The best day ever. Ever ever.

The Ultimate Wedding Post

Not a surprise. What girl doesn't want to brag about every detail of her day as a princess? I had a personal goal to have this posted before our 6-month anniversary passed {failed that}. I really wanted to post a full-on entry about our wedding day, because firstly I'm an avid journaler and I promised myself I wouldn't skip this entry of all entries, and secondly because I wish I had been able to find more posts like these when I was planning my wedding. Any advice from other brides was so appreciated, even if their wedding or points of view weren't my style. So that being said, this post is going to be huge. And heck, I spent two and a half months of my life planning it, so I figure I am allowed to do this. So here are my thoughts. The more personal ones are in my journal. The rest go here. Stick around & read or leave in utter boredom...  

Ryan and I met in 2011 when we both moved into the same apartment complex at BYU. We became friends through a mutual love for major league soccer (rival teams, though!) and the outdoors. He was the loud funny guy that everyone loved. I was a quiet-ish Earth geek who thought he was way out of my league. We were casual friends/acquaintances who randomly flirted about soccer teams and things like that for about a year. In the fall of 2012, though, Ryan started showing up at my apartment with all sorts of excuses (this is while I was dating another guy [: oops) such as that he was getting a book or homework help from my roommate who was in the same major. Though most of the time (at first) I was out with my boyfriend or studying at the library, when I was there I noticed that he could get me (usually content to just ask questions and listen) to talk like no other guy could. Things ended between my boyfriend and I in October, and Ryan started coming over more often. He was charming and intelligent and funny... We'd sit on the kitchen floor and talk for two or three hours at a time. Before I knew it I was falling hard and fast. By December we were becoming more serious, which led to seven of the most fun and challenging and exciting months of my life. By May I knew I wanted to be with him forever (Ryan says he knew by February) and we were engaged in June of 2013. 

We thought that it would be better to get married before we went back to school, as opposed to trying to squeeze in a wedding and some semblance of a honeymoon during the semester or during Christmas break. We decided on Tuesday, August 27th in the Seattle, Washington LDS Temple. That meant two and a half months to plan with our budget of $3,000.  

Details and Vendors | Photography: Andrea Brionne Photography (with a few of my dad's shots mixed in here) | My hair: Tracy at Salon O | Dress: Venus Bridal, purchased from A Formal Choice boutique in Puyallup, WA | Suits: Men's Wearhouse | Florals: Tami Glauser | Decor: Borrowed or DIYed | Food: Our own menu, made by my amazing mom and her incredible team of girlfriends (my "fairy godmothers") | Cake: The Icing Diva | Music: My laptop hooked up to speakers (classy right) playing a playlist of Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, and Harry Connick, Jr. | Venue: Ceremony - The Seattle LDS Temple // Reception - The residence of some family friends in Maple Valley, WA | Our budget: $3,000

My wedding vision: Two things about me: First, I'm a born and bred Pacific Northwest girl. I grew up backpacking and sailing with my family, and I love the wild, wet, evergreen beauty of my small hometown near Seattle. I wanted a wedding that reflected that. Natural, simple, earthy, yet elegant. Second, I love classic style. I wasn't a fan of the gray suits all my friends were doing with their grooms. Black and white is the key to my heart. Like 70% of my closet is black. I'm a happy person, though. Really.  

Planning this was so hard, as I'm sure every other married and engaged woman will attest. I'm a bit of a tomboy, though, so luckily I was able to simplify things and avoid a lot of stress by feeling "eh" about a lot of the elements of weddings that other girls lose sleep over. I didn't care what my shoes looked like, I didn't want to wear jewelry or paint my nails or anything, I didn't have bridesmaids because all my best friends were spread across the globe at the time, and I wanted a simply decorated, straightforward reception. That being said, I still found half the time I just wanted to either elope or curl up in a ball and scream "I DON'T CARE SOMEONE ELSE JUST PICK IT FOR ME." But when I finally nailed it all down this was my vision: I wanted a black, white, pastel, and neutral palette. A black tie affair with an earthy touch. I wanted Ryan in black with a slim black tie. I just love the way it offsets the white dress.

It was a miracle that I found my dress as quickly as I did. I loved it from the moment I tried it on. It was a pretty magical moment. [: It was the perfect mixture of everything I wanted: a little lace, a full A-line skirt, a lace-up back, a sweetheart neckline. It originally had a sort of beaded medallion on the front below the bust, but I had it taken off because I'm not a glitter person. I wanted the music to be a playlist of vocal jazz and swing-style music from all the classic crooners, and in hindsight I loved the atmosphere it created; romantic, classic, a little vintage, sing-along-able, and danceable. {I still listen to the playlist at least once a week. It makes me so happy.}

For the cake, I wanted it simple. No adornments, just texture. I LOVED how it turned out. I pictured muted flowers with lots of greenery, and I loved the way they turned out, too. Lots and lots of green leaves. Me gusta. For my hair, I wanted a soft and romantic up-do, with a loose braid on the side. My stylist nailed it. PS, extensions are the most magical thing on the planet. I invested in some real-hair ones and dang did I love how much more hair they gave me!

