the big two killed my baby (read: making my wedding awesome)

Early on in this magical/tedious process called wedding planning, my fiance and I talked about our priorities -- what we liked about weddings, what we wish was better at weddings, and what we could totally do without. It has been so so helpful using that as a basis for our budget.

Our first priority was the music. The very first vendor I booked was the DJ, long before I signed a contract for our venue. I seriously heart dancing. If there's a live band playing somewhere, anywhere, I'm up dancing to it. If a store has good music, I'm shaking my butt. When I'm riding the Metro, I bob my head and do this weird finger pointing dance (especially if it's the intro for "Gold Digger"..). Mr. D isn't quite like that, but he'll get his groove on too! So, while I have no shame dancing to anything, most people do. They get all awkward and just sort of stand there -- it's sad really. Therefore, a killer DJ was needed.

I found The Flashdance through blogs. It's a collaboration between Michael Antonia, aka The Human Jukebox, photographers Max Wanger, and Jesse and Whitney from Our Labor of Love. I had been reading Weddingbee for a few months when Mrs. Meatball posted about her DJ. After I saw his videos, I was hooked.

how to make it hype pt. 2 from Michael Antonia on Vimeo.


Unfortunately, he was also local to LA. My wedding is in Indiana. Clearly it was hopeless.

Oh ha, it wasn't. We exchanged a few emails and I realized I could make it work in our budget, as long as I eliminated low priority stuff (like silly favors). This is also where having a small wedding becomes fortuitous: your budget just goes a lot further and you can do crazy stuff like fly a DJ to your wedding. Totally. My only concern now is how I'm going to get down and dirty in a big ass dress.

The second priority was photography. Ever since I read "Camera Lucida" by Roland Barthes, I've had a new, amazing respect for photography, not perfect pictures. I've written a few scholarly essays on this subject, so before this paragraph get too dry and didactic -- we really searched high and low to find a photographer that embraced the realness of the day. I'm so excited about who we booked!

I found Our Labor of Love through The Flashdance. I originally had my heart set on Max Wanger, but due to some date conflicts and budget worries, that wasn't going to happen. I started searching for Bloomington-area photographers, thinking I had already used up whatever budget wiggle room I had on the DJ. They were all competent, talented people, but nothing.. fit. So on a whim I contacted OLOL. While I ultimately decided Jesse and Whitney were out of my budget, they did refer me to someone else from OLOL: Heidi. Amazingly, she was the same price as my first choice from Bloomington, but far far far more fitting for us as a couple. Her photos are so amazingly saturated. Gorgeous. Behold, the wonders of Heidi!

 

 all above images from Our Labor of Love by Heidi

Now, OLOL is based in Atlanta. Another long-distance vendor. Do you think I'm insane yet? Well, Heidi is pretty nutty too, because she's going to drive with her assistant to Bloomington! I can't wait to meet this woman. Damn.

Obviously, I've had to eliminate things from the budget to make room for these talented people. I kicked favors and a limo/schmancy car to the curb. I'm printing almost all of my paper products at home on an inkjet printer. We're putting off the big honeymoon for six months. I'm doing my own make-up. These are the sacrifices. But honestly? None of them feel that way.

What are you priorities for your wedding? Are you eliminating "required" wedding items from your budget?

favorite planning resources

I'm at work so I don't have full access to my clip file (more on this later), so the mood board posts will continue soooon.

But I wanted to share the online resources that have made planning more organized and, in some cases, easier to share.

1. Google Docs

Oh Google Docs, how I love thee. At first I was just using the spreadsheets to keep track of potential vendors and their quotes, for the sake of comparison. But once I started booking vendors, I saw more potential! Sharing!

So I signed my mom up for gmail and invited her to the budget spreadsheet (she is paying for about 85% of the wedding). We can both add things, make notes, and keep track of the overall budget while living 12 hours away. Perfecto.

2. Mint.com

Ah, another money application. This isn't so wedding-related, but it is supremely valuable.You input all of your banking information (the more you supply, the more accurate it gets), and it spits back a very visual representation of your spending. You can then go back and set budgets for individual categories: utilities, entertainment, dining, etc, and make your own. So we've created a "wedding" budget that's actually our way of tracking the wedding savings. The other neat thing about Mint is the Iphone app. It pushes updates to you, like fees on your ATM transactions, recent payments, paychecks, etc. My fiance calls it "the tattletale." Oh how true it is.

3. Style Circle Inspiration Board Maker

This is a so-new feature on Style Me Pretty and it's awesome. Instead of dealing with Photoshop to make a mood board, you can upload images directly to this application and it generates a very clean board. I particularly like it because it saves the "credits" for a photo. You can then post it directly on your own site.

One little tip though for those that save images from the web willy-nilly, like me: When you're saving the photo, save it as the credit. I cannot count how many times I've saved an image and have no idea where it came from, especially if it's something I might want to actually buy. If you want to save even more info about an image, change its "Properties." Right-click the thumbnail (sorry Macs I have no idea how you right click stuff..), click Properties, go to Details, and fill in the relevant blanks. You can then list the website and any info that may be useful later on.

4. Dropbox

This is something I really like but don't use enough - if I did, I'd have access to all of my clippings! You sign up for their free service and then download the widget for all of the computers you use. After that, you can "drop" files you want to share with yourself into the box, for access later from any of your computers or the web. You can also share folders with other users, which is what I've done with my fiance and my mom again. So instead of forcing her to check her email to see inspiration photos, I just drop the photos in the box.

So those are my web essentials for planning. Do you have any favorites?