Bride Buddies

I am a Bride to be who is getting married in May of 2008. I would love to have a support group of women in the same boat as me trying to lose weight and tone up for the big day! Lets motivate each other so we can look and feel great for our weddings! (not to mention the honeymoon!!!)

Yay, I'm someone's hero! :-D

Yeah, our wedding is untraditional in a bunch of ways. We like to be creative.

I want my wedding traditional. I want to get married in the Ashley Manor Castle in Chandler, AZ. Near my home. It's beautiful.

Ooh, a castle! That sounds magical! :-)

My maid of honor, fiance and I went out to look for invitations today. We found a really nice stationary store and bought a few textured papers and embossing stamps to play around with. I am excited!

We are having a garden wedding next to a river on the grounds of a 1920's hotel that was a speakeasy during prohibition. It is decorated in the art deco style. Very old Hollywood Glam. I love it!

I wish we lived near a castle...that would have been beautiful! You are so lucky If you are able to do that Star!

All you brides to be look gorgeous!!!!! ( :

I am not getting married yet myself, but I joined cc with the motivation in mind of being a bridesmaid September 8th. I'd like ot look hot in the pics! ( :

How;s it going, girls? What;s working for you?

I'm totally second guessing this whole wedding thing. Why do weddings have to cost so much money? On top of that, the date is set in July and I want to wear sleeves. I am not comfortable with my body AT all. Oh man oh man.

Maybe I'll push it to be a September wedding. It's cooler in september. I dont know.  I'm frusterated.

I don't know how much you're spending, but yeah, it gets expensive VERY quickly. I keep hearing these stats about the national average wedding being $27,000. Crazy. We're probably spending more like $6,000, including the rehearsal dinner, which is still a ton of money for one day!

We're trying to do most things on the cheap, though, and more casual than many weddings. That helps. For example, we're having the catering be a cookout rather than a sit-down fancy meal. It will be more relaxed and fun, and a lot less expensive!

What is with this rehersal dinner stuff? SEEE that's what bugs me. I just want to have a nice day with friends and family without all the stress and buying everyone food a bunch of times.

Who can really afford all this? I dont want to be in debt. But I still want to be a beautiful bride.

I was thinking about getting a dress and him a tux, getting married at the JP with just our mothers, then taking photos at a Japanese Garden near by my house, then flying off to some island somewhere.

CHEAPER! And I get a vacation and my pictures.  Maybe when I come back everyone will throw ME a party. Why does the bride have to throw a party for everyone else?

LoL mini rant.

I completely agree. If we were paying for it ourselves, I definitely wouldn't bother with a rehearsal dinner. My future-in-laws are paying for it, and the idea is to have some nice, quieter, more personal time with your wedding party, as opposed to the crazy day of the wedding. It's supposed to be a way of thanking them for being involved, as well as your officiant. But is it necessary? No, none of this stuff is. It's all optional.

The coolest thing we're doing, and our biggest splurge, is having a Beatles cover band at our wedding. I am incredibly excited whenever I think about that. :-)

My fiance and I are saving money by working overtime to pay for the wedding. (We are lucky to both have jobs where this is an option!) My parents are recently divorced and are helping some but because of the size of our families it will be a larger wedding. 150-200 guests. His parents are paying for the rehersal dinner so that takes stress off of that.

My sister just got married on Saturday and they saved a lot of money by having the family do everything but it was sad to see the actual family not be able to enjoy the day because there was so much to do. I do a lot of event planning on the side so she had me be the planner/coordinator. I was also a bridesmaid...talk about stressful! If you have a smaller wedding with family help try to come up with a way where they can enjoy themselves too and can actually relax a little!!! It will be more memorable for all of you.

Seems like I am going up instead of down in the weight department... while it's only a couple of pounds, I really wanted to be down to my 'fighting' weight by the wedding.

My dress still isn't in... I called the shop and they said, "don't worry, it should be in this week"........................my wedding is less than 11 weeks away! 

