What do you think this is? Charity??

Craigslist is a joke.  I prepare you this is going to get all ranty up in here.

When I am looking to buy used items on craigslist I am just astonished by how much colossal crap people are selling and then how much they think their crap is worth.  Over the past 12 months I have scoured craigslist for décor items for the wedding and at one point even did a search for cheap wedding dresses.  What I found was a whole lot of ugly junk!  Okay, I’m not being fair.  Some of it was reasonably priced and decent stuff….. but that stuff disappears very quickly!

So now I am on the other end of the craigslist ad.  I have become the seller.  Here is what I have discovered as a seller.  Even if you price your merchandise for less than what you paid, people are still going to come at you with some ridiculous offers.  I understand that as a seller I need to be prepared to come down on my prices and be able to bundle things together to save the seller some cash.  What I don’t understand is someone offering me $60 for three items totally $150.  Come on! 

I put the hard work in.  I searched for months!  I ordered things from the states, had them shipped to my parents American shipping address, paid to pick them up and then had to drive there and back to pick it all up.  I did the online research.  I found the best prices and then to re-sell these items I posted the prices minus the shipping minus the exchange rate minus the taxes and less than ticket price and I’m still being low balled!

Here’s the thing.  We didn’t go into debt to pay for our wedding.  We did everything on a budget and we stayed pretty darn close to that budget.  I made branch centre pieces. I made my own garters.  I killed myself for 12 months to make sure we didn’t spend a penny over what anything was worth.  Do you know how much it cost to buy tree branch centerpieces?  I did the research: $20-40 bucks a piece (just branches) and to rent them its cost around the same.  I made ours for $22 each including the vase and the filler stones.  That’s all the paint to coat them so they weren’t dirty, the sparkles, the plaster base to weigh them down in the vase.  All of it!  And some lazy bride thinks I’m just going ot give them all away for $3 a piece?!! This is not a charity! 

Here is my insight people.  Make me be the schmuck who paid full price.  Then buy my stuff at the discounted price and then sell it after your wedding for the same price you bought it for.  Wedding decor is the biggest rip off there is.  Women lose their minds when it comes to executing their vision for their wedding.  Let’s be honest.  This stuff is going to sit in my garage for a year until my husband puts it on craigslist again for 20% less than I posted it for!  Oh well.  It would be nice to just see all the stuff I collected go to good use. 

Hire a Coordinator!

Trust me!

BRIDES!! Are you listening?  If you have decided to get married on a budget and you are doing lots of DIY projects and you have your hand in everything going on in your wedding, and you’re not getting married at a hotel or a golf course but instead in a hall, barn, cabin etc where you have to book all the vendors yourself and do all of your own set up; HIRE A COORDINATOR!

Now that I have gotten that run on sentence out of my system I cannot put enough importance or emphasis on this one thing.  Even if you ask one of your close friends (who isn’t in the wedding party) or a relative to take over the day of coordinating, please for your own joy and peace of mind on the day of, delegate all of the day of responsibilities to someone else.

I planned everything and I had a very specific vision.  Very specific.  I thought I had everything covered and I was feeling pretty proud of myself until after the ceremony I was informed that all of the prep work I told the bartender would be done had gotten missed amongst all the other very important things that needed  to get done (that of course I insisted I do) the day before.  The float for the bartender apparently is an important thing to provide. Ooops.  I was lucky enough to have an amazing MC who took it upon herself to also be my on the spot in the moment wedding coordinator who handled all of the things I had forgotten.  

Chaos!

During your wedding you do not want to still be coordinating the event.  You want to be in the moment enjoying everything.  I can honestly say I didn’t relax until we had checked all of the “picture” moments off the list (cake, garter, bouquet, first dances).  Thank goodness for friends and family who take initiative because I don’t think I would have had nearly as good a time if many many responsibilities were not taken over by our loved ones.  

So, brides.  Loosen the reins and let someone else steer for that day because you will be thankful.  If you have $650-900 extra in your budget to hire a professional I can now see that they earn every dollar they charge. 

Another note from experience:  Decorating always takes twice as long as you think it is going to.  We were lucky and we were able to book our hall for a few hours the day before since we were married on a Friday.  It took us over 4 hours to decorate the whole hall, not including ceremony prep.  Granted we had a lot of assembly work to do.  Because I made all of our centre pieces they needed to be put together at the hall and all of the table numbers needed to be set up depending on if the centre piece was a flower arrangement or a branch setting since all of our picture frames were different sizes and would need to be arranged based on height; which meant the pictures and numbers couldn’t be put in until the tables were arranged and set up with centre pieces! Yikes! I’m glad I was getting my nails done at that point.  After my lovely friends and family finished setting up a couple of my girlfriends and I went back to clean up and make the bridal bouquets (that’s a whole other blog!).  The next morning I had to return to the hall to take the floral center pieces out of the fridge so the flowers would open in time for the ceremony.  The groomsmen and our fathers arrived early to set up the ceremony site which was an issue because it had rained all morning so we had to relocate the ceremony. 