 Money talk: I'll admit it - I am extremely naive when it comes to weddings. This realization hit me when I was doing wedding research one day during our engagement and saw a blog post titled, "How To Plan Your Wedding Under $10,000!" My jaw hit the floor. $10,000?! That's like, a nice used car! Or a fantastically remodeled kitchen! Or food for a family of four for a YEAR! I couldn't believe that that was considered a cheap wedding. So clearly I don't know what goes into the average wedding, but I have a few tips on how we saved (if that sort of things matters to you) as well as a break-down of what we paid for each component of our wedding day here. 

First, the biggest money-saving tips I can give:

1. Borrow borrow borrow. We borrowed tons of decor from friends of mine who had gotten married earlier in the year. Table runners, lanterns, globe lights, birdcages, chairs, tables, tablecloths, etc. We didn't pay for any of those things! Ask around your church, neighborhood, or whatever. You can find those things easily!
2. Have family members "gift" you certain parts of your wedding. Yeah, probably super unconventional, but I think it's wonderful because your wedding becomes a group effort. My nana paid for my hair and makeup, and that's something I'll always remember and be so grateful for. My grandparents helped chip in for my dress too - also something I'll always remember! And on a similar note, because Ryan's family didn't have to pay for an open house in his hometown (they moved around a lot and he doesn't really have a hometown), they helped pay for some of the reception components, like tuxedos and the flowers. That really helped as well! Again, quite untraditional, but I think it's always worth talking about with your family and considering. 
3. Free venue. Boom. Do it.  

Our budget breakdown:

- Ceremony venue: $0.00 | Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are blessed because our temples, where our most sacred ordinances are performed, are maintained by tithes from church members and are run by volunteer members. They are such beautiful buildings! We as members are commanded to marry in the temple, as it is the only place where two people can be sealed for eternity - beyond this life. Our church places heavy emphasis on the family and we believe that families can be together forever through this sealing power! The temple closest to my home is the Seattle temple, and this was where Ryan and I were married. We were sealed by my grandfather, former president of the temple and one of the most influential people in my life. It was wonderful. [:
- Reception venue: $0.00 | We did our reception open-house style in the beautiful backyard of some family friends. It was absolutely perfect. The only thing they had us pay for was watering the grass through the summer, and a few nights of our time to help with getting the yard ready for the reception. We were so grateful.
- Dress: $789 | I bought my dress from a darling little boutique in Puyallup called A Formal Choice. The alterations to take off the beading & hem the skirt (short girl problems. story of my life.) were about $75 if I remember right. (I've also had friends find dresses to rent OR find used dresses on Amazon or Craigslist!)
- Food: $315 | My mom is incredible. We planned the menu together and she delegated it out to her friends the week before so that everything was brought to the reception the day of, ready to go. That was the key - delegating the work. The preparation is the most stressful part! But when you have help, you can do it at a fraction of the cost that a caterer charges (for our wedding it would have been over $4,500). We highly highly recommend doing this! Our menu consisted of:

• pulled pork sliders (Holy cow. We had people asking for the recipe left and right at the wedding. They were sooo good.)
• caesar salad
• penne, olive, and feta pasta salad
• fruit platters

- Hair & makeup: $100 | However, this was given to me as a wedding gift by a family member
- Decor: $0.00 | Really I'm wracking my brain trying to think of what we spent money on with this. We made the dining table centerpieces for free (thanks nature) and borrowed everything else. Tables, chairs, tablecloths, lights, runners, lanterns...  A lot of it came from our photographer, which was so nice of her! It made up the bulk of our decor! I don't think we paid for a thing. It's really the way to go.
- Photography: $800 | She was SO wonderful about fitting into our budget. Andrea is the best! Most photographers understand when you say you have a tight budget, and are willing to pull together a simpler, custom package that doesn't have all the normal bells and whistles. Andrea did that for us and it was perfect.
- Flowers: $675 | My favorite part of the reception decor. My wildest flower dreams come true. We saved money on this by using flowers that were in season, and using locally native greenery - loads and loads of salal leaves! We also only ordered a few large arrangements and then did the table centerpieces ourselves. That saved a lotta dough.
- Cake: $200 | Dutch chocolate with a raspberry cream cheese filling and buttercream frosting. Every crumb of that thing was gone at the end of the reception. We had so many comments on how delicious it was! Lucinda is a boss.
- Miscellaneous: The rest of the budget | My shoes, veil, cutlery & plates for the food... other random stuff I can't remember.

