The Bloomin' Truth - Flower Budget

I'm not big on flowers. I knew this wasn't going to be a huge chunk of my money. Don't get me wrong, I love flowers. But they are so expensive. And they die.

On top of it, I used to work for FTD. I was the Product Development manager for their floral containers. I know a lot more about the inner workings of flower shops, florists and floral wholesalers than the average bride, in my opinion. I certainly know what I don't like:

Leather Leaf (hello, 1985)
Plumosus (it sheds little tiny green needles - like a mofo!)
Bear Grass (hello, 1997)
Baby's Breath (unless you are doing an all Gypsophilia thing like these:)

From The Martha, of course.

Found this on The Sweetest Occasion. Never knew about this blog. It's AWESOME!

I found this on Weddingbee (God, how I hate that site), but don't know the original source. If ya know it, lemme know!

I am not a big rose kind of girl. I like some weird flowers, most of them happen to be cheap. Lucky me! Now, I don't know if this was the smartest thing for me to do, but I only interviewed one florist. Yup. Just one. And I have no recollection as to how I found her. I think I was just hunting on-line, found a link to her on some seriously obscure wedding web-site and then found examples of her work on Flickr. I made an appointment, talked to her about what I wanted and what I knew about flowers. I was up front about flowers not being the bulk of my budget and that I wanted to trim the fat at every possible turn. She was totally down with it. Her name is Angela Sadler.

I think we went through about 6 or 7 quotes until we got to where I wanted it. The thing is, I had a hard time deciding what I actually wanted to do with the flowers at the reception. You can read about that here. I finally decided, bit the bullet and went for staggered bud vases scattered on the tables, mixed with small votives (provided for FREE by Mere Bulles!). I got my bud vases on sale at Crate and Barrel, Target and Ikea and had a total of 5 different shapes and styles. I bought WAY too many. The good thing was that I was able to return ALL the vases to Target (I did get a merchandise credit because I had purchased them long ago), and I sold a good chunk of the C&B bud vases to Angela. I still have the Ikea ones and some of the C&B ones that I will offer to sell here as soon as I can get my act together.

I met with Angela a few weeks before the wedding at the local wholesale florist place to review and pick out flowers as well as to show Angela the bud vases. Apparently, most brides don't do this. Angela made a comment about how involved I was! I'm not sure if this was a good thing or what, but I like to see what I'm buying. Anyway, you can see what we did here.

We kept the ceremony flowers super-simple since I knew it was going to be a short service. Why pay tons of money for something people are going to see for 30 minutes, tops? Owen Chapel has it's own unique charm, so I didn't want to over-do it. We had wreaths on the doors, a large wreath inside and two large alter arrangements.

How did I save? A few ways:

1. I saved $25 on the large wreath by purchasing the wreath myself. It was about $13 with tax and coupon use at JoAnn's, so it saved a little over $10. Hey - every little bit counts!
2. I saved $5 each ($10) on the door wreaths. I bought those on sale at Micheal's for $3 for both.
3. Going the bud vase route versus centerpieces saved me about $500 from the original quote! Angela had really affordable arrangements using BIG flowers like hydrangeas, football mums, gerbers and stock. We used really beautiful variegate pittsporum and snow berries as the filler, both affordable.
4. We had one large corsage for my mom and then smaller corsages for the other females in the group (no MOG for us, so no need).
5. We used really big, really inexpensive flowers in my bouquet: gerbers and football mums. The most expensive flower was a garden rose that we added, just to make it a little different than the MOH's bouquet.
6. I had my go-to girl Alecia take one of the alter arrangements as well as the door wreaths to Mere Bulles to add to the ambiance there.
7. I chose teeny tiny little button mums with fern curls for the boutonnieres. The guys really liked them and they were CHEAP!

Here's the budget breakdown.

The delivery and set up was "free" - I just took out the bud vases Angela bought in trade. The total here doesn't count the $60 I made back from the returned Target vases. Hopefully, I'll get a little more back if I sell the remaining Ikea and C&B vases. I was really hoping to come in under $1500 on this and I might in the end. Who knows.

There was one thing that I didn't like about all of the flowers and that was the handle on my bouquet. Again, I blame no one but myself for not being more specific. I had wanted the stems of my bouquet wrapped in the left over lace from my mom's mantilla. I mean WRAPPED - like how they do it with the ribbon. I also had a pearl pin I wanted put on. Well, she used just the teeny-tiniest piece of lace, I think to preserve the lace usage, but that's not what I wanted. She could have used it all! At any rate, the lace shifted around as did the pin and looked a little tattered at the end. I assumed that the bouquet stems would be wrapped all the way down to their ends. That wasn't the case. I was afraid that the stems would touch my dress and leave a mark during photographs!


