Following celebrity weddings and reading glamorous bridal magazines can be a lot of fun, but nothing’s more helpful than learning how real brides plan their big day. With that in mind, meet OWD's Real Brides: real OurWeddingDay.com brides-to-be sharing their experiences every day. It’s not about the “right” way to plan; it’s about each bride planning the wedding that’s right for her.
With wedding bells and endless amounts of tulle in mind, I started planning my wedding two weeks after Mr. Right popped the question. What can I say, I’ve been dreaming about this day since I was almost out of the womb!
The first thing we did was select our bridal planner, which wasn’t as easy a task as I had expected to be. Jay and I had a mini-argument about which bridal planner to use. The one he wanted to get was ugly but had tons of little pockets to store receipts and paperwork in. I wanted a really pretty, slightly less organized one. I told him that if I had to look at the thing for the rest of my life it was going to have to be pretty. So I, with a reluctant fiancé in tow, marched up to the counter and bought it. From that day on, that book and I have been best friends.
From the get-go I have included Jay in all of the planning. Most of my guy friends I talk to tell me when they get married they want the girls to take care of the details and they will just show up. Not the case with my guy. I’m really happy that he wants to be as involved with the wedding planning process as I am, which means he will be able to enjoy that day with as much pride and joy as I am knowing that we pulled it off together.
I guess the hardest thing to keep in mind is where we stand on our budget which is close to $13,000. I have become aware that that isn’t very much money in the wedding industry, especially because I’m planning a wedding consisting of about 350 guests (which is another story all in it’s own). We ended up making the decision to plan our wedding all by ourselves in order to forgo the extra cost. We haven’t worked out the ‘wedding day’ mechanics yet but we know that the day before we are going to set up the décor for the ceremony venue and reception, before the rehearsal. I barely have any ideas about the ceremony decorations but we’ve been dreaming up ways to decorate the reception.
Needless to say we are having to crunch on our spending for the wedding items. A lot of our shopping I am doing online through stores like ThingsRemembered.com for our cake serving set, ebay for various items, and InvitationsByDawn.com for our invitations and our guest book as well. I guess I can be called quite the online bride. I am ALWAYS online looking at wedding stuff trying to find the right candelabras for the main table or the right aisle runner.
The thing I would recommend to every bride that have REALLY is a wedding planner book, complete with plenty of checklists. My parents have been complete angels about everything including taking me dress shopping. I had done quite a bit of window shopping online and seriously considered ordering online but I really didn’t want to skip out on the trying-on-the-dress experience. I work right across from a David’s Bridal so I stopped in. I had seen their site previously to going in so I knew what I wanted and it was the first dress I tried on. I had fallen in love with it online but I fell in love with it when I put it on also. The size was perfect as well. So I rang fiancé and said (ever so sweetly!), “baby, I found the dress.” In a few minutes we had it all wrapped up and ready to take home. So excited!
I am also on a budget. Check out this website that I found with the best organza bags for the cheepest price! I have ordered the organza bags and the programs. I will soon be ordering my bubbles and lilac organza ribbon from them too. Do a search with the word wedding to see what they have. I have already told my friend at school, who is also planing a wedding and she loves it!