I'm here today with a different type of blog post.
Late last year, my older brother got engaged to his ladybird. They had pretty different ideas of their "dream wedding" and ultimately called me in for some guidance on meeting in the middle and creating a beautiful way for them to celebrate their love.
Here are the stats:
My older brother wanted a big, white wedding with a guest list that included everyone he has ever met in his whole entire life.
His fiance is more of a "let's go to the courthouse" kind of gal.
So, how do you make those work together? Great question.
I've found that when wedding planning, couples often start from very different places. We encourage newly engaged couples to sit down separately and make a list of the top 5 parts of their wedding day that matter the most to them. Compare lists and see where you overlap and start your planning there.
For Brock and Megan, it turned out that they were closer to the same page than they initially thought. Here's the list of wedding day dreams that overlapped for this happy couple:
- A ceremony with an exchange of personally written vows
- Really. Great. Food.
- A kick-ass photographer and videographer to capture the day.
With this information in hand, we gently pulled Brock and Megan in the direction of an intimate desert wedding against the Lost Dutchman mountains. Fall in Arizona is gorgeous so we chose a date in November. Because amazing food was high on the priority list, we put most of their budget towards hiring a truly unique caterer (more on that in part II). Immediately after we secured the venue, we booked Lunabear Studios for photos because Brock and Megan love to have a good time and SO DOES LAUREN. Then we locked in the amazing Love Story Films to create the perfect video for their big day.
Then, we moved on to planning the smaller details of their day. Just because a line item doesn't make your "most important" list does not mean that it isn't important to your day. Take, for example, wedding invitations. We knew that a custom suite was out of budget but that didn't mean we wanted to DIY. So, we started to search for options and around this time, just happened to get an email from Basic Invite.
Here's the skinny on Basic Invite. They have a HUGE selection of invitation suites in a wide variety of styles/colors and they're really affordable. They just rolled out clear and wood invites which made my heart explode. I also love that you can order samples from them so you don't have to gamble your whole budget on invites that aren't PERFECT for your vision.
For Brock and Megan, I ordered samples of these insanely fun clear wedding invitations.
I loved mixing in the hotel and registry cards with touches of floral print and black to really unite the suite with the overall design of the wedding (more on that in Part II!!). I also loved that the colors on the invitations themselves can be changed out. For example, the black background on our hotel and gift inserts can be whatever color you want (seriously, they have a HUGE amount of colors to choose from). There was also flexibility on fonts, envelopes (and so many cute liners!), and the best part is that they look custom without breaking the bank.
As an added bonus, you can also create your own, personal wedding website through them. It's so nice to have a page that holds all the details of your big day so guests can easily click through to your registry, RSVP, and even just double check any details that might have slipped their mind. Brock and Megan have a lot of out of town guests for their wedding day and I love that no one will have to worry about keeping track of the venue address because they can just pop on over to the website!
Next week I'll be back with Brock and Megan's mood board and details about their menu which will blow. your. mind. In the meantime, hop over to Basic Invite if you're ready to spread the word about your big day with some really classy wedding invitations.