I think a heritage house would make for a beautiful ceremony! Make sure to take pictures while you're there! And good luck this weekend! I hope the snow lets up a little for you!

A Heritage house sounds beautiful!
I think you could do your wedding for $1500 if you use your friends and family. You can get wedding cake or cupcakes from your local grocery store. The prices are much better there, Linz also mentioned getting her flowers there and they are much more affordable there. Get a friend to take your pictures, maybe if you want, invest in a good camera you'll have for a long time and have a friend use that. :) I think your wedding will be the best day of your life and very very beautiful!

I do have some advantages to help make the day more affordable. My son's g/f has worked in a grocery store bakery for several years and has started making her own cakes, so she will be making our wedding cake. My brother's wife has a really good digital camera and is going to take pics for us (though I might hire someone to just take ceremony pics, if I can find someone who works by the hour?). I will definitely check out local grocery stores for flowers, but I don't need much, so even if I went with a florist I think I could keep costs pretty low.

The heritage house is $300 for the day, which is good, but I'm trying to see if the rental is cheaper if we only use it for half a day.

Not sure about food yet. Fiance wants to get food from Costco, but I'm not too sure I want to go THAT cheap, even though it's just going to be our immediate family :confused:

No wedding planning yet or even engaged or close to getting engaged, I just popped in to read about everyone planning. I love reading up on how everyone wants their weddings to look. Allows me to visualize what I would want mine to look like one day :) Congrats to everyone!

Linz, that dress is absolutely gorgeous! I love it!

Speaking of Costco... you may want to check there for flowers as well. Some will even make the bouquets for you. Ours won't, but we will be ordering flowers for our centerpieces from there. Their roses are $17.99 for two dozen. If you were feeling up to it, you could even make your own bouquet for that price! I had considered that, but I am not confident enough to try it myself!

That is great that your son's gf will make your cake! As for photography, we cut costs by finding a photographer who is just starting out in his business.. it has been his hobby for 10 years, but he has just decided to make it his main focus. Because of this, his pictures are gorgeous but we are saving a ton compared to the big name photographers around here! Actually, a friend of my fiance's has also just started photography and she has offered to do engagement photos for us for free just for experience and to build her portfolio. You might want to check classifieds or even post your own, looking for an experienced photographer who wants to build their portfolio.

Good idea for the photographer. I did a quick search for local wedding photographers and ALL their packages start at about $2000! Yikes!! I will see what I can do.

That's great that you are getting some free engagement photos!

Yes that's how they are here too! It's soooo expensive! Our wedding photographer also includes an engagement shoot in his package so we will be having two lol.

Our photography package was $2500!!! Yikes!! That was after we cut cut cut from the original package! Crazy!

I just checked mine again and the prices have gone wayyy up since we booked him last summer! We got his premium package for $1850. This includes the engagement shoot and all day coverage, from getting ready in the morning to the reception, and all photos retouched, and rights to all photos on a disc. Now I see his all day packages start at $2450. His ceremony/formals only starts at $1450. Glad we booked when we did! I guess he's getting quite a bit more popular!

Another idea! You could do is to hire a student photographer. Contact local colleges and ask the head of the photography program for recommendations of particularly talented students.

I wish there was a like button here!! Lol

Haha I thought the same thing!

Ladies your dresses are so beautiful can't wait to see pics of the special day :)

What about hair ideas? I have really naturally curly hair. I can straighten it pretty good, but with dancing and all that it will become curly and nappy by the end of the day. Plus I hate a lot of product and pins in my hair. I have a halter gown and I was not going to wear a veil (this is still undecided though, since I actually have a veil from the first time I was engaged.

My big idea is taking pieces of hair like 2 inch segments from each side and loosely pulling it back and pinning it together with rhinestone pins.... doing that down the length of my hair so I have a line of rhinestone pins going down the back of my head. It will be loose though and I'll leave my natural curls instead of struggling to straighten and spray the heck out of it.

