So the last time I left off we were just beginning to plan a wedding...fast forward a year and the wedding has been planned, completed, and we're 4 months into marriage! I did not blog as planned...if you're new around here this sporadic blogging is nothing different than the usual. Our favorite day would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my parents and Damon's parents.
I know a lot of my friends are in the middle of wedding planning, getting engaged, or just looking for ideas in general! I wanted to splash all of our wedding day details in one place. All photos were taken by our photographers at Atlanta Dahlia Photography- we highly recommend this team! Annie Schiffmacher (A.Maker Events) coordinated the week-of and day-of our wedding. She is organized, very communicative, and works out of Myrtle Beach. She's awesome!
Save-the-Dates, Invitations, & RSVP's
I will forever be loyal to Truly Engaging by Magnet Street. Not only was this the most affordable website I found online, it was also the most editable. I was able to change color, font, text position, size. Literally anything you wanted to manipulate was editable! For some perspective, we ordered 100 invitations with raised gold foil, 100 guest & return addressed envelopes, and 100 RSVP postcards for a total of $197. My mind was blown! I highly suggest RSVP postcards- we pre-stamped and pre-filled in guest count so there was no confusion and all guests needed to do was check yes or no, sign their names, and drop them back in the mail box. We loved getting the postcards back in the mail! We also ordered our Save-the-Dates and Thank You cards from this company as well. We plan on ordering Christmas cards from here this year too!
Flowers, Boutonnieres, & Bouquets
Let me start by saying my mama is a rockstar. We had faux floral everything and she handmade them all. Not a single real flower was used and it all turned out incredible. We kept tables to glass hurricanes, glass jarred candles, and a faux Lamb's Ear garland. Bouquets were a beautiful mix of peachy and green floral from Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and Walmart. Stems were wrapped in jute and a braided beaded mix of twin. We shopped Hobby Lobby 50% off sales throughout the year. There was about a $400 total in florals.
It was really important to us (mom and I) that we use things that could later be repurposed. For example, all of our signage (besides the guestbook) were in glass frames that both of us have now reused in our own homes and the leftover bell favors will be used on the Christmas tree this year. I bought a wedding sign bundle off of Etsy and we printed everything ourselves. This included a memory sign, bar menu, bride and groom drinks sign, an exit sign, a guestbook sign, etc. Damon and I wanted a fun guestbook, so we chose to use a couple boxes of Jenga blocks for guests to sign. Everyone rang their bell favor during our first kiss. Tip- Print your seating chart at Office Depot as a poster! I designed a poster on Publisher and uploaded it to Office Depot. They printed it for $20 and that was the biggest money savor we came across!
My MOH Laura was the real MVP on this one. I was able to reuse all of her glass hurricanes from her wedding which was a big money saver. We bought a few extra from Dollar Tree, Goodwill, and Walmart to fill in here and there. Guest tables had 3 different sized hurricanes, a Lamb's Ear garland, and 3 candles. I didn't want the tables to be too crowded with decorations, so I chose to use a vinyl decal on one hurricane to show the table numbers for guests. The wedding party table had a mix of Lamb's Ear, Reserved signs, candles, and a terracotta cheese cloth runner going through it to tie in our wedding colors. Napkins were white cheese cloth and tied in a knot in front of guest seats.
Cocktail Hour, Dinner, & Cake
The biggest regret (if I can even call it that) was that I didn't get to see our cocktail hour come together. Thankfully, our awesome photographers got some incredible shots and from what I've heard everything was delicious. We used a company out of Sunset Beach called Host & Graze and they were amazing. We chose to do a huge charcuterie spread instead of a few different apps circulating. We wanted people to save room for dinner and hangout! Our wedding cake was simple and we really loved the idea of cupcakes. After shopping around for cakes and cupcakes, we realized that a major chunk of the budget would be going to dessert. We chose to use Walmart Bakery cupcakes (vanilla cake, vanilla icing) and got a couple dozen Gluten Free cupcakes from Cakes by the Sea (vanilla cake, vanilla icing) and a small cake just for us to cut. I ordered a topper from Etsy and grabbed some gold dust glitter to toss on it all. The dessert table came together beautifully! Tip: Highly recommend saving money on dessert and Walmart Bakery cupcakes were yummy. We used Middle of the Island out of Wilmington for our dinner buffet and caterer. Their staff was fun and enthusiastic and the food was delicious! We chose the route of providing our own alcohol (shoutout Damon's parents) and it was a big money saver. We went on a big trip to Total Wine in SC to scoop it all up.
Hair & Make-Up
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