Ok so the title is a little dramatic, but I'm feeling a little dramatic right now. Good news first. If you've been keeping up with Facebook the past week, you know we're officially homeowners now! How exciting, and scary all at the same time. The closing was so weird. I was so nervous for some reason. Our realtor ended up redeeming herself by buying us a gift off of our registry, and offering to host our housewarming party! Heck yea!! She wants to foot some of the bill, I am all for it! We like her as a person, as a realtor she is a little bit of a flake!
In other news (like the wedding) OH YEA, we're getting married, totally forgot about that with all the house crap! I got a lovely email from our wedding coordinator this week stating some "wonderful, and exciting news" Our venue has merged with a new catering company. Can you imagine what my heart did when I read that line. It stopped. It fell to my stomach. I thought I died for a second. Luckily she followed that sentence up with, you can keep all your menu selections from our catering company, or you may choose from the new menu. Welllllll, fantastic. I've already ordered, paid for, and received our wedding invitations..including the RSVP cards which have our menu options on them. Things better not change!!!!
She also assured me that they were keeping their executive chef, so the food we tasted would be the same. However, if this chef doesn't like new management he could up and quit..which will change everything. Fan-flippin-tastic. She also told me, I now have 2 points of contact, someone for food, and her for the venue. AWESOME. One more person to throw into the loop. One more cook in the kitchen. GAHHHHH.
I calmed down, and responded to her email...this isn't the death of our wedding, things will be fine. Friday I got another email...
Here are my new issues:
Our Wedding is the same weekend the new Batman movie comes out...so not only with the theaters be packed with whack jobs (lets be honest, those batman fans are slightly nuts and obsessive) We can't have our rehearsal in a theater without paying for another theater rental. I'll be damned if I pay $500.00 for a 30 minute rehearsal. I am SOOOOOOOO PISSED. I figured we don't need a long rehearsal it's not hard to walk in a line, but since it's kind of an unconventional setting I would like for everyone to practice at least once. We get a rehearsal, but in a random room. AWESOME.
Our coordinator told me she "doesn't work weekends" UMMM hold the phone. You are a wedding coordinator..how can you not work weekends? Who the heck is going to be running our shindig? Apparently I have to ask someone to help with the ceremony. How much are we paying the place?? Needless to say I'm now fuming reading this email. Finally the kicker...the catering company that they are now working with, is the company that we intentionally avoided while selecting our venue. We went to a venue and saw this company, and didn't like them at all. They were touching glasses with bare hands, they were touching silverware with no gloves, and one of them made a rude comment under her breath about something I said, and I happened to hear it. I want nothing to do with this staff. I am hoping they are still going to at least use Celebration Cinema's serving staff. If not I'm going to pitch an epic fit.
Everything was going so smooth, everything was moving along at a perfect pace, and then wham, this hits us. I'm hope it doesn't turn into a hot mess...
In more news.. Packing sucks. I always forget how much I hate to pack. The apartment is a mess, there is crap everywhere, my hands have this dust/dirt film feeling all over them. We can't really clean because there are boxes every. The cats love it..they have kitty jungle gyms everywhere..but for us it's no fun!
Enjoy the week, I can't believe it's already May. Also I just realized when I previewed this the punctuation is weird... the exclamation points look like the letter l..I'll make changes soon.
<3 Karissa
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Budget....What Budget??!!
When we started planning for our "big day" we both knew we didn't want to go overboard on our budget. Neither one of us could ever imagine spending obscene amounts of money on just one day. That being said, we also knew we wanted to have a day to remember, something special, something that was ours, and something that people would remember. There are things in the budget that you don't really need, and there are other spots in the budget that you really shouldn't skimp on. Here's my list of the things you can cut or cut back on, and things where you're money should be spent.