Despite it all it turned out lovely!

So, like I said.  Hire someone!  Anyone! To help with set up and or coordinating. Whether you pay them or not, have someone in charge who isn’t you or your partner.  My words of wisdom passed on.

I love you more than… red velvet cake with cream cheese icing!

Today, Monday August 12, 2013 marks the four year anniversary of mine and Aaron’s first date.  About a week ago I began to ponder, is it okay to celebrate your first date if you’re now married? 

So what is any girl to do when posed with such an important life altering question?  Why GOOGLE it of course!  There were many mixed reviews.  Some very opinionated ladies exclaimed “NO!” while others simply suggested each person do what is right for them.  The latter however, in my humble opinion opens the floodgates for crazies the world round to make a huge deal out of every single moment.  Next thing you know I am going to have to wade through the onslaught of facebook statuses proclaiming celebration of first kisses, first coitus, first family dinner, first toot in front of significant other, first time holding hands etc. etc.

What’s a girl to do with no many differing opinions and no black and white answer?  So in the end I conferred with the only other person who really mattered in this situation; my husband.  Initially, he answered with a  resounding no to the suggestion of a fourth year celebration, however with a tad bit of discussion, it was decided that our most important anniversary is our wedding day but we will acknowledge our first date-iversary with a low key date out to the movies.  If anything it is an excuse to go on a date because let’s be honest, life gets hectic and sometimes you forget to enjoy each other. 

Four years ago today, on a Wednesday my husband picked me up and took me to see “Funny People”.  It was not the best first date movie, but it didn’t matter because it was the first date that led to the rest of my life. 

Aaron, I love you more than I can express!  It’s been the best four years of my life and I am so thrilled to be your wife xoxo

I love you more than...my former last name!

I am officially a married woman!  Can you believe it has come and gone already? To be honest I am just thankful it is over.  Don’t get me wrong, the marrying my best friend was the best part, but really truly if I knew a year ago what I know now, we would have either eloped or had a very, VERY small simple wedding. 

I figured I should make an appearance over here on the ‘ol blog since my friend Kim is putting me to shame.  Granted she hasn’t been consumed with the task of planning and executing the most stressful day of her life (yet) but she is a very busy gal who somehow still finds time to blog!  I envy her. 

I have made a list of blog topics I would like to concur this month since my hubby and I have successfully managed to make it through the past year and still love each other as much as when he proposed!  I would love to pass on some of the wisdom I have obtained on our journey and hopefully save all those naïve DIY brides out here from going through what I went through. 

Though DIY-ing saved us a lot of money in the long run, we still went over budget.  Expect to go over budget just control by how much.  Also, if you are thinking about DIY-ing and you’re not super crafty like me, make sure you have people to help you who are; it really makes a difference.  Lastly, if you are DIY-ing really consider, like really think long and hard if 1) you really need that in your wedding,  2) is having it or doing it yourself worth the time and stress and 3) do you have a contingency plan??

Here is a list of items I DIY’d:

Centre pieces: tree branches dried, painted, set in plaster

Flowers: I made all of the centre piece flower arrangements and all the bouquets

Lanterns for the trees: painted red (multiple coats), rhinestone string handles, crystal chandelier garland attachments

Garter: Ribbon, charms, lace and a sewing machine

Invites: drawn, scanned printed

Flower girl dress: Revamped and made a bit fancier with ribbon and buttons plus crinoline skirt

Table numbers: Designed, printed and added vintage pictures collected from family

Shoes: dyed and added brooch

Guest book: added individualized plaque

Card holder: Bird cage with DIY’d signage

I will gladly write tutorials on how I did all of my DIY’d decorations.  There was a lot of trial and error, trust me!  I will say that some of the things I DIY’d ended up costing just as much as if I had just bought something ie. my shoes; but I had a vision!

The first and most important piece of wisdom I can bestow upon all you future brides out there is to learn from my mistake.  I am a perfectionist and I planned down to every last detail and things still went wrong so in the long run I should have been more relaxed over the past 11 months.  I’m sure I drove my husband up the wall and he still married me.  If that’s not a testament for love concurring all I don’t know what is!  I vowed after the wedding that I would never allow another event or special occasion to consume me the way planning the wedding did.  I was an unrecognizable person.  My bridesmaids tell me they were surprised I didn’t go all bridezilla because I have the kind of personality where I really could have ripped a strip off of someone and I didn’t.  Maybe that’s because I was bridezilla-ing on my poor fiancé the whole year and particularly the week of the wedding.  There was a moment when I was speaking to the groom hands free whilst driving to pick up the flowers and I got so frustrated my MC who was accompanying me, had to commandeer the conversation so I wouldn’t get us into an accident.  All of that for one day!  ONE DAY! Yes it is one of the most important days in a young woman’s life but not so important you cause your FH to question why he chose you.  If he wasn’t questioning it I definitely was.  Thank goodness for true love cause if I were him I would have taken off in the eighth month!