the final countdown

We are less than 12 months from our wedding day! We’re SO thankful to have a long engagement to allow us the time to scope out different vendors and prices… but now, it’s time to really focus on a structured wedding checklist. We are using tools on TheKnot’s website where you can create your personal wedding agenda and fill in vendors, keep track of your budget, to-do’s, and even RSVPs! Best thing – the personal site is free!

We’ve been calling hotels to request room blocks for our wedding and have been asking certain questions:

• Is there a wedding block rate?
• What amenities do you have that we could utilize on the wedding day – use of a banquet room to get ready, complimentary breakfast, shuttle service, and multiple night stay for rate?
• Is there a complimentary stay for bride and groom if a certain number of rooms are blocked?
• What is the cutoff date and cancellation policy?
• Can the room block be extended if it fills up?

We have invested a lot of time to research and have found two hotels that we like! Just need to sign the agreements (after reading carefully!). Next up, save the dates!

• There are plenty of wedding vendors that offer templates for your save the date and wedding invitation needs! – sign yourself up for free for wedding shows by looking them up online and requesting passes via email or mail.
• Consider a handful of sites for review, i.e. Minted, Zola, Shutterfly, Walgreens, and wait for promo codes for up to 50% off, before you purchase!
• Design your own save the dates and print them for much less!

Now, this whole wedding-planning process has not been easy! When you’re on a budget, you’re certainly going to need to give yourself realistic expectations of how much time you’ll take researching, visiting, tasting, and interviewing vendors. THEN… you might hit some road bumps.

Our first road bump: catering. We had continued issues with the vendor who we thought would be a perfect fit for our catering/beverage service needs. The pricing was FABULOUS – the only vendor within our budget! – which we believe is because this caterer isn’t known for off-site catering (they do TONS on-site). We had a poor experience with one of their staff members at the initial tasting, but loved the food and the head chef. Then the next representative they set us up with left to work with another company (we were not updated of this change)… and we were working most recently with their executive catering manager, who hadn’t gotten back to us consistently at any point.

We decided this caterer is not right for us so to avoid headache later, we’re going back to the drawing board. This might mean spending above our allotted food budget, but at least with our time remaining,  we can continue to make our monthly deposits in the wedding savings account and work to save money in other areas to account for spending a little more than what we accounted for. We can do this!

Peace, love, and complimentary shuttle service,

Scott + Megan