Pretty Paper Flowers by The Green Vase

Earlier this summer, I came across The Green Vase at Much Ado About Madoo, a pop-up market at the Madoo Conservancy in Bridgehampton. I stopped to admire the company's amazing paper flowers, and I was particularly taken with the potted paper geranium (above). When I asked if I could snap a photo, the women from The Green Vase told me that John Derian, who sells their designs, had actually come up with the idea of the paper geranium.

Reading the New York Times' T Magazine this weekend, I was pleased to spy one of The Green Vase's geraniums on John Derian's desk in his home office (below). The rest of Derian's apartment is worth checking out, by the way.

If you want to see more of The Green Vase's work, head to The Green Vase online shop or stop by John Derian's shop on East Second Street in New York. I think they would be a great resource for decor for weddings and parties!

It Takes A Village

A word about DIY weddings: They're a lot of work! I was tempted to title this post "This Is What A DIY Wedding Looks Like...," but decided that "It Takes A Village" better described the post I was about to write. Because, trust me, it takes a village.

While we were fully committed to DIY-ing much of our wedding, I definitely underestimated how much manpower would be needed to get the whole thing off the ground. I'll share some of the wedding photos in a future post, but first I thought I'd give you a behind the scenes look at how our wedding came together. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all my friends and family who helped make it happen (and to my cousin Judy, who snapped all these shots).

Two days before the wedding: Here I am sweaty as can be moving boxes around in the garage. Our host and floral designer Susan Armstrong is busy creating arrangements and my father and uncle are in the background screwing lightbulbs into the string lights we ordered.

Here my dear friend Elizabeth and I are trying to sort out the table arrangements and the menu place cards.

In this shot my father and uncle are assembling our matchbook and sparkler favors. Across the table out of the shot you'd find my dad's cousin and my husband's brother's girlfriend assembling place cards and rehearsal dinner favors.

My then-fiancé (now husband) and his brother hung the string lights in the tent -- thankfully, his brother was tall enough to reach without a ladder.

My little sister is hard at work folding napkins around the menu place cards and flatware (and my friend Elizabeth is working on another stack in the next room).

The day of the wedding: We hung the Mexican paper flags, assembled tables and chairs, linen-ed and set the tables -- my father, mother, sister, aunt, and my mom's best friend from high school are among the helpers with tent set-up

In the kitchen, limes are being squeezed for margaritas (by my sis, her boyfriend and family friend Sacha) and fresh avocado is being mashed into the store-bought guacamole. Yes, that's a bucket they are filling with lime juice.

These shots don't capture half of the work that went into the pre-wedding prep, which also included tree stump removal, patio furniture moving, outdoor lighting design, many trips to Costco, an epic liquor store run, hours and hours of printing programs, place cards and the like, and a whole lot more. It was a little stressful, but I was also glad to have my family there helping me make it happen.

Cutting Wedding Costs: A Dress from eBay

A lot of women will be horrified by what I am about to write, but I hope many others will read my words and take confidence from them. I bought my wedding dress on eBay. For $99. That's right: My dress was less than $100 off the internet and I am thrilled about it. Now, mind you, I am not a clothes horse, nor am I the type of gal who had her ideal wedding dress picked out long before marriage was every a question. I just wanted a tasteful dress.

I found my dress by googling "J. Crew wedding dress;" it was a model from a past season, which Real Simple had deemed the choice "If you're tall.." which I am at 5'10" (don't you dare, click that link Mr. Wells). When I realized it was no longer available, I checked on eBay, and there were multiple listings for the dress. Not sure what size to order, I consulted J. Crew's website, which, of course, left me more confused. However, searching for the dress name and the word "forum" lead me to a super-helpful thread about the sizing of J. Crew dresses, which lead me to opt for the smaller size.

