Hi again everyone!
So it has been requested for me to do some wedding tips and how to's for planning and just a basic run through about my wedding. So what better place than here on my blog because really I don't think people want to see a video about that anyway!
Well the first thing that I want to bring to everyone attention is that for years before getting in to real estate I was an event planner. I ran events for a large marketing company based out of NY. I worked at home and in my own market (Maryland, DC and Delaware.) So I have had lots of experience dealing with how events go and how to handle last minute issues. I did have a wedding planner and my wedding was over 400 miles away from where I live.
I live in Maryland and my wedding was in Cape Cod Massachusetts. So the good side of this is that the wedding planner was able to point me in the direction of people in the area that were great for each thing I needed. Since it was so far away I did have to rely on her to give me recommendations and besides she knows her area and the people she has worked with so far better than I do. If my wedding was in my local area- then I probably would not have used a wedding planner.
So the first things we did was to pick a location. We spent a weekend looking at locations and finding what we wanted out of a location. Our requirements- at the cape, on the water, great food. Major things for us. Past that the rest can be changed easily. So we found the venue and narrowed down a date- this was difficult since the location was booking fast. We had trouble deciding between summer and fall. Both beautiful up there. But we decided to go with the summer, since it is the best time of year to go there and so many people would be traveling, so why not make it somewhere they could vacation as well? So with the date July 23rd chosen on to the next thing.
We then had to find a hotel for people, officiant, cake, DJ, florist, photographer, makeup/hair people and many other small things.
So with the help of the planner I found all of the above through phone calls and viewing websites. On many people I did follow up with people that had used them in the past.
So all of these things out of the way and the next few items were to do a tasting for the main food and the cake. After doing the tastings and making decisions. We had pretty easy decisions because we wanted one beef, one fish and one vegetarian option. We also had an appetizer station and 4 passed ones. We then had a salad and the main courses we had chosen. Our dinner was sit down except for the cake and the appetizer station. The cake was an easy choice- we had two in the running but the one we choose has won the food network cake challenge 4 times! It was so yummy and I am not a cake person!
After all those things were decided we had to do a save the date. We sent those out back in January I think.
I also in the midst of all of this had a few meetings with the Makeup Artist and Hair person. If you follow my videos I was not a fan of the makeup person. She was snippy and just not getting the look I was going for. The hair person was great though. I did 3 different looks for both and decided on a hair style and to do my own makeup (best decision I made.)
Next was invitations- We did that pretty quick we knew our theme and what we wanted it to look like, so then it was just getting them in and sending them out. We sat at my office conference room one Saturday and just put them all together and sent them out.
After we received all the responses back, which is fun, seeing what people can come and which can't and what they want to eat. haha! Then the somewhat hard part was seating chart, but having dealt with this before I have learned- take paper plates and post its and use the paper plates as the tables (# them) then put everyones names on a post it and then you can move them around table easier. This was super quick and easy way to get your table done.
Then on to the week before the wedding. We had decided to do a candy bar, so we had to go buy all the stuff for that and drop off all the table cards, candy, guest photo frame (we had everyone sign a frame and we are putting a wedding photo in it instead of having them signs guest book.)
After that was done it was just a better of waiting for the wedding. We did go up to our cape house the week before to make sure if there were any issues we were prepared. Mostly we just hung out with people that came in to visit.
The day before the wedding we had the run through at the venue. It was hotter than anything so we wanted to to go quickly since it was outside. Then that night we had the rehearsal dinner. My dress was to big and had to be pinned up, I had to laugh at this!
Then the day of- it was lots of getting ready and making sure everything was together, but mostly I relaxed, had a few people come and visit me at the house and to see the house if they haven't bee to it before. Then the storms started in! haha! I was like oh well can't win em all, but on the same note I knew that in the cape we have lots of flash storms. So everyone was watching the weather channel to see what was expecting. Keep in mind we had a back up plan in case it did rain. But the storm went buy after about 2 hours and it was beautiful again. The heat dried up the grass and we were on track.
One of the biggest hiccup's was that the motor coach we had left 8 people at the hotel and had to go back and get them, which put us behind 30 min- oh well.
We did do photos before the wedding (so we could enjoy the cocktail hour with our friends) so we actually saw each other and had a first glance on the dock by the ceremony location. he had his back to me and when I walked up he turned around to see me for the first time! It was great and so memorable and it was nice that it was just between the 2 of us instead of as I walked up the isle in front of everyone! It was special to us this way!
The day went by super fast and thank goodness for the wedding planner because she did keep everything on track.
There were a few things that went wrong and some things that happened in the wrong order but I went with the flow and just enjoyed every minute!
The BEST thing I can leave you with is to not worry about all the small things, no one will notice unless you make a big deal about them and make sure to savor every moment! oh yeah and a great photographer helps to relive it later! :o)
I hope you enjoyed hearing about the wedding and let me know if you have any questions!
Cheers-Lisa