I like the idea of rhinestones! What you could do is straighten your hair and re-curl it with a curling iron. I have friends with curly hair that do that and the curls always turn out amazing! I also love the hair loosly pulled to the side. Are you a member of pinterest? There are a lot of people on their with bridal inspiration boards...Pinterest / Home

I like the idea of looking like yourself on your wedding day, just a better version of yourself. I like the idea of the rhinestone pins!

I have no idea yet if I'll wear my hair up or down. I guess I wear it down most days, either straight or with curls in the ends. If I leave it down for the wedding, I will have it curled. I don't want to do a big extravagant updo, but just something simple if I put it up!

My fiance and I love old things, so I do want a bit of a vintage look. That may just be lots of volume with curls and a birdcage veil :) I tried on a birdcage with my dress when I was first trying on dresses, and I loved it! My MOH has made a few comments about things like that though lol... not knowing that I am leaning towards it. It's not her fault but I don't want her to see me that day and feel like she put her foot in her mouth!

I loooooooooove Pinterest!

I understand the curly hair issue, since I have the same. I'm thinking of straightening and then using a curling iron. No idea what I will be doing for veil or anything like that. I really like the idea of rhinestones all down the back of your hair. I think that would look amazing!

Heritage house is out. Dave didn't like it at all. Back to square one! :(

I'm on a forum at Weddingbells.ca and I just did a quick search for Abbotsford and saw someone said Bradner Hall is pretty affordable.. but of course I don't know what their definition of affordable is! You might want to join that forum and ask around there. It's pretty active and all Canadian. There's an area for the West coast that you might be able to get some more ideas from!

Another thought... would it be warm enough there to do an outdoor wedding at the beginning of May? Maybe you could rent a portion of a park or something... My brother is getting married next year and our local zoo has a park area and they are renting a part of that, and it's MUCH cheaper than the church/hotel wedding we're planning!

I was at Bradner Hall for a wedding last year and it's just way bigger than we need. I think we might have to accept that beginning of May is just too fast. I'm going to talk to David and maybe we should hold off until end of July. That would make things a lot less stressful, and THEN we could do an outdoor wedding. Beginning of May will be dicey. It's more likely than not to be raining and on the colder side.

Thanks for the heads up on that site. I will check it out!

Okay the biggest worry for me right now is that we still have to ask people to do things for our wedding... we still need ushers, an MC, and some kids to sit at the guest book table to take gifts and greet people!

Most weddings I've been to have some teenage cousins or something for ushers. Well, my cousins are all older than that, and Scott does have two teenage cousins but their dad is going to be our MC and his wife (Scott's aunt) kind of made a fuss over that on the phone, but later told Scott's mom she was joking... so it makes me uncomfortable to ask her kids to do something too! So now we're thinking maybe we can ask Scott's brothers-in-law to do it.

As for MC... does anyone even like doing that??? Lots of times it's an outgoing aunt or uncle or something, but my family is terribly low on public speakers. Scott does have one uncle (besides the dj one) who LOVES to talk, but they live in BC and I've only met him once when we went out there a couple of years ago. I kind of want it to be someone who has spent more time with both of us than the couple of hours we were at their house! Scott suggested maybe the twins.. two girls he grew up with and who have become friends to me as well. One of them just got married and is having a baby in March and the other is getting married in June, so I'm not sure if they would be up for it and I'm nervous to ask.

Finally, I think we're going to ask two of his little cousins (they are brother and sister and probably 10-12 years old) to sit at our guest book table and greet everyone. They are super outgoing, and the little boy talks like he's a 30 year old man lol! So I think they would be great.

I just haaaaaaaaate asking people to do favors for us, but I don't want to leave it for too much longer.

How many people will you be having?

That site has been really helpful to me. I chose where to get my flowers and our limo based on their reviews!

