Archive for the “wedding” Category

I’ve started a series of posts about how to do a Wedding on a Budget. One of the posts, choosing a photographer, received many comments with great ideas. In the end, Jen and I settled on a friend of mine who was just starting out with her own business.

Carolyn is Spilled Milk Photography, a company that focuses on family photos and children. Perfect for what our wedding will be - a family celebration!

To test drive our chemistry with Carolyn, we scheduled a shoot for this weekend up at Cypress for our Christmas Card. Some decorations in the forest, a snowman and some ice. It was perfect.

All images are Copyright Spilled Milk Photography. No Use Without Permission

Carolyn’s got a great eye, a perky personality and she’s a mom who loves other people’s kids almost as much as her own. If you’ve got a new one on the way and want to capture the growing family, or if you’d like her to run around your little one’s special birthday bash you’d best get in while she still has availability and her rate card is still low.

Old fashioned word of mouth is filling up her dance card and with shots like these, you know her rates will rise with her popularity.

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Be sure to check out the complete Vancouver Wedding on a Budget series of posts.

You need two venues when you plan a wedding. One for the ceremony, one for the reception. The best way to save money is to pick a place that can do both or find a place where you can do one of them for free.

Initially Jen and I were planning on getting married along the Ambleside seawall. It’s a place we’ve gone for walks throughout our relationship, and it’s special to us. The District of West Vancouver has no issues with small wedding ceremonies in city parks, as long as you’re a small party and don’t get in anyone’s way.

You will, execute, with a witness, and deliver to the Parks and Community Services Administration Office, a copy of your licence agreement (i.e. the letter of permission) along with consideration in the amount of $100.00. Your letter of permission (signed licence agreement) must be available at the ceremony.
[West Vancouver]

When we started planning the wedding, we figured the ceremony would be there and then it came time to choose a place for a reception. I canvassed some photography and event planning pals and they came out with some great suggestions, but they all came out waay too expensive.

LET’S DO LUNCH

So we decided to plan a lunch wedding, instead of a dinner party. You save on menu, you save on alcohol, and since many of our guests are families with children, you don’t force them to keep their kids up past bedtime.

While we were brainstorming on venues, I kept coming back to the Sequoia Grill at the Teahouse in Stanley Park. Jen really wanted to keep everything on the North Shore, but I knew this would be the perfect place for a reception.

One day last week, Jen and I drove out and decided. That was it. Here’s the best part: we could have the wedding ceremony on the huge lawn at Ferguson Point, just across from the venue.

The wedding and reception would be at the same place. We’d be somewhere filled with many beautiful corners to do wedding photos, and we’d be in the same place as our guests, not worrying about out of towners getting lost, or others needing rides. One place for ceremony and reception.

The City of Vancouver is a little more lenient when it comes to having weddings in city parks. Here are the rules you need to remember:

Wedding ceremonies are held at various locations throughout Stanley Park including Ferguson Point, Rose Garden (maximum 25 people), Third Beach, Devonian Harbour Park, the wooden bridge area in Ceperley Meadow, as well as Lost Lagoon and Beaver Lake. (Please remember: no chairs, tents, awnings, tables, decorations, alcohol, rice or confetti and your group must be less than 50 people.) No bookings allowed in these areas.
[Vancouver Park Board]

In other words, it’s first come first served, keep it small, don’t get in anyone’s way and we won’t charge you a dime!

That’s how we picked a venue for a Vancouver Wedding on a Budget, what are your tips?

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When planning for invitations, there are a few hidden costs that you don’t think of right off the top when you’re doing things like choosing stationery, font, colours, theme and layout - mainly, postage.

It’s proper to send a self addressed stamped envelope for the RSVP with each invitation, so that immediately doubles your postage costs for each invite.

Jen and I are only going to be sending out 40-50 invites, so that’s only an additional $25 for return postage, but if you’re having a big wedding, it can quickly add up, especially when you factor in reply cards and extra envelopes.

But, as with anything, there are many ways to cut costs when it comes invites.

You can simply email your guests and sort their responses on your own for nothing. You can step your presentation a bit by creating an eVite which will let you add a little bit of wedding personality to your invitations, and it will manage your responses for you - again for free.

If you want to go traditional and have actual printed invitations mailed to guests, there are still ways to save.

Jen and I are wanting to try something a little more traditional, while still having a new media flare. So we’re choosing to mail invitations, but have the RSVPs handled online through a personal wedding website. (I’ll tackle the personal wedding website in a future installment)

I tossed the question out on Twitter one night, and got an instant response. “Use a Google Form for RSVPs, will populate a spreadsheet of guests,” wrote @dougsymington.

I tested it. It’s brilliant. I can ask guests to choose menu items, provide email addresses, give us information about special needs, and have it all instantly populated on a spreadsheet for easy viewing and management.

The Google Form is free, it’s embeddable in our wedding website, it’s totally customizable and it’s thorough in its managing of information.

