Our Love Story pt 5

When you find the person you are going to marry and you are in love, the wedding cannot come soon enough! That's how it felt for us. It was December and April 9th seemed so far away. Joey was like "why couldn't we have planned the wedding for January?". Again, I'd remind him that he was the one who suggested waiting 3-4 years… 


January up until the wedding day was packed full of wedding planning. We had a $10,000 budget to work with and we were so careful with how we spent it that it ended up covering the whole wedding plus our honeymoon! My mom kept a list of everything we were spending and she would deduct it from the original budget. We put the most money towards what we really wanted for our wedding- the beautiful church and the reception food were two of our top priorities. We knew that we wanted a really good, out of this world, homemade full Italian meal for our reception.. and we got just that! A friend of ours owns an Italian restaurant and she did an amazing job on the food for our reception. People are still talking about that meal! We also knew that we wanted a church wedding. The church where we got married was just absolutely gorgeous!


We saved money by - 1. Having a lot of friends help out
                                   2. Decorating everything ourselves (also buying/making all of the decorations)
                                   3. We ordered our flowers in bulk and had some friends arrange them
                                   4. Having family members do the music
                                   5. We shopped a ton at Hobby Lobby and used their 40 % off coupon frequently
                                   6. We used fancy paper plates, silverware and cups as opposed to real dishes
                                   7. My bridesmaids made their dresses. They cost about $40 total. ( we didn't pay for that, but it saved them money!)


I found my dress at a local bridal store on the clearance rack for $400. It was big and needed a lot of alterations, but it came out beautifully!

The dress before alterations. It was strapless, so they were working on figuring out the straps.

All of my girl cousins came to see the dress.

My mom and I

My grandma and I

Planning a wedding can be stressful at times. I was so in love that sometimes, I just didn't want to work on the wedding plans, or I just didn't know what to do next. That's where my mom was a big help. She and I are both list makers. She would write out a list of things that needed to be accomplished and we would do them together, checking it off the list as we completed tasks.

At other times, wedding planning can be a lot of fun! I loved looking at wedding blogs for ideas. Picking out colors was something I really enjoyed.

The only place I didn't put as much money toward was the photographs. I wish I would've gotten a more professional photographer. The photographs were just unprofessional and the photographer didn't even take the time to edit them! It was a nightmare. I ended up editing all of my own wedding photos! It took weeks. I still haven't put them in an album.. :(

We had a day to decorate the church and the reception room. The church was so beautiful, that it didn't need much decorating. The reception room, however, was our church's gym. We had so many friends come and help. It turned out so beautiful!

The church

rehearsal

We made the paper cones at the end of each pew and stuck a fake hydrangea in each one.

My boquet

Reception tables

I will post about the wedding day next!


On a side note, I am now 15 weeks pregnant!