planning our wedding: why we said NO to a bridal party

as i've watched friends get married, i would make my secret list of people who i'd choose to be in my bridal party for when the time arrived. giiiiiiiiiiirl, i know i'm not alone on this...can i get an amen?

yet when it came down to it, i chose to toss that list out the window.

actually, i think the value behind a bridal party is beautiful. it recognizes the people closest to you who have stood beside you and your relationship, and who will hopefully continue to stand beside you in your marriage. these are the people who will help you live out your marriage - because marriage is work and painful at times. it's heart-moving to see all those people physically standing beside a bride and groom. 

but the decision to NOT having a bridal party was pretty simple. we asked ourselves: 

• Q: why does it feel so bad to have to have to rank our friends? 
• A: we don't want to rank our friends! they're all meaningful to us in different ways. 

• Q: is there a way we can involve our friends without putting such a large financial burden on them? 
• A: a resounding YES. so we said NO to having a formal bridal party. 

we believed we could still honor those people closest to us without having them incur the often large cost of being part of a bridal party. especially for women, being a bridesmaid can be painfully expensive. but because we love our friends, we're willing to spend the money. i have done so in the past without any regret. 

there was a period in my 20s when all of my close friends were getting married, and i was invited to be a part of many of those bridal parties. without a doubt, it was an incredible honor and, i was also making practically poverty wages working at non-profits and living in the bay area. i was genuinely unsure how it would all work out financially. for one wedding there is usually: a bridesmaid dress, sometimes matching shoes, hair & makeup, bachelorette party and all the associated costs, hosting a bridal shower, bridal shower gift, wedding gift, time away from work or family, flights or gas, etc. for some of my friends, i couldn't even afford to give them a wedding gift because i was financially tapped out after all the pre-wedding affairs.

that's why we decided to honor our friends by asking them to participate in other small and meaningful ways:

• give a toast at the rehearsal lunch: my sister helen, steph, zack, michael and matt all gave heartfelt toasts. the time they took to write and share their reflections meant a great deal to us. 
• speak at our wedding: we had five formal speakers and my sister annaha, who read a poem. it was an enormous gift to have our friends reflect on and write a five minute talk they would deliver in front of everyone - on topics we chose! this was no small task, and we were grateful for their honesty and vulnerability in sharing. 
• come be with us in the morning of our wedding: samuel asked a couple of guys to hang out with him as he got ready for the wedding, as did i. it was so lovely to have friends to simply be with us. 
• come to a ladies' weekend (aka bachelorette party): this was my way of having some time away with special women in my life, relaxing at the beach in santa cruz and eating delicious meals. i felt super aware of the costs associated with going away for a weekend, but also felt like it was important to do this. so samuel and i agreed to pay for the beach rental in santa cruz, which cost us $950. it was a lot, but it felt like a way i could say "thank you" for being a part of my life. plus, the ladies coordinated and cooked all of the meals and we ate extremely well. nom nom nom. 
• note: this was different for samuel. he didn't mind his boys throwing down cashmoney for him. haha. they went go cart racing, white water rafting, and ate a lot!
• be our ring-bearers: in a typical wedding scenario, i would've asked my nieces to be my flower girls. but we didn't think having flower girls was necessary and they were already part of the family processional. also, i didn't want to spend money on buying special dresses for them when they already have a lot of cute clothes. then it dawned on me....it would be really meaningful to me if they brought us our wedding rings! so my sister dressed them in cute clothes they already had, and told them the importance of their role. i thought it was a great win-win. and the best part...my precious nieces got to play a typically male role. i'm all for that!

• lastly, the way we thought about the bridal party was this: inviting someone to attend our wedding meant that we were inviting them to participate in our marriage, for life. all in all, it's like everyone was part of our bridal party. : )

so we stood up there alone...

...but together with everyone.

planning our wedding: everything is expensive, but these 5 things are FREE!

here are some ways i didn't just "save" money, i didn't spend any!

1. borrow your friend's jewelry. at my ladies weekend (aka: bachelorette party), i asked everyone to bring any/all of their gold earrings. i tried them all on and knew immediately which one i wanted to wear. the sweet thing was that the pair that jumped out to me belonged to my oldest childhood friend annette. it was particularly meaningful because we chose not to have a bridal party, but still wanted our close friends to know they were precious to us (upcoming blogpost on this topic). i stood as annette's maid-of-honor and hadn't planned on reciprocating that role for my wedding, but it was special to have a piece of her hanging on my ears! FREE (and priceless)!