Wedding Tip #3: Be as specific as you can. Assume nothing. If you don't ever ask for it, you can't be sure of what you are going to get. If a vendor gets snippy because you're asking too many questions or giving lots of direction, let them or move on. You have a right to know exactly what you are paying for.

I really enjoyed working with my florist. She was happy to give me references, even one who had a wedding at Owen Chapel before! I contacted everyone and they sang Angela's praises and were straight up about her short-comings, the only one being that she wasn't one to reply immediately to emails. Knowing this bit of information saved me a lot of worry. Since I knew she would eventually reply, I could contact her in advance of needed info and wait out the response. She knew if I called, I needed her and she would call back in a jiffy. She was a great vendor to work with. I liked her personally and kinda wanted to get to know her more and just hang out. I think because I was around her age, she got me. That's how it all ended up though - we hired the vendors who understood The Candyman and I as people and treated us that way. That makes it all good.

The flowers were simple and beautiful. Mixed with the candlelight at Mere Bulles - they were STUNNING! The good thing about using the bud vases was that we were able to add them to different areas in the venue without a bunch of extra arrangement costs. We had some added to the fireplace mantel, the place card table and the cake table.

Gorgeous!

"I Wish" Wednesday

Wishing The Candyman HAPPY MONTH-A-VERSARY!

Here's to a bazillion more months, just like this last one.
(OK, well maybe not including last week, so let's not count that one. I call DO OVER!)

WEDDING TIP #3 - Just cuz you get married, doesn't mean all the same relationship crap that's hard work goes away. It means you get to work harder at it.

Budget ReCap -o- Rama: The Reception Venue

You guys know that I was totally in love with our reception venue, Mere Bulles from the moment we stepped inside. The brown walls and ivory crown molding are accented by amazing artwork all over what was once the grand manor house of Maryland Farms (horse breeding country, back in the day). Right when you walk in, there's a killer spiral staircase with a gorgeous chandelier. The main dining room has a gorgeous old mantle and fireplace. There are built in bookshelves all over the house and it's just so damn inviting.


This feeling was extended to us by the fabulousness of one Carlin McQuiddy, their kick-ass events coordinator. I mean, she fed us their famous Charleston She-Crab Bisque the second we came in for our appointment. I mean, damn. She'd never even met The Candyman and she knew the way to his heart - straight through his stomach!



I have nothing but good things to say about Carlin and the fine people over at Mere Bulles. They took care of us. The treated us with respect and were attentive and responsive to every single thing we requested. We made one mistake though. Ooooops. Here it is:


WEDDING TIP #2: It's possible to get too distracted by the details. Don't forget to double check your budget. You might be really far UNDER.


Yes, UNDER. Here's what happened. Again, I can only really blame only myself for this. Carlin said she should take a little of the blame, so I'll give her some too. If you have a band or DJ at Mere Bulles, you have to do a whole house buy out because it's a house and you can hear the music throughout. At our first meeting when Carlin told us the price of a whole house buy out, I put my spoon down (remember, she was feeding us) and was about to bolt. She quickly informed us that a whole house buy out on a Sunday was HALF THE PRICE of a Friday or Saturday. I picked my spoon back up and said, "Carlin, please tell me more." The Candyman was oblivious to this. There was food.

You can also bring your own wine into Mere Bulles even though you have to pay a cork fee. I knew I could get budget savvy with the booze so opted for this as well.

Here's where I fucked it all up:

See, I had this AMAZING spreadsheet, y'all. Seriously. Formulas and links and all that crap. I love Excel spreadsheets. Like, love them. My dad is the Master of Things Excel and I call him all the time for advanced workshops via the phone. Anyway, I had this kick-ass spreadsheet that linked the booze tally page to the Mere Bulles tally page, that all linked up to the total page. Sweet, right? Right.

One day at work, I found this other formula and format that I thought was uber-bitchin' so I did that during my lunch hour. I sent the spreadsheet home to myself and did a little copy and paste into the Master of All Mack-Daddy Spreadsheets. Yeah. When I put the new format into one of the worksheets, I erased the link that went from the booze tally to the Mere Bulles tally and NEVER fucking noticed. NEVER.

