A is for Addiction?!

So, before we get to what the heck this title means, let's recap. Wedding planning can be broken down into three little letters, A, B, and C.

C is for Compromise.
B is for Budget.
And A, A is for addiction.

No, not that kind of addiction. An addiction to Pinterest. What is Pinterest you ask? Well, click the link. Go ahead, click it, I'll wait... You back? Probably not, it sucks you in that fast, but I'll be here when you return.

Pinterest is basically an online inspiration board. You scroll through and when you see something that catches your eye you can save it to one of your boards. It links everything back to the original web page it came from. So say you find an amazing recipe for pot roast and you want to try it out next week. You can pin it to a board and then next week pull it up and find the exact same recipe!
 
Since finding Pinterest, my addiction has just grown and grown and grown. I currently have 27 boards, 2,151 pins, and 185 followers! (Can you tell I spend a lot of time on there?)

Now, A is for Addiction because it makes it easier to nail down the general theme and feeling of a wedding. Back when Zack and I first started talking about getting married, I told you guys that I started doing some research about how we wanted our wedding to look. Pinterest was a huge part of this. As I started adding more and more pins it began to show me the kinds of themes I wanted to incorporate into our wedding. Pinterest is also great for vendor meetings. Say, (like me),  you have a crazy theme that no one knows anything about, when you go to meet with your vendors you can pull up your Pinterest boards and scroll through to give them an idea. I also have an entire board dedicated to wedding photo inspiration that I plan to send to my photographer before the big day. I've also used my Pinterest board for The Dress to put together a slide show to take with me when I go shopping (again!).

So there you have it! The ABC's of wedding planning: addiction, budget, and compromise. And for those of you that are curious, you can check out all of my Pinterest boards at http://pinterest.com/callirome/! Is anyone else as addicted as I am?

*All photos from Pinterest.

The ABC's of Wedding Planning

So after writing my last post I sat down and really thought about how I was planning my wedding and I realized I was doing it with three simple letters, ABC.

Last time I talked to you about how is C is for Compromise. So today, this blog is brought to you by the letter B, and B is for... Budget!

 As I previously stated, Zack and I are paying for the wedding on our own. When we first sat down to talk about a wedding budget (before we got engaged, oops!) we had no clue how much a wedding actually cost! Doing a little bit of research we found that the average cost of a wedding is $27,800!!! (Figure via The Knot.) The average cost of a wedding in Ohio is a little better at $23,645. (Figure via Average Wedding Cost.) Zack and I both have jobs, and here very soon we will both be working full time again. Using these numbers (and a little bit of math about our average salary and how much we could realistically save during our engagement) we set our budget at $20,000. Now, some people include their rings and honeymoon in this figure, we did not. My ring is on a Kay card and we bought my engagement ring and band as a set. Zack's ring is going to be special ordered off of Etsy and we don't expect it to cost too much. As for our honeymoon, we have big, big plans but we both know that if we have to, we are willing to put it off to have an amazing wedding.

Last time I told you guys about how we decided on compromising on certain things to make our budget work harder for us. Using this we creating a Google Docs spreadsheet to keep track of our budget, what we wanted to spend, and what we were spending.

A screenshot of our spreadsheet.

I really, really love Google Docs. I can access it from my phone, Kindle, and laptop. I can also share it with Zack so that he can access it as well. The numbers we used in the "estimate" column are from WeddingWire.com. They have an amazing setup and I used it for a long time before I decided I wanted something a little more mobile. As you can see, we are currently over budget on our venue and our photography, this is because we already have our numbers for these two vendors and they are more expensive than Wedding Wire allotted us. To make things even out, we are going to shave some money out of other areas. We are also waiting on an email back from our coordinator at The Darby House about a discrepancy with our quote which will hopefully help our venue come closer to our budget!

Budget is one of my biggest concerns going into the wedding. Sometimes I wonder if we have champagne taste on a beer budget, but we will make it work!

How did your budget shake out?

Learning to Compromise

Zack and I knew from the very beginning that we would be paying for our wedding virtually on our own. We never had to have that awkward conversation with our parents about who would pay for what because we knew we didn't want to burden our parents with that kind of financial strain when they had their own bills to pay. Because of this we knew we had to learn the art of compromise.

Planning a wedding with anything less than an unlimited budget means you are going to have to compromise on something at sometime. Working with a lower budget, we knew there were quite a few things we were going to have to compromise on. To help make this decision easier we decided to rank what was most important to us in the wedding so then when the C word came up, we would know what to cut back on and what we would be willing to pay more for. Our list shook out something like this:

1. Photography

I'll go more into detail in a later post our criteria for a photographer, but this was something that was extremely important to both of us.

2. Venue

Like I told you in my last post, we wanted a venue that didn't feel like a hotel and was warm and inviting for our guests. The venue sets the tone for the wedding.

3. Catering

We love food and we love to eat food so we wanted good food.

4. Attire

Steampunk is most easily translated through clothing. Plus, I want a unique wedding dress and that comes with a price tag.

5. Officiant

We went to a friend's wedding where the officiant was really, really bad. We may not end up having to pay a ton of money to get someone great, but we still label this as a priority.

6. DJ

I have been singing since I can remember so music is very important to me. We knew right away we wanted a DJ and not a band. Bands are great, but they tend to be kind of one-trick-ponies and we have a very wide, very eclectic taste in music that we want to represent at our wedding. But honestly, if push came to shove we could load up an iPod with some music, set up some equipment and put together a playlist ourselves.

