that came complete with scary generic shot lists. This is why I have been so excited to find photographers of the wedding elf breed.

The Best Budget Tip I Know

I've shared a number of tips and tricks on how to keep a wedding on budget - and believe you me, I've used everyone of them and then some the last few months! But it occurred to me that I hadn't shared my very best budget trick. It's as simple as this: We spend cash on all wedding purchases. We believe in this so much that we chose to have a longer engagement so that everyone could save their pennies. I know using cash isn't always possible for everyone*, but with the rest of the world pushing you to get a wedding credit card, I thought I'd tell you why this works for me.

• We are more emotionally attached to cash then to credit, which feels a bit like free money (whee, I'll pay it back when we're married and are making more money!) When I look at something I love, like say invitations, and think to myself "Yes, $2,000 is a lot more then I was planning to spend, but in the long run it's not that much," I sort of believe my own logic... until I pull out my debt card that's attached to my savings account. I know exactly how hard I worked to put every penny in that savings account, and I look at my debt card, and I turn around and walk out of the store. A credit card would not hold that power for me. If your parents are helping you out with the wedding, I suggest that if they can do it, you have them send you a check for their contribution (incrementally, if they need to). Put that money in a money market fund for the wedding. It will then emotionally become your money, not free money, and you'll feel exactly the same way about spending it.
• Compound Interest. I know, I know, but I have to do this math with you. Let's say you charge $5,000 in wedding expenses, and you plan to pay it off in 5 years, on a credit card that has a 14% APR (the average in the US). By the time you have paid off your bill (if you make no additions or subtractions to that amount over time), you paid $10,028. What just happened to your wedding budget? Is that a Kaboom that I just heard? You can calculate this here, just remember, most credit card interest compounds at least once a month.
  
• If none of this helping you stay on budget, try taking it one step farther. Instead of paying with a debt card linked to your cash account, pay with real live greenbacks. Watch, and see how putting down 50 one-hundred dollar bills for a dress makes you feel. I thought so.

* I really really do know that spending cash is not always possible for a wedding. If you are paying for some or all of your wedding on a credit card, please do not take this post as any sort of judgment. If I believe one thing about weddings, it's that each couple needs to trust themselves to find the best path for them. I just like to point out the practical paths that no one seems to be talking about.

San Francisco Budget Wedding Ideas

I have lots of ideas for San Francisco weddings on a budget, and, well, I'm only having one wedding. So, it occurred to me that I could *share* my bright ideas, and then maybe, if I'm very lucky, someone will steal my idea, implement it beautifully, and then send me the pictures. Deal? Deal!

I have two ideas that I've been dreaming about. Both of them involve a small personal ceremony, a reception for 50-60 people, quite a bit of wine, and between $6,000-$7,000 dollars for the whole shebang (in San Francisco dollars, that's something of a steal).

Idea #1
Have a small personal ceremony on telegraph hill. You could get married right by Coit Tower, or in San Francisco's hidden wonderland - the Filbert Street Steps.
That evening, around 8pm, have a small cocktail reception at my favorite wine bar in the city - Hotel Biron. It's dark, moody, and sophisticated all at once. Last time we were there we discovered you could rent it out for the whole evening for $5,000, and that includes high quality wine and tasting plates. Mmmm... if you do this, you should invite me.
Wear a sophisticated cocktail dress, and of course, killer shoes.

Idea #2
Have a small personal ceremony in the most beautiful building in San Francisco - City Hall.
Then at 5pm, rent out one of my favorite cafes in the city, Nook, on Nob Hill. Cable cars will go by both windows of the restaurant, and the sun, or fog, will stream through the leafy trees. You'll serve simple appetizers and sandwiches, wine, and good coffee.
Wear a outfit reminiscent of a 1940's wedding suit, a feather fascinator in your hair, and killer shoes, natch.

Photos: Filbert Street Steps via Flickr, Hotel Biron via, City Hall via Flickr, Nook via Yelp, and outfit by the talented Emily at Emily Style.