We will only have 14 people plus ourselves, so 16 total. VERY small wedding, being immediate family only.

I know you said the weather wouldn't be great, but even if you pushed it back a few more weeks you could have a beautiful backyard wedding! If you know someone with a beautiful yard that is!

I think the person who is chosen to be MC should really like it and feel comfortable with it. I was asked to be the MC for my brother's wedding, and I was so nervous about it that I ended up having a few too many drinks and ... well, let's just say that I refuse to watch the video of me making an ass out of myself :thumbdown

On the other hand, I think it's not really doing you a "favour" when a person is asked to be part of the ceremony and goings on at your wedding. Most people are delighted to help out and I would like to think it would make them feel good that you wanted them to have a special place in your most important day!

I'm worried that really nobody is comfortable with it! One of Scott's friends would have been great, but now he's a groomsman. I guess there's always his uncle to fall back on if we want to.

When my best friend got married and I was her MOH, I was honoured to be a part of her day! But then when I realized I had to make a speech I was pretty nervous. It worried me for weeks until it was over! I just hope that whoever we ask to be MC doesn't say yes just because they feel they HAVE to do it for us. But on the other hand I worry nobody will say yes!

I don't know, I guess I sometimes feel like we're inconveniencing people. Scott's mom wanted us to call his uncle to be our DJ. I wanted to just get a local DJ, but I decided to compromise... they also wanted Scott's dad to do our photos with his digital camera, and I said I wanted a real photographer. I got the real photographer, and said we could get the uncle as a DJ. We will rent the equipment for him, and he will donate his time as a wedding gift to us.

So anyways, Scott called to ask and his aunt answered, so Scott asked to speak to his uncle. His uncle got on the phone and Scott asked him if he would DJ for us, and his uncle seemed to be on the fence about it but he said yeah he thinks he could do it, and then his aunt in the background said something like "Don't you dare tell them you'll be the DJ and leave me sitting alone all night again!" :( But that was background noise, and his uncle didn't know that Scott heard it. Scott felt terrible later and I said we'll just book a DJ instead. He talked to his mom about it and she said she would call and ask about it, and then she called us back and said that the aunt was just kidding around. My guess is the aunt was embarassed that Scott heard it.

It just makes me apprehensive about how people are really feeling about helping us out!

I ramble a lot, don't I?

Lindz can your DJ MC your wedding? That way there is no pressure on anyone? What do you need them to MC...announcing the bridal party, speeches, etc?

We might be able to do that. I think we'll ask the friends and if they say no, we'll ask his other uncle, and if he says no, we'll ask his DJ uncle... From what Scott says, he's basically just going to have a playlist on a laptop and play music from it, and he'll just sit with his family the rest of the time. He'll check every once in awhile for requests on some request forms at the DJ table. I told Scott we could just load up an MP3 player and do the same thing! But you know... compromise. :rolleyes: His uncle doing it is our wedding present!

We are also having a little game for the order of tables to go and eat because we're having a buffet, and the MC will be running that.

MC isn't going to be in front of the mic all night. Just have to be ok with people looking at them when making announcements. Honestly I think what made me most nervous was that I was also asked to give the speech on the groom (my brother). I'm terrible at speeches. The announcing part was not bad.

Good idea to do some compromising.

Personally, I already feel just like my first wedding - everyone is in charge except me! I don't even know how to plan a wedding because I wasn't allowed to do anything first time around. This time I want to have it my way, but yikes! I don't know if that's ever gonna happen!! :(

Well maybe it won\'t be that bad then. I guess I shouldn\'t worry until we just ask! Maybe they\'ll love to do it, who knows. I think it would be easier on the two sisters too if they were doing it together. They wouldn\'t have to be up there alone!

Oh no, I\'m so sorry you don\'t seem to be able to have things go your way. This is your second wedding - it should be everything you really want. You can compromise here and there, but you\'re the bride and people need to compromise with you too!