Congrats LPT :~)

My hubby and me just got married at the Justice of the Peace at lunchtime.

Congratulations!!! How exciting for you. =)

We got married at the Justice of the Peace too. We had close friends and family out for a gathering on the weekend. Family style, lots of people brought the food and we brought the cake. We actually had to have to parties….lol

Congratulations.  This is great news.  May you have a lifetime of love n happiness together.

50-75 people sounds like a lot to me too.    Sounds like you got all the bases covered with your sister helping with the food and another making the cake.   Thats great.

How exciting! Congrats!

Just one piece of advice since you’re doing everything yourselves. Make absolutely sure everyone knows exactly where they need to be and when! Even things that might seem obvious are the ones that cause the most trouble. I’m still angry with my in-laws for not showing up to the wedding until 10 minutes before the ceremony. Um, hello? What about the pictures? The photographer was all ready to go, but they were no where to be found. So we had to take the pictures after the ceremony and our guests had to wait a long time for us to get to the reception.

Congrats

I got married in my mom in law’s living room. same place she and my hubby’s dad got married in fact We just had 2 friends to witness, plus hubby’s parents, grandma, and a couple of his mom’s friends that helped us with flowers and cake. All we had to pay for was the marriage license, as his mom knew a minister too lol. yay free stuff lol.

any bigger and i would have gotten massive stage fright

Do you know anybody that can cook for you and take photos?

I have a friend that practically volunteered to cook for my wedding (in the far future). She LOVES cooking for other people lol! I’ll likely have a mix of hamburgers and Hawaiian food. I have another friend that I’ll pay to take pictures. She took pictures of Chacha late last year. She does a really good job with editing.

I plan to hand make some things like invitations and table centers.

I like how you want a different dress I love watching “Say Yes to the dress,” though sometimes I want to punch some of the people on the show I really really like one shoulder dresses.

Oh how wonderful! (((((((hugs)))))))))) Congratulations!
Hubby and I tied the knot in Vegas. We were going to have a full-on fancy wedding, then I began to feel like it was going to be too much of a big production, so I opted for the quick elopement method…lol. I had the dress already, so I wore that (and looked completely overdressed for the occasion) but I was still so nervous I didn’t eat all day and had a few sips of champagne to steady my nerves at the last minute and was so sick by the time the reception dinner came around I just wanted to go back to the hotel room and sleep…lmao. We had to go back to Pismo Beach (where we were living at the time) the next day to work, so we never really got a honeymoon. What a fiasco! ^_^
Yet it’ll be 23 years this March. So it was a good wedding. But to me the stigma of Vegas will always make me feel kind of weird about it. At least Elvis didn’t officiate! rofl!

BTW, sending you something in the mail today, sorry it’s late but it’s just been one thing after another this month! I guess I didn’t recall exactly where your part of Canada is properly, I thought you were closer and I had more time.

Moosie says he wants to be invited to weddings. He already has his tux, you see.

I have a big smile on my face. Congratulations!!! Well, I suppose it’s belated seeing as you’ve been engaged 5 years… but all the same… Your plans sound lovely!

My only advice is be clear about what you and Ricky want for the day. Write it down and even write what others (well meaning) might insist on and your reasons for not having that etc. From observations, much of the stress around weddings comes from trying to cater to how everyone thinks things should be. Then changing things on the run. Try not to be deterred from what you guys want. I think having it written down gives you something to go back to and to reaffirm what’s important to you when you’re feeling pressure from others. Hopefully, your family and friends know you both well enough and you won’t be facing any of that.

Will you be having official photos with the fur babies?

Congrats! How exciting!

DH and I got married in 2009 with 75 guests, so hopefully I can offer a couple good suggestions. 75 felt like a ton of people, but they were all close friends (far more friends than family) and I’m glad that each and every one of them was there. Still, it definitely felt like a “big” wedding to me, even though most places required 100 people minimum, so clearly it was relatively small.

You mentioned food, but what about alcohol? Is it going to be dry? Some places will let you bring your own and some won’t (because of liability laws, usually) so check into that. It can add a lot of extra cost. Even if you don’t drink, I think it’s usually a good idea to offer at least a couple beer and wine choices.

For dresses, definitely check out bridesmaid dresses that come in white and look on JCrew. You can find a lot of cheaper dresses that way that aren’t too typically bridal. I almost got one from JCrew.

Any plans for flowers? I’ve heard you can order them wholesale and make the arrangements yourself (sounds like your sister would be good at that). I don’t know anybody personally who has done it though.

