Mind Over Matter Elegant Garden Wedding
A few months before her big day, the bride's friend gave her some great advice. She said, "decide what sort of bride you want to be and then don't let the small things turn you into something you don't want to be." Very Zen, and we love it! What sort of bride would you want to be? Let us know in the comments below!
This elegant garden wedding was captured by Troy Grover photographers and you can see more of it in the full gallery AND get the full budget breakdown below!
From the Bride
I was given the best advice from one of my friends/mentors before my wedding. She told me to decide what kind of bride I wanted to be on the wedding day, and to have that mindset before the big day even got there. I wanted to be calm, happy, and grateful, I didn’t want to be a stress case and snap at people.
Having that goal and vision before the wedding day came made me enjoy every single moment of the day. I was so relaxed getting ready with my bridesmaids, and when hiccups came (because they always will) I just rolled with them and didn’t even think twice about it. I don’t have any regrets and I really feel like I enjoyed every part of the wedding day!
I wanted our wedding to have some DIY feel to it, but I didn’t want to stress out making every single thing for the wedding ourselves. I tried to find the right balance between what we made and what we rented or bought. I had one of my best friends make all the hand painted wooden signs and design the programs, the Father of the Groom made the Table numbers, and we bought some of the personal decorations. Other than that we let the vendors do their job and that helped make our wedding day stress free!
The one piece of advice that I would give is…. if there is anything you are worried may happen on the wedding day, do something about it. Even the smallest of worries – florist forgetting something, a dress mishap, a speech running too long, do something about it beforehand.
I had a few minor things that I thought might happen on the wedding day, and of course, they did! I instantly thought “dang it, I knew it!” Trust your gut instinct and handle any small concerns before the wedding!
To get a closer look at this elegant garden wedding check out the wedding film Paperback Weddings created below!
https://vimeo.com/98369499
Read on to see how much this elegant garden wedding cost. Please note that costs change as the years go by, and prices are subject to change. This is just one couple’s breakdown to give you a rough estimate on how much a wedding like this may cost you.
We invited over 300 people to our wedding. We both have big families so we knew it was going to be big. 240 people came, so we hit the “expect 20% not to make it” mark exactly.
Budget Breakdown:
Venue Fee - $6,000
Alcohol – our venue let us bring our own alcohol, which was a big plus and money saver! We got some of the alcohol donated, we ended up spending about $2,000 out of pocket for a full bar.
Photography – about $8,000
Videography - $5,000
Florist - $3,000 our florists re-used all the flowers from the ceremony site in the reception site; this saved us some money and didn’t waste flowers!
Furniture rentals - $4,000
- Bridesmaid Dresses: Dessy Group
- Bridesmaid Dresses: Bill Levkoff
- Cake: Skiffs Cakes
- Cakes & Catering: Command Performance
- Cinematography: Paperback Weddings
- Dj: Scott Norris
- Flowers: I Do Weddings with Love
- Groom’s attire: tux and tulle
- Hair: Wedlocks
- Jewelry: M Kaltenback
- Photography: Troy Grover photographers
- Rentals: Maravilla Gardens
- Veil or hair accessories: Twos Company
- Wedding Dresses: Hayley Paige