worth a thousand words

Finding a photographer we could afford was possibly the most challenging thing we encountered when planning the wedding. Since we were having the ceremony in Atlantic City on a Thursday night, and then the reception in Philadelphia the following Saturday, it was extremely difficult to find someone to do both and not bust our budget. And while our wedding was casual and non traditional, we still agreed that it was very important to us to have a professional photographer at both events, and that while we didn't have a ton of money to spend on it, it was still something we were willing to put a little extra into. After all, the pictures are the only thing you have that doesn't last just the one (or two) day(s). Oh, and the marriage. That hopefully lasts a while too.

I contacted a photographer whose work I liked that I followed on facebook, and he was out of our price range. He did however give me some amazing advice - he suggested I contact the Press of Atlantic City and ask to be connected to their photo department. Then he said I should ask if anyone did freelance work for weddings, and ask if they would spend two hours shooting my ceremony. While he wasn't sure what to tell me about my reception in Philly, he said that a freelance photographer from the paper might be more affordable for the ceremony in AC.

I feel SO lucky that my inquiry was responded to by Sean Fitzgerld. After a few email exchanges, he agreed to photograph the ceremony in AC for two hours, and also travel to Philadelphia to photograph the reception for five hours. Afterwards he would edit the photos, give us access to them all on his website, and send them to us in both color and black and white on a disc, giving us rights to the photos so we could share and make prints all we wanted.

I'm not even going to tell you how much we paid for this, because I think he should charge much more. I think we were super fortunate to catch him at a time where he is just starting out in the wedding photography world, and I hope that soon he will raise his prices to better reflect the quality of his work and the effort he puts into it. I've had friends whose photographers missed key moments of the wedding, or some who ended up with only a handful of pictures when it was all said and done. Sean was there for everything, constantly clicking, and the end result was over 800 photos for us to chose from. He caught everything and the pictures are perfect. Here's a few of my favorites...

So while Sean might one day not be an "on the cheap" photographer, I have a feeling his rates are still going to be insanely reasonable for quite a while, so if you're looking for a photographer you should totally contact him. He is amazing. And it's also good advice to contact local newspapers and find freelance photographers that way. You might luck out like we did and get someone who is experienced and right on the brink of becoming a wedding photographer and not yet charging what they can in the future for their work. Their pictures will also probably possess the same editorial qualities that ours do, which is a style that we love.

On top of this, I got an email from living social soon after we got our photos that was a deal for a custom photo album, hardcover and free shipping, for only $7. I snatched it right up, and we put together a lovely book of over 40 of our images with an interesting layout and fun backgrounds. It would have normally been $35, so it was a tremendous deal. The site was York Photo, and after I ordered the book, they also gave me 20 free prints! We now have prints to put in some frames we got, and some to give to our families.

Between the photo booth, Sean, the album, and the prints, we couldn't be happier with the photography aspect of our wedding.

three ring circus

First, a couple of interesting updates...

When I went to get my wedding dress cleaned, I learned that the minimum charge would be $120!! I'm sure that's completely normal and reasonable but I just was not anticipating anything even close to that, so I said no thank you and went on my way. I checked the donation website and they actually don't require that you have your dress cleaned before you send it to them, so they will be getting my slightly dirty dress in the mail shortly (don't judge).

Also I just finished reading this really hilarious and sweet and amazing book called Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson. I'm not only bringing it up because I can't recommend this book enough and you all should read it, but also because I bought this book in the airport before we left for Jamaica, and I found out that they have this awesome program where if you buy a book at the airport and return it within six months in any condition, they refund you half of the price you paid! I thought that was quite genius.

Ok now onto the new stuff...

My engagement ring literally cost almost as much as our entire wedding. It's a round 0.71 carat diamond solitaire on a white gold band, from Milanj Diamonds. David is so proud, he could talk about it for hours... how the cut grade is "ideal" and the color grade is a D (meaning it is completely colorless, which is a good thing... like, basically colorless is the BEST color for a diamond to be). When he gave it to me he pointed out how there were actually heart and arrow shapes in the stone if you looked at it from different angles, and the symmetry and polish were both categorized as "very good." This ring was a budget buster and definitely was not "on the cheap."

Funny side note - Milanj was not subtle at all, and would send things to David in the mail, with handwritten envelopes. This can make the woman you've been dating for almost four years a little bit suspicious and anxious. The first time they mailed him something, I just put it in his mail pile and let him find it on his own, giving him the false hope that maybe I hadn't noticed it. The second time, I handed it to him directly. He opened it in front of me and then crumpled it up and threw it out in the trash can. I saw that instead of just throwing it on top of all the other trash, he actually picked up the empty container on the top of the pile and shoved the paper underneath. Of course when he left the room I dug right in to find the paper (again, don't judge me), and when I did I realized it was just the envelope - he had taken whatever was inside with him. Pretty sneaky. It was something about the insurance... but come on, Milanj. Email!!

