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Megan and Scott's Journey:
bridal party
As we sit here writing this week’s blog post, we’re reminiscing on the amazing time we had with our closest friends last night! We planned a bridal party as a way for our besties to meet and greet and say hi and be able to put faces to names before the big day! While we wanted to roll out the red carpet and provide surf-n-turf, butler-passed appetizers, gifts, etc., we instead took a bit of a different route to stay within our budgets for groceries and entertainment for the month!
How do you host a party without going overboard on spending?
Refer back to our grocery coupon/deal recommendations from this summer!
- We pulled out a frozen ham and frozen chicken from our basement freezer (where we keep our bulk food purchases), prepped the meats, and kept them on warmers all afternoon/evening so that everyone could snack when they wanted!
- From couponing through the year we always have extra beverages in our basement refrigerator like sodas, bottled water, some adult beverages
- We had extra disposable kitchen products – cups, napkins, plastic ware, straws – leftovers from our engagement party last summer
By using our weekly food calendar on our fridge, we were able to hold ourselves accountable by seeing the numbers we’re spending (we added a column on the side of the magnetic planner to have a running total of our grocery, going out to eat, and entertainment budget). This helped us to parse out what we wanted to spend for other food items while also keeping in mind the rest of our spending this month
We asked everyone to bring either their favorite drink or a snack to pass!
We needed to purchase:
- A new folding table (we didn’t have one)
- Fresh food items for egg bake in the A.M., since several friends spent the night!
- Beer
- Ice
- Fresh rolls for sandwiches
We coordinated reservations at a local bar that has mini-bowling! At a cost of $15 per lane per half-hour, instead of reserving four lanes, as we thought we’d need with a group size of almost 25 and with a maximum of 6 people per lane, we reserved just three. We ended up having the PERFECT amount as by the time we started bowling, we had 18 people! Yahoo!
The Meyer Mingler was a HIT and I would recommend throwing a party like this to any bridal couple!! It was such a fun time and a few people even asked us to host another one in the spring! We’re so thankful for great friends and family, and to be able to host a fun night (within our means) for our favorite folks to get to know each other prior to our big day.
Peace, Love, and Duckpin bowling,
Scott + Megan