Our Wedding Venues

We had always known that we wanted to get married looking over the side of a cliff. What an amazing view for everyone and we knew that we had the perfect place! We frequently go hiking in a favorite location out here that has just that kind of spot. In fact, this is where he first proposed to me! What’s even better about this particular type of location is that because it’s public property, it comes at no cost to us! We simply had to go out early enough that morning and claim it!

Tim was the one that came up with our perfect reception spot. He is in college up here at the major university and just so happened to use this beautiful chapel for one of his required school exercises and knew that it was for us! This chapel had glass around half of the walls and had a perfect view of the lake, the rocks (exactly where he proposed to me!) and even the sunset for an incredibly perfect evening reception overlooking the water. It came free as well with him being a student at the university!

Lodging for Out-of-Towners

When sitting down a few months ago to try and figure out lodging for all of our out-of-town guests, I just kept coming across rates for hotels, cabins, etc. for around $80 which is actually a great price. However, we then had to factor in the fact that we asked our guests to come and stay for about four days and hotel rooms only provide breakfast at the very most. They would still have had to go find lunch and dinner for themselves and who wants to chill in a hotel room.

We decided to look into vacation rentals for our guests; one or two homes where everyone could come and have a nice place to stay. For the price of what one person would have had to pay to come and find lodging for our wedding, we were able to provide lodging for everyone! A vacation home also had all of the comforts of staying home including nice bathrooms with big tubs, a living room with couches and a big screen TV, and most importantly, a full kitchen. We even stocked the kitchen with bread and pb&j, tons of fresh fruits and veggies, a pitcher of our famous sweet tea, milk and tons of water bottles for everyone. As a wedding favor, I even cooked tons of fresh baked bread and left it in the rental home for all of our guests. Not only did they not have to worry about lodging, but they could all stay together and had all of the food and entertainment they needed. With everyone pitching in a little moola, we easily paid for guest lodging without cutting into our budget.

Favors

We really wanted to get creative with our wedding favors. Most couples provide something really cute with their names on it that guests take home, lose and never use. We both felt like that was a huge waste of money. Nobody was really interested in pear shaped candles, bottle openers, salt and pepper shakers shaped like pea pods or any of the other cuteness we could have spent money on.

We actually have this tradition of picking up rocks on all of our hiking adventures or when we go visit some place really special. We use them as decoration, bookends, paper weights, doorstops and all kinds of creative things.  It only made sense with our nature themed wedding to place rocks with our name and wedding date on each table for décor and for everyone to take home as a reminder of our wedding. Not only was this free for us and went extremely well with our wedding theme, Tim and his siblings had a long-standing tradition as well of giving pet rocks as gifts to each other when they were younger. We both had slightly different symbolism for using rocks in our wedding, but it worked either way!

Furniture and Seating

For seating at the ceremony we had originally considered bringing a variety of different dining chairs from friends’ and neighbors’ homes for that continued eclectic look from the reception, but ended up choosing hay bales from a local feed store. What’s great about these was that we were able to purchase them, have them delivered and setup, have them picked up, and then sell them back to the feed store for the same cost. Talk about great service! We used our linens from the reception to cover them and there you go! Everyone said that they were great! The low key seating choice we made allowed for the backdrop of mountains, rocks and the lake for our ceremony stand out that much more!

For a table for the programs to sit on, for our sand ceremony and even to sign our marriage certificate afterward, we simply used the end tables from our guest bedroom. More free décor we didn’t have to worry about! It was just beautiful!

Catering

From the moment we even considered catering, it was a no brainer! We knew that we wanted food from one of our two favorite restaurants; either Olive Garden Italian or Macayo’s Mexican. We figured we could have a really nice but simple meal and we would know it was going to be delicious. With Olive Garden, we could have done a simple family-style meal with breadsticks as an appetizer already on the tables, soups and salads set out as initial courses and then the main dish brought out on platters and set on each table for guests to serve themselves. We could also have chips and salsa out on each of the tables and have a table set aside for all of the little minis they offer like beef Chimichangas, chicken Chimichangas, mini chicken flautas, little tamales, etc. The Mexican food was the winner!! We ended up paying only $144 for all of our catering with Macayo’s and had an unbelievable meal for everyone. We received tons of compliments and the meal really suited our individual personalities and the overall atmosphere.

I always recommend that my brides really think outside of the box when planning their weddings. There’s no reason that you have to have a traditional “wedding venue” a “professional caterer, florist, baker,” etc. Your wedding is the perfect time to be creative and really express yourself! Why not have your favorite food on your wedding day and pay a thousand times less than you would have with a professional wedding caterer?

Registry

We loved our registry! At www.eregistry.com you can get a free wedding registry that can later be used  for holidays, birthdays, a baby registry, etc. Not only did they already have tons of suggestions for what to put on our registry depending on the kind we chose, but then we could mix and match, add everything from gifts and cash donations, but we could add in our separate wedding requirements like our photography, the cake and the dress, and also vacations, a new car, our mortgage, our honeymoon, and just about anything else our imagination could come up with! Your loved ones really want to help and at this particular time of your lives, really want to shower you with gifts! Give them that opportunity by telling them exactly what you need!