Engagement Pictures

I have so excited to be posting our engagement pictures from the talented photographer, Mandy Owens. Crystal Jackson did my hair, and Dusti Rains made us matching Alabama Mr. & Mrs. shirts (even though she is an Auburn fan lol). We had our pictures made at Cherokee Rock Village, which is just 5 or so minutes from my hours. Enjoy them as much as we do!

Gorgeous scenery, right?

Mandy was having to warm me up for PDA pictures.

One of the few times when James is taller than I am. :)

This one is probably my favorite. I just like how it is just me and him in the moment together.
We were going to get on top of the rock we are leaning against, but when James tried climbing it he slipped and tore the back pocket of his jeans.

This one was funny because Mandy told him to act like he was flirting with me and trying to get my number.

We really wanted a fall scenery. It was our luck that the leaves really started turning colors the next week.

A big thanks for our friend Dusti from church who made us matching shirts for our pictures.

I just love this picture!

A sweet embrace!

That is about as much PDA as I would do.

This was our "serious" look.

This was truly one of the sweetest moments that I love to look back on. We are both so happy and in love, and you can see it through this beautiful picture.

I love this man!

She almost snapped a kiss! :)

Yes to the Dress!

We are just a little over 7 months away from our big day and I can safely said I have found my dress. It was my first day looking and really didn't plan on finding anything yet. I wasn't even planning on trying on anything. I went to a local store that I have bought all prom dresses and know the owner really well (plus I felt very comfortable with them since we all know that you simply can't buy a formal dress and it fits you without any weird gaps or alterations). I learned that over the last year that they have sold all their wedding dresses to another store. So my mom and I went there, but they didn't really have any dresses I liked in my size or in my price range. I saw one dress, though, that I did like and would have loved to have tried it on had it been closer to my size. I mentioned a store that was down the road as we were winding down the afternoon. When we got there, I saw 4 dresses in my size that I liked, so I tried them on while I saw them. Really, I just wanted to get a feel of how wedding dresses work. I had an open mind to trying on most anything, but I did have some things that I really wanted in my dress:
1. I wanted a conservative dress that was traditional, modest, but beautiful
2. I did not want a lot of bling-bling on my dress or designs all over the place.
3. No poofy dress for me and no skin-tight dress either.
4. A shade of white (there are so many now). I just knew I didn't want gold or blush pink or other odd colors.
5. Some sort of straps. Not spaghetti straps and not long-sleeves.

The first dress I tried on was a bright white with just a little bling on the side. It had a corset and wasn't poofy. The only thing it lacked was straps, but the corset helped to keep it together. The next 2 dresses just didn't suit my fancy. My 4th and final dress was...it is a surprise, but I will say that it met all of my requirements. :) I am keeping the details under wraps because he cannot see the dress until the day of!

Shout out to Bridal by CC in Albertville, AL for being so wonderful in helping me with my dress shopping and giving me a discount when I get all of my bridesmaids and flower girls to purchase their dresses their. Also, the groom gets a free suit/tux when all his guys get their attire there.

So my tip, don't go trying on many dresses. Decide what you like and try to stick to that, but be open to other suggestions. The store owners have been doing their jobs for quite a while, so they can tell you what looks best on your body. Happy dress hunting!

Venues

Selecting your locations and venues can vary based on your budget, theme, guest list, type of ceremony you want to have, etc. We wanted to have a traditional wedding with a Southern/Classic theme to it. We are having the ceremony at my church for free since I am a member of the church. Our fellowship hall is too small for our guest list size and we wanted to dance and have music, so we are holding it at a nice gym (where others have held receptions) that belongs to another church in the county. Since my dad is the Associational Missionary, the sweet lady cut us a deal on the price. Our only time crunch is that they use the gym on Friday nights, so late Friday night we will set up and begin decorating early Saturday morning before the wedding. Many couples could easily spend $1500 on these two locations, but I am proud to say we are getting it all for $150!

Tip: If you want an outside wedding, consider looking into park in your community. Many times you can use them for free or for just a deposit fee to help cover costs of cleaning up. Also, think of friends or family members who have a gorgeous view or landscape who would let you use their places for free. If you are like me and hate to sweat, usually churches are the least expensive routes. Most churches offer their buildings for free or a reduced price. Even if you want to get married at a church you don't attend, a church is typically less expensive than a chapel that is used only for weddings.

