Choosing What's Important: Wedding Style

Mike and I are not particularly traditional people, especially when it comes to our wedding. Luckily, being non-traditional has really helped us stretch the wedding money. 

I've written about how much it will cost us to have a small-ish wedding (50-some people) over here and how I really hoped it would cost less. We've made a lot of choices that have gotten us to our current price tag and I have to tell you, a lot of those choices were cutting out traditional stuff that would've cost an arm and a leg. 

Here are some examples: 

Flowers - I'm not having a bouquet, and I don't want one so that works for me. We chose a venue that doesn't really need help in the decoration department so all we're doing flower-wise are some center pieces. I bought my flowers from Blooms By The Box which is an on line wholesale flower business. They're the only company I saw that didn't have absolutely giant minimum purchase requirements. 

Outfits - I bought my dress on Etsy. Yup, I know it's scary but I just could NOT handle the thought of being in a bridal boutique surrounded by thousands of dollar dresses. No way!! The designer was wonderful and so communicative. She got me the dress ridiculously early and I've had time to get it altered and play dress up occasionally. Only once have I had mild dress regret and that was slapped away when I realized I paid a reasonable amount of money for a custom made, beautiful dress. Also I'm using gorgeous jewelry I already have and never have the opportunity to wear and I bought comfortable shoes online for less than $100. I know people say, it's your wedding, spend big, but I cannot justify $700 for a pair of shoes just because it's my wedding. It's also my life, and I have real expenses in my life that $700 could go towards and make me a lot happier for it. 

Rehearsal dinner - Now I think you don't have to have one at all because 1) they're expensive 2) they're not necessary. However, we have a lot of family coming from across the country and we wanted an opportunity to hang out with them before the wedding. One great piece of advice that my sister kept giving was, "Anna, it can look any way you want it to look". So our rehearsal dinner is at a local brewery and our caterer is doing a southern-bbq style meal. And, because we aren't being fancy shmancy about it, the price is totally reasonable. 

Favors - I don't believe favors that you pay for. It's just an added thing to think about/purchase/add to the list. And I have to tell you, it's likely your guests won't use them anyway! If we actually buckle down and finish our project, our favors are free, semi-useful, pertinent to our relationship, and oh yeah, free. 

Wedding cakes - These things are stupid expensive and I might buckle down and buy and/or make one but our venue is strict about this - if we bring one in, they still charge us money per plate to serve it to our guests. Welcome to the crazy world of weddings. 

We're not having a band (yay ipod dj!), we aren't serving liquor (just wine and beer), I'm not getting mani/pedi/makeup, I mean the list goes on for what we aren't doing. 

But what we are going to do is have an awesome time, on a reasonable(ish) budget and I promise we are NOT going to miss the slew of traditional things we are choosing not to buy into. 

To learn more about some of the evils of the Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) please visit Apracticalwedding.com