Rehearsal dinner/Sunday brunch........are you kidding?  His mother wants all of that, but I delicately put my foot down.  She is going to have a brunch at a local restaurant on the day after the wedding for all the out of town guests who are staying in a hotel (there are 40-50 folks that will be put up that night).  I opted to have a rehearsal at the church in the LATE evening (7p), which, for our family will mean that they will have eaten (we are early eaters)  so, my girlfriend, who lives across the street from the church has volunteered to have drinks at her place after the rehearsal.... (again, just so the out of town folks don't have to go sit in a hotel room all night by themselves)

Now, what about centerpieces for the tables..... anyone have any good ideas?

I am not having favors, etc., but I do have an idea for the tables... just want to see what others are doing.

x17star17x - the only thing I can tell you is to be sure to do what you want... don't let others dictate what you want your day to be.  Don't get into debt for ONE DAY.  I spent the money on what I thought was important--- rings (you have to look at them everyday), and a cake - - because I make cakes on the side, I am sort of picky in that regard.... but for others, it's the dress, or the flowers... to me, those are not as important.... I would definitely have a sit down with your betrothed and tell him to "handle" his mother.  I don't mean to sound like bridezilla, but it is about YOU, not HER, and if he loves you, he will talk to his mom and be the buffer. - - PLUS, if she can't PAY for what she wants, then she certainly can't expect you to.

good luck!

Amy

Not a bride to be, just some advice for how to save money...

I have a friend that found everything over Craigslist.  They found a band, got their cake, found caterers, got the limo.  I don't know what else, but they found people looking for a way to get their foot in the door to get in the wedding business.

Oh yea... the flowers, too.  And they weren't disappointed with anything. 

For our tables, we're playing up our "fall" theme, since the wedding is in October and we met in the fall and love the season.

So, we have these big, glass, apple-shaped jars, and we're going to fill them with candy corn for the tables. On the table around that, we're swirling fall leaf garlands, and we're going to get some of those (real) baby pumpkins and scatter them on the tables as well. We're not doing traditional favors, because I think they're a waste of money, but we're going to encourage people to decorate a pumpkin and take it home. :-)

I love baby pumpkins - thinking about them makes me grin. They're so happy and adorable!

For our flowers we are buying them in bulk for .70 each and doing our own bouquets, boutineers, and centerpieces. For my sisters wedding she bought 750 roses and all of the flowers were absolutely gorgeous! I will post pic's when the come back. Our centerpieces will be a low glass bowl with a candle in the center and roses surrounding the candle. We will also scatter rose petals on the table.

I haven't finallized our favors yet but I think I will be doing CD's with our favorite songs. I did this for my sisters bridal shower and it turned out really nice. I designed the cover jacket and even printed on the CD. I will also be doing some sort of chocolate as well.

I am playing around with doing a video of pictures set to music to play at the reception. My fiance's sister is a photographer so we will have some pretty cool shots to add in the video as well as pictures we have from trips and daily life. Most computers come with the program to make them and it is so easy to do!

I just got the call and my dress is finally in!! I am going to pick it up today and take it to the tailors.... It finally seems real now.

A

Hi everyone!

I just found this thread, and the timing couldn't be better - we just decided where and {kind of} when we're getting married, it'll be July or early August 2008 :)

I am sooooooo excited already, we're getting married at the Renaissance Faire - and of course we'll be dressing the part!

I've lost 21lbs so far ,and I'm 66lbs. away from my goal, so I don't know when I should actually order my dress...

We're just starting the planning, so even though we have lots of ideas, everything is still pretty up in the air

When I ordered my dress I asked them about how much they can take a dress in if you lose weight. They told me wedding dresses can typically be taken in 2 whole dress sizes. So for me I knew that I would be okay ordering so early. When I was at my goal weight before I tried on similar dresses and kind of have a rough idea of what will work. Start looking for what you want and as you get a little closer to the wedding start thinking about ordering your dress. With a renaissance themed wedding will you be able to wear a corseted dress? If so you could always cinch it in more if you need it by the big day!

How are everyones wedding plans going? What do photographers run in your areas?