Invites

This is not our invitation. Just a clip art. :)

I am so excited about this post because we have saved a ton of money on our invitations and stationery needs! When looking for invites, we first sat down and listed everyone we wanted to come to the wedding. Let's just say we ended up with over 200 invitations when it was all said and done. Clearly we needed to cut corners and figure out exactly how many invites we really needed to send. Girls, take your time and do plenty of research (especially if you are on a tight budget and want to save as much as possible). I spent days researching different websites and local stores, ordering FREE samples from online stores, finding discounts, and looking for deals on what we wanted for our invitation. Plug: check out David's Bridal where you can get 5 free samples of any invite. (HACK TIP: If there are more than 5 you like, trust me I loved like 30 different ones, pick 5 of them and put in the promo code FREE, put in your shipping info, then repeat all the steps until you have all your sample invitations sent.) Ann's Bridal Bargain does the same thing with free sample invites except using the promo code SAMPLES, and you can get a free sample kit and a free catalogue from Minted. Of course, you can google for things as well, which is how I stumbled across our awesome deal!

Before I reveal our source, let me tell you all about our savings! I wanted to keep the invites around $100 and going no more than $200. Well, for 250 Save the Date postcards, 70 invitations, and 250 business cards (which was an unexpected purchase because we forgot to put our RSVP date on the invites LOL!) we spent a grand total of... drum roll please... $91.93. (If we hadn't have had to get business cards it would have been $78.95.) To put this in perspective, to get what we wanted would have cost us well over $500 at a printing store, over $150 at Hobby Lobby, over $100 at Wal-Mart, and over $400 for our favorite invitation we found on David's Bridal. So who did we select for our printing needs? VISTAPRINT :) I definitely have no shame in using them. I have purchased products from them in the past for my parents and have been pleased with their work and quickness of sending me my products. Since I have used them before, I get e-mails with promo codes for discounts. I was able to save 40% on my invites using a promo code they sent me that would have regularly cost $75, but I paid $56.47. We got 250 postcards that were regularly $35, but purchased them for $4.99 with a promo code for a special they were running. We also had a promo code for the business cards where we could get 250 basic cards for free or 250 premium cards for $7.99. We would have gone with the free cards (which would have included about $5 for shipping), but there were none that matched our colors, so we spent an extra $8 for something we could customize.

I am sure you are probably wondering why we have different numbers for different things. Consider this another money-saving tip from me. Since I don't have a job right now, I am looking for tons of ways to save and cut corners while still getting a great quality and price on what we want. After we looked through our list, we decided there was no way we could really narrow it down, so we will be sending the Save the Date postcards to everyone and handing them out at church and to family and friends. The lowest number of postcards we could order was 250, hence the reason we have so many. Also, postcard postage is much cheaper than regular postage, so we knew we could send more postcards to more people. As we looked through our list, we highlighted close family members and friends. This put us at about 55, so we ordered 70 in case we forgot anyone. So no matter if you get a Save the Date or an invitation, YOU ARE INVITED. (Just make sure you RSVP to our website or call one of us!) Just as the count was with the postcards, the lowest we could order of business cards was 250. We are still figuring out how we want to put it all together, but I have a few ideas up my sleeve.

So after all of this, here is my tip: Research & Dig Deep! Know your budget and the limits for each thing and take some time to look hard for what you want. Send out lots of Save the Dates, but send invites to close family members and friends. No one has to know who gets what or where you buy them. :)

Later on this week I will do a post on venues and how to look for deals there! Happy planning!


*****UPDATE*****
After all our stuff came in, we had about 25 postcards damaged and 10 invites damaged that did not have envelopes. I wasn't too worried about the postcards since we have more than we need, but I just went to the Vistaprint website and chatted online, and in less than 10 minutes the lady had me an order for 50 postcards and 10 invites with envelopes for free with free expedient shipping! Talk about great customer service!!! I made sure to give 5 stars on all my surveys because I was thoroughly impressed! You can also call or e-mail. The only "negative" side was I had to wait for about 10 minutes for someone to be able to message me, so you could have a longer wait or a shorter wait. I prefered the chat so I wouldn't run up minutes on my phone waiting and it was accessible to my account. :)

First Payments!

It finally has sunk in that we are getting married. We made our first 2 wedding investments and are so excited!!