Food/Drink: You're on the verge of feeding a fairly large amount of people (anything over 20 is large considering you're footing the bill. I'm not saying 20 is a large wedding, however, it's a lot of people to pay for) Don't go cheap on the food, don't try to cook it yourself, or hire someone you know. That puts a huge amount of pressure on everyone involved. Leave it to the professionals. They are pros for a reason, they've studied the art of fine food, and they cook for large amounts of people all the time. One way to keep the costs low (and very easy to predict once you have your final count) is to pick items on the menu that all cost the same thing. Pick a meat, and chicken plate that are both $15.00 rather than a steak that's $20, and a chicken that's $16. This way no matter what entree people select, you'll have a round about idea of what you'll be spending. It's also wise to choose a more common cut of beef. Rather than ordering prime rib for everyone...why not pick a 6oz sirloin (it's about 5 dollars cheaper).
In regards to your drinks...There are so many options for your bar. Personally I think cash bars are tacky (gasp) or insert eye roll here, I don't like the idea of making my guests pay for drinks. If you can't afford a hosted bar, then by no means should you put yourself in a situation where you're going to be in debt forever to pay your bar tab, but if you can host your bar...it's a nice treat for you guest. If you're scared people will take advantage of an open bar (they most likely will) there are a few options to keep costs low. You can offer drink tickets. Pay for each of your guests to have 2 drinks on you. Your catering company will put "drink tickets" at there place setting and they may use those at the bar to pay for their drinks. Once their tickets are gone, then they can pay for the rest of their drinks. Chances are some people will get drink tickets from the non drinkers and will still get away with not paying for a single drink.
Another option for your bar is to host beer and wine only, and make it a cash bar for all mixed drinks. This way you're still covering people, and if they want other beverages then they can pay for it themselves. The final options is to host the bar but pay based on consumption rather than pay per person. If you know you have a mixed crowed of drinkers and non drinkers, pay per drink rather than per head. This way you aren't paying 20 bucks for people that aren't going to drink anything. **warning*** If you know your wedding will have lots of drinkers...pay per head, otherwise if you pay based on consumption you could really shoot yourself in the foot and end up owing a lot more, than if you just paid per person.
Photography: Don't go cheap on your pictures. This is the one thing you'll have forever, you'll look back on these for the rest of your life. Don't let your Aunt Sally who takes pictures as a hobby do your wedding pictures. You can save money by hiring a photographer that will give you the rights to your pictures, and will give them to you on a disk. If you have your photographer make you albums you'll be paying upwards of $600.00 for a photo album...when you could make one yourself on shutterfly. Find a photographer that will edit, and photo shop, and change the color on your pictures, and then give you the CD. These photographers are everywhere!!
**On that note, don't waste your money on the disposable cameras on the tables. You'll end up with inappropriate pictures, and half of them won't turn out. People get picture happy when they get drunk, and they tend to take horrible pictures once they have consumed too much!
Chair Covers and Linens: Some people will disagree with me on this one, but I believe everyone should spend the money on chair covers. Banquet chairs are some of the ugliest chairs on the planet (I don't know who designs them, but they should be unemployed) Chair covers are a great way to transform your entire venue for a few hundred dollars. You can save money by agreeing to put them on yourself (If your rental company will allow that) you can also save by not getting a sash to tie around the chair. I have always said the one place I will not compromise is chair covers...lucky for me Aaron completely agrees! You can also save money by using the catering companies linens. Yes it would be nice to have floor length linens in different colors, with runners down the table, but if it's going to stretch you, don't do it!
Favors: Don't buy your wedding guests expensive favors. I hate to break it to you, but 9 times out of 10 they forget them at the end of the night, or they find them useless and leave them behind, for you to have 100 extra (insert favor here). A way to leave your guests with a little gift of appreciation is to make a donation to a favorite charity. The charity will send you little cards with information on them about the organization and you can place those at all of your tables, or treat them to a little snack. We're hosting a candy buffet. Giant jars of all of our favorite candy with little take home boxes. Something that is much cheaper, and most people will enjoy the candy. A lot of catering companies will make special deserts for you too. You can have cookies with your monogram wrapped up and at each setting. These types of things will get used, or taken. Many Mommies and Daddies take things like that home for the kiddos, who didn't attend the wedding! Everyone wins!
