Links I’m Loving
I’m typically not a fan of “inspiration boards” and “mood boards,” but I do like this Royal Wedding one. Please please, bring sleeved dresses back in style! Although, surely enough designers won’t update their collections in time for me to have one!
Love love LOVE these stamps. I just ordered one for all our wedding-related papery!
I love reading these types of posts. This one is about the best decisions the bride made for her wedding, but I also like reading ones about what went wrong on wedding days, etc.
A Star Wars Grand Entrance sounds BRILLIANT!
You have to scroll quite a bit, but I thoroughly enjoy the ceremony reading that is being read off a Kindle! I heart my Kindle! And, I would just like to point out, that the photos in that post are by far the best I’ve ever seen from a destination wedding photographer. Amazing!
Good wedding budget tips in general, but I can’t agree with all of them. For instance, #2 says “If you save money in one area, don’t spend the savings in five other places.” Actually, that’s exactly what I’m doing. We’re saving money on catering so we can have more money to spend on things that are much more fun and important to us for our wedding!
My fiancé and I just picked out our first song this week! In fact, it was he that found it! So perfect!
Fellow wedding blogger Broke Ass Bride, aka Dana, suffers from an autoimmune disorder that causes her body to attack her eye as a foreign object. The disease, left untreated, can ultimately cause blindness. Dana is need of her 12th surgery in 9 years, and her medical expenses are adding up. This week, she announced Dishing for Dana, which will help her cover expensive medical treatments and insurance costs. 10% of your donation will go to the American Autoimmune Related Disease Association. Please venture over to Dishing for Dana and help her out!
Wedding Fitness Goal Progress
Weight loss stalled. Again. 0.0 lbs lost. oh well, at least it’s not a gain I suppose. This is not going as well as I had hoped. I know I can do it! I lost 40 pounds several years ago. I need to find that mentality again! I also didn’t work out a single time. Granted, we were busy every night, but that’s no excuse. I have to find time to fit it in!
April Wedding Planning Goal Progress
(as part of our Wedding Planning Timeline)
- Develop potential wedding songs and playlists – In progress. I’ve been collecting links of wedding playlists, and my fiance found an awesome first song for us this week!
- Start wedding dress shopping – Just barely started. I contacted the one and only bridal salon in the area that sells the one and only dress designer that has ever caught my eye, Saja. I called them to make sure they have Saja wedding dresses in stock (they’re only sold in Bella Bridesmaids stores). They’re only open weird hours though, so I need to figure out when to make an appointment
- Interview DJ’s – In progress. We’ve interviewed three so far with several more interviews set up next week. Only one of those three sounded knowledgeable.
- Have engagement photo shoot – In progress. Scheduled for May 6. I bought some fun outfits this week for the pictures!
- Research cake bakeries – In progress. We had our first cake tasting on Monday. I was kind of unprepared. I hadn’t given much thought to how we want our cake designed. Seriously, it’s on the bottom of my priority list. But I did show her this link of cakes I loved from the link roundup a few months ago. Love the cake display instead of one tiered cake!
- Wedding Related Expenses This Week: $90.85 (a prop for our engagement shoot, the address stamp, and some envelope samples (the cost of the envelope samples will be credited to my account when/if I place a full order with the company.
- Total Wedding Related Expenses (all time): $1118.83
- Total budgeted Difference (we have a $15,000 budget): $13,881.17
- Estimated Hours Spent on Wedding Planning (not including blogging) This Week: 5 hours
Finances and Administrative
Check out our Wedding Expense Tracking Spreadsheet for a list of all our expenses to-date.
So, although our expense tracking spreadsheet is still in its infancy, I will add some analysis functions to it in the near future. One of the many things that I may analyze are the items that we purchase that could have use beyond our wedding. For instance, we bought an address stamp this week. Sure, we’ll use it on our Save-the-Date cards and Wedding Invitations, but we can use it on other things we mail too, right!? Same thing with the dance lessons. We’ll use our new dancing skills in settings after our wedding for sure! What about the outfits I bought for the engagement photo shoot? They’re also great for every-day clothing. So, for now, these murky category purchases will be tracked (except the clothes), but I’ll separate them out at a later date!