When it comes to saving money on the invites, doing them yourself is the easiest way. I can take a photo with special meaning to Jen and I (definitely not the one below!) and have it printed on a postcard with iPhoto on my Mac.

With iPhoto, you can add all the fancy scripty font and then you just put the wedding website and RSVP address on the bottom.

Going the postcard will mean we dont have to buy envelopes to mail the invites, and we can keep the design to just one card (saving paper costs). By having the RSVPs online, we dont have to buy extra reply cards, envelopes and postage.

Total cost for invites, including postage, would be about $2 each!

What are your secrets for saving on wedding invitations? Let me know.

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Be sure to check out the complete Vancouver Wedding on a Budget series of posts.

Jen and I are still 9 months out from our wedding, a little early to be booking cakes and flowers and the like, but we want to do this on a budget so we’re planning ahead and getting as much information as we can.

Today was a meeting with Cupcakes. Jen and I love their stuff. They’re cute, yummy, and as I’ve said many times before the Chocolate Chocolate cupcake with Penfolds Bin 2 is one of my favourite things in the world.

So we had a consultation to talk budget, design and more. We’re planning on 60 people at the wedding, and a 3 tier cake at $8 a serving would roll us out at $500. Wow.

But that’s not all, Christina told me on Twitter that most venues also ding you for a $2-$3 cake cutting fee.

So let’s back things up a bit.

We also looked at a simple 7″ cake and a tier of cupcakes. That worked out better, $250.

My pal Shelley told me some venues still ding you for a cutting fee, even on cupcakes! WTF? See dollar signs when the word wedding is mentioned, or what?

Even with the cupcake version, things are still sounding very expensive, especially after what I was hearing on Twitter today.

“Oh please don’t book with cupcakes - you pay through the roof there for sickly sweet sugar and the brand,” said Laura.

John got his done by a friend for a mere $125.

Sean suggested going to VCC. “Solid cakes without the diabetic coma.”

John said to skip the cake altogether, and Susan agreed.

“We saved money and did a hard candy buffet and chocolate fondue. SAVED $$,” she wrote.

So this weekend we’ll go to WestLynn Bakery, a classic for kids from the shore, to have a look at their Lemon Cake.

We settled on a quote from Cupcakes that would give us a 7″ cake with some sugar butterflies scattered on it sitting on 3 tiers of 60 small and large cupcakes with pink, orange and yellow icing.

We have until January to make the order, so there is lots of time to shop around.

What are your thoughts on wedding cakes and how to get a good one on a budget?

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Be sure to check out the complete Vancouver Wedding on a Budget series of posts.

We’re trying to do this wedding on a budget, I’ve explained that already.

$7 000 is what we have to spend for the whole day, so when I started my search for a Wedding Photographer, I wasn’t thrilled to see most packages starting at $2500 and moving up rapidly from there.

Most photographers we have seen offer very nice packages. Engagement photos, proof books, prints, montages, hard bound books etc.

We don’t want that.

We’d like to pay a photographer for their time to come and shoot our wedding, say 5 hrs, then retouch a couple dozen images that we’d like to get printed (on our own) and then hand us a cd of all images taken on the day with a Creative Commons license attached to them. Our wedding pictures will be for personal, non commercial use. I have no problem signing an agreement to that effect.

This is 2008. I don’t need to pay a premium to a photographer to get the prints done for me. I can create my own scrapbooks with iPhoto on my MacBook or through a variety of websites. We’ll be using the pictures for thank you cards, creating brag books for the parents and printing off a couple of small photos for our living room. That’s it. We don’t need to be tied into any Silver Deluxe Honeymoon Couple’s Package of 8×10s, 16×20s and more.

Photographers are very skilled people, I get that. But I’m only looking to pay for their time shooting images and retouching the ones we like the most. All the extras are nice, but they’re really unnecessary and just part of the inflation that happens to any price tag when the word “wedding” gets attached.

My budget for a photographer is considerably less than the rates I’m seeing quoted, but Jen and I will be considerably less effort. Take some pictures, touch them up and hand us a cd with full res quality of all 500 images you took that day, cash the cheque and done.

Am I out of touch with what I’m looking for?

Maybe you know someone who fits that bill and is available July 4, 2009 in the afternoon?

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Be sure to check out the complete Vancouver Wedding on a Budget series of posts.

It’s not about the wedding, it’s about the marriage. I proved that the first time. Now, as I get ready to walk down the aisle a second time, I’m steadfast against making the same mistake. I would rather invest in the marriage than the wedding.

Jen and I have fun on the weekends watching Rich Bride, Poor Bride on Slice. Bridezillas pouting because they want $200 tiaras, grooms needing flashy Ferraris, surrounded 250 people they don’t even know guzzling signature cocktails and grazing the midnight buffet.

One couple last night had 2 budgets. He wanted $25k, she wanted $45k. They settled on $38 000 and spent in excess of $52 000. On one night, perhaps 8 hours, of fun. It’s insane.

