Before I get further into this, let me give you all a little back story. I am obsessed with paper, organizers and office supplies in general. One of the best Christmas presents I have received in recent years was an old school Franklin Covey planner. I didn’t write a damn thing in it. I merely liked the idea of it—that I could be the type of person that is so important and organized that I have my life planned down to the minute. In reality, I am a mess of hastily scribbled scraps of paper. Receipts come skittering out of my purse uninvited, I can never find a pen, and I am frequently late for, well, everything. But oh! Those crisp sheets of lined paper all neatly bound, each clearly marked off for a day full of phone calls, meetings, and appointments. I didn’t end up using it much since the events in my day-to-day life go something like this:

9am-12pm: Sleep late, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, surf the internet

12-1pm: Get ready for soul sucking job

1pm-10pm: Attend soul sucking job

10pm-12am: Drink vodka tonics at local bar. Smoke more cigarettes. Flirt with bar manager

12am-2am: Play Rock Band. Impress all of my friends with my mad drumming skills.

See? It would be very depressing to schedule time to play Rock Band. So the planner merely sits on my desk gathering dust looking very, very important.

But with the ring on I finally had a purpose, a goal, something to plan. I was going to be a very organized bride.

And then I went shopping.

I couldn’t find one wedding organizer I liked.

Have you seen these things? They are a mess of pink, with hokey looking fonts spelling out “your special day”. There are flowers, bows, and sappy looking couples staring deep into each other’s eyes. They are sentimental, precious, and overwhelmingly tacky.  These were wedding organizers for women obsessed with unity candles, matching sea-foam dresses, scrapbooking, and tote bags with the word ‘bride’ bedazzled on them. Not for me.

Where oh where was the planner for the bride who wanted something fresh, something modern, something she wasn’t going to be embarrassed toting around for the next year?

Finally, I have found it.

russel+hazel  make an amazing looking wedding planner. They even have downloadable templates to put in it. Yes, it is stupid expensive ($75). But just look at it. No bows! No swirly fonts! No pink!

I can actually start planning my wedding now.

I am not rich.  Should I start my new life pretending like I am?

With my broke down self in mind (and for others like me) — I present my Cheap, Cheaper, and Cheapest money saving wedding tips.

The Dress

Cheap- Try a bridal resale shop. Some stores, like whiteChicago have great designer gowns which were originally designer samples or gently worn dresses on sale for less than half of their original retail price.

Cheaper- Check out David’s Bridal. I shudder to mention this place, as it has always creeped me out a little bit (row after row of those cheap dresses all mashed together in plastic—yuck!) but if you look hard and try on a ton of dresses, they really do have a few pretty dresses.

Cheapest- Win a $200 dress on ebay. Crazier things have happened. Persistence, timing and luck are all a factor here.

Invitations

Cheap- Order offset printed invitations. They don’t look as crisp or feel as elegant as an engraved invitation (or even one printed using some kind of raised thermographic printing technique) but they are functional and can still be very pretty.

Cheaper- Make your own invitation from one of those kits you can buy at Target or a craft supply store. Making your own invitations will take patience, time, and a good printer.

Cheapest- Send out an evite. Yeah, it’s kinda tacky, but free! I repeat free.

Tip- Know your printing methods AND ask your various wedding vendors if they sell invitations. Many planners, bridal salons and other vendors sell wedding invitations as an extra money making venture. Often they will discount as much as 20% off your invitations if you are purchasing other things from them.

Flowers

Cheap- Try one of those wedding flowers in a box services. Go for common or less popular blooms to keep costs down. Carnations are really cheap and have a kind of a vintage vibe I am really all about lately.

Cheaper- Buy your own flowers from the local farmer’s market and assemble your own bouquets.

Cheapest- Make unique bouquets and centerpieces from paper flowers, bits of feathers and other found items.

Tip- Never order flowers out of season.

Cheap- Order a small cake (which could never possibly feed all of your guests) for display and the cake cutting ceremony (you gotta have those pictures, right?) but serve your guests from a larger (and cheaper) sheet cake.