What are your plans for the food? I’m not personally into DIYed wedding stuff because I wanted to relax as much as possible the couple days before and I knew I would get stressed out trying to do too many things. I do have a friend who made her own cake and it turned out great. Just make sure you have a plan – cooking for even 50 people is a lot and you don’t want to be up until 4am the night before making food. Enlist lots of help 🙂

Oh, and I also absolutely didn’t want to dance with DH by ourselves in front of everyone, so I invited our wedding party up to dance too. Plus, they got to dance with their actual SOs instead of the other wedding party members (they were friends and knew each other for years, but I’m sure they were much happier to dance with their own guests). I also had a big table for our whole wedding party plus their guests (there were only 4 of them, so it wasn’t too big) so we could sit together at dinner and talk and have fun. That was one of my favorite things that we did.

Congrats! HUGS!!!

Wow, lots of “Justice-of-the-Peaces” here… that was my wedding too! LOL! We were very young and just starting out, we didn’t want to go totally broke for one day.

Keep us posted on how your planning goes, I want DETAILS!

Congrats!! Maybe you could search Etsy.com for craft ideas…perhaps you’ll see something you like and think “hmm, I could make something like that!”

Etsy is fantastic! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I got jewelry from there and a hair-thingy (I didn’t wear a veil, so I got a hair clip thing instead). You can find so much great stuff there, even invitations.

I liked Vista Print for invites and save the dates. They’re ridiculously cheap (I think I spent $0.25 per Save the Date) and you can completely customize whatever you want.

For favors I think anything edible is good! I know people who have given out homemade cookies or home-brewed beer and both were hits.

Congratulations! I’m not much help on this – we opted to get married in Vegas. With my family in one country and Scooter’s family in another (well more than one) we knew that no matter where we had the wedding it meant that some people would have to travel. So we figured hey let’s make everyone travel and make a vacation out of it, and we picked a nice chapel in Vegas (yes there are such things) and got married there. Ceremony itself was short and sweet, the package didn’t cost that much and included photography and flowers. We bought an invitation package set rom Staples and printed them ourselves. I already had the dress (long story), bought it on sale years earlier for something like $260. Since we were doing a Vegas wedding we went with personalized decks of playing cards as wedding favours.
– Annette

Speaking of wedding dresses, what sort of dress were you thinking? A tea-length dress? Or a long dress that is really sleek and simple?
You may want to check JC Penney and Nordstrom, they have some simple dresses there. If you’re looking for a real bridal gown, Alfred Angelo has some nice dresses and they are fairly inexpensive (as far as wedding dresses are concerned anyway). I’m picturing a few below (only because I like looking at wedding dresses!).

LPT, you could wrap up choc molten lava cakes for wedding favours! Yum!

If you want to keep it fun and light hearted, what about fortune cookies? You could make fortunes personalised for guest. Make it more meaningful or just have some fun with it.
I just found these which are cute. http://www.favorsplus.com.au/prodde…ies_1Heart
Or you might be inspired by something else on the site.

I’ve received inscribe shot glasses before. Glassware or coffe mugs are always useful afterwards. You can inscribe a message on the bottom, fill it with choccies or cookies and wrap it up nice.

Another thing you could do not have the same thing for every guest. You could have something more suitable for each depending on their sex, age, interests etc…
I don’t mean something different for every guest because that would be time-consuming. But you could have say five different items, one for young women, younger men, older women, older men, children etc

Jersey, we did glassware for our favors (personalized pint glasses) and those suckers were expensive! Haha. Totally worth it though.

If you do want to do glassware, keep it to one color and it’s fairly cheap. I think ours ended up having 4 colors which really drove the price up.

That dress is gorgeous! Love it.

I don’t think you need to do any favors for your wedding…I would consider cutting that out. Just make sure you take pictures to remember it by.

You probably don’t have a David’s Bridal near you, they have 2 stores in Canada. They have cheap dresses though. Here’s a link to a search, hopefully it works.

http://www.davidsbridal.com/Browse_Bridal-Gowns-Shop-By-Silhouette-Sheath___lh

As for favors, we did magnets. I figure if you are going to give favors at all, that they should be something that people won’t throw away the second they get home. Everyone can use a magnet! I love going over to someone’s house and seeing our magnet stuck to their fridge! Ours were fairly expensive because we opted to do the ceramic tile kind. They have our names and the date on them. But you could have less expensive ones made, like those vinyl ones are cheap.

congrats lpt!!!! 

so exciting!  i love the dress too… that style is so feminine and pretty.  how about instead of wedding favors you send out thank you’s with your fav pic of you and the groom?  my best gf and my step bro just got married last summer.  they had less than 40 guest tho it wasn’t too low key sing they splurged and had the wedding at a beautiful inn. 

you can find some pretty good deals for non-traditional wedding gowns / bridesmaid gowns at a wedding gown shop too.  and for invites she went non-traditional and had “postcard” style ones designed that were gorgeous and inexpensive.  here is a pic of the placecard she used which matched.

OMG congrats!!!!!!!! *HUGS* The dress is beautiful!!

I was considering eloping because it is SCARY (For me!) to get married!!! lol But I feel ya on the not really wanting the whole day-or stressing out about it. But your going to have so much fun-I’m sure. Weddings are a blast

Promise me we get pics on here of the blushing brides special day!!