So as Jen and I plan our wedding, we’re trying to do things reasonably. To that end Jen has been scouring Craigslist for wedding dresses. There are some bargains to be had, but most dresses run about $600 and then need about $300 in alterations and even more for your accessories. Plus you get someone else’s ju-ju. Jen is big on the ju-ju. She wants everything fresh and new with clean karma. I was surprised she was willing to look through Craigslist.

What do you think? Guys rent tuxes, would you wear a rented gown, or buy a used one?

In the end, after trying on dresses at just 2 stores, but scouring the web and magazines for weeks, Jen has picked her dress - and it’s a steal. She gave herself a budget of $1000, but has managed to get it all for less than $500.

Angeline Bridal Boutique on Hastings near Boundary makes their own dresses. They sell them to other stores who mark them up. Buying here means buying direct, means no middle person, means Jen got a perfectly stunning simple dress for a great price and no ju-ju.

We’re trying to do the entire wedding for less than $7 000. We’re paying for it, and I’d like to have a honeymoon in Tahiti (which could cost $7 000 itself), so let’s see how we’re doing.

BUDGET: $7 000
garments: $500

Next up is the invitations. I wouldnt mind doing them myself, I’ve got a fab picture of the Eiffel Tower from the day we got engaged. Just looking for ideas to get the wedding script down the right side.

Where did you get your invites done? Who has good ideas on how to do them inexpensively?

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Back in February I started to get a little itch in the back of my brain. One that said proposing to Jennifer in Paris would be absolutely perfect. It was time.

I was driving up Burrard St in Vancouver, and the next thing I was inside Spence Diamonds checking out their open showcases of cubic zirconia designs.

You’ve heard the commercials, I know you have. They’re hard to miss. Everything in them is true. The dude who reads them is annoying as hell, but the experience at Spence is second to none. Now their website needs A LOT of work, it did little to help me choose the ring and price I wanted, but once I was in the store, Michelle was a breeze to deal with.

I told her my budget, told her the style, and she pointed me in the direction where I could find settings I’d like. Then she left me alone. Once I found a style I liked, she took me into an office and gave me a complete education on diamond buying. She showed me 3 different stones under a microscope and went out of her way to really help me understand what I was about to do.

Again we went through my budget and she went into their vault to see what sort of stones were on hand.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Jen’s favourite style of diamond is an Asscher cut, or a square Emerald. Spence doesnt carry that one. So the stone Michelle came back with was a round cut. It was .65 and beautiful. Michelle told me many diamond cutters will sacrifice to get to .7, so to find an ideal cut diamond at this size was a great deal. I put a deposit down and left with a big smile on my face.

But then the second guessing. This was a round diamond. Not what Jen wants. It seemed kind of small as well. I mean it looked huge, but I was really trying to get close to 1c with my limited budget, but I wasn’t going to sacrifice colour or clarity.

Then I started to look online. Sure, I’d thought about going the eBay way, but Jen would hand me the ring right back if she ever thought it was cursed with someone else’s bad luck.

I stumbled upon BlueNile.com when I was looking for information on Asscher cuts.

It has a beautiful and easy interface that takes you through diamond and setting selection. You can go through each and every important factor in the diamond from size, to cut, to colour, clarity and budget. Sliders let you adjust the importance and range of each factor and more or less stones in the inventory show up.

You can compare a cloudy big diamond vs a colourless tiny one. It was great. The most important part of the process was BlueNile carries Asscher cut diamonds. The one Jen wanted. And guess what? For the same price I had put down for the .65 round cut at Spence, I could get a full 1c stone from BlueNile.

I chatted up some of Jen’s friends and scoured the internet forums and Twitter to get as much feedback on BlueNile as I could. It was all golden. I called the 1-800 and dumped questions on the operator, all were answered perfectly. If I got the wrong size, they would adjust it for free, it was fully guaranteed etc etc etc.

I bought the ring with the idea that if it didn’t turn out perfect, I had the Spence stone on the side. But when it arrived via FedEx, it was exactly as promised. Huge. Sparkly. Perfect.

I called Spence to drop the deposit and they were awesome again, no questions asked. I really can’t say anything bad about these guys (other than I got a ring 50% bigger for the same price)

Now while I LOVE the convenience of shopping online, the after service makes it a little tough. Had I bought from Spence, or Tiffanys I could just drop in to the store to get a clean or adjustment, I can’t really plug a USB key into Jen’s ring to get the same service. So fingers crossed nothing like that will be needed. In the meantime, I would HUGELY recommend BlueNile.com for those who trust the internets, and Spence for those who want to go the B&M way.

Hey, now that I’ve blog about Jennifer’s engagement ring, does it become a tax deduction? I mean, I do make a couple hundred dollars a year off the blog - surely that’ enough to offset the few thousand I dropped on the diamond as a legitimate business expense?

Just wondering.

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