You’ve dreamed about it. You’ve sat back in your easychair (or office chair) and conjured up images of your wedding day. Maybe you have everything figured out. You know what type of dress you want, and what color your bridesmaids will be wearing. You know what type of meal you will serve. You even know what kind of cake you won’t be smashing into your sweetie’s face at the end of the night.

Or maybe you’re still in a fog. Maybe you haven’t got a clue about where you will have your wedding, or how many guests to invite. Your mind is an open slate waiting for some great ideas to come along.

No matter how clear your wedding day picture, one thing is for certain: you’re about to embark on one of the biggest adventures of your life.

Planning a wedding is an exciting and creative process, but it can also be a strange ride.

Firstly, you’ll be faced with lots of decisions – and some of them might not come easily. Secondly, it’s a highly emotional time in your life. Not only will your emotions be running high, your spouse-to-be, not to mention family members, might also be touchy. Then there’s the issue of money. What if you go over budget? (In fact, breaking the budget is what brides-to-be stress out about the most . As if that’s not enough to worry about, what if you forget a crucial detail? What if your maid of honor backs out on you at the last minute or only half your guest list shows up?

Combine these common bridal anxieties with the pressure you will face from the bridal industry to have the ‘perfect’ wedding and you’ve got a recipe for full blown wedding panic.

If you suddenly find yourself succumbing to what I like to call the “Jekyll and Bride Syndrome” (loving, intelligent woman temporarily transforms into crabby, stressed out vixen-with-claws), take heart. You don’t have to let these temporary moments of insanity overshadow the joy and excitement that comes with planning your wedding.

The worries that make you break out into a cold sweat at night will not likely materialize, and pretty soon you’ll be looking back on these months of planning with a feeling of pride and joy that you not only survived, but created a beautiful event that will always be remembered.

Meantime, don’t let wedding planning devour your entire life. Call a friend and chat about something other than your nuptials. Go to a movie. Read a great novel. Take a walk on the beach. Revisit an old hobby. It is during these moments of distraction that inspiration might whisper some brilliant wedding day ideas in your ear and banish “Jekyll and Bride” from your life forever.

Save

Elizabeth, 27 and Hedi, 31

Holbrook Palmer Park, Atherton, CA

Wedding Date:  December 27, 2008

Number of Guests: 59

Wedding Cost: $15,000

Wedding Ceremony Location:  Holbrook Palmer

Wedding Reception Location: Holbrook Palmer

Why did you have an intimate wedding?

We really wanted this to be a special, memorable and personal time shared only with the people who matter most to us. We didn’t want it to turn into a show or spectacle, just a fun time with our very closest friends and family that we could always remember forever.

What are some the challenges that you faced planning an intimate wedding?

I did feel really bad leaving some people off the guest list, and we chose to have the wedding in Northern California instead of Southern California where we all live in order to kind of make it easier to explain why we were keeping it so small. Also, choosing a day two days after Christmas kind made it less desirable unless you REALLY loved us 🙂

Was it difficult to pare down the guest list?

It was hard. Unfortunately, due to the time and travel involved, there were many people who weren’t able to make it. We felt sad not to have them with us, but overall I wouldn’t change anything about the day.

Did you have any issues with the small guest list from friends and family? If so, how did you address them?

Not really. If anything, what I heard over and over were people noticing the intimacy of the group and telling us they felt honored to be invited, which was really awesome.

What were the highlights of the ceremony?

Definitely the fact that our officiant has known me since birth. He has been like a father/mentor figure ever since I can remember and to have him officiate our ceremony and give us his unwavering blessing and joyous part in our ceremony was incredible.

What were the highlights of the reception? 

Just sharing the fun and love with all our friends and family.

What was the best thing about having an intimate wedding?

Really knowing everyone there, and feeling like every single person that surrounds you truly knows you, and your relationship, and is there to celebrate that love.

What advice do you have for couples who are considering an intimate wedding?

Just go with your gut!  If you want to be able to hug every person at your wedding, have the time to spend at least a few meaningful moments with everybody and feel like you have all shared something truly memorable, this is definitely the way to go!  Also, it worked out great for being on a fairly modest budget but still wanting lots of unique and interesting details. We had incredible food, handmade favors, belly-dancers and all sorts of things I could have never dreamed of doing if I had to do it for 200 people. For 50ish guests, I could really splurge on the stuff I thought was most important. A small wedding gives you the chance to maximize quality over quantity.  No matter what, it is going to be an incredible day for you, just do what you want!

Vendors:

Photographer – Robert Her from nLightenImages. (An absolutely phenomenal photographer who was also friendly, professional and accomodating. He made everyone happy and comfortable and got amazing shots!)

Coordinator – Frankie Regan Rogers at  Breath of Fresh Air Events (breathoffreshairevents@yahoo.com ) She was awesome. I had a big vision of this event, only four months to plan, and 400 miles seperating me and my venue/vendors.  I am not sure I could have pulled this off without her!

 Food – Chef Stephanie Hibbert . She created a personalized organic, natural, sustainable menu for us that was also delicious and affordable!  Not to toot our own horn, but this was definitely the best wedding food I had ever had!

Entertainment – Belly dancers, Ashley Lopez with Orchid Belly Dance. They were beautiful, skilled in traditional belly dance as well as more modern styles and got our guests involved and having a great time!

Photos: nLightenImages

You’re hiring a photographer to cover the wedding, but what about all the great shots that your guests are going to take with their digital cameras? There’s a good chance you won’t end up seeing many of the photos that your guests take, and that’s a shame. That’s why I loved reading about the invention of a computer-based kiosk that allows wedding guests to insert  their camera memory cards and upload photos on the spot. A wedding photo download station! The New York Times online writes:

“{Rush Hambleton’s} invention is a computer-based kiosk for events like wedding receptions. As guests leave, they are invited to insert their cameras’ memory cards into the device. The kiosk stores the photos on a thumb drive that the bride and groom can take home. (His research showed guests didn’t want all those photos.)