I also went to the J. Crew bridal shop in New York, because even at full retail J. Crew's dresses are much, much cheaper than almost everything else on the market. I fell a little in love with one of their current dresses (don't look at that link either, just in case!), but just couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger on a $575 dress. So, I went back to eBay, where sure enough, the dress was listed for sale by multiple vendors. On a whim, I made a low-ball bid on one in my size and ended up winning it, as well. I love both dresses, and frankly,  I feel like I beat the system getting a dress for so little. (Note that most wedding planning sites tell you to allocate 10% of your budget to attire!)

I am 99% sure, I'm going to go with the first $99 dress, but I've got another month to decide, at which point I'll bring the winner to a tailor for some minor alterations. I'll sell the other one on eBay, and post-wedding, I'll plan to sell my dress, as well. because really, I'm not ever going to wear it again, unless, of course, I had it dyed...

Cutting Wedding Costs: Cake

While I'm on the subject of cutting costs, let's talk about cakes. Neither of us felt strongly about having a wedding cake, and we had vetoed the idea of cutting the cake and feeding it to one another at the reception (it just seemed a little silly to us). So when I found out that even a simple wedding cake would cost $450, I decided we'd forgo the traditional cake and opt for cupcakes instead. A local baker has said they could do the cupcakes for just $27.25/dozen, which would put us at $220 for eight dozen.

Now the big question is: Do we need to rent small cake plates ($.075/plate) or can we just have our guests pick up a cupcake and a cocktail napkin? What do you think?

Cutting Wedding Costs: Flatware and Plates

Despite my best efforts, it is incredibly hard to find ways to pare down the budget for our wedding: Many things simply cost what they cost, like a tent, rental tables and chairs, the church fee, etc. So, I'm trying to find creative places where we can cut back.

I'm debating opting for disposable bamboo flatware and plates for the meal. Renting plates costs only $0.75/plate and buying the bamboo ones is about $0.70, so we wouldn't save a huge amount there, but the flatware is $80 for all the forks and knives we would need. Whereas these Greenware disposable forks and knives are only $6.49/100. What do you think, would they be acceptable for a wedding?

Our DIY Wedding Invitations

The prospect of spending hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on our wedding invitations was not an option for us, but we still wanted to create something that was personal and tasteful. We turned to Paper Source, Staples and eBay for the materials for our invites, which ended up costing just over $175. Here's how we did it:

The invitations are the Scallop Laser Cut A7 Printable Party Invitations (20 for $18.50), for which we designed the text layout and then printed at home on our ink jet printer.

For the reply card, we got a little crafty. We purchased a vintage postcard from our wedding locale, Shelter Island, NY, on eBay for $12. We then scanned the front and back of the card and re-sized them to fit onto Staples® Inkjet Postcards, 5 1/2" x 4 1/4", Matte (which I happened to have on-hand leftover from another project). We added text about the wedding to turn the vintage card into a reply card, and once again we printed them out on our home printer.

The envelopes are A7 Pool Envelopes (10 for $4.25). We also ordered a custom return address stamp (Ampersand Flourish Custom Stamp - PS design, $39.95) from Paper Source for the invites, but I'm not including it in our wedding budget, since we'll be using it long after the wedding is over.  

For postage, we went with one of the LOVE stamps and an herb-themed one for the post card. I used a Kuretake Zig Memory Writer Marker that I had on-hand to write out the addresses.

In total, we ended up spending about $177 on the stationary and postage -- not bad, right? Here's the cost breakdown, with the items we either already had or plan to use after the wedding in brackets:

Invitations: $74
Envelopes: $38.25 (including ones I messed up)
Vintage Postcard: $11.98
Postcards: [$17.99]
Postage: $52.81
Marker: [$2.65]
Return Address Stamp: [$39.95]

Total: $177.04  [$237.63]

We're just starting to get the reply cards back today, and it's very exciting to see friends and family members' handwriting telling us that they will be attending out wedding! Hurray!