In contrast to my not-cheap engagement ring, we spent a long time looking for a good deal on our wedding bands. David found his on ebay. It's tungsten, a thick silver colored band with two thin gold colored stripes on the sides. And it cost a whopping $45. My band is totally a story where it's all about who you know, and maybe some good karma thrown in there as well.

I run with an amazing organization called Back on My Feet, which uses running to help those experiencing homelessness change the way they see themselves so they can make real change in their lives that results in employment and independent living. Every Wednesday morning at 530am, I go with a group of students from Moore College of Art & Design (where I work) to the House of Passage shelter. Moore is an all female school, and HOP is an all female shelter, and it is an amazing experience to see these two groups interact. It's truly inspiring.

One of the non-resident members of our group who was the team leader at the time is named Chakir, and he is just a bundle of sweet smiling energy. How anyone can be so hyper and happy at 530am every morning is beyond me. It felt like a gift to start my day by being around him - you can't help but smile when you're in his presence, even if he's making you do jumping jacks or run 3 miles. After we became friends on facebook, I saw that his day job was selling jewelry. I told him I was looking for a ring and he told me to come to the store where he worked one day after work.

When I got there, I was a little discouraged to see some beautiful rings that cost somewhere around $2,000, just a tiny bit out of my budget. He said to just find one with a look that I liked, and that he might be able to find one that looked the same but was just slightly lower quality and in my price range (which I had told him was more around the $250 mark). I was skeptical, but I showed him the one I liked, which was white gold and had small diamonds all along the top of the band. The very next day he texted me a photo of what looked like the same exact ring and said he could get it for me for $245. I of course said yes, and a week later I had my ring.

Chakir could do this because he not only works at the high end diamond store, but he also has his own jewelry business called Chakir Jewelry. He can check with his suppliers to find rings that the store most likely wouldn't carry, and can also sell them to his friends at cost so you don't get killed with the crazy mark up. And that's exactly what he did for me.

Throughout the entire wedding planning process I was continually surprised and grateful for what my friends and family did for me, and how even people that I didn't know very well were willing to help. So my advice to you is to take advantage of every resource and try to look for connections... and maybe take some time out of your day to do something good for someone else too.

Oh and also, try to get engaged to a guy who thinks you're so great, he buys you a diamond the size of a... hmm... what's something that's just big enough that the exaggeration is funny? Like... a Crunch Berry? Yes. A diamond the size of a Crunch Berry.

playing dress up

When I imagined what my wedding dress would look like, I didn't envision the traditional long white gown that most women do. I thought it might be fun to go to an expensive department store and get a beautiful designer gown that I would never have purchased in my everyday life, one that was super fancy and any color I wanted and just fun. I started looking at dresses online and in the mall, and everyone was asking me if I was going to go look at traditional gowns. I realized that I probably should go just to have that experience - I mean, when else in your life do you get to try on wedding dresses? I needed to take advantage of this opportunity!

So I made my way to David's Bridal with my mom and my two friends Jeanette and Colette. I had already printed out the 8 dresses I wanted to try on, and when we got to the store, as my beyond awkward sales associate tried to ask me questions to try to figure out my style, I handed her the paper and said something along the lines of "I want to try on these 8 dresses." This was apparently impossible for her to understand, as she put me in one that wasn't on the list and only brought in two that were. Fortunately they were my top two choices. I think she was still hung up on the fact that I told her I only had one bridesmaid and that she was allowed to wear whatever she wanted - it was like when you see a sci-fi movie and they tell a robot a paradox in an attempt to disable it, and it's all "this does not compute," and then its head smokes up and explodes. That was my sales associate.

The two dresses I tried on that were on my list sealed the deal - I was going to get one. After going back and forth for quite some time, I decided on this dress by Vera Wang, originally $1028 but on sale then for $699 (and now for $449, apparently). They had only two in stock, and one was exactly my size. It literally needed no alterations except to be hemmed. So I bought it right then and there and took it home with me. The alterations were done about a month before the wedding and they came to $120 (good thing I only needed it hemmed!). Oh and here's a way stupid thing you should know - David's makes you buy the garment bag to take the dress home in for ten bucks. I mean, I guess they don't make you, in theory you could bring your own? But when you're not expecting to take a dress physically home with you the day you buy it, you're kind of in a bind.

I give David's high marks because I LOVED my dress, and the prices really can't be beat. However, expect them to call you basically every day from the day you buy your dress until your wedding, asking you what else they can sell to you help you with. I don't know how many times I told them my groom already bought a suit, or my bridesmaid would not be shopping at David's, or I wasn't going to need a veil (oh that's another thing - people are totally going to get weird with you about veils - for some reason, people feel very strongly about them and think it's extremely strange if you don't want to wear one, some seem almost personally offended).