Cheaper-Serve pie, cheesecake or other sweet treats which are less labor intensive to make and have a lower per person serving cost.

Cheapest- Put those bridesmaids to work. Have your attendants help make cupcakes to serve in lieu of a wedding cake. Decorated in pretty colors and displayed on a stand, cupcakes are a cheap and still look cute.

…And finally…Cut out the extras! Do you really need…

-Extravagant transportation for you and your wedding party?

-Fancy toasting glasses, cake servers and other random serving pieces you will probably never use again?

-Photography and Videography?

-Custom printed programs? Is this a wedding or a Broadway show?

-Printed anything—monogrammed matchbooks, napkins or other such nonsense?

…links for some of the tips coming soon…

Tell me if this sounds familiar…

You arrive in some dank building with acoustic ceiling tiles. The floor is sticky and everything smells vaguely like grease, beer, and the sweat of a thousand old men. For a minute you hover in the doorway and scope out the decorations—tulle, twinkle lights, fake flowers, and balloons  are dangling, draped, tied, swagged and staple gunned to everything in sight. To the right of the door sits the gift table, you throw your card in the “wishing well” and scan the room for a seat. You never have a seating assignment at these receptions; instead you plop down at any table with enough room.

 While you wait for your friends, you admire the “centerpiece”—usually some version of candles floating in Wal-Mart’s finest glassware, arranged on a hexagon shaped mirror. For a minute you inspect your party favor—some type of candy or almonds wrapped in tulle, but you get frustrated trying to get the ribbon off, and so you head for the bar. At the bar, you order a Bud Light or a soda (the only beverages available for free).

Eventually, the wedding party arrives, and the DJ plays “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble” to announce the wedding party. They stumble into the room—pumping fists and yelling. You notice one of the bridesmaids is missing, and later learn she was throwing up next to the wedding party’s stretch Hummer.

 Dinner is a buffet served on plastic plates with plastic silverware. The menu consists of mushy pasta, even mushier chicken, floppy green beans, stale rolls, and an iceberg lettuce salad garnished with carrot shavings and approximately three slivers of shredded cheese. You don’t eat much, but drink a lot and now you are drunk, and secretly gleeful that so many of the girls from high school are fat.

Toasts are short and sweet, if they happen at all, because everyone is in a hurry to get to the good part—the dancing. The first dances are traditional, except during the bride and groom’s big slow dance, when the Toby Keith love song suddenly cuts off and fades into “Baby Got Back”. You watch as the bride really gets in to it—shaking her booty for all she is worth, while the groom stands open mouthed, appalled by her antics. For a few minutes, you wonder which phrase would work better during this situation, “Shock and Awe” or “Shock’n Y’all”.

Finally, the real dancing begins and you throw yourself into it—the Electric Slide, the Macarena, the Cha-Cha slide, the Chicken Dance. You do the YMCA and you even ‘throw your hands in the air like you don’t care’ during “Word Up”. You slow dance with an old ex-boyfriend from high school who is balding and has sweaty hands. You return to your table glad he broke up with you after junior prom. If things had worked out differently he could have been your husband—this could have been your wedding reception.

Hopefully, I am not the only one who has been to wedding receptions like this. I may be revealing a little too much of my Southern Illinois roots, but whatever. I haven’t been to a VFW hall in years, and I kind of miss them. I guess, since I have moved up the socio-economic ranks far enough to be invited to “fancy” receptions at country clubs, museums, swanky ballrooms and banquet halls, I get a little nostalgic for a low-fi  VFW  style reception.

Pass the Mostacolli. I’m hungry.

Music and stationery are probably my two biggest wedding obsessions. Most brides seem to get hung up on things like dresses and the perfect ceremony location, but oh no, not me. Give me a custom designed letterpress invite and some rockin tunes and I will probably call my wedding day a success despite any other calamities that might blight my “special day”.