GRAND TOTAL: $3000. It can be done!  

What I Wish I Had Done:

- Done a test-run with hair & makeup: Don't do what I did and skip the test-run to save money! If you don't like your hair or makeup and you've got to run out the door to make it to your wedding ceremony... Yeah that happened with this girl's makeup. Save yourself a lot of stress and do a test-run at the salon.
- Had a (premature) Pinterest wedding board: Yep. I never thought I'd say this but I wish I had been one of those girls who had slowly collected ideas like two years before she even met her husband. I got engaged and had two months to plan the wedding and boy do I wish I had a board full of stuff I liked to draw from. It would have made nailing down what I wanted a whooole lot easier. It also would have helped me know what shots I wanted to make sure the photographer got, another thing I really wish I had done.

- Stood in line longer. Ryan and I were adamant about not spending a lot of time standing in "the line" and greeting people. But once I was there, I didn't want it to end. There were so many people who made the trip to congratulate us and support us. It was amazing. I wanted to thank each of those people for coming to surround us in as much love as we felt that night. Family friends, family members, friends from high school {that meant everything to me you guys!}, people who had to make considerable trips to get there. I was overwhelmed with the love and gratitude I felt. We did a line for I think roughly one hour, and I regret the limited time. Granted, we had to get the cake-cutting and bouquet toss in before the photographer's time was up, but when we had to cut off the line, there were still so many people waiting in line or coming in. Seriously I was blown away by how many people came to support us and I wanted to thank them individually. I think two hours would have been more appropriate.

- Formally spoke to the guests. I wish Ryan and I had given some sort of little speech thanking people for coming and all that stuff. Again, I wanted everyone to know how thankful I was! Really, when hundreds of people come out to something that is so important to you and that you spent so much time on, you literally want to fall flat at their feet and thank them over and over. At least that's how I felt. I so wish I had been able to thank them all collectively.

- Had people address envelopes at the reception! WOW that would have made sending out thank-yous a whole lot easier. Having guests sign our wedding book at the "sign in table" and then also print their name and address on an envelope would have been a great thing to do in hindsight. 

- ALSO under the subject of Thank-yous, I kinda wish I had done thank you cards like this with a picture of us incorporated into it, instead of cards from Target or whatever. There were so many people who lived all over the country (and the globe) who weren't able to come but who sent us gifts and kind wishes. Some of them mentioned to me that they wished they could have seen a picture from the special day they weren't able to attend! Plus I just think it's cute. [: 

- Did bridals before the wedding day. I was SO against this before my wedding. I was all "Ryan can't see me in my dress before the wedding" blah tradition blah blah superstitions etc. But woah, hindsight is 20/20. As I see it now, it's an excuse to wear your wedding dress more than once. I'd do anything to have that opportunity! Also you get to plan out what you want, where you want, what poses you want, you can have your hair down or different somehow, plus, you get the "first look" on camera. In our rush I thought all of this wasn't a big deal, and it really isn't, but if I could go back I would most definitely do this! You get to do it on a day when you're more relaxed, therefore freeing up more time on the wedding day. I wish we had done that!

What I'm glad I did:
 - Researched photographers like crazy. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT. The pictures were the thing I wanted to spend the most of our budget on. I lucked out because I found Andrea, who, because she wasn't a big famous professional (yet (; ), was very affordable. And if I had had a larger budget, I would have spent more accordingly. Seriously, get the best photographer you can buy. Get someone who is a pro at weddings, especially. They know the poses, the procedure, the classic shots. Don't ask your Uncle Bob. Don't ask a friend who dabbles in photography "on the side." The pictures are all you'll have after ten years. Hire the best you can buy!

 - Wore a veil. I went back and forth on this, and I'm so glad that I decided to go with a veil. Wearing a veil just made me feel like a bride! It was so fun in pictures, too. If you don't like it, you can take it off for half your pictures or something. I'm a major advocate of that thing.
- Got pictures of my mom helping me get ready. We LDS girls don't often remember to get pictures like that, since most of our wedding day preparation happens in the temple. But thank goodness my mom remembered and called our photographer upstairs when she was helping me primp before the reception. The shots Andrea got are really special to me.

- Hired someone to do my hair. HUGE stress reliever. I was frantically tearing through beauty blogs and failing horribly at the styles. We decided two days before my wedding that we would hire a salon to do it. Good choice in my opinion, though very belated. [:
- Found ways to DIY and borrow. Let me say this first: Making everything yourself can get WAY out of hand if you let it. In my opinion it isn't healthy for your sanity to try to DIY everything. At least not when you only have two and a half months. We borrowed a lot of the reception decor from friends. Almost all of it. The centerpieces we did ourselves. I'm proud of those things! I wanted to incorporate the foresty, natural feel into our decor, so the day before the wedding my little sisters and I went out into our woods and picked a garbage bag of salal leaves and sprigs of cedar. We arranged them (with some fresh baby's breath we bought wholesale for like $6 from a flower farm in Kent) around our borrowed lanterns and voila! Free centerpieces. And when we needed more tables and centerpieces, we just used the pink and white roses that Ryan's mom had used the night before at the groom's dinner. 

