Welcome to the fourth installment in my Wedding in a Week series. If you want to know more about how we made the decision to get married in a week, took care of the decorations and food, and dressed ourselves with a week’s notice, check out the prior installments.

This post contains affiliate links. If you click on them and buy anything, regardless of whether it’s the product linked, I will receive a commission. For more information, view my Disclosure.

After a whirlwind 6 days, it was finally time to actually do the deed and get married.

The Officiant

Our officiant, Aaron, had been recommended to us as a photographer, but it turns out he offers both services and actually specializes in elopements. We hired him to be the officiant and also take our official photos after the ceremony. He made the process so easy, and we had our finished photos just a few days after the event. If you live in Virginia and are looking to put together your own simple wedding, I’d recommend checking out Aaron’s site to see what he offers.

The Photographer

Although Aaron took our official photos, our friend Adam, who is also a photographer, offered to take some more candid and environmental shots, and I’m so glad he did. All the posed photos are lovely, but the candid ones bring a smile to my face every time I see them. There’s nothing like capturing people’s emotions in the moment. Also, if you’re the one getting married, believe me when I say that it’s such a whirlwind that you will want some shots to look back at and digest later.

The Vows

Joe and I elected to say standard vows but also add our own little twist. We each came up with something to say before the vows to personalize them to our relationship.

The Music

No wedding celebration is complete without a little goofy dancing. We didn’t really have the budget for a band or DJ, and it would have been yet another huge hurdle to jump in our limited time, so our music source had to be quick and dirty.

My now-husband and I enlisted the help of his sister and her fiancé to create a playlist of songs on Spotify for the dancing portion of the evening. We also chose songs for our entrance to and exit from the ceremony and for our first dance.

To play the music, we hooked an iPad into some speakers that Joe’s parents had in their house already, and voilà, the halls were alive with the sound of music! The only cost to all this was technically the subscription to Spotify, which we already had.

If someone who wasn’t a paying Spotify member wanted to take this approach to his or her playlist, I would recommend using a free trial of Premium during the month of the wedding, then canceling before the subscription kicks in. Free music, no ads, what’s not to love?

The Food-Wrangler Volunteers

I mentioned in the first Wedding in a Week post that we could never have pulled off the wedding without some serious help, and that is so true. The more time I have to think about it, the more I realize just how much everyone pitched in to make it happen.

From Joe’s parents offering their home as a venue, to the help from the rest of our family and friends to decorate, clothe us, and even play the music, we were surrounded by helpers. On the day of the actual wedding, however, two of the most valuable helpers were a couple of neighbors who volunteered to be the kitchen crew. My mother-in-law had made them some gorgeous cookies for another wedding not long before, so this was their way of returning the favor.

They set up the food and tables, cleared away dishes, and just generally made sure things went smoothly. That way, my mother-in-law wasn’t running around trying to feed everyone, and all of us could relax and have fun.

Many venues come with staff to help take care of these minor problems, but in this case, we didn’t have any built-in staff. It was amazing to have two extra helpers who weren’t guests but were willing to help. If they had not kindly volunteered, it would have been 100% worth it to pay people to come in and do the same work.

The Bonuses

The photo booth

Photo booths aren’t a new concept at weddings these day. We went back and forth on the idea a little bit, but when we ran by Michael’s craft store and saw they had a Fujifilm mini instant camera on sale, we went for it, and I’m so glad we did. With a box of accessories I grabbed at Charming Charlie and a few cute background decorations from Michael’s, we had a cute photo booth set up.

Having a portable camera proved to be a great choice, and luckily, I’d bought a twin-pack of extra film. Once the dancing started, we passed it around and got some great shots of our friends and family having a blast. I plan to put them in a photo album to cherish for years to come.

The hot cider bar

“Bars” of various kinds aren’t unusual at weddings either. Allowing your guests to personalize something delicious can be a great way to make sure everyone gets exactly what they want. Since all our food was taken care of already, we decided to go for a hot cider bar that was made available immediately after the ceremony, during the cocktail hour. It fit with our autumnal/Thanksgiving theme and made sure no one got too full before dinner was served. Boozy additions and orange slices were provided as options and the hot drink was so welcome as the evening temperatures dipped.

The Cost

The officiant/photographer was super reasonable, plus the speed at which we had our photos was very impressive. Our friend offered his pictures as a wedding present, which was lovely. Cost: $600

I don’t count our Spotify subscription as a wedding expense because we would have paid for that regardless. Cost: $0

Our kitchen volunteers were invaluable, but offered their services for free, which was so sweet and much appreciated. Cost: $0 

The photo booth supplies were more costly than I would have liked, but we sacrificed a few dollars in order to buy the camera and film immediately. Had we decided to get them earlier and ordered online, they probably would have been cheaper. Cost: $120

The cider bar used a lot of items my in-laws already had. We did get some booze, fruit and cinnamon sticks, not to mention the cider itself. Cost: $50

Total wedding cost so far: $4,822

Wrap Up

For a wedding that was planned in less than a week, I think we did pretty darn well. It was truly a team effort and with some creativity and a lot of help, we got to have all the important parts of a wedding, and then some. Having a little extra time might have saved us a few bucks here and there, but it’s entirely possible that extra time would have allowed us to find other extras to spend all that money on anyway.