Menus: Don't make them, don't waste you time or money. The food isn't going to change whether they have a menu in front of them or not, so don't tempt people, by showing them all of the main entree selections again. They'll try to change their order. Nothing is more annoying to a server than when a guest says "can i get the chicken instead?" "no, no you can't you pre ordered, so you get what you get" They had a chance to see a menu, when they RSVP'd. Plus it's a free meal, suck it up! Menus end up being a waste of space, and you'll be sad at the end of the night to see all your hard work, crinkled up, spilled on, and left to be forgotten.
That's all for now, there are more budget saving tips coming!
<3 Karissa
Food/Drink: You're on the verge of feeding a fairly large amount of people (anything over 20 is large considering you're footing the bill. I'm not saying 20 is a large wedding, however, it's a lot of people to pay for) Don't go cheap on the food, don't try to cook it yourself, or hire someone you know. That puts a huge amount of pressure on everyone involved. Leave it to the professionals. They are pros for a reason, they've studied the art of fine food, and they cook for large amounts of people all the time. One way to keep the costs low (and very easy to predict once you have your final count) is to pick items on the menu that all cost the same thing. Pick a meat, and chicken plate that are both $15.00 rather than a steak that's $20, and a chicken that's $16. This way no matter what entree people select, you'll have a round about idea of what you'll be spending. It's also wise to choose a more common cut of beef. Rather than ordering prime rib for everyone...why not pick a 6oz sirloin (it's about 5 dollars cheaper).
In regards to your drinks...There are so many options for your bar. Personally I think cash bars are tacky (gasp) or insert eye roll here, I don't like the idea of making my guests pay for drinks. If you can't afford a hosted bar, then by no means should you put yourself in a situation where you're going to be in debt forever to pay your bar tab, but if you can host your bar...it's a nice treat for you guest. If you're scared people will take advantage of an open bar (they most likely will) there are a few options to keep costs low. You can offer drink tickets. Pay for each of your guests to have 2 drinks on you. Your catering company will put "drink tickets" at there place setting and they may use those at the bar to pay for their drinks. Once their tickets are gone, then they can pay for the rest of their drinks. Chances are some people will get drink tickets from the non drinkers and will still get away with not paying for a single drink.
Another option for your bar is to host beer and wine only, and make it a cash bar for all mixed drinks. This way you're still covering people, and if they want other beverages then they can pay for it themselves. The final options is to host the bar but pay based on consumption rather than pay per person. If you know you have a mixed crowed of drinkers and non drinkers, pay per drink rather than per head. This way you aren't paying 20 bucks for people that aren't going to drink anything. **warning*** If you know your wedding will have lots of drinkers...pay per head, otherwise if you pay based on consumption you could really shoot yourself in the foot and end up owing a lot more, than if you just paid per person.
Photography: Don't go cheap on your pictures. This is the one thing you'll have forever, you'll look back on these for the rest of your life. Don't let your Aunt Sally who takes pictures as a hobby do your wedding pictures. You can save money by hiring a photographer that will give you the rights to your pictures, and will give them to you on a disk. If you have your photographer make you albums you'll be paying upwards of $600.00 for a photo album...when you could make one yourself on shutterfly. Find a photographer that will edit, and photo shop, and change the color on your pictures, and then give you the CD. These photographers are everywhere!!
**On that note, don't waste your money on the disposable cameras on the tables. You'll end up with inappropriate pictures, and half of them won't turn out. People get picture happy when they get drunk, and they tend to take horrible pictures once they have consumed too much!
