You are worth two stamps

One to send the invitation to you, one so you can mail me back saying you are not coming to the wedding.

as I get further and further into the wedding process, the costs are staring to add up. Not that I am obsessing about them, as we like to say 'we have the money, and are only doing this once". At the same time we don't have an unlimited budget.

One of the key ways to get your budget expenditures down is to lower your head count. who you invite to your wedding is a very personal thing, and according to all the magazines, websites, in laws, outlaws, friends, and enemies...this list will change over time. However the list I got from my mom is not going down anytime soon.

There seems to be two ways to tackle this problem. First is to fight over each and every person that is on the guest list. Telling your parents "I don't care if they invited you to their daughters wedding, I don't know these people, they ain't coming" or setting ground rules like "unless you have talked to them in the last year (talked! not wrote on their facebook wall) they are not invited"...well that will bring a lot of tears.

The second way, which is what I am doing much to my fiances chagrin, is to invite everyone you want and hope that they say no. It is a strange thing to think "i like this person so much I want them to know I am getting married, to who, when, and where.....but I don't actually want them to come.....if they could stay at home but send a gift, well that would be ideal."

In my defense most of my invitees have to travel, have kids, and really only liked me when I was drunk....so out of the 80 I am inviting I am thinking that 8-16 wont show (they say it is 10%-20%).....my fiance thinks, if we invite them they will show up.....or in her words, we are going to need a bigger tent (and budget).

So please, if you read this (and no one does) and you get an invitation to my wedding...to show your love and support, please don't come. It would be an awesome gift.

first stab at the budget

There are times when you realize just how much alike you and your fiance are, tonight was one of those nights. A few things happened today, my fiance looked at our first venue, my mother's invite list came in the mail, and another venue's price list came as well....combine these all together and we had our first real talk about our budget.

It made us realize a few things:
we both understand this only happens once, it is worth spending the money
do not piss off mom by telling her she can not invite people
sitting on our asses and not doing the budget stuff asap is not the type of people we are.

We had to start the budget today, could not wait, not for a second....even though nothing is final yet. Not he guest list, the venue, anything.

We had a ballpark last weekend when we got engaged, but apparantly that ballpark was for little league play only....we have moved up to triple AAA and I have a feeling that by the end of this we will be playing in Yankee stadium. Don't tell my fiance, she is a Red sox fan.

Nothing makes you feel more grown up then spending tens of thousands of dollars on a single day.
We are both ready for it though, and even the budgeting made us happy....lets see if that holds till after we write our first check.