Our Wedding on the Crystal Coast Question and Answer

 

 

In honor of our anniversary coming up, I decided to do a Q + A of highlights from our wedding! It’s been fun looking back, so I hope you enjoy!

 

8 years!!! There’s a funny story here actually! We had been talking about getting married for years and I knew I didn’t want to buy a house or think about growing a family until we got married. Basically, I gave John an ultimatum that I didn’t want to just stay dating forever and I needed a timeline of when he might propose. He told me that it would be within the calendar year. So I started a countdown and told him he was moving out if it didn’t happen by then. Well, technically he lied because he proposed just after the clock struck midnight on New Years Eve!

 

I knew I wanted to get married in the summer because I’m a teacher and wedding planning would be far easier during a break from school. I didn’t want to rush the wedding, so we were engaged for 1.5 years. For me, it made it way less stressful because I wasn’t fighting as much with other people to book vendors.

 

Did you have a bridal luncheon?

 

 

Who did you invite to your rehearsal dinner?

 

This is a tricky answer. I think it’s really a matter of what matters most to you! I did try to book the “big stuff” first and worried about details later down the road.  Location, Caterer, Photographer, DJ and Florist took up the majority of the budget, so I needed to know what we had to work with.  We knew we wanted to have a larger wedding and they’re weren’t many venue’s in this area that could hold a larger crowd. So, for me my goal was to find a location first! We lucked out that the Crystal Coast Country Club ended up being perfect for the size of the wedding and included catering. I really liked that a lot of the details like tables, chairs, and some decor were included, so I didn’t have to worry about renting everything and the fact that the event coordinator acted as a “day of” wedding coordinator was a huge perk!

 

 

 

After location, my second priority was Photographer because I’m such a sentimental person and wanted them to look back on our pictures! Behind venue and food, this is where we spend most of our wedding budget. I chose our photographer by looking at pictures from friends weddings that I really liked the style of. I remember looking at pictures of my grandparent’s and parent’s wedding; and year’s later feeling how special they were so it was something I knew was important!

 

I can honestly say that they’re isn’t really anything I wish I didn’t do. I think our wedding day was perfect! That might be because I tried to have little expectations about how the day would go- I tried so hard not to be a bridezilla! Since that doesn’t really answer the question, I’ll instead give you some places that we cut corners a little bit.

 

 

 

I saved BIG time on my wedding dress! The idea of spending a lot of money on a dress I would only wear one day just wasn’t me. I first started looking for dress that had a top and skirt so that I could wear them separately, but I didn’t find any I liked. I ended up trying on a dress that someone had worn to a military ball that I saw on Facebook Marketplace. I loved how different the dress was and we ended up finding it on Amazon! My dress costs $80 and my mom tailored it, added a bodice and bustle. My favorite addition was that she added button’s that we took off of my grandmother’s 60+ year old wedding dress down the back.

 

 

I also really wanted a video to look back and remember the day, but after learning that they can be just as expensive as the photographer (and for good reason with the amount of time spent) I also knew it wasn’t in the budget. I probably wouldn’t watch a professionally edited video many times anyway’s so we paid a photographer friend, Brad Styron Photography, to shoot some footage of our wedding. He went above and beyond and created a little highlight reel for us! We still have the video to look back on and spent way less than with a professional videographer.

 

My mom also saved us so much money by making our wedding cake! After going to my cousins wedding and seeing her cake -my mom said “I can do that!” and she my made our delicious cake. She did ton’s of research to find the perfect recipe, provided us with plenty of cake tastings, and learned all about wedding cake sizes. If you’d like her recipe I wrote a whole post about it here!

 

 

When she found out we had gotten engaged, my “Lisa-Mom” kindly offered to pay for our flowers, but in true Allgood style, I hated the idea of spending so much money on something that was going to die. While we did use cut flowers for the bouquet’s and boutonnieres,  I used live flower’s for the table scapes. My favorite flower’s are orchid’s and after looking into the cost of ordering orchid’s my mom and I decided to take a gamble. We literally drove to ALL the grocery stores in the area about two weeks before the wedding and wiped them out of white orchids. I bought vases from consignment stores and made DIY mercury glass. It paid off, because they ended up beautiful and I gave them as gifts to people who had done something extra special for our wedding day.

 

 

Finally, I saved some major money by designing my own invitations and then ordering the parts to make them. I plan on doing a post on how I made our invites in the future- so if you’re interested make sure you subscribe!

 

My parent’s divorced when I was super young and have both remarried. They did a great job of getting along for me growing up- graduations and big event’s were thankfully never an issue! However, when it came to planning our wedding I was nervous about making sure all of “the parents” feel included and most importantly, know how special they were to me. We decided not to do a wedding party table so each family would each have their own space, and I also spent a lot of time planning out the ceremony, seating, how each party would be introduced, etc.

 

 

And while they’ve always gotten along, the biggest concern for me was who would walk me down the aisle. Don’t get me wrong, my Dad is a great father who has done so much for me. Even while living 10 hours away, he managed to see me as much as possible when I was growing up and is a huge part of who I’ve become. But, at the same time, my step-dad, Mr. Don, chose to help raise me when he married my mom. He has been another father figure in my life and the decision to not include him left me so torn. I didn’t want to take away from what my Dad has done for me, but I also didn’t want to not acknowledge my step-dad’s impact. I worked up the courage to tell my Dad that I’d like Mr. Don to co-walk me down the aisle. I told him it wasn’t about my love for him, but also about my love for Mr. Don to be there. I’m so lucky that my Dad was so understanding and said it was okay!

 

 

I also thought about ways to separate the two roles. I asked Mr. Don to say the prayer before the dinner, while my Dad gave the Father of the Bride speech; and I did a separate first look with each (my Dad went first). We did parent dances during dinner and my step dad and I danced at the end. Moral of the story if you’re in my situation- trust your gut! If your parent’s are anything like mine, they will want to make your day special and will be willing to put any differences aside!

 

 

All my vendor’s were amazing, seriously, we lucked out! If I have to choose just one though, I think the most memorable for our guests was our DJ. Fox Feltman with BTA Entertainment certainly isn’t your “typical” DJ. His goal was to get the crowd involved in your wedding-and boy did he do it! At first John was second guessing me, but by the end of the night so many people told us how much fun they had. He had people up, playing games, doing dances, and created a really special moment for us at the end of the night! I’d definitely book him again!

 

 

We did do a first look and I’m so glad we did! We chose to do a first look because I didn’t want our guests to be waiting on us to take pictures, and with my huge family we needed all the time we could get for family pictures. I’m glad we did, because my favorite pictures of the two of us were during the time together before the wedding. I think it’s because looking back at them they are extremely genuine and they truly brings back the excitement of seeing my husband for the first time. When we took those photo’s we weren’t focused on a photographer being there, we were just excited to see each other!

 

 

60% of the people we invited we’re able to come to the wedding. I think this number is a lower than the standard, but a lot of my people were from out of town. When I was working on the guest list, my mom and I literally sat down and guessed the probability that people would be able to attend. We were only off by 10%. Distance play’s a large factor in the probability that people will attend a wedding. My family and friends lived about 3 hours away from our wedding and we invited people from all over the world. That being said, our furthest guest lives in Micronesia most of the year, so still be careful about inviting too many people even if they do live far away!

 

 

Nope! We carefully worded our invitations so that we didn’t give a plus one and only invited couples that had been dating for a while! We also decided to not invite kids other than John’s niece and nephew. If we had given a plus one or invited kids we would not been able to invite a lot of the people that were important to us!

 

What’s something you regret not doing?

 

 

 

Let me know if you have any other questions about our wedding in the comments below!