Nine years of marriage makes you nostalgic…We had planned and prepared for this day. I had already lived a bit of life, and had two children and so did Chris.
Just a couple of kids in love! Thank you to EB Novak for this picture!
Chris was a contractor, and the economy had taken a pretty steep turn for the worse. This meant our budget was pretty thin. And being grown adults who had already left the nest, we were paying for our own wedding. We also decided we just wanted to be married, no need for a long engagement. We were engaged roughly 30 days!
All of those factors meant that our wedding budget was pretty slim. But we were determined to make it happen!
Our Wedding in 10 Steps
I come from a large family, and I think this gives me the “find the deal” gene! Also my dad is the ultimate negotiator, and sometimes I can channel my inner “Dale”!
Here is how we made it happen…
1: I found my dress on the clearance rack, paid a seamstress to fix it and take it in.
2: I bought flowers from Hobby Lobby and made my own bouquet.
3: My sister is really good friends with Steffany Bowling, who you may know as the owner of Peace, Love, and Cakes but at the time, she just had a dream of having a baking business. I bought her the cake pans and she made our cakes!
4: My sisters both also worked for this little Bar & Grill place called Margarita Rocks (We miss that place!), and they let us have our reception there FREE if we had it on a Sunday! They only charged us for the food, to which we had a variety of appetizers and pizzas for everyone to enjoy!
5: Did you know, you can get married at Research Park for a mere 8 signatures?! It’s hard to get them all, and you must be able to track people down, but it’s FREE!
6: We rented a couple of tents and chairs, and bought an arch from Hobby Lobby.
7: A friends daughter was interested in photography at the time, so we asked her to take pictures.
8: We then asked Chris’ best friend to get ordained online and marry us!
9: We invited 30 of our closest friends/family with invitations we purchased at Target.
10: One of my best friends loves music and put together the music and acted as somewhat of a coordinator.
That was one of the best days of my life, but if I had to do it again I would change a few things…
For the next few weeks Chris and I are going to spend time dissecting this post to give you tips and tricks on how to make your wedding day memorable, what we did right and what we wish we could do over!
**All photography in this post by EB Novak, she was probably 12 at the time…pretty sure she had more skill when she first started than I did my second year picking up a camera!!
We would love to hear any tips and tricks you have, as well as any questions you would like to see answered! Feel free to leave a comment below, or email us at hello@waml.in/doodle-dev/rachel-driskill
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