As the RSVPs came in, I updated both worksheets and the totals went down on their SEPARATE pages. However, I didn't really look at those pages individually because I had already set up all the functions, so all I had to do was update the number of people. The overall total was going down but not by NEARLY enough. And again, I NEVER fucking noticed. Yes, there are a lot of "fucks" in this particular blog. You'd drop the F-bomb a lot too if you were $1000 UNDER the house buy-out.

Here's what this means. I started out with a total of 88 people and 21 kids invited to the wedding. I allotted total food and alcohol for that many people, erring on the high side for booze. As the numbers went down, the food and liquor pages went down, as did the total, but it was only pulling from the food tally. I basically had budgeted that 66 adults would drink 200 beers and six cases of wine. Yeah, sure. Maybe if those 66 adults were 21 years old at a freakin' South Padre Spring Break wet t-shirt contest. WTF?

I want to know when exactly I got so stupid. Was it the diamond on my finger? Was I constantly distracted by the shiny things? Or just constantly distracted? Oh, who knows. So here's what happened....

I come cruising into Mere Bulles (gushing, mind you because everything looked so damn pretty), the DJ is announcing us and I see people standing around with cocktails. Not cocktails in the generic, I'm-offering-beer-and-wine, but like scotch on the rocks and martinis. Lots of them. Um, what? I can't see THIS many people ponying up for cocktails when there's FREE beer and wine. I desperately make eye contact with Tabitha and she pulls me directly over and starts talking. Fast.

Tabitha: Don't freak. You're under budget. The manager opened the bar.

Me: WHAT?!?

Tabitha: Dude, you're UNDER budget. The manager ran the numbers and he says that every person in this room can have 6 drinks and you will still be UNDER budget. He opened the bar.

Me: WHAT?!? No. That can't be right. I ran the numbers too (and I did, just not the way I thought I had)! No. No. No.

Tabitha: Yes. I swear it's OK.

In my head: Do NOT let this freak you out. Do NOT let this freak you out. Trust the manager. Trust Tabitha. Let it go.

Me: OK, fine. But I swear, if we go over budget because the bar is open.....

Tabitha: You won't.

Me: OK. I need a drink.

And guess what? We were still WAY under budget. I could have served prime rib. I didn't have to buy all my wine and worry about having good wine and not going over budget. I didn't have to mess with all of that.

The thing is, I am so okay with everything. People enjoyed the food. People enjoyed the drinks. Everyone had what they wanted and that was perfect. I still don't care about prime rib because I think it's disgusting. Our wine was yummy. And I could return the unopened portion, which off-set the $1000 under budget by $300+.

And here's the BEST part. Mere Bulles did not have to open the bar. I had a signed contract that stated wine, which would be provided by me and beer, provided by them. They, by all legal accounts, did NOT have to open the bar. And they did. Because they are cool. Because they are fair and because they are a classy establishment who cares about their clients. Period. They were going to get paid regardless of what they served and they went above what was legally and contractually required. How often do you hear about THAT in the WIC (Wedding Industry Complex)?

On top of it, Carlin sent us some gift certificates that we can use at Mere Bulles. Again, she didn't have to do that. It was a super-nice perk.

Here's some other fabulous things about Mere Bulles:

1. The staff was top-notch. People commented frequently to me that the service was great.
2. The food was top notch. I heard "best wedding food" several times.
3. The staff participated in an impromptu group dance during the reception. Fun!
4. The staff loaded all the presents for me into my parent's car.
5. The staff had all of our chargers and bud vases cleaned and cleared and packed up and ready for us to pick up the next day.
6. Carlin's immediate responses to any and all of my inquiries.
7. They were concerned that my cake plates were a little wobbly. The cut all the cakes so people could just pick up a piece and enjoy! Nice. No stupid cake cutting fee (clearly the dumbest up-charge in the world).

Thanks to everyone at Mere Bulles for a wonderful reception! Regardless of where I came in, it was the most perfect evening ever and worth every penny, spent or not!

I'm sure there will be more pictures to come. I pulled these of Mere Bulles from their website gallery.

Fall 2010 - Already?

I mean, damn. Already? Like Christmas has already hit retail and it's a nano-second after Halloween. I'm working on June 2010 (like, we are so behind schedule) and fashion has just cranked out Fall 2010. Nice. I was pondering and perusing the runway fashions and have decided to share my favorites. In no particular order.

Yummy Zac Posen! This makes me wish I'd gotten married in January, but only for like a second.

Angel Sanchez. Let's take the giant flowers out of our hair and put them on the dress. Much better.

This is from the BCBG Maz Azaria Cruise Collection, but I think it's a beach wedding gown - for sure!

Oh, hello....and a gorgeous farewell on the backside of this stunning Christos gown. 