Chair Covers and Linens: Some people will disagree with me on this one, but I believe everyone should spend the money on chair covers. Banquet chairs are some of the ugliest chairs on the planet (I don't know who designs them, but they should be unemployed) Chair covers are a great way to transform your entire venue for a few hundred dollars. You can save money by agreeing to put them on yourself (If your rental company will allow that) you can also save by not getting a sash to tie around the chair. I have always said the one place I will not compromise is chair covers...lucky for me Aaron completely agrees! You can also save money by using the catering companies linens. Yes it would be nice to have floor length linens in different colors, with runners down the table, but if it's going to stretch you, don't do it!
Favors: Don't buy your wedding guests expensive favors. I hate to break it to you, but 9 times out of 10 they forget them at the end of the night, or they find them useless and leave them behind, for you to have 100 extra (insert favor here). A way to leave your guests with a little gift of appreciation is to make a donation to a favorite charity. The charity will send you little cards with information on them about the organization and you can place those at all of your tables, or treat them to a little snack. We're hosting a candy buffet. Giant jars of all of our favorite candy with little take home boxes. Something that is much cheaper, and most people will enjoy the candy. A lot of catering companies will make special deserts for you too. You can have cookies with your monogram wrapped up and at each setting. These types of things will get used, or taken. Many Mommies and Daddies take things like that home for the kiddos, who didn't attend the wedding! Everyone wins!
Menus: Don't make them, don't waste you time or money. The food isn't going to change whether they have a menu in front of them or not, so don't tempt people, by showing them all of the main entree selections again. They'll try to change their order. Nothing is more annoying to a server than when a guest says "can i get the chicken instead?" "no, no you can't you pre ordered, so you get what you get" They had a chance to see a menu, when they RSVP'd. Plus it's a free meal, suck it up! Menus end up being a waste of space, and you'll be sad at the end of the night to see all your hard work, crinkled up, spilled on, and left to be forgotten.
That's all for now, there are more budget saving tips coming!
<3 Karissa
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Top Five Dream Wedding Locations
Soooo judge all you want, Aaron and I played the Mega Millions when it was at 640 million. Yea our chances of winning were slim to none, but what the hell?? We talked about everything we would do with all of the money. It got me thinking, if we had all of the money in the world, where would I have my dream wedding? Mind you, I love where we are having our wedding, it's going to be amazing. However, there are places that are totally out of our reach for one reason or another (mostly money) and I will only ever dream of these places.
5) The San Diego Zoo: I have always thought it would be fun to get married in a zoo, Aaron said no to the John Ball Zoo because "It will smell". But San Diego is beautiful and I have heard amazing things about the zoo. Bliss!
4) Nappa Valley:
Aaron and I love wine, we love going wine tasting, I love learning about wine. How amazing would it be to have this view?
3) Italy: Two words, It's Italy.
Enough said.
2) Mackinac Island: I love the island. There is something magical about that island, with no cars, and everything so pure. I have ALWAYS wanted to go on a carriage ride. Aaron has tried on multiple occasions to take me, but it's never worked out. I would love to get married on the island with the bridge and water in the background, and then hop on a carriage and take a ride with my groom! The Grand Hotel is amazing, beautiful, and screams elegance. It's so expensive to have a wedding there, but that would be my pick!
1) No amount of money could ever make my number one dream location happen. It's so sad, and many people have heard me go on and on about this place. Brook Lodge will always be a special place to me. I can not describe to anyone (unless you experience the Lodge yourself) how absolutely amazing and special that place is. It will always hold a place in my heart. I worked with AMAZING people. I had the dream job (I have yet to find a job that comes even close to that job) I got to go to work in the most beautiful location ever. Everyone that worked there, got married there, or worked as a vendor there, knew how absolutely amazing, and special Brook Lodge was. It breaks my heart every time I think about how it's a big ol' piece of property now sitting and doing nothing. All of those empty buildings sitting there with so many memories...it's horrible. When I worked there I had my wedding all planned out. Never in a million years did I ever think that I wouldn't be having my wedding there. I knew I would be in good hands with that entire staff. My friend Loni was married there. Long story short we had mutual friends and I ended up working on her wedding at the Lodge, before we even knew we had mutual friends. Here is Loni's wedding story. Note the pictures: She had an awesome photographer Loni's Brook Lodge Wedding
Beautiful Bride, and a beautiful background.
