Warning: when you plan your own wedding you will have time for nothing else.
I stopped blogging to focus on my new job which needed a lot of attention and to work out the final details of the wedding. And I'm happy to say that it was a great success. It far exceeded my expectations and was filled with the sweetest, happiest memories you could ever hope for. I learned a lot about the realistic and unrealistic and accomplished my goal of my dream celebration within my limited budget.
I dodged a lot of high prices. Example: the florists estimates for my bouquets and boutonniere's only started at $900. We did them for $200. And they were peonies.
We had some last minute stress factors. Like heavy rain all week, swarms off bugs on the property (so we arranged for a pest control visit), and some centerpiece miscommunication but it all came together.
Some advice that will make life easier for you on the day of your wedding. Hire a wedding planner or ask a close friend to act as the planner for the day of your wedding. A dear friend of mine did that for me and she was incredible. She came in 2 days before the wedding, stayed with me, made sure I was on schedule, that I ate, handed out the final payments, made sure I always had a glass of champagne and took care of all the vendors when they had questions. And they will have questions. I introduced her to them all and she had a list of people who could help. For example, if there were any necessary last minute purchases, she knew to go to my Aunt Sandy. They kept everything running smoothly and helped me relax.
It was amazing. And I can't thank me amazingly talented family and friends for everything they did to help make it happen.
Like my cousin who made an awesome cake! And our friend who Djed and my grandmother and sister for making bouquets and my friends for putting centerpieces together. The list goes on and on.
If you have any questions of are looking for some ideas for particular projects then please let me know. I'd love to continue to share more about what I learned. And I wish I could help couples plan their weddings full time because I love it so much. It was very satisfying to see all the hard work and planning come together but at the end of the day the best part was being married and then celebrating with my nearest and dearest.
And with this post, I retire. I was thinking of continuing and I'm still exploring the possiblity of doing some more work with wedding planning but for now I feel very content to just.... be married.