I am dying over the gobs and gobs of pearls. A million times yes. Thank you, Douglas Hannant. 

This is the one aspect that I wished I'd had - a little something peeking out. Gorgeousness by Farah Angsana.

Lace by Jim Hjelm.

Lovely, lovely layers by Junko Yoshioka.

This totally reminds me of the amazing St. Pucchi gown I tried on. Alas, this little number is all Monique. You know, Ms. Lhuillier.

The latest from Vera Wang. She just nails it every damn time.

Who is your favorite designer? Me? I just la-la-love St. Pucchi. He's got this weird sort of Thierry Mugler sort of vibe so him.Not that I would wear any of his dresses, I just really appreciate the artistry behind them. I did try this one on and was in heaven until I looked at the price tag.

Source

And just so you know, I'm compiling some budget stuff to go over for the venue, so hold onto your wallets, I'll be back to the budgets ASAP!

100 and Shout Out. Yo.

Source

Well, now. Lookie here. The Thirty-Something Bride has 100 official followers. HOW TOTALLY EFFING COOL IS THAT? You people rock, you really do. I'm still not quite sure how all this happened. This blog, I mean. It just sort of did. Happen, that is. One day, I'm reading all these wedding  "how to" blogs and I'm like, "You know, I should write about what I'm doing, just so I can have something to look back on. Or maybe someone will read it and learn from the plethora of errors I plan to make." I really don't know what I was thinking. Then again, I guess I never really do. However, what I do know is this: you people rock. I have met so many wonderful people through this silly little blog who have become real-life, face-to-face friends. What a treat.

Someone who I've been following (ok, quite pathetically stalking, is more like it) is Ashley's Bride Guide. Ashey's is the Nashville go-to for resources, vendor highlights and recaps of other local brides. Today, she posted the first installment of our wedding recaps. She makes me feel so famous! FAMOUS, I tell you! Thanks Ashley, for all the support! You're the bomb-diggity-bomb. It's true. Check her out her blog too!

So thanks to everyone for following and reading and commenting. Keep it coming and I will too!

Budget Breakdown - Invitations

So little did I know about paper. Oh, so little. Card stock weight, letterpress, metallic versus matte. Good God, what a cacophony of primal fear it can bestow upon the innocent of wedding planning brides. Oh, I fell in love with some invitations. Oh, the gorgeousness of them. Stunning. Works of art. For $4000. For 100 invitations and envelopes. That didn't even COUNT the RSVP card. It really stressed me out because when you look at all this crap (and it's JUST paper, people) on-line and in stores, there's this push that you must have the most fabulous of all because it tells your guests what kind of wedding you're going to have. Really? Really? No it doesn't, you do. Who you and your groom are tells everyone they need to know. And if you can't do that then why are you inviting then to your wedding?

Now, I'm lucky that I didn't have to invite my Dad's boss's cousin. Perhaps if you're having that kind of wedding, the invitation means more. For us though, it just wasn't like that. I also thought through all the wedding invites I've ever gotten in my life. I remember one in particular because it was purple. All of them ended up in the trash, even the purple one. I have no idea if they were letterpress or what they even looked like. NO ONE DOES. Not really, not in the end. In my opinion, if you need to save someplace, do it here. It's paper, people.

About the time I was in the invitation process, I found Jessica, The Budget Savvy Bride. She is one talented lady and I almost used her to do my invites. I did a lot of research and I realized that I could DIY my own invites easy enough, just as she did. For me, time was a big issue, so I went the Michael's route and gave some pre-fab invites my own twist. In fact, I was able to get nearly every single bit of paper product from Michael's and it all coordinated. I used lots of coupons and got creative.

Here's my original breakdown and the final numbers. When I filled in my budget, I really didn't have a great idea of what things cost. I also forgot to add in the postage for RSVP cards, which is why that number is double the budget! Now, I have to admit that I am missing a few things on this template because I had a whole different page that I did some budgeting on that linked over. Below is what I paid for all the paper for my invitations, table numbers, glue dots, programs, ribbon, etc. For just the invites, they were $2.13 a piece including postage. Without postage, they were $1.26 each. Not too shabby, right?


What was nice about all of this is that I got to customize everything I did with my own font and wording that I carried throughout the wedding - from menus to table cards to place cards to programs. I'll betcha people who don't read this blog had no idea I got all that stuff at Michael's or that I did it all myself.

