Wedding Wednesday - Vendors Edition

With everything going on last week I wasn’t able to get a wedding Wednesday post up. Let’s get to it this week, though!

// Photographer – Photobooth

I love love love Aladdin and this is how I felt at the prices!

When I started looking for a photographer I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew they were expensive and I knew I would spend a large part of my budget on it because you simply cannot skimp on pictures. However I kept running into photographers that charged $1500 or more and it was only for 3 or 4 hours of your wedding day. My wedding will start at 2 in the afternoon and then the reception will probably run well into the night. I began to get discouraged because I wanted to have pictures of both the ceremony and the reception, not to mention the time before the ceremony of both Thomas and I getting married. It started to look like I was going to have to pick which part of my wedding day I was going to have photographed professionally.

Just like with the invitations I kept on googling and searching all the wedding websites until I finally found Altar Photography. I browsed their photos like I had done on countless other websites and found them creative and in some cases different from what I had seen from other photographers. When I checked the prices I grew excited! This photographer was only charging $995 for a WHOLE day of photography. Not only was that a lot less than others but it also was for the entire day. With them I could have pictures of myself getting ready, Thomas getting ready, the reception area BEFORE everyone comes over and it gets messy and the whole ceremony and reception. Plus all the posed pictures. THIS was amazing. I sent a quick e-mail out to them and was happy to get a quick reply.

I met with Trista along with my mom and Nikki (my niece). She showed us her book of pictures which were great. It was a quick meeting but I knew I had to book her ASAP. On top of the great price for the photography she offers a photo booth for only $350. I had been thinking that having a photo booth would be fun but I knew that with my small budget it might not be feasible. Altar Photography is making it possible for me to have beautiful photographs from my whole wedding day as well as a photo booth for my guests to take pictures!

I talked to Thomas about it and then quickly let her know that we would be using her. After putting our 1^stand 2^nd deposits down I got a call saying that she had double booked! I started to panic! I was never going to find another photographer with the same prices and time. Luckily when I called her back she let me know that she had another photographer she worked with that was available. Thank goodness!

// Tacos & Tables

One thing I’ve been really lucky with in planning my wedding is being able to book people who were recommended to me as well as a couple whom I went to school with. Thomas and I needed an appetizer/hor dourves to serve while we are having our pictures taken at the chapel. Since I’m not hiring waiter’s and the dinner will be buffet style this wasn’t an easy thing to figure out at first. One day Thomas mentioned that he wanted a taco truck for the wedding. At first I just couldn’t’ handle it. My perfect formal wedding was going to have a taco truck? Ah well, it’s in a back yard so we might as well go all out for that theme, right? I started looking for taco truck company’s and started to ask around for them.

A co-worker mentioned to me that she knew a guy who had a taco truck who also did rentals. Perfect! I could take care of both the food and all the tables and chairs with one guy! Awesome! After a misunderstanding about when we were going to meet with him he came over to Thomas’ house, where the reception will be. He brought over the color he thought matched my wedding color – and it did, perfectly. We were able to work out a deal for (a gazillion) tacos/quesadillas as well as all the rentals I need: chairs, tables, linens, chair covers, and napkins. I am providing “looks real” silverware and plates.

// Cake

I had a lot of fun looking through cake pictures online to get an idea of what I wanted. I knew what I didn’t want: all white, classic, traditional. I knew I wanted something with color and modern, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. I also knew that I had a $300 budget for the cake and I wanted to stick as close to that as possible. On a whim I remembered that I had a classmate from high school who made cakes and I had looked through her blog a year or more before. I sent her a Facebook chat and we planned on meeting a month or so later, closer to the wedding date. Being the darling that she is she drove up (probably like 40 minutes!) to come to me so that we could decide on a cake and she could give me cake samples to try.

They were DELICIOUS! I’m not going to tell what kind of cake we’re having, but I will say that the cake will be 3 levels and each level will be a different kind of cake. The design will be colorful and yet still classy. I’m very excited for how it will turn out. As of right now I don’t have a topper for it, so I need to get on top of that (no pun intended!! Hehe) soon! Best of all she is giving me a great price and will deliver it the day of! So excited to see the finished product!

// DJ

Music. I didn’t want dancing at my wedding mostly because I am not a dancer at all so I didn’t want to be forced into dancing. This idea was vetoed. My fiancé very much wanted to have a money dance so that meant we had to have music. Since I had not budgeted for a DJ and had heard from others (included his twin sisters’ wedding last summer) that DJs cost nearly $1,000 I had planned on making my own wedding son dance mix on my iPod and asking my brother in law to act as the MC. This was the plan for most of the time, I began to get music from Spotify and to plan the timeline for my brother in law to follow. Then I remembered that I always see updates on Facebook from another high school classmate about his “shows”. A DJ! Out of curiosity I sent him a message and asked how much he would charge for a wedding. The answer completely surprised me: $300! When I saw that I knew we could make some room to have him take care of the music so that my brother in law could enjoy the night and I didn’t have to create a wedding playlist.  

// Alcohol

I also was not very excited about having alcohol at the wedding. I know people can get rowdy and make weddings difficult and I really did not want to deal with that. However I didn’t have a choice when it came to this. His parents took over the cost of the alcohol so I couldn’t say it was too expensive to include. We will be having a bartender friend of theirs take care of the drinks – which will be an option of a martini (most likely Cucumber Mint) or a pina colada/margarita (we have not decided yet). I think there will also be champagne but I am not positive.

If you read all or part of this... thank you!!!