Welcome to part 3 of our “My Wedding in a Week” series! If you haven’t read about how we decided to get married and tackled the decorations and food, I’d recommend catching up on those first, but all the parts can pretty much stand on their own. Today’s post will focus on how we, the bride and groom, prepared for our wedding!

This post contains affiliate links. If you click on them and buy anything, regardless of whether it’s the product linked, I will receive a commission. For more information, view my Disclosure.

The Bride

The Dress

After we’d sorted out the bigger questions about the wedding, I realized I was missing a big part of the “bride” experience — the dress.

I obviously wasn’t going to have time to go through the whole rigamarole of going to a bunch of boutiques, trying on different gowns, and getting my favorite one altered to fit me perfectly. Cue desperate online searching.

I knew I wanted one with an A-line skirt and some lace, but other than that I really wasn’t sure what I should get. I found a couple of contenders, but some wouldn’t get here in time or would be cutting it close, and others had mediocre reviews. In the end, I took a flyer on this beauty from Modcloth. I ordered a size up, as reviews suggested, and crossed my fingers.

Honestly, I probably should have ordered more than one dress to hedge my bets, but I know myself and how bad I am at returning online purchases. (They tend to sit in a “to return” pile until they are well past their return deadline.) Plus, I figured I could run out to a department store and grab something in person if it came down to that. I also ordered a gold metallic belt as a statement piece.

Luckily, my gamble paid off and the dress fit perfectly. I was thrilled I got the aesthetic I wanted at an amazing price. The belt, on the other hand, wasn’t really a look I liked, but the dress definitely needed a little something to spice it up.

The Accessories

The day after Thanksgiving, I dragged Joe to Charming Charlie. If you’ve never been to this accessories chain, let me describe the glorious ridiculousness of it: every store is filled with jewelry, scarves, shoes, purses, and random stuff like mugs all organized by color. Nothing in there is super high quality, but the prices are good for what you get, especially since it’s all stuff that’s very affected by trends. Since it was Black Friday, they were allowing visitors to spin a wheel of coupons, and I got one for 10% off! Any little bit helps, right?

There’s a bridal section at the back of the store and there I found a couple of potential, blingy sashes to replace the metallic belt that didn’t work out. One of them worked perfectly and really took the dress from beautiful to bridal.

The next day, I actually returned to this den of accessories with my bridesmaids and found earrings and a sparkly comb for my hair. I spent way more in Charming Charlie than I ever have before, but considering what I got for it and how convenient it was to find all those things in one place, I was happy.

The Face

Makeup is yet another thing a bride has to think about! I had some basics, but I’d run out of my nice foundation, so I ran over to Sephora and grabbed some Makeup Forever foundation and their matte HD finishing powder, which I had heard helps make you look great on camera. Not a cheap combo, but way cheaper than hiring a makeup artist. My sister-in-law and my Maid of Honor did my makeup on the day, using these products and some we already had, and I think it turned out fabulously.

The Shoes

The saga of my wedding shoes is a sad one. I found the perfect pair of wine-colored heels at DSW two days before my wedding. Sadly, I left them behind in the rush and they spent my wedding day at my parents’ house instead of on my feet. Luckily, my sister-in-law lent me her black heels for the ceremony and photos, and I had brought a pair of black flats for dinner and dancing anyway, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but I was still bummed. I’m counting the shoes as an expense, since I’m keeping them and I wouldn’t have bought them if the wedding hadn’t been happening.

The Groom

The Outfit

On the Wednesday of our pre-wedding week, Joe and I headed to a mall near his parents’ house to hunt down his wedding outfit. Since he works from home, he hasn’t had to wear a suit since his brother’s wedding a few years ago, and that one didn’t fit with the color scheme we were going for.

Our first stop was Nordstrom Rack, which is one of our favorite stores to find sneaky deals, but nothing there quite fit. He needs a tall, wide-shouldered fit, and most average sizes just don’t cut it. Oh well, it was worth a shot, and we did find a nice white shirt on sale that we snapped up.

Next stop, Brooks Brothers, where we met a nice salesman who helped us narrow our choices and eventually decide on a navy blue suit that would look great with the fall color scheme of the wedding. It fit really well for an off-the-rack suit, which was key because we had no time to get it altered. Plus, there was a sale going on for the holidays that brought the price down a little, and now Joe has a suit he can wear in the future.

Finally, he needed a tie to match the burgundy that was going to be our base color. We bought three that might work and returned the two that he didn’t wear.

The Ring

The last piece of the groom puzzle was his wedding ring. I was just going to use a ring I had as my wedding ring, but Joe doesn’t wear jewelry normally, so we poked around in some stores looking for a cheap ring. No one wanted to sell us anything under $125, and since we knew this probably wouldn’t be his permanent ring, we weren’t willing to spend that much.