I knew I wanted another short party dress, since we would be spending the night partying in Atlantic City after the ceremony, and then I would be wearing my long dress again at the reception at my house, and I didn't want it covered in red wine or vomit or anything. I wanted the party dress to also be white and bridal looking, so that people in the casinos and clubs would pay attention to me and ask me if I just got married, because I am a Leo and love attention. I searched on Amazon and found this amazing BCBG dress that completely fit the bill. It was on sale, and I saw that they had it at Bloomingdale's so I went there to try it on and was sold. But I was still kind of hoping to find it for less online, so I went home and looked for deals. I was so happy to see that Amazon was actually having a deal that week on all clothing, and I ordered the dress for $140 instead of the original $338 price tag. WIN!

So while I did end up spending a good amount on my dress(es), about a grand, I still got two dresses that I loved and one that I actually can wear again. David bought his suit at Express and got an amazing deal on the whole thing (pants, shirt, vest, jacket, and tie) - Express is always having great sales, and he caught one that was 40% off EVERYTHING. So he made out like a bandit, and his suit didn't need any tailoring, because he has the body of an Express model (oh, another win for me!).

I'm now looking for places to donate my long gown, and I think I'm going to go with St. Anthony's Bridal - a non-profit that lets underprivileged brides borrow dresses or buy them for a super low price. It's such a weird item of clothing - you spend so much money on it, it is perfectly tailored to fit your body, and you wear it for just a few hours but on the most important day of your life... and then what? I realized I needed to get rid of it sooner rather than later, before I started developing a hoarders type attachment to it. So this weekend it will go to the cleaners, and then in a box, and then off to the next lucky lady who gets to wear this beautiful dress on her special day.

wedding expo = free samples

My friend Cory runs a business called Philly Penny Press. It's amazing - you can rent one of those penny squishing machines you see at the Zoo or the Liberty Bell or that one truck stop in South Carolina where you can get one that says "never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you" (no, seriously, I got one that said that...). Philly Penny Press let's you pick from different image sets to be printed on the pennies, and you can decorate the actual machine however you want. Pennies are provided for your guests, who don't need any quarters to operate the machine. It's like the epitome of nostalgia.

Shortly after I got engaged, Cory was vending at a wedding expo called Lovesick, which features all kinds of unique and local caterers, photographers, interesting attractions like the Penny Press, and more. This expo is national, so you can find one near you and go. I highly recommend it - you find all sorts of unexpected options for your wedding, there are all kinds of giveaways, food and music, and tickets are way cheap (I was fortunate enough to be put on Cory's guest list, so David and I got in for free - a common theme which greatly helped make our wedding as affordable as it was).

A lot of the vendors you meet at the expo will offer you a special deal. We loved the idea of having a photo booth at our wedding, and there were two companies there that let us sample their booths and take home a photo strip.

The one we ended up going with was called Go Festive. After a tiny bit of negotiation (and don't be afraid to ask for lower prices on basically everything), they were able to offer us a crazy deal (more than 50% off the normal rate).

The great thing about the photo booth is that it knocks out both your favor (your guests get copies of their photos, and they put a little logo for you on the bottom with your names and wedding date) and your guest book (another copy prints out that they place in a scrap book and write a note next to, pretty much the most adorable and sometimes hilarious guest book ever). They bring props for people to use in their photos (sunglasses, bunny ears, and of course a hat with a giant hotdog on it). We also bought some big cardboard frames so people could hold them up in their photos, which ended up being super cute.

Afterwards you get access to every single set of photos online and they send them to you on a CD. They are so fun, and we got so many comments and compliments on what a great addition it was to our wedding. The photo booth gives you a lot of bang for your buck, and Go Festive was amazing to work with and crazy affordable.

Janine, me, and Lori - photo booth fun with old friends!

honeymooners

Planning the honeymoon was stressful for me. It was something that had to be done right away (our wedding was only 6 months from our engagement, and when it comes to travel and airfare, the sooner you plan, the better), and I didn't even know where to start.

We decided we wanted something all inclusive, because you don't want to be stuck on your last day with 8 bucks for dinner. I always lean towards the vacation with a lot of authenticity - where you really get to experience the place you are, see the culture, eat the food, see the history... I wanted to go to Thailand and hike the rainforest and eat the cockroaches and sacrifice virgins into volcanoes (...or something like that). David wanted to eat, drink, and lay on the beach at a resort. So we had to find some happy medium.

So here is my advice for places to look for cheap honeymoon destinations - first, look on Groupon Getaways and Living Social Escapes. They always have great deals, although you have to check the restrictions on travel times, what the trips include, etc. We ended up booking our vacation on Cheap Caribbean, which I would definitely recommend to anyone who is finding the process a little overwhelming. This site is great not only because the prices are so low it's just plain stupid, but also because you can take care of everything with one click. We booked our trip at an all inclusive resort that included taxes and gratuities, our flights, and our transportation from and back to the airport, all at once. It was five days, for two of us, and for everything I mentioned, it still came to under $2,000.