Most wedding advice columns, manuals, magazines etc. all say the same thing about invitations—they set the tone for the wedding and let the guests know what to expect. So if I send you a cream colored engraved invitation from Crane with a swirly font and request “the honor of your presence” you know I am having a pretty formal (and most likely stuffy) traditional wedding.

If I send you something like this

(insert image of an irreverant wedding invitation here. I couldn’t get my photos to upload today. Sorry.)

 You know to expect a different kind of wedding – a little less traditional, perhaps a lot more fun, and definitely super fancy (Custom Ceci invitations like the ones I planned on posting here start around $2200 with the average cost around $4000— a girl can dream, right?).

Wedding music also sets the tone, although in a slightly different way.  If I hire the string quartet, pay someone to sing Ava Maria, and hike up and down the aisle to the Wedding March (processional? recessional? When is this played in the wedding?) I set an expectation of the same old, same old, traditional wedding. If I bebop down the aisle to… hmmm… I don’t know, the Jackson 5? I make a completely different impression (perhaps not a good one).

And just like my ongoing struggle to determine a favorite song, I struggle to figure out what kind of music I want played at my wedding. For my big walk down the aisle, I am considering one of the promenade movements from Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”. For the rest, I am completely befuddled. My fiancé is into old school punk, maybe we should play Fugazi’s Turkish Disco, or some other such nonsense?

With the bee theme, I am leaning towards music with bee/honey/tree motifs. I started a list of these songs once, but now all I can remember is “Tupelo Honey” by Van Morrison. A wedding soundtrack, one song does not make.

Damn.

At least I can always get the girls at Wedding Music Central to lay down some funky beats if I get desperate.

I love these things!

This year was my third year attending this particular show and I knew exactly what I needed to do. I slid right past the registration table and headed directly for the free champagne. In the next hour I consumed beef satay, a seafood salad, several bacon wrapped scallops, an egg roll, a chocolate dipped strawberry, an unladylike amount of salmon mousse puffs, two pieces of mini gooey butter cake, a couple of cookies, a cupcake, and several pieces of the aforementioned sample cake.

…then I waddled out to the parking lot, went home, and threw up.

Bridal shows aren’t really supposed to be about the food. Theoretically, I am supposed to be networking with potential florists, bakers, and wedding planners. But bridal shows are crammed with so many wedding charlatans hawking their wares and hoping to get their hands on my phone number (Seriously, I have had this custom made swimsuit company call me every week for the last year. I didn’t even know custom made swimsuits even existed!) The only way to attend unscathed is to go “undercover”.

By “undercover”, I mean passing myself off as a member of the group of girls who are already married or who hope to be married soon. I no longer register myself as a “bride” and I never, never wear the sticker, the carnation, or display whatever symbol the show promoter has set aside to cull the marks from the masses.

And we are marks right? Brides-to-be are like neon flashing dollar signs. Every two bit huckster in sight is trying to sell us something. And we want to buy it! I want to buy it! Of course I want the $1700 photo booth at my reception. I want to buy the custom made letterpress invitations which cost $12 apiece. I want a dessert bar, and a gigantic ice sculpture and I really want to serve those salmon mousse puffs on gilded silver trays.

But none of that is in my budget.

So I skulk around the perimeter of the bridal show stuffing my mouth with canapés; skirting the booths of hopeful vendors trying to get ideas and inspiration I can translate for my low budget wedding.

I like wedding themes—an overall concept which is introduced with the wedding invitation and then is carried out through the ceremony, the reception, the music etc. These ideas tend to be a little too matchy- matchy (like an over coordinated outfit) but I can’t stop coming up with them anyway.

Wedding themes I have discarded in the past year…

Story Book

Colors: white, gray, purple

Time of Year: Fall/ Sunset

Save the Date- Vintage fairy tale books which open to an insert designed to look like those lined pages that are stamped when you check out a library book.

Invitation- A custom made story book invitation.

Ceremony Location- Story Land, New Orleans.