7. Paper

We already have an amazing, unique, wonderful Save the Date in the works. (Can't wait to reveal them to you!) We plan on DIY'ing the rest of our paper products as well, so we are hoping to still get good quality for a cheaper price but at the end of the day, all the paper stuff goes in the trash, so why spend a bunch of $$$?

8. Flowers

Since Steampunk has so many metallic and steam elements to it we could get away with cutting out flowers completely. Flowers are beautiful, but very expensive so if we have to save the money, we will cut the floral.

9. Cake

Yea. Just not a big priority.

10. Everything Else!

This includes my hair and makeup, gifts, and accommodations. These are things we would love to do for ourselves, our bridal parties, and our guests, but we can do without them if we must.

So that was our break down. We are building our budget around what we've fallen in love with and compromising in other areas to be able to afford our top three.

What do you guys think? Did anyone else have to compromise for a wedding?

The Place Where We Will Wed

So, let's recap. When we last left off, we were looking for a venue that:

1. Was all inclusive.
2. Could host our ceremony and reception.
3. Did not feel like a hotel.
4. Was warm and inviting.

So after driving all around Columbus and visiting half a dozen venues, what did we end up choosing? An absolutely amazing place called The Darby House.

Image via Perfect Wedding Guide.

Beautiful isn't it? The Darby House is a historical estate which sits on 120 acres of land. It includes a nine hole golf course, a barn and space for horses, and the beautiful building pictured above. The Darby House offers a gorgeous space for both the ceremony and reception. It also allows us to choose at a moment's notice whether to hold the ceremony indoors or out. Without further ado, here are some more amazing pictures to oogle at!

This is the indoor ceremony space.

The ceilings are just divine.

All decked out for a ceremony. Image via United Marriage Services.

Since we are having a wedding in November, we are sure that we will end up utilizing the indoor ceremony space, but this past year November was unseasonably warm and if that ends up being the case, we can look forward to a gorgeous ceremony like this:

The outdoor space roughly set up for a rehearsal.

It's gorgeous! Can't you just see the beautiful red, oranges, and yellows of all of those trees in the background? It makes my heart swoon! After the ceremony, guests would head to cocktail hour:

Isn't this the coolest bar?!

All of these cases are filled with sports memorabilia. It will be such a cool conversation piece for our guests.

Next will come the party:

The room set up for a beautiful reception. Again, love the ceiling!

The view behind where the head table would be.

There are so many pictures in this post, but I am just so in love with our venue! And to top it all off, the service there is amazing. They shuttle your guests from the parking lot to the building when they arrive, a day of coordinator is included in the price of your wedding package, they guarantee you a time slot for a rehearsal, and they don't have a food or beverage minimum! They have an overall minimum that you pick and choose what you want to add to build to. Some fun things you can add: a round of golf for the guests at the rehearsal, a pontoon boat ride for the wedding party during the cocktail hour, a horse drawn carriage ride for the bride, a photo-booth, and fire pits outside during your reception!

I am so excited to see this place all decked out in steampunk regalia and become a Mrs.!

* All photos personal unless otherwise noted.

The Journey to the Venue

First, please let me apologize for how long it has taken me to get another post up. These last few months have been full of crazy. Since I last posted Zack has left his job and got a new one and I turned 22 and went dress shopping for the first time! But that's a story for another post, in this post I want to tell you about our search for the perfect venue.

Before Zack and I got engaged we wanted to get a feel for what the prices of all wedding related items so that we could set a realistic budget. We decided to start with a venue. We wanted somewhere that was all inclusive. I did not want to be the bride running around super stressed out making sure everything got set up correctly or cleaning up after the reception in her wedding dress. We wanted a place that would work well for a ceremony and a reception. And we wanted somewhere that felt warm and inviting.

The first place that we went was a restaurant called The Greystone Wine Cellar. I hated it so much that we didn't bother to take pictures. I'm sure that it is nice for some people but for me it just looked like someone's damp, 80's inspired basement and it reeked of fish. The man who gave us the tour was also very disengaged, he didn't care at all if we booked them or not.

The next place that we went was The Kelton House.

The front of the Kelton House. Image via website.

The back of The Kelton House. Image via website.

We actually really liked this place. It was part of the Underground Railroad and is run as a museum during the week. When they do weddings, they will dress in period costumes and give your guests tours of the museum during cocktail hour. Plus, the pictures are stunning, they were featured in The Knot magazine and they also allow you to bring your own catering. There were only a few downsides. First, when we went and toured the facility it was the middle of fall and walking around in the garden I got eaten alive by bugs. I didn't really want to be an itchy bride. Also, to have an outdoor reception you have to rent a tent custom fit to their side patio and it was really expensive, but the indoor space just wasn't adequate. This venue was beautiful, but not for us. Back to the drawing board.

The next venue we visited was called The Columbus Athenaeum. It was a Knot pick and nice, but it had a very "hotel wedding" feel to it, which is something we really didn't like. After that we visited The Columbus Athletic Club. I absolutely loved the venue. Really, really loved it. I'll show you some pictures of why:

The ballroom was absolutely gorgeous! The ceilings, the chandeliers, the hardwood floors and amazing windows. I loved it. I was so incredibly in loved, but it was pricey. Very, very pricey. So we decided to go with another venue we had seen. What is that you ask? Find out next time!

(All photos personal unless otherwise noted.)