Check, Check, And Check!

Phew!  We've gotten tons done!

Last Friday Mr. T and I went and got our marriage license (kind of important!).  I picked up my mom and she and I met with the on-site coordinator at my venue along with with my day-of coordinator, to go over all the final details and time-line.  Then the three of us (my mom, my day-of, and myself) went to Miosa to my dress fitting.  We ended up talking with Michael, the designer at the shop for over an hour; he's awesome!  Oh yeah, the alterations were perfect :-).  It was on to Michael's from there to get the table number stands.  Finally we went to See's Candies to pick up the truffles for our favors.  All of this by 2:00 p.m.!

Sunday afternoon was wedding prep time!  We took all the vases and supplies for the favors to my matron of honor's house.  A couple of friends came over and the four of us got to work.  We prepped all the vases (washed and grids in place), and put together 150 favors.

It feels good to get so much done!

And the Oklahoma Family.....

I had lunch today with one of my favorite people, the Future Mrs. R., AKA, "The Recessionista Bride."  I love getting together with her to have "wedding talk!"  She finds the best deals.  Who else could find nine pairs of shoes for under $40; that's total, not each, people! (Payless, with coupons, on a sale day).

She is currently having the same dilemma that I am with guest count.  We both only sent invites to family and close family friends.  We were both hoping that we would have 125(max!) be able to attend; we're both now expecting 150+.

If you're like me, you have everyone listed in Excel.  I had gone through the list and marked those I thought would or would not attend.  My initial count was 152.  It is now up to 163 based on changes I have made after people called when they received their Save the Date cards.  Ack!!!!

The Future Mrs. R has the same issue.  The latest unexpected RSVP's are her family members from Oklahoma, whom she thought would not attend at all!

Any other Future Mrs. out there having the same issue?

A Loving Budget - Venue Selection Troubles

As you know from my previous guest list post, I LOVE spreadsheets! Although the day we finalized our guest count I was cursing Excel.

We had reviewed my pre-list of over 30 places (that list was vetted from all of the sites within a 2hr radius of my house:-)).  We had narrowed it down to our favorite eight, and our "back-up" fifteen.  We had also considered having it Mr. T's brother and SIL place.  All of these went out the window.  None would now work, either for budgetary or space limitations.

I had run an estimated budget for 100 guests.  When the list was finalized our count was MUCH higher; 185 invited, 150 expected (estimated) to attend.  Now that we were going to have more people, all the numbers changed. 50% increase people! 

We are paying for the majority of the wedding ourselves, with a little help from my family.  We also have no interest in going into debt for one day of celebration (no matter how awesome it is going to be!).

We went back to the drawing board and started from scratch.  I had already been thinking "out-of-the-box".  Now I went really out of my comfort zone (insert freak-out moment here!).  I am very organized when it comes to party planning, and not knowing where we were going to get married was very stressful for me.  It was the only time during the whole planning process so far that Mr. T told me that I needed to "chill out". (Reason #497 I'm marrying that man!)

I looked at out of the way places, parks, etc..  Then, in a "what the heck, might as well" moment I called one of our favorite restaurants that does weddings.  We were ecstatic!  It seemed that they were totally in our budget.  I ran a comparison sheet of what would work out of our new options and we found that we could do a ceremony, followed by a lunch reception at La Provence, cheaper than any of our other options.

Did any of you have to change gears drastically when it came to your venue?  It turned out great for us; how did it turn out for you?

The Guest Count

I am a planner.  I come by it honestly, as my mother is a planner, the same as her mother before her. As soon as I said yes (okay, maybe a little before then! ;-)) I was in full planning mode!

I already had a guest list started; we were at 144 people before he sat down with me to go over the list to make sure I hadn't missed anyone.  Now, with our budget, we were under the impression that we should lower our guest count to the point that we would have about 100 attendees.  We thought that this would not be a problem.  We were wrong!

By the time everything was said and done (major cuts had been made!) our guest count settled at 185 people!  With this count we are figuring that we will end up with approximately 150 guests.  And yes, I did use my spreadsheet to track who I thought would come for sure, who was a maybe, and who we knew would not be able to make it.

This made us completely re-think our entire wedding plan (more on that later!).

How many of you had your guest count go up instead of down when you actually sat down and wrote you full guest list out?