Congrats and happy planning!  I miss planning but at the same time it was a bit stressful   My colors were aqua.  The centerpieces was a small vase that we put aqua and dark blue marbles in and filled it up with water and got a floating flower candle that we light.  We didn’t rent anything, but we have a Michaels by us and we would go out every week and use the 40% off coupon from the weekend paper to save some money on it.  If you have one by you, get family members to save that coupon and go out and each by one.  I still have all 35 of my vases and a whole bucket of marbles!  LOL!  I can always resell them.  

Alfred Angelo has some pretty dresses.  Be careful of David’s Bridal; I’m not sure if this is for every store but in ours, they charged for each alteration.  I got mine at a place in PA called Helen Freeds and they charged just one price for alterations instead of $20 for this and $20 or so for that…it can really add up that way.  If you find a dress you absolutely love but it’s out of your price range, find the maker of it and look it up and print a picture or take a picture of yourself in it and go to a less expensive store and show them that picture.  You might be surprised to find a dress very similar for 1/2 the price.  That’s what happened to me.  I found a dress but it was $1400!!  I absolutely loved it but too much, so I went to Helen Freeds and told them about the dress and they found one not only similar but much prettier and it was around $700.  My dress was from this company and I absolutely love their dresses: http://www.sotteroandmidgley.com/  Watch beading under the arms because your arms rub against it and can make red marks under your arms (mine didn’t have it but some of the dresses I tried on really bothered me)

Don’t try to make all your bridesmaids happy, it’s just not possible, I tried believe me.  Most important thing is make sure your bridesmaids are TRUE friends!  I have a horror story about mine but it’s way to long to tell.  She was the maid of honor from hell!  And I believe she had major jealousy issues that I was getting married.  I gave her too many chances and it got ugly because she refused to leave the party with respect, so I had to kick her out and we’re not longer friends.  Ugh.  

I like LBJ’s idea for magnets for favors. I can’t tell you how many wedding favors I’ve ended up tossing because they weren’t useful and just took up space in my junk drawer. Either do something useful, or just skip them all together.

Yep, the magnets were a big hit. I definitely think favors should be something useful, otherwise they are a waste of money.

For center pieces, we had tall cylinder vases of varying heights clustered on each of the tables. They were filled with water and then rose petals were submerged in the water. We had little floating candles on top. We were able to rent the vases and the rose petals were from roses that were beginning to wilt, so it ended up being pretty cheap. We also bought a ton to cheap white Christmas lights when they all went on clearance after Christmas. We also bought tulle, so we had tons of white lights everywhere with tulle wrapped over them. It looked pretty nice and it was really cheap to do.

We didn’t have centerpieces. But we more or less had the traditional Chinese wedding banquet and there wouldn’t have been room on the tables for them anyway. The two most memorable favours from weddings we’ve been to would have be one where the bride’s family had contacts in Mexico and had managed to get a bunch of little silver/pewter items, we’ve got a little shell-shaped placecard holder and a small dish that Scooter uses for coins. The other was a couple from different parts of the US – one was from Seattle and the other from Maine, so for favours they did up little goodie bags with a small packet of Starbucks coffee and a little bottle of maple syrup. Along the same lines was a wedding we went to a few years ago where the couple had bought a bunch of small glass containers and had them filled with honey from a local producer.
– Annette

A friend of my hubby’s got married a few years ago, his wife is a pharmacist, he is a doctor, so they made little glass bottles that they labeled with “prescriptions” ordered by him as the doc, and filled as her as the pharmacist. the little bottles held little seeds you could plant in your garden. Very ncie meds I think I think my hubby still has his, i’ll have to ig it up and take a pic of it if i can find it.

Check out business promotional companies instead of wedding supply companies, you can get different kinds of items from them and usually cheaper.
– Annette

Actually, $800 is pretty cheap. Well, at least it is where I live. We looked at a ton of places and many were between $1500 to $2000 to rent for an evening. Nothing else was usually included, although some places did have their own tables/chairs.

My friend that married 2 years ago said her mother made her bouquet. She had a tiny wedding, only 10 people I believe. Michaels is a good place for DIY type of stuff I love that place lol!

Just be careful with renting a tent and stuff – that can quickly get insanely expensive! It seems like it would be cheap to rent things yourself and set them up, but I found the cheapest way was to find a place with everything included and book that. The place I went with had food, alcohol, and simple centerpieces all included for one price and it ended up being one of the cheapest places we found. Tents can cost thousands of dollars to rent and then you still need tables and chairs and linens.

Oh yes, that’s right. Those tents can start to get crazy expensive. You end up having to rent other things too beside just tables, chairs, and linens. Like a dance floor and stuff like that.

Sooooo update???

Wow, I just realized I posted in the wrong topic.