Stunning!!!! You made a beautiful bride and you are a great looking couple!!! And that venue - WOW!

Thanks Linz! How was your honeymoon! Was it amazing to be back in Italy? Ahh I am dying to go back there some day.

Oh your pictures are gorgeous, love your wedding gown, and that's one of the prettiest bridemades dresses I've ever seen. I love the black and white photo of you, so lovely. Matt is adorable too.

It was great but soooooooooo hottttttttttt!!!! No wonder they take siestas in the afternoon! My Canadian body just wasn't used to that much heat and I'm pretty sure I haven't sweated that much in my life lol! But besides that it was amazing :)

Where did you go for your honeymoon??

Beautiful pictures...love your gown and your Matt is a cutie!!

Beautiful stunning pictures! You and your husband make a beautiful couple! :)

Ok, I know this thread is a little old but I thought I might try and revive it :D
I got engaged in September to my boyfriend of about 10 years. I moved to Texas for/with him and we have finally decided to get married. I have found a venue close by my house that is very budget friendly for the ceremony and recpetion. The date is picked- Oct 01,2013! My colors are dark purple, white, and black. I am still waiting for my dress to be shipped to me (went dress shopping with my mom in CA and she surprised me by buying my dress). I am so excited! Theres so much to do and plan. I just wish I had more friends here in TX to do wedding stuff with, Im doing a lot of shopping alone which isnt much fun. Any one else in the planning stage of thier wedding??

No planning here for me and hoping none of my single friends get engaged during Christmas because for some odd stupid reason I went to college for 3 years for floral design, wedding and event planning... Stopped doing it 13 years ago but of course they all seem to bring me out of hiding when a wedding comes up lol

Congratulations!!! Your colors sound great for October! I got married this summer and I am now helping my cousin plan her little getaway wedding next September in New Orleans (somewhere none of us have been before, but her fiance is a big fan of the Saints :rolleyes:) It is so much more fun helping plan someone else's wedding than my own lol!

Do you have any pictures of your dress? I'd love to see it!

Congratuations!!! I got married in March this past year. My colors were wine colors, from dark purples to burgundys and everything in between. We made our own invitations, they came out gorgeous! Go back in this thread to early days and you'll see some pics of my centerpieces, favors, invitations, etc... all in purples.
Have so much fun planning your wedding! The day comes so slow, but then goes soooo quickly! I can't believe Ive been married closer to the year mark already! WOW!

Congratulations!!! Planning a wedding is soo much fun...not planning anything yet, just got wedding set finally picked out, so waiting for my sweetie to officially pop the question! We know we want to get married, that's as far as we got...my ring is gorgeous though...will post pics when I finally get it....:)

Thats so funny because we did things a little backwards like that too! I knew he was going to ask me, I even picked out the ring but the when and where were a surprise.The waiting was the hardest part, we did so many romantic things and in the back of my head I was like...'is he gonna do it now?'. Patience was never my strong suit;)
I tried taking a pic of my ring but it just didnt do it justice. I dunno if you can tell but the diamond is a heart shape.
Also heres pic of me in my dress :D

Your ring is stunning and I love your dress! You are going to make a beautiful bride...what does your band look like?

Congratulations. Your ring and wedding dress are just beautiful.

Where is your venue?

I found this awesome place called "Noah's" it's in Irving, about 10 mins from me. I loved the prices and how much is included. Venues for weddings are kind of outragous, let alone reception areas. Noahs lets you bring any catering you want. I didnt think I would be able to have a nice wedding on such a tight budget but now I am super happy that I found this place. I just ordered my save the dates so it's official. No turning back now! EEEEE!
let the freaking out begin! :D

My husband and I are having a vow renewal next year for our 15 yr anniversary and we are having it at the Fort Worth water gardens. It was only $35.00 to rent for 4 hours!

We're doing yellow roses.

So after them shipping my dress back to CA (they had the wrong address) they finally sent it back over here aand I finally got it on New Years Eve. Also finally got my save the dates (fiasco with that getting lost in the mail and then they relplaced it with the wrong thing). SO hopefully this means all disasters are out of the way right???
Heres to hoping for a smooth 2013
(only 10 months to go before the big day :D)

Oh I hope that is it for disasters and all goes smoothly for you now!
I didn't have any major disasters, just my venue was non-communicative until 10 days before the wedding! I was stressing out big time at that point .... but they pulled everything off and it was a great day! I am 2.5 months from celebrating our 1 year anniversary! It went by soooo fast!

Soooo, any other newly engaged YTers out there?? :D I need someone to empathize/stress/plan with!

I've got my dress, a venue, my bridesmaids, my bouquets, music, caterer all picked out but nothing set in writing yet or paid for. It's hard to set a date in stone when its so far off, plus the number of guests is going to really be up in the air til I get around to talking to aaallll the family. Lots of out of towners. I insisted the wedding be in my hometown which means im planning my wedding from 1,400 miles away and on a small (3-4k) budget. Ways I'm cutting back:
-Having the wedding on a Friday (Saturdays are the most popular wedding day and usually double the $)
-No DJ....we're going to use Spotify to create a playlist and have it play on a laptop
-No catering. It will have to be a potluck type deal, but my family is great at that kind of thing
-Corsages for my bridesmaids instead of bouquets. They literally cost about $15/ea
-Limiting my guest list to about 45 people.