On Monday we met with our photographer, Mandy Owens, and paid our $200 deposit to reserve our wedding date and selected a date to do engagement pictures. She had the best deal for everything we were looking for. I wanted 2 photographers to capture moments from multiple points of view (i.e. walking down the aisle and seeing both the bride and grooms expressions) and I wanted enough time before and after the wedding along with printing rights to the pictures. I got all of that with her for $1500. 6 hours of photography, 2 photographers, and a CD with 600+ images. Plus her work is awesome (click her name above if you don't believe me)! It has that nature appeal to it, which is what we both wanted. When we first started looking, we had one photographer in mind who is very well known around here, but her work was TWICE the cost of Mandy's for about the same work and quality. We also looked at newer photographers who have great work as well, but the total difference when adding engagement and wedding pictures together was about $200. Here is a breakdown of everything we are getting for a grand total of $1600:
- Engagement Session at our place of choosing (within an hour from Albertville)
- Unlimited outfits (we are just choosing 2-3)
- No set time limit (ours will probably be 1-2 hrs max)
- $10 per image on a CD of the engagement pictures (or $300 for all 100+ images)
- 6 hours of coverage on the wedding day
- 2 photographers on the wedding day
- CD with printing rights of all 600+ images from the wedding day
- Online gallery viewing with a password for both engagement and wedding pictures

One of my bridesmaids told me that the amount we spend on photography will be the quality of the work we receive, and I definitely agree. We could have used a lot less expensive photographer, but I think we selected a great photographer for the money we are spending. Both James and I said we would be willing to pay a little more for a photographer who matched exactly what we wanted because this is a special day that will be remembered by looking at the pictures.




Our second big purchase was...drum roll please... INVITES!! :) I cannot tell you how many hours we spent researching, viewing samples, finding discounts, and looking for a good deal on what we wanted for an invitation. Originally, we fell in love with an invitation through David's Bridal, but after I went in and personalized it, 150 invites would cost us over $480, which was out of our budget. We wanted to keep the invites around $200. Frugal wedding planners and shoppers, perk up here! We spent a total of $78.95 on 250 Save the Dates and 70 Invitations. Backstory- We sate down and made a list of people we should invite. Our original list was about 230 invitations with about 350 people. So we marked through the list and decided to announce it at church instead of sending an invite to everyone (which cut out about 50 or so people). On our second guest list draft, we had about 120 invitations. About this time I was getting frustrated at the prices and stubbled upon Vistaprint. LIFESAVER!!! :) We were going to do 150 invites and RSVPs. Then I got a promo code for postcards. We went through our list one more time and figured that we could order 250 Save the Date postcards for $35 and 70 invites for $75. I also received a promo code for my invites. So here is a breakdown of the costs and savings:
- 250 Save the Date postcards

• Originally $35
• Shipping & Processing $4.99
• Paid $22.48
• Saved $17.51

- 70 invites

• Originally $75 (including an upgrade to Premium, 100 lb. White Matte paper)
• Shipping & Processing $9.99
• Paid $56.47
• Saved $28.52

- We saved $46.03 just in promo codes that Vistaprint gave me.

So if you are looking for a budget-friendly place, go check out Vistaprint. Have no shame in it. You don't even have to tell people you got them there. Ours should come in by next Friday/Saturday, so I will post of picture of the final product!

Second tip: Research and dig deep! You never know where you will find what you are looking for. I just happened to come across Mandy Owen's FaceBook page when searching for photographers. I was also lucky enough to score some awesome promo codes with Vistaprint to save even more money, which Vistaprint is great about sending promo codes for just about anything.

We are on to looking for a videographer and comparing prices, so happy planning!

Just Got Engaged!

James and I are beyond thrilled to announce we are engaged!! On June 18, 2014, James asked me to spend the rest of my life with him on campus at Samford University. So, here we are 19 days later and put down our first wedding payment! It is finally sinking in that we are getting married. I hope to use this blog to share my ideas to brides who are on a tight budget (because believe me, I AM!) and show you that you can have a nice wedding without taking out a loan or spending a fortune. It takes a lot of work and research finding the right people for the jobs needed, but I believe it will be worth it in the end! We want our story and happy ending to help other brides because I love, love, LOVE reading blogs on how girls saved money in their weddings. And by the way, we will be getting married June 27, 2015, so we have plenty of time to plan and prepare and find the best deals.

So, my first tip is to give yourself plenty of time for your engagement. I'm not saying everyone needs to give themselves a year, but I would recommend at least 6 months so you can try to get all your ducks in order and not feel as rushed. Trust me, I get stressed even though I have a little over 11 months to go, so don't put more pressure on yourself by getting married so fast that you can't enjoy your engagement and planning your special day! You only get to do this once, so don't make yourself miserably stressed out. There will be people who will upset you and get you down, but that is going to happen no matter what. Just stick to what you and your fiance want and have each others backs so you don't feel pressured to do what everyone else says. It is nice to get advice from recently married couples and parents who have just paid for a wedding, but it is okay to just shake your head and just thank them for their advice. Trust me, most of the time they just want to help, not to boss you around.

Happy planning!