2. do your own hair. i could've gotten something elegant and fancy done, but the occasion didn't really call for it. because our whole wedding was more low key, i didn't have any problem curling my own hair. (side note: i felt more confident doing my own hair than my makeup so i paid someone for that. you can see how much i paid here for my lack of makeup skills. *gulp*) the morning of my wedding, my friend steph drove to michael's and found the flower i wore in my hair for under $5. she and mary helped me clip it in and voila! hair done! i think steph said not to worry about the cost, so if i'm remembering correctly, i guess it was FREE! ;-P 

3. look around your house. you may be surprised by what you find tucked away in your cupboards and closets. we ended up using the following that we had on hand: large canvas, clothes pins, straws, card stock, floral tape, pillows, markers, compostable utensils, some nice dinner size napkins, and a shell alice (sister-in-law) found last summer in france to hold our rings. 

most of us tend to be accumulators. we own a lot of stuff "just in case." well, time to dig into your "just in case" stock pile and use them up. you've already paid for these items so it's not a new expense. FREE! 

4. borrow everything you can think of. instead of creating more waste or purchasing things you won't use again, ask around. if you want to have those cute glass water dispensers with lemons in it (i did!), i'm sure someone in your community has one. ask around. people want to support you! or maybe you have a friend who has a really cute sense of style and would be willing to loan you a few decorative things here and there, ask! call on your community for support. FREE! 

on a related note: one thing that samuel and i were clear on was that we would much rather spend money on a small gift (we chose a pair of movie tickets) or a meal with someone who helped us, rather than spend that money on buying one-time goods for the wedding. connecting with people outweighed having the "perfect" __fill in the blank__.

5. if you can't find it for free, forget about it. sometimes it's easy to get married to an idea you simply "can't do without." well, you can. if it costs something or requires too much work, it may not be worth it. try to simplify your process by cutting things out. it's likely that very few people, if any, will even remember...and you probably won't either. make your wedding planning process as easy as possible. it's such an emotional time, so reduce any additional stress. FREE and FREEING!

most of all, it was vital for samuel and i to keep coming back to two things:

• as special as our wedding day would be, it is just one day. it's one event. what is far exceedingly more important is that we spent time preparing for our lifelong marriage, not just an event. 
• my friend heather reminded me that "your wedding is a celebration of you, not a reflection on you." remember that you're creating a space to connect and celebrate with dearly beloved guests who love you! they are not there to judge you, they're there to love on you!

planning our wedding: our itemized budget

i have a story in my head that there's an overarching issue in our society regarding the private nature of money. we tend to be very hush hush about it - me included! it's usually an "undiscussible." i wish we lived in a more disclosing manner, not hiding behind shame or guilt or pride or fear of judgement. i imagine we might be more open to disclosing what we have (or don't have) if we honestly believed money was an arbitrary gift, and therefore neither mine or yours, but rather, ours. it's a gift that comes and goes; money is simply part of a flow.

one thing i noticed when we were planning our wedding was that folks would be eager to share things like the minute-by-minute schedule, mile-long to do lists, budget categories and advice - lots of advice! (i do it now too. oh dear.) but no one ever voluntarily shared their itemized budget with us. i'm not sure i even asked because i didn't think it was okay to. "how much money they spent is their business. it would be too invasive to ask," i told myself. would it have been?

i think it would've been helpful to have a frame of reference to get a sense of how much things cost - for real, not just in my fantasy la-la head. 

anyway, in the spirit of greater transparency, i want to share ours. i hope it's of service to you. if you have any questions about it, i am more than happy to help in whatever way. you can email me at lizsong (at) gmail.com or leave comments below.

notes:

• thanks andrew for pointing out a glaring omission of our photographer! corrections made above! 
• we had approximately 100 adults & 20 kids in attendance.
• $5135 was the total we spent on gifts/thank you's and family care. this was much more than we expected to spend, but in the spirit of generosity, we wanted to make sure people knew we were extremely grateful for all the ways they supported us. 
• samuel's shoes cost $130 because we got his granddad's old shoes restored. they were beautifully done by the european cobblery. and then of course, we had to find the perfect belt to match, which also happened to cost $125. i've never paid that much for an accessory, but i learned that men's apparel is extremely particular! it all needs to match! now we have a suit fo life. (samuel just can't gain any weight.)
• i bought a shirt "i had to have" for the our saturday night family dinner. totally didn't need to have a new shirt for that evening. #emotionalconsumerism
• i also bought a slip to wear under my dress. it was high quality and the only one i found that actually worked. i don't regret buying it, but now i have this $90 slip i've only used once. it's very unlikely i'll use it again. what do you do with these one off purchases from a wedding? 
• a shift in perspective: when we were living in the bay area, we thought, "wow, we planned this wedding for a steal!" especially when we compared it to stories like, "we only spent $30k. that's pretty low." but now that we live in rural montana and see what some people live on, i feel like we spent quite a bit for our wedding. (and after reading this post from mr. money mustache, i'm like...whaaaht?) my perspective has definitely shifted!

anything strike you about our budget?