I was nervous looking at such cheap packages, because I thought there had to be something wrong with the place to have prices like that. We were looking for places in Jamaica, and I became obsessed with reading reviews on Trip Advisor, which is helpful and useless all at once, because really you just read a bunch of glowing reviews and a bunch of terrible reviews about every single destination you look up. And you never know who's writing them - maybe it's just a person who is generally unhappy and wouldn't be pleased with anything. But I didn't want to go somewhere where there were a bunch of hidden costs, or our passports would get stolen (I know, I'm high maintenance like that), so I was vetoing a lot of places we initially liked after I read reviews.

Finally we found the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort and Spa in Montego Bay. All inclusive with multiple bars and restaurants that were open at all hours of the day, taxes and tips included, lots of activities each day, and pretty good reviews. For some reason the fact that it was a "Holiday Inn" put me at ease... just because of the familiarity, I guess. Any bad reviews weren't for anything major - they were more for things like, a lack of variety at the buffet, or a line whenever they wanted to sign up for a snorkel, or something like that. Which I would kind of expect when paying what we did.

It was a really exceptional trip. The flights were nonstop which is nice. I am extremely afraid of flying, but thankfully my mom gave me some Xanax and I did pretty ok (I mostly slept and only ended up grabbing David's arm once during takeoff). When we got to the airport in Jamaica we got onto our Jamaica Tours Limited shuttle to the resort, which was actually like a little orientation to the island. The driver told us what certain words and phrases meant (for instance, if someone told you you looked "trash," that was a good thing, and a "tough bumper" means a nice butt). We drove through the countryside where people's homes were made from pieces of wood and sheets of aluminum and what looked like ruins of previously beautiful homes, and he explained to us that most of the people who live there squat in their home while they work on building it, because to get a mortgage in Jamaica, you have to pay something like a 30% interest rate. While it was kind of depressing, it was interesting to learn about the country.

The resort was great! Our room was big and clean, and the water was clear and warm and amazing. The main buffet, where you had your breakfast lunch and dinner, was really good. I thought there was plenty of variety and the quality was above average. The drinks were super strong, which I didn't expect at an all inclusive. You also got to have one dinner at one of their fancier restaurants, and we chose the seafood one that faced the ocean. It was a nice change of pace.

It took a minute to get used to not tipping, but they even gave us a paper when we checked in that told us it was not necessary to tip since it was all already included in our package. And if we wanted to tip, we were supposed to go to the front desk and get an envelope to put it in and leave it there, instead of giving it directly to the person. Once I saw that nobody was tipping, I felt better (I didn't want to be the only asshole there that wasn't tipping, which was my fear).

We spent five amazing days eating and drinking (I swear I gained 10 pounds), snorkeling, kayaking, sailing, laying out on the beach, playing bingo, hanging out in the adult's only pool (with the swim up bar), having the most amazing jerk chicken and pork, and just having a fantastically relaxing time after the six months of chaos we had just been through.

I have to say the big highlight for me was the one thing that we actually did pay for while we were there - they had all kinds of excursions you could buy, and one was horseback riding. We paid $75 each, and a shuttle picked us up and drove us the 40 minutes to the stable. It was interesting to again see some of the countryside that we were so removed from at the resort. When we got there, some Jamaican cowboys (oh, it's a real thing, and it's just as cool and sexy as you would imagine it to be) got us set up on our horses (David was TERRIFIED, which was quite funny). We took a 30 minute ride through farms where they were raising goats and growing onions and hot peppers, and we had to keep our horses from eating the marijuana on the side of the trail (maybe the guides were kidding about that?), and then we rode along the beach and to the water, where we got our bathing suits on and then hopped onto our now barebacked horses for a short ride in the Caribbean. At the end, we stood up on the horses back, and then jumped back into the water. It was seriously magical.

My husband, ladies and gentlemen, doing his best Usain Bolt impersonation.

We rode back a different way, seeing more farms and a private jet landing strip and some beautiful privately owned homes (quite different from the squatter's village we had seen coming in). And then we were shuttled back. It was just what I had wanted - to really experience the country and see more than just the other tourists drinking pina coladas and singing karaoke (not that that's not also fun). So we ended up having a perfect balance.

There was also a show the last night we were there called The Michael Jackson Experience, where they had dancers and a Michael Jackson impersonator that was so spot on it was uncanny. David is obsessed with Michael Jackson so this was a very nice surprise, and a perfect way to spend our last night on the resort. We returned fat, tan, and happy and it was a great first week of being husband and wife.