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.

Caterers and all the food stuff

Sorry I have been absent no one who is reading this, but I am kind of busy planning a wedding!
Things have progressed of course, the venue has been chosen although we are still waiting for the contract to arrive in the mail. I should say I have been patiently waiting, my fiance not so much. I actually had to call and put my nice voice on and say "it has not arr rived yet, maybe we gave you the wrong address?" like I don't know where I lived. "please send the contract to..uh...1..uh..2.....uh...3....way, the moon, USA".
The nice lady told me she put it in the mail. It had better be there today.

In other news we have started the process of choosing a caterer. I called a few places (our venue only works with certain caterers and gave us a list) and asked for quotes.

How come every estimate we get from www.theknot.com comes in about 100% less then the real world? We have already upped our budget....twice.

When thinking about your budget here a few things NOT to do:
1. figure out how much you are spending per hour on that day
2. Remember all the times you already bought drinks for someone on your guest list
3. devise ways to get corporate sponsorship
4. figure out new ways to cut costs, pot luck wedding? anyone?
5. drink heavily

Needless to say, when I saw the first proposal for the food budget my first thought was "the food better be easier to swallow then this proposal!"

However, what everyone tells me is that they remember two things from a wedding. The food and the music. So this is an expense we can't skimp on....although they are doing wonderful things with cat food these days....all organic!

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.