It may seem like a ton of sacrifice but we will be married and that's all that matters! Still looking for a way to make our travel cheaper. It will be at least $650 for the two of us to fly in on a Wednesday amd return on Sunday.

Carmen another good flowers budget idea is hydrangeas. They can be sprayed just about any color with flower spray (I had them in my centerpieces) so if you get the blue ones they are about $3 a stem. 2 stems makes a good size bouquet and a pretty colorful ribbon and greens can bulk it up and make it beautiful for probably $10 for each bridesmaid bouquet.

Think centerpieces too! My centerpieces were about $15 a table. I bought fake grapes at Hobby Lobby for 1/2 price, the my mom made candle holders out of wine corks she'd been saving and bought some cork coasters for $1 for 12 of them or something cheap like that) and she got packages of LED votive candles for them. I used empty wine bottles I had been saving, washed them out, sprayed them with chalkboard spray paint and wrote the table names on them. I got charger plates at hobby lobby for $1 each and 2 hydrangea buds sprayed purple-ish in the wine bottles. I think there are pics around of my centerpieces. They were cheap and beautiful!

As I found out, a DJ does more than play music, our DJ kept our wedding on track. He was organized and made sure that we got to everything (first dances, cake, dinner announcements, etc.. ) all on schedule. If you want a DJ but think you can't afford a 'wedding' DJ, look for a DJ that works for himself/herself and does not have admin expenses, building expenses etc. Our wedding DJ did not charge for set up or break down also.

Also, lots of people think home weddings will save you TONS of money... but if your wedding more than 20 or so people, then this might not be the case. Food can still run $500 for everyone to have a beautiful meal together, then there may be a cost of renting tables, chairs, china, silverware, glasses, tent, etc... I thought about this type of wedding also, and when pricing it out, it was roughly the same as a hall (except no one had to clean up the mess after with the hall!) LOL

Invitations, make them! It was time consuming but our invitations were GORGEOUS! Get creative... do you know anyone who has a Cricket or does scrap booking? Bet they could give you great ideas! Our invitations cost maybe $90 for 80 (and that included postage out and postage for RSVP).

Look at consignment shops for veils, shoes, jewelry, hair adornments (clips, tiaras, barrettes), etc... these things cost a fortune at wedding stores, but lots of shops have them gently used for way cheaper and they were only used once. Have your hair, nails, waxing, etc.. done at a hair school by students. They do a great job for a fraction of the price!

Ok.. ideas are waning here.. dealing with my own crisis now.. gotta run! Hope I helped a little with ideas!

Oh one more thing... I went to a cupcake shop in our town that had JUST OPENED. Taking a leap of faith, and tasting their cupcakes, (which were fabulous), we asked them to do our wedding. Since we were the first event they were asked to do, we got a Fabulous price! Saved us about $500 from every other place we went to, and they had 6 months open before our wedding where they did other shows and things to perfect their display. 12 dozen cupcakes of 4 different types, + stand rental (they were free but most other places were $200) delivery and setup was $250. It was amazing! And they left take home boxes for any leftovers. So look for newly opened bakeries for your cake/dessert.. you can save a bundle.

I think I had a $30K wedding for $20K by watching the prices and doing a lot of it on our own.

Well, I'm not newly engaged, but I'm still planning. When's your day Carmen? I set my 12/13/14 last June and we're doing destination because of his family living all across the US. We've been saving like crazy since we were engaged and have alot more saved up than I thought we would!

Of course, my family isn't happy about it, but its my day, we've waited over 10 years so tough I say! ;) There are so many ways to DIY things. One thing I've been doing is using my Cricut to personalize all my stuff.

Love love love that date!! Very auspicious!

We finally picked a date. May 1, 2015. Before the town goes to sh*t from tourists and motorcycle rallies haha. I'm really excited but it is tons of work! Next thing on our to do list is working out a detailed budget and our venue coordinator wants to Skype to work on a day-of timeline.

One hint, do get something in writing from Florists, Photographers, and Bakers etc so they can't give you the run around last minute.

We have our venue booked and I have my dress. Those are huge things, but surprisingly they were very easy. It'll be the little details that give me the most trouble. Coordinating everybody and accomodations and all that. I think I want to type up an itinerary for that entire week...may be overkill but I'm very type A and it'll help me keep my head straight. We'll be arriving in SC on Wednesday, wedding is Friday and we'll stay the rest of the week to spend time with everyone.

Even with the emergency fund I had to use some wedding money for vet bills when Rosie passed...so we're cutting out a "professional" wedding cake. I can't eat normal cake anyway, and a gluten free cake would be even more expensive. Eesh. All that for dessert? No thanks! Tony prefers cupcakes anyways.