Then I realized we had overlooked maybe the most obvious option — buying the ring online. Amazon to the rescue! We found a white tungsten ring with great reviews for less than $14.

This is the one we chose, (click on the image to see it on Amazon) and it’s been great so far:

 

The Cost

Note: I’ve rounded all the prices to the nearest dollar to make the totals easy.

I paid for fast shipping for my dress and belt, which was an extra $20. Cost: $206

Makeup from Sephora is expensive, but I know I’ll keep these items for a while and get a lot of benefit from them, so at least it was a multi-use purchase. Cost: $83

Charming Charlie accessories for days! I’ll definitely wear the earrings again, and this includes some items that I’ll talk about in my next post. Cost: $144

The shoes I got are gorgeous, so despite the debacle, I’ll keep ’em. Cost: $36

Joe’s new suit was on sale for 30% off. Cost: $317

A nice, lightly patterned white shirt with French cuffs to wear with the suit was a nice find at Nordstrom Rack. Cost: $32

A burgundy tie rounded out the groom’s outfit. Cost: $15

Once we realized online was the way to get Joe’s ring, we bought it in about five minutes on Amazon and it arrived well before the wedding. Cost: $14

Overall outfits/jewelry cost: $847

Total wedding cost so far: $4,052

Holiday greetings, money nerdlings!

I know things have been pretty quiet in the L$G world over the past couple of weeks. There’s a lot going on at the moment, but a major reason it’s been so quiet is actually a pretty good reason: I got married!

Now, you might think I could have been a good blogger and set up some posts to cover my absence from the keyboard, and you’d be right, except that I didn’t know I would be getting married until less than a week before we said “I do”.

You read that right. Even though we got “engaged” on Monday, November 20th, we managed to have a wonderful wedding on Sunday, November 26th. I learned so much in that week about myself and weddings in general that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share it with you all.

Hooked yet? Settle in, because I’m going to share all the delightful details with you over a series of posts I’m calling the My Wedding in a Week series. We’ll talk decisions, cost, and lessons learned. Enjoy!

Making the decision

Health problems in my family prompted my lovely boyfriend, Joe, and I to pull the wedding trigger at breakneck speed. We’d been dating for 7 years, so it wasn’t like this was completely unexpected, but we’ve always been that couple that took things slowly and steadily, so we caught a lot of people off-guard with this decision.

We had been talking about getting married soon for a few months, and had even gone ring shopping. Then, on that Monday, we were on the phone talking about how everyone from both our immediate families was coming into town for Thanksgiving and it hit us: why not get married while everyone was here? It sounded crazy, but we decided to go for it.

Despite it being so last-minute, as soon as we told people the news, everyone — EVERYONE — immediately asked what they could do to help. I’m going to tell you right up front that this wedding would never have been the success it was without the help and support of our families and friends. This will be a theme in these posts, and the whole process just solidified how important a network is and how you really never know who you know until you need help.

We told our parents and siblings first, since we had to make sure they all were okay with the date and time we were aiming for. Once we had them on board, we messaged our friends to let them know. Every local friend we told was able to make it. Score!

At this point, we kind of thought we’d done what we could attendee-wise. Thanksgiving is a tough time for people to travel last minute and it was going to be a Sunday wedding, which meant most people would need to be back at work on Monday.

However, to our surprise and delight, several members of Joe’s family moved mountains to get here and what we thought would be a 20-person gathering turned into a 40-person celebration.

The Venue

This is probably the biggest obstacle when planning a wedding at short notice. Most professional venues require pre-booking and deposits. Restaurants are great options for small, quick weddings, but you might have to guarantee certain spending limits to make it worth the restaurant’s while and you’re stuck with whatever food they happen to make.

We got lucky: Joe’s parents offered their home as the venue.

Joe’s parents’ house is right on a body of water and their living room is open and gorgeous, with cathedral ceilings. They had even already thought through how they would host a wedding there since another family member is getting married next year and had considered their house as a venue. The choice was an easy one: a home wedding it would be!

The Cost

We didn’t pay for announcements/save-the-dates or invitations since we just called or emailed everyone with the information. Cost: $0

Since most of our guests were local and several others could stay with family, only a couple of people needed to resort to hotel rooms to stay, so we didn’t need to reserve a block of rooms or anything. Cost: $0

Our venue needed no reservation or pre-booking, and the food, drinks, furniture, and decorations were going to be separate. Cost: $0

I used a claddagh ring I already owned as an engagement ring, since we hadn’t finalized one yet, and it’s currently serving as my wedding band! This will be a future expense, since Joe wants to buy me something to represent our new milestone, but I love my placeholder. Cost: $0 (so far)

Wrap up

Of course the decision to get married and the announcement are easy. The venue worked out wonderfully, and we didn’t have to worry about a ring for me, but there was still so much to consider. Our so-far free wedding wasn’t going to stay that way!

Up next: Decorating the venue