So now you have it. Everyone always likes to sit around a dream. I've heard the question a million times "If you could do it differently what would you change?" I can't, and won't be changing anything, but these are the top 5 places that will never be. :)
Go check out my friend Loni's blog about life with a little one! It's an amazing blog, that tells it how it is! www.babypmakesthree.blogspot.com
<3 Karissa
5) The San Diego Zoo: I have always thought it would be fun to get married in a zoo, Aaron said no to the John Ball Zoo because "It will smell". But San Diego is beautiful and I have heard amazing things about the zoo. Bliss!
4) Nappa Valley:
Aaron and I love wine, we love going wine tasting, I love learning about wine. How amazing would it be to have this view? 3) Italy: Two words, It's Italy.
2) Mackinac Island: I love the island. There is something magical about that island, with no cars, and everything so pure. I have ALWAYS wanted to go on a carriage ride. Aaron has tried on multiple occasions to take me, but it's never worked out. I would love to get married on the island with the bridge and water in the background, and then hop on a carriage and take a ride with my groom! The Grand Hotel is amazing, beautiful, and screams elegance. It's so expensive to have a wedding there, but that would be my pick!
1) No amount of money could ever make my number one dream location happen. It's so sad, and many people have heard me go on and on about this place. Brook Lodge will always be a special place to me. I can not describe to anyone (unless you experience the Lodge yourself) how absolutely amazing and special that place is. It will always hold a place in my heart. I worked with AMAZING people. I had the dream job (I have yet to find a job that comes even close to that job) I got to go to work in the most beautiful location ever. Everyone that worked there, got married there, or worked as a vendor there, knew how absolutely amazing, and special Brook Lodge was. It breaks my heart every time I think about how it's a big ol' piece of property now sitting and doing nothing. All of those empty buildings sitting there with so many memories...it's horrible. When I worked there I had my wedding all planned out. Never in a million years did I ever think that I wouldn't be having my wedding there. I knew I would be in good hands with that entire staff. My friend Loni was married there. Long story short we had mutual friends and I ended up working on her wedding at the Lodge, before we even knew we had mutual friends. Here is Loni's wedding story. Note the pictures: She had an awesome photographer Loni's Brook Lodge Wedding
Beautiful Bride, and a beautiful background.
So now you have it. Everyone always likes to sit around a dream. I've heard the question a million times "If you could do it differently what would you change?" I can't, and won't be changing anything, but these are the top 5 places that will never be. :)
Go check out my friend Loni's blog about life with a little one! It's an amazing blog, that tells it how it is! www.babypmakesthree.blogspot.com
<3 Karissa
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Hurry up and Wait.
I've said it a million times. We're in limbo right now. There is a lot of waiting going on, and it's getting annoying. Waiting for the appraisal, waiting for the underwriter, waiting to sign papers, waiting for wedding stuff to pick back up. I am so ready to get a move on everything. We've been saying we need to hurry and get (insert project here) done, then we get it done, and we're left just sitting around waiting some more.
We had the appraisal a couple weeks ago, and found out all this information this week. Everything turned out great, no renegotiating or anything. So now we're just waiting...to hear when we actually close on the house. Once we do that it's more waiting for our move in date. Everything is going to happen all at once and I'm getting a little overwhelmed.
