Budget bride

So I'm officially a married gal! Jeff and I tied the knot on the beach in Cabo at the beautiful hotel Zoetry end of March. We had about 35 of our closest friends and family for an all-inclusive vacation/celebration. I wanted to share some of our planning/wedding highlights.

Paper/Invites: for our save the dates, wedding invites and Cabo itinerary my close friend and designer Ashley helped me craft a vintage/natural theme. Using colors like light blue, sage green and tan we sent out "boarding pass" save the date, travel poster/post card invites and "passport" in-room booklets keeping our guest informed of the hotel amenities and events. (Ashely's starting a shop on etsy, which I'll link to once its up!)
Cost:
Design- Free
Paper/envelopes- $100
*Random: $120
Printing- Ashley took care of this as well! What a steal!

*I bought a Gocco printer, that I used to print parts of her design onto my envelopes. Also we used raffia to tie our invites together.


The event: for the wedding, I wanted to have things that were uniquely mine... and not going to bust your budget. After dress shopping, I found a few ($3k-$5k) dresses I liked and used those as inspiration for a lady to create a dress for me, from scratch for $500! (not including fabric cost)
Cost:
Fabric: $160
Dress: $500

I wore a pearl/diamond necklace my grandfather had given me and used etsy for the rest. I had a flower/veil hairpiece, cake topper and shrug created to match my vintage style.
Cost: It was under $200 for all 3 pieces to be originally created just for us, worth the investment! Love me some etsy.

Venue: Luckily, a beach provides most of your ambience! The hotel's outdoor area was changed to an imperial/single table to make the space feel different on the day of. For the placecards, I purchased some buri fans online and some tags/stamps/ribbon at Michaels and handwrote each persons name to keep our intimate feel.
Cost:
Table/seating: included with wedding package
Cards: ~$75
Flowers: $700

The shoes I did splurge on, but I tried so hard not too! I ended up with these lovely Badley Mischka shoes, but they were ~$100 on sale!

I thought overall we had a unique and initimate wedding. I am so grateful that we were able to spend time with our friends and loved the beach wedding. I say same time, same place next year?

Budget decor

In the never ending decorating-on-a-budget, you can exhaust all your resources rather quickly.

Here are some fantastic, wallet friendly shops off Riverside:

Cityview Antiques: expansive offerings and fairly organized/clean space.


Lots of Furniture: run by brothers, these guys are usually willing to make a deal... keeping their inventory turning quickly. Not to mention, they have a beautiful pooch that ignores you on the way in/out (a big Diego dog!)


A cute way to remember a special time, easy to make silhouettes

A lovely framed wall

Secret stash for cheap wall art

Next week I'll write about our adventures in San Juan! Ole!

Wine not?

So I've been taking my time planning our low key beach wedding this upcoming March. I finally asked my high school best friend, college roomie and general life adviser** to be my one and only... bridesmaid that is.

Since I was only going to "pop the question" once, I wanted to make it special. I put together a personalized beach tote filled with some goodies.
Here's what was included, these were all pretty easy to make or order:
1. Customized tote in one of our colors with her initials.
Where: LL Bean
2. Martha Stewart photo book featuring our shared trips, outings and friendship.
Where: Kodak online
3. A cute cup, also in our colors, saying "eat, drink and be married"... just to get her in the mood!
Where: Swoozies
4. Free bath swag courtesy of the Mister.
5. A bridesmaid handbook, since both of us are pretty new to this
Where: amazon
6. DIY wine label. This was my favorite part, I customized a "Maid of Honor" label with a personal note about how much our friendship has meant to me, as well as some of our destination wedding deets. This was actual super easy.
- First, I measured the wine space.
- Found some vector art (vector allows your to edit and size the image)
- Wrote out a short label-speak letter
- Applied our colors to the label and printed on 8.5x11 label paper (easier to run through our home printer) from Office Depot
- Simply soak your favorite grape over night, peel old label and apply new and improved label!

Finished bundle below:


This summer I've really enjoyed some refreshing, light white wines, but I'm looking forward to breaking into the reds with this cooler weather. Here are a few of my fall wine picks (all very affordable):
1. Domaine Clavel Coteaux du Languedoc 'Le Mas' ($8)
2. Argyle Pinot Noir Willamette Valley ($15)
3. Geyser Peak Sauvignon Blanc ($9)
4. Camelot Merlot ($6)
5. Francis Coppola Rosso Classic ($8)

In case you take me up on the above rec's, here are some sleek and stylish wine racks for storing your wine finds.


** Cheers to Crystal, my BFF, who said yes!