I’ve bothered with The Knot, and a couple of other message boards, but the amount of trolls and bridezillas is absolutely astounding.
I’m getting hitched on September 18. I’ve done basically nothing but plan a few things for the wedding, and have purchased very little so far. I am the world’s slackest bride-to-be. I have a place to have the ceremony, but no reception site. I have a dress, but it’s not made. I have bridesmaids, but they’re all picking their own dresses. I don’t have a plan for flowers or food for the reception.
I have begun saving money in a ‘wedding’ account, but haven’t been able to spend any of it on anything. I can’t order invitations, because I don’t have anything to put on the reception card.
I’m getting married 500 miles away from where I currently live, but it sure doesn’t feel like a “destination” wedding…
Anyone got any good advice for me? Or maybe just a virtual kick in the pants so that I will quit being slack and start getting on this before September 17?
Elope. Take the money and run off to the Bahamas for 2 weeks with your man and consume copious amounts of alcoholic beverages with the little umbrellas in them. If you can get out of bed long enough to order room service, anyway
First off, you have to figure out what your priorities are. Sit down somewhere quiet by yourself for about thirty minutes, and think about the stuff that actually matters to you. Make two lists, things that are really important to you, and things that would be nice. Have your fiance do the same thing, then get together and compare lists. (It might be helpful to set a deadline for both of you for getting this done.) The combined important lists are your priorities–this is where you spend your time, energy, and money, and then if you have any left over you do the nice list as you can.
Once you know where your priorites are, you can figure out what kind of reception the two of you would like, and then start looking for appropriate venues. I’d do this as early as possible, you wouldn’t believe how far in advance these places can book up. Ditto for finding someone to officiate.
I’d hold off on the flowers till I knew where I was having the reception–flowers might not be the way you want to go. We had our reception in a funky private dining room of a New Orleans restaurant, and flowers wouldn’t really have looked right. We had decorated pillar candles instead, which went much better with the room. I wouldn’t worry about food till then, either.
One thing that was really frustrating for me was trying to get Dr.J’s opinion on anything. I’d tell him that I needed him to look at this or that or the other, and he’d be hell and forever getting around to it. I finally had to start putting stuff on his desk with instructions that this was what I liked, and if he didn’t like it, he had 24 hours to suggest something else. Otherwise, we were going with this. Pushy, yes, but when you don’t have any of the ceremony planned three weeks before the wedding, it’s time to get pushy.
Best of luck, and if you need any concrete advice, feel free to email me.
Well, we are getting married the weekend before you are, and we have most of the stuff done by now! Of course, honesty compels me to add that we are scooting off to Las Vegas with a couple of friends, getting Elvis to marry us, then scooting right back to SoCal and back to work. Eloping just seemed so much easier! No muss, no fuss. Let everybody throw parties for us afterwards.
I, too, was put off by most wedding message boards; I ended up only turning to crafty ones (since we did our wedding invitations, favors, etc. ourselves) and, luckily, those had some pretty good advice.
How many people are you inviting to your wedding? I ask because we also had something of a “destination” wedding (Florida Gulf Coast), and if you’re asking a whole bunch of people to attend your special day some place far off, you gotta get that invitation or at least a “Save the Date” card out. If you opt for a “save the date,” you could easily print one up at home using a nice font and some card stock (to save $$). On a typical “save the date” you only need to include both your names, the date, and the city of the wedding…just enough info for people to book their plane tickets and/or hotel reservations.
I wish you the best of luck and please feel free to e-mail me if you need more info/support.
We got married last October and I was pretty much like you. Didn’t really have anything in mind, didn’t really care (knew what I didn’t want but not what I did). If you’re willing to spend the money, get a wedding planner. Then she can do all that stuff and you just give the orders. She’ll love working with you b/c you are so low-maintenance.
If you don’t want to do that, then just sit down one night with the groom in this and decide if there are things that you really do or do not want. (I said that if I heard the chicken dance even once, someone would die.) Surely you must know at least what you don’t want so start from there. Then, decide roughly who you want to invite. Take that number with you and get a reception place. Perhaps the place you are getting married in has something, or has some choice recommendations. Once you have the reception place, they can help you with a lot of the rest of it.
But yeah, I’d elope, personally. There are 1000 more important things in your life to worry about then what color flowers you have at the reception.
I am getting married June 26th, and I hope your planning goes well…
I would imagine that it being 500 miles away makes it pretty rough… It may be worth getting a wedding planner to plan everything else… (just a thought)
I did find the knot usefull… along with searching for other sites that are around my area… (I am in NJ… so I would google “NJ weddings”) That gave me some decent sites…
June 26th is coming very quickly… and I am still not done with everything… there are just a few more small details we have to work out… Then we are off to Jamaica… I can’t wait!
I’m getting married May 1. We (well, me, actually) did our own invitations and wedding favors.
For the rest of it, we’re going to be using a facility that has a package deal for the service and reception. I really didn’t want to have to futz with a lot of details since I’m a worrier, and tend to stress out MAJORLY over everything. So they handle the service and reception, the caterer, basic flowers, cake, officiant, etc. for not too much money. But we’re also having a small (40 people) wedding.
Well, we’re having a small wedding, too. No more than 50 people, and most of them are my friends/family. I found really cheap, pretty invites, so I’m probably going to just use those. (Ya can’t beat 100 invites for $60. I’ve tried.) I don’t have access to a good printer, anyways, so doing them myself would kind of be difficult.
moi, I’m not really sure that I need a ‘save the date’ thing. The only people travelling to this wedding are the groomsmen, their dates, and Fiancee’s mom. But they are all well-aware of the date, so I think I’m safe on that. We are planning a Baltimore area reception sometime after the wedding, so we’re only sending out a couple of invites here.
My biggest problem is finding a reception spot. There aren’t too many places in Charleston that won’t break my budget. (Apparently, Charleston is the MOST expensive place in SC to get married. Even the marriage license is 3 times that of other counties.) At this point, I’d be willing to have the reception in my parents’ backyard, but we’d have to find a place to park cars. (I would use the local church parking lot down the street, but they have Sat. night services, and the wedding is going to be at 7 pm.) We are working on a really tight budget (less than $2K), so I’m trimming excess where I can.
We did decide (or should I say I?) that the reception is going to be a ‘dessert/cocktail hour’, so that cuts the food and beverage budget down some. The only things that we’ve really been able to pinpoint that we want are:
evening wedding
dessert/cocktails
simple, but nice
reception is key
I just feel a little lost. Overwhelmed. Swamped. And I really haven’t done a thing.