This is what the next few weeks look like
Mid April Close on house
May 1-5 Hopefully in our house
Mid May Bridal shower, sending wedding invites, finalizing wedding details
Late May House warming party
It doesn't seem like a whole lot of bullet points, but when you think about what each of these things entail, I'm getting stressed. To top it off, our Apartment complex is being 100% difficult right now with us breaking our lease. We know that we have to break our lease, and we understand that there is a buy out fee, but they're telling us since we haven't been in the lease for 6 months (never mind the fact that this is Aaron's sixth lease with this complex) we can't give our 30 days. Meaning, we're left with paying rent through August and our house payment. They said there is a waiting list, but it doesn't matter, because we haven't been in our current lease for six months. So our option is to let our apartment sit empty for 4 months and pay rent on it anyway. It doesn't seem to make good business sense to me to leave our place empty and be stubborn about us leaving before our 6 months and potentially losing business because people don't want to wait all summer for a place. Sure they're making rent off of us even though we aren't there, but what happens when we stop paying rent, and all the people on the waiting list that possibly could have gotten in in May, have found other places to live? It's so annoying. I have never heard of such complicated rules. Yes we will pay extra to break our lease, most places have some sort of rule like that, but to tell us "you can't give us your 30 days" is ridiculous to me. It makes me want to pull my hair out.
We have has such a busy couple of weeks. We went up north last weekend for a shooting weekend (I learned how to shoot a gun) it's interesting. It's a scary powerful feeling...not sure if I liked it, or if it scared the bejesus out of me. This weekend, we went to the in laws for Easter dinner. It's always fun heading out there, we have tons of property to ride the quads, huge game room with shuffle board, pool and ping pong, and great family to enjoy it all with! I've been busy taking classes for my CDA for work. As soon as I get my qualifications I will get a raise and be officially and Lead teacher. Such a good feeling!!
I've tried like 600 times to upload a video of the house from my flip camera. I can't get it to work. I'm beyond annoyed. Sorry!!!
<3 Karissa
We had the appraisal a couple weeks ago, and found out all this information this week. Everything turned out great, no renegotiating or anything. So now we're just waiting...to hear when we actually close on the house. Once we do that it's more waiting for our move in date. Everything is going to happen all at once and I'm getting a little overwhelmed.
This is what the next few weeks look like
Mid April Close on house
May 1-5 Hopefully in our house
Mid May Bridal shower, sending wedding invites, finalizing wedding details
Late May House warming party
It doesn't seem like a whole lot of bullet points, but when you think about what each of these things entail, I'm getting stressed. To top it off, our Apartment complex is being 100% difficult right now with us breaking our lease. We know that we have to break our lease, and we understand that there is a buy out fee, but they're telling us since we haven't been in the lease for 6 months (never mind the fact that this is Aaron's sixth lease with this complex) we can't give our 30 days. Meaning, we're left with paying rent through August and our house payment. They said there is a waiting list, but it doesn't matter, because we haven't been in our current lease for six months. So our option is to let our apartment sit empty for 4 months and pay rent on it anyway. It doesn't seem to make good business sense to me to leave our place empty and be stubborn about us leaving before our 6 months and potentially losing business because people don't want to wait all summer for a place. Sure they're making rent off of us even though we aren't there, but what happens when we stop paying rent, and all the people on the waiting list that possibly could have gotten in in May, have found other places to live? It's so annoying. I have never heard of such complicated rules. Yes we will pay extra to break our lease, most places have some sort of rule like that, but to tell us "you can't give us your 30 days" is ridiculous to me. It makes me want to pull my hair out.
We have has such a busy couple of weeks. We went up north last weekend for a shooting weekend (I learned how to shoot a gun) it's interesting. It's a scary powerful feeling...not sure if I liked it, or if it scared the bejesus out of me. This weekend, we went to the in laws for Easter dinner. It's always fun heading out there, we have tons of property to ride the quads, huge game room with shuffle board, pool and ping pong, and great family to enjoy it all with! I've been busy taking classes for my CDA for work. As soon as I get my qualifications I will get a raise and be officially and Lead teacher. Such a good feeling!!
I've tried like 600 times to upload a video of the house from my flip camera. I can't get it to work. I'm beyond annoyed. Sorry!!!
<3 Karissa
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