- Let other people do the work on my wedding day. Up until the big day, I was insistent that I would be involved in all the set-up, food prep, etc. No way was I going to let all these people work their tails off for me while I had a grand old time doing nothing! It was hard for me to let go of that. But boy did it make the day relaxing when I just stepped back and let my amazing Mom and family direct all the work. It let me focus on Ryan and what the day was actually celebrating - us. And everything went perfectly. So my advice: Plan plan plan. Then step back and let it go. Enjoy your special day not having to worry about anything. It's glorious.
- Had a picnic on the lawn after our sealing. Now I don't even remember how this idea came to be part of our wedding day, but it's something that I will suggest to everyone who's willing to listen! Most LDS brides have a luncheon after their sealing with their family and closest friends, but we did that the evening before our wedding day (which I really liked). That meant we had a big chunk of time between our sealing and reception. Though I'm sure most grooms would rather spend that chunk of time with his new bride doing something else (; Ryan and I both agree that our picnic was a highlight of our wedding day. My nana packed us a picnic blanket and basket full of sandwiches, finger foods, and a bottle of sparkling cider with plastic goblets the morning of our wedding. After we came out of the temple and did pictures, everyone left to go set up the reception, and we sat on the grass and had lunch together. It will forever be one of my favorite memories of the day. The weather was beautiful and we got a wonderful couple of hours alone to talk about everything that was happening. Our first meal as Mr. and Mrs. Gray [: 

- Chose an up-do. Wedding hair. Such a big decision. I waffled between a down-do and an up-do. Down-do's are more soft and casual, but up-do's are gorgeous, can be fancy or casual, and it means your hair is out of your way for all the pictures which is really nice, and was important to me because I'm a girl who likes my hair out of my face. Plus you don't have to worry about it ever getting messed up because it's usually had the heck hair sprayed out of it anyways. It's a day where you can have a great excuse to have a drop-dead gorgeous up-do, so I believe it should be used! But that's just me. 

- Used these. Lifesavers, those things. If you're having an outdoor wedding, buy those bad boys.
- Threw a different bouquet for the toss. I'm a sentimental person. Looking at my dried bouquet hanging on our wall makes me real happy. I'm thinking I'll put the petals into Christmas ornaments like this when I get a chance.
- Found a free venue. Do it if you can. A park, a friend's or your own backyard or home, anything. It saves serious dough. 

- Did our own food: shelling out $300 vs $4,800. Which sounds better?
- Got a horrible farmer's tan the weekend before my wedding. Yeah, you read that right. You can see hints of it in some of the pictures. We retouched it out of the photos where it was real obvious but the fact still remains that I wouldn't have traded that backpacking weekend for the world. Take a break from wedding planning to spend time with your family before you belong to someone else. People thought we were crazy for skipping town so close to the big day but we all agree we will never regret it. 

- Took our time in the temple. I'm so grateful that I didn't rush anything on my wedding day. That special time with my mom in the bridal dressing room, the moment Ryan and I took to sit in the celestial room together after we were sealed... These things only happen once, and they are some of my most favorite memories of the day. 

- Married my best friend, whom I trust, respect, and love more deeply every day. No explanation needed. 

The most important thing: Realizing that my wedding was not a measure of my family's wealth, my worth, craftiness, style, or love for Ryan. This day happened only for the purpose of one thing - that I wanted to marry Mr. Ryan Adam Gray for eternity - but popular culture (i.e. Pinterest/Green Wedding Shoes/Syle Me Pretty, etc.) has blown it up into "Oh but you need this, and this, and you'll regret not doing this..." so much that you get caught in a whirlwind of a billion cute ideas that blind you to what's important. Weddings really should be simple because they are simply for the purpose of celebrating two people who are committing their lives to one another, but unfortunately they can easily become so complicated and too detailed. That's not necessarily a fault of pop culture, but it sure facilitates it by giving us access to so many beautiful weddings online! If I could say one thing to a future bride it'd be to keep it simple. Focus on how you'll look, the photographer who will document it, and how you'll take care of your guests. What's most important on that day is that you marry your best friend and you feel beautiful. And, in my opinion, that the people who come to support you have a good time (read "GOOD FOOD")! Then no matter what happens you see everything through rose-colored glasses and you're floating on air. You feel like a princess and you're married to the love of your life; life is now perfect. [:

Here's to forever, Mr. Gray. The best is yet to be.