THE Dress

I'd like to share some thoughts about wedding dresses. First, I'd like to say that the whole wedding dress industry is a bit of a racket. It makes me crazy that a dress made from the same amount and quality of fabric that is not a "wedding" dress is inevitably cheaper than a bridal gown. It also seems criminal that the $400-$1,000 dresses sold by companies like J. Crew and Ann Taylor are considered "affordable" -- that's a lot of money to spend on something you will wear once.

When I set out to find my dress, I didn't have strong opinions about what kind of wedding costume I would like. I knew I wanted it to be simple and elegant -- and truly affordable. So, I went ahead and bid on a J. Crew dress from a few season's past on eBay. I won it for $99 and it arrived looking great. The dress fits me fairly well: I could wear it as-is and be fine, or I could have slight alterations to make the bust fit a little better. I was pretty sure I'd wear this dress, as I liked it and I relished the idea of telling everyone I'd worn a $99 dress from eBay.

However, everyone said: You must go try on dresses, you'll regret it if you don't, this is your one chance, etc. etc. So, I booked an appointment at J. Crew. I tried to do the same at Ann Taylor, but they only sell online. My attempt to contact David's Bridal made me very certain I did NOT want to buy a dress there. My mother hearing of the appointment and of a sale on Jet Blue plane tickets booked a flight to NYC to see me try on dresses. So, suddenly, it was an event.

I went to J. Crew with my mother and sister on Saturday. I told them what my price range was and we started trying on gowns. The first few left me feeling confident that the eBay number was going to win, but then I found a few I liked a bit more. And then there were two dresses I really liked -- one of which I really love. But my gosh, it's $575 dollars (before taxes!) and that's more than 1/20th of my whole budget.

On the one hand, I feel like I should just go for it: I love the dress and in the grand scheme of things it's really not that much money, and well, it is my BIG day, right? On the other hand, we set a budget and I am determined to stick to it. If we start making decisions to spend just a little bit more on this and a little more on that, the overall budget will quickly escalate. I want to save money for our future house more than I want to wear that dress on my wedding day. However, I also want to look and feel great and I don't want to look back and regret not buying a dress I really loved. I know every woman will say buy the dress, but I am not sure that, that is the right answer. I could find a compromise and try to buy the dress on eBay for less than the marked cost, but I'm still uncomfortable with racing out to spend more money when I do have a dress that I like that cost only $99.

Going to the Chapel...

I apologize for my long blog silence, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of work, out-of-town guests and some big news. I've been debating whether or not to mention on this blog that my boyfriend and I are engaged to be married. Ultimately I decided that yes, it's something I might like to blog about. While I feel that our wedding is a very private matter, there's lots about planning a wedding that I would love to share.

First, I'll say that we are having a short engagement. My lovely boyfriend asked me to be his wife a month ago and we are planning to wed at the end of September. Many people have seemed shocked (truly: Shocked!) that we intend to plan a wedding in just a few months. I know many people who spend more than a year planning their weddings, but for us, we wanted to capture the excitement of the moment and not drag things out for months on end. Plus, in the end, it's just a big party and there's no reason it should be that hard to pull together.

Second, it was my turn to be be genuinely shocked when I discovered how much my peers spend on weddings. My mother always said that we could plan a wedding for $10,000, which, frankly, sounded like an awful lot to me. I've since learned that many women spend that much on a dress and that the average wedding in New York costs more like $40,000. That is a LOT of money, and I can't imagine spending it on one day. I'd rather pinch my pennies on the wedding, and save to buy the house I hope to someday own. There are some costs that are unavoidable: Food, wine, a tent, but there are many that can either be eliminated entirely or cut down to the bone.

Now don't think I am a wedding Scrouge. I am so thrilled and ecstatic to be getting married, and the idea of a party with all my nearest and dearest to celebrate the occasion is nothing short of thrilling. I just know that there's a way to do this that keeps costs to a minimum and still leaves us with a beautiful celebration to remember for the rest of our lives. I'll tell you more about it as we plan.