The kiosk, the size of a small cabinet, has been to 11 weddings so far as well as summer camps. The next step is to raise half a million dollars to pay for miniaturizing the kiosk — he wants it small enough to be packed and shipped.

What if you don’t live in New York and have no chance of renting this device? Create your own. That’s what Nikki, who hails from Calgary, Alberta,  did at her May 2008 wedding. She and her groom didn’t want any of their guests’ photos getting away, so they set up their laptop at the reception and had Nikki’s aunt man the ‘download station.’

“We set up the laptop near the door at the reception.  The hall we rented had a coat check area right at the door with a counter that had the necessary plug ins,” she says. “My aunt took care of the station.  She did everything, I just gave her the laptop and card reader (which I bought at Walmart for $25) and she took care of the rest.”

The MC and DJ let guests know about the download station throughtout the evening, reminding them to copy their photos before they left the reception.

The result?

“It was SO worth the effort.  I would have missed some amazing shots as well as some group shots of friends.  I ended up with close to 700 extra photos.  At no cost!,” she says.

Her advice?

“I would highly suggest having someone take care of the station for you, that way you aren’t worried about it.  Also, as my aunt loaded photos, she had a slide show rolling for people to watch.  There was always at least two people standing around and watching the pictures.  It is also so much easier than asking everyone to mail you a CD or trying to track people down to get certain photos of people.  I now have enough candids to fill in the parts of the day/night that the photographer missed,” she says

If you are considering a ‘download station’ at your wedding, here’s some other things to keep in mind:

• Do not leave the laptop unattended.
• Make sure the person manning the laptop gives easy instructions to your guests and assists them in downloading. You don’t want drunken guests messing with your laptop.
• Drinks and laptops do not go well together. You are taking your chances if you have guests milling around with drinks in hand.

Save

It’s everywhere. It’s found in newspapers nationwide. It’s all over the Internet. It’s on Good Morning America. It’s even under your bed – that is, if that’s where you hide that glossy bridal magazine you bought for inspiration.

What is it? The ‘average’ cost of a wedding. The magic number that casts a spell on brides, hypnotizing them into believing that they need to shell out the cost of a 2009 BMW 1-Series sedan to make their wedding day special.

As we speak, the so-called ‘average’ cost of a wedding is just under $29,000, according to the Wedding Report, a trend tracking company that is quoted extensively in the media.

“Look, honey, we’re spending way less than the average,” proudly declares the bride with a $15,000 budget.

What she doesn’t know is that also according to the Wedding Report, four out of five brides were projected to spend less than the $28,704 in 2008 and a full 50 percent will spend less than $14,352.

“Huh?” you say. “How can this be?”

The Wedding Report’s ‘average’ number is a mean – the sum of all wedding costs reported in the surveys divided by the number of surveys. Just a handful of over-the-top weddings and you’ve got an average number that does not reflect the masses.

If this has you scratching your head, take Marc Fuller’s analogy. Fuller is a bridal marketing expert who runs the website Wedding Professional Success.

“If Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, walks into a crowded bar … everyone in the bar is instantly a multimillionaire. On average, that is,” he says.

Fuller is not a fan of this method.

“Establishing an average so much higher than what the majority of brides have to spend is amplifying their fears, uncertainties and convincing them that their desires are unattainable …  As an “industry” we have helped set up expectations that fewer than 20% of the brides can comfortably be part of. As wedding professionals we need knock that down,” he writes in his blog.

He’s not the only one attempting to debunk this myth. In his column in the Wall Street Journal, Carl Bialik, aka The Numbers Guy, argues that using the mean to portray the “average” wedding is misleading. (The column was written a while ago, but the information is still pertinent.)

“The mean is especially susceptible to a single lavish exception: One $1 million wedding put into the mix with 54 weddings costing $10,000 each would boost the mean to $28,000, although among the 55 couples, $10,000 would seem a much better representation of the typical cost,” he says.

According to Bialik, the median number would be a more accurate reflection of what couples are actually spending on their weddings.

“The median is the middle figure when you line up a set of numbers in order of size. It is a popular choice for social statistics because it is unperturbed by very small or very large numbers,” he writes.

In her book, One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, Rebecca Mead (a great book by the way!) argues that this magic number is buried in a bride’s psyche so that shelling out “the average cost of a wedding”  is just something that a bride feels she has to do:

“If a bride has been told, repeatedly, that it costs nearly $28,000 to have a wedding, then she starts to think that spending nearly $28,000 on a wedding is just one of those things a person has to do, like writing a rent check every month or paying health insurance premiums.”

Given the recession, there’s no better time to get real about the so-called cost of an average wedding and debunk the $28,704 myth. Because it’s not just a number. It’s a delusion. And that can be a dangerous thing.

Into vintage? What about vintage DIY wedding place cards? They’re super easy to make. I came up with the idea for these name cards when I was leafing through some of the vintage children’s books that I own. I’ve got a super, huge stash of them from resale shops and rummage sales. Some of them are classics that I read to my daughters, but lots of them I simply bought for the illustrations. I knew I could put them to good use.

I used a piece of card stock or book page for the background (4″ x3″) Then I cut out faces from vintage children’s books (the ones that I didn’t want to keep for reading purposes.) I folded the cardstock in half, and glued the faces on the cardstock. I then chose a font that I liked (there are gazillions of cool, free fonts at Dafont.com) typed the names of people I know in Microsoft Word, then printed the names out on white card stock. I then glued the names beside the faces on the cardstock. Easy Peezy!