Story Land is a whimsical children’s playground in City Park. Each area of the little park depicts scenes from well known fairy tales and children’s stories. I mean who doesn’t want to get married in the whale that ate Pinocchio?

This theme makes me think of fairy wings, gossamer ribbons, groomsmen in tails, a gigantic cake spiraling into the sky, and a march down the aisle to Stravinsky’s Sleeping Beauty.

**I abandoned this idea simply because I am too cheap to have a destination wedding, but when I lived in New Orleans it would have been perfect and relevant since I went there all of the time with James (that’s my fiancée by the way).

Carousel

Colors:  red, white, small pops of yellow

Time of Year: Summer/ Day

Invitation-  This red and white swirly number is evocative of carnivals and vintage popcorn containers.

Ceremony Location- The Carousel at Faust Park, St Louis

I think this space is mostly rented out for children’s birthday parties—but why not a wedding? They have a great pavilion where you can have your reception and everyone gets a free spin on the carousel.

…Think Calliope music, immense handmade lollipops, huge bouquets of balloons bobbing in the wind, cotton candy, and vodka infused lemonade

But this one didn’t work out either since Faust Park insists you use caterers from their list. I have no problem with this concept (as it is extremely common) but sheesh!  Could they at least offer a list of caterers with a range of prices? I can’t afford $50-75 a head for a super casual afternoon wedding.

The Bee’s Knees

Colors:  Yellow, Celery, White

Time of Year: Summer-ish

Invitation- I still haven’t ordered any yet so I will post several options—vote on the best. I think they should have bees or trees on them (or both) but I really like the poster style one. See? I can’t make a decision.

Ceremony/ Reception Location: Bee Tree Park, St. Louis

This park is pretty (and cheap) and I like the name.  I am going for a kind of a kicked back/ rustic/ vintage vibe.

…Think bottled sodas in galvanized buckets, tiny honey pot favors, picnic tables covered in vintage tablecloths, cheap wine, cheap beer, hunks of crusty bread, marmalade, and pinwheels.

I am sticking to this theme (reluctantly) but as of yet still have not found….

-Invitations

-caterer

-dress (and assorted frou frou trappings)

-photographer

-music  (DJ?  Band? Ipod? Help!)

-flowers (and décor type items)

-enough vintage tablecloths

I know what I want my cake to look like but still need to find someone to make it.

(I think this picture came from some issue of Martha Stewart…but I have been hanging on to it for a while, so I am not sure.)

Oh, Lord. I have a lot to do.

Recently, my best friend got married. And while her ceremony was beautiful and the reception was fun and everything sailed smooth, and people smiled and made toasts etc. — behind the scenes everything was drama. A bridesmaid (the groom’s sister) was bounced from the wedding party for getting a gigantic phoenix tattoo, another bridesmaid was reprimanded for wearing her hair down, the remaining bridesmaids were forced to wear matching Juicy Couture sweat suits the morning of the wedding, and finally, the caterers were reamed for serving garlic mashed potatoes instead of twice baked potatoes.

I am so not that girl.

My wedding only needs a few things to be considered successful—the people I love in attendance, good music, and plenty of cocktails at the reception—everything else will work itself out. I don’t care if my bridesmaids want to march down the aisle covered in tattoos and wearing roller skates, I don’t care if my shoes come from Payless. I don’t want to wear, or own, or be given any item with the word “bride” bedazzled or Swarvoski crystaled on it. I won’t fight my best friend for a wedding venue (Bride Wars, anyone?). And no one is getting ready in color coordinated sweat suits.

Perhaps I am the anti-bride, bride?

But paradoxically, I love weddings. I am having so much fun planning mine I can’t stop (I have been engaged for two years). Mostly, I like all of the tiny details that make up a wedding—the scrawl of calligraphy across an envelope, the heft and promise of a wedding magazine, the satin ribbon wrapped around the stems of a bouquet. Weddings—yours, mine, ours– are about the little moments that add up to love, to hope, to something new—

Life isn’t perfect.  I don’t expect my wedding to be perfect either.