If you click on the above mosaic montage of mega-hot detail shots that my oh-so-fabulous photographer took (like you don't know JCP already), you can see all the printing I did myself on my little $150 HP printer. And you know what? I am not a graphic artist. I am not an artist. I am a product developer, but I don't know how to work in Photoshop. I introduced myself to Publisher for my OOT letters. I do know how to work in ACDSee, but that's it. You just have to know what you want and how to go about ripping it off and making it your own. ;) The web has a crap-load of free templates and clip art and patterns and all sort of stuff you can manipulate to make your own. It's awesome. The resources are there, it just takes a little time to find it.

Try not to get caught up in WIC (Wedding Industry Complex, if you're not down with the lingo yet) on this one. Get caught up in your creativity.

Tell me, are you stressing over invites? How did you get creative? How did you save $$$?

The Budget Breakdown - Attire

Decisions, decisions. You people totally want me to show you the money. And I will - on some things, but not everything. That's what I've decided. If you're really looking for budget breakdowns and help in doing it, convo me privately and I'll give you the lowdown. I created a very detailed spreadsheet with links and formulas and equations - oh my!

So let's get started, shall we? Let's talk about the dress, OK? It's really the best part of any wedding planning process, right? Y'all know that finding my dress was definitely a pain in the ass. I talk about it here. And here. And here. And even here. The original budget for my dress was $800. Uh huh. That's right.

God, I love JCP.

Early on in the game, my Mom gave me a little monetary sumpin'-sumpin' to supplement the dress fund (thank you, Mom!). I basically just took that money and added it on top of my budget because I quickly realized that $800 wasn't going to cut it. Keeping that in mind, I only went $142.50 over budget on the dress. See how I rationalized that? Instead of being $642.50 over budget, my creative math skills keep it all good. Right? Right?

Here's my final break down of all things fashion related.

The budget column is where I really wanted to be. I was a little over on few things but way under on others. Since I made my own veil, all I had to purchase was the tulle (which is super cheap) and the comb. I already had the lace and thread and all that. I went a little over on the lingerie only because I counted in the multiple pairs of panties I bought at VS during tax-free weekend that I wrote about here. If I take out the cost of all the stuff I bought and just what I wore on the day of The Big Show, then that price would go down. However, I left it all in 'cuz it was money spent.

I don't believe in wearing stockings unless they are cotton tights in the dead of winter, so I knew I wouldn't need any budget there. We didn't do a garter or bouquet toss so I didn't need any cash allotted there either.

The thing that killed my budget was the gown preservation thing. I took it to the best place in town for gown preservation, Oakwood Cleaners. Their reputation is really good and I was just so nervous to take it anywhere else. I didn't call ahead of time. I didn't ask for the price. I just took my dress and veil there. I dropped it off. I walked out and then was like, "Hey, I wonder how much that's gonna cost." I walked back in and asked. The very nice lady went into the system and pulled up some pricing and then her computer locked up. Seriously, I saw it happen. I was running errands, getting ready for the honeymoon and didn't want to wait, so I just asked around how much it would be. She said around two-something for just the dress. I'm thinking it was going to be around $250 total and I was OK with that and went bouncing out of the store. They called me to tell me the dress was ready and informed me that the total was $359 and I almost had a coronary. STARTING prices on any wedding dress is $279. "Two-something" was actually closer to three. I have no one to blame but myself for not inquiring into specifics. I was still floating about 3 feet above the ground, so didn't quite have my senses about me.

WEDDING TIP #1 - Don't even think about thinking about things that are of any importance whatsoever until a week or so after the wedding. You're head is still up your ass.

There are lots of wedding budget calculators out there. I've seen some that say "attire" should be 5% of your budget. I've seen others that say 12% and others that say 18%. The difference between 5% and 12% and 18% is HUGE. Let's say you're planning a $20K wedding. You're dress can be $1000 or $1666 or $3600 based on those "average" percentages. That's the difference between trotting on down to your local David's Bridal versus Monique freakin' Lhuillier. Big dif. Huge.

What you've got to do is look at your budget break down areas and decide what is most important to you (oh yeah, and the groom). Is it the dress? Or is the food? Must you have Lily of the Valley dripping from every pew, chair, centerpiece and bouquet for your December wedding? Then you need to be putting all your cash into flowers child, because that's going to be one costly decision.

In the end, I was happy. I felt like I looked like a million bucks. You guys saw my dad's face when he saw me, clearly I shocked the hell out of him. The Candyman said he's never seen me look so beautiful. I loved my dress. It was totally comfortable (although I did have some boob issues, more on that later) and I seriously felt stunning. It was worth every damn penny. All 213,201 of them!

What area are you dumping all your cash into?