One Fish Two Fish:
Local & Small Businesses to Shop for Gifts
Monday, December 7, 2020
One Fish Two Fish:
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
To start with, I want to give Izzy + Co a huge thank you. She and Hannah were able to capture Sean and I perfectly (despite the crazy wind that sprung up! haha).
Sean and I are very laid back people. We love being outdoors, hiking/camping, low-key dates, etc. We wanted our engagement photos to reflect this. We chose the beach because it felt very us; it wasn't fussy and we could be ourselves and goof off. Sean was pretty nervous because he hates having his picture taken, but Hannah made it so much fun for both of us! We literally goofed off the whole time and felt like it was more of a beach date than a photoshoot.
I am so thrilled with how the photos turned out! We chose Izzy + Co because we loved the personality in her photos. When I was browsing online, her photos were all so cheerful and colorful. In addition, all the people in her photos looked like they were enjoying themselves rather than posing.
I hope you all enjoyed! I cannot wait to share more Wedding Wednesday posts.
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
I feel like this is a pretty important one since we are not using a traditional "wedding planner". A lot of people recommended to me that we use one, but when I emailed to get quotes I could not justify the cost of a wedding planner. Some were upwards of $10,000 for a full wedding planner and for just a day-of planner I have already done all the work myself I may as well just do the whole thing. I am very fortunate that I have LOVED the wedding planning process, but I know for some people it is a million times worth it to use a planner. I have a friend who is going to be my coordinator the day of so that my family and I do not have to worry about making sure vendors and everything else is in place.
This may be a common question for any of you who are planning your own wedding: you may have been told that vendors would not talk to you unless you were going through a planner, but so far this is not the case. And a little known tip that no-one told me is that some venues come with a "day-of" planner. Which they typically actually help with month of coordination.
So how am I planning?
- One of the FIRST and most important things we did was to decide on how many guests we would invite. This affects pretty much every other part of the wedding because there is essentially a 'cost per guest' and almost every vendor and venue needs to know how many guests you are having to give you accurate information.
- Sean and I then set a budget and broke down all the 'pieces' we would need for a wedding. We then guesstimated the cost of each of those pieces.
- After that I looked up wedding timelines on Pinterest to give me an idea of when things should be booked.
- Once we had time estimates done I started emailing vendors to get better price estimates and we adjusted budgets as necessary.
- One of the first vendors I started emailing is photographers since we want engagement photos as well.
- One we picked a photographer, she and I made a tentative wedding day timeline so I had an idea of when things should happen such as: hair and makeup, deciding if a first look right for us due to the time of the wedding, and how many hours of coverage would we like.
- I also started making appointments to go to venues in person. We knew what we wanted in a venue already so it was just a matter of finding the right fit.
- Photographer
- Venue for both the wedding and reception
- Wedding dress
- Bridesmaids dresses
- Plates and silverware for the reception
- Wedding invitations (we decided to skip Save the Dates because it just felt like an unnecessary extra expense for us)
- Bridal hair and makeup artist
- Hotel: we are just finalizing how many out of town guests we will have before we make the reservation
- Cake: we are not doing a traditional cake, we are having a macaroon tower
- Bride and bridesmaids' bouquets
- Picking linens
- Deciding on overall reception decor
- Finalizing the caterers we are interested in
- Picking a DJ (this is Sean's job though haha)
- Pinterest has been a life saver for us. We wanted a clear picture of how the wedding day would look so that we always had that vision in mind while making decisions. It has given us such great ideas and kept us on track.
- Etsy has been absolutely amazing as well. We have found things at such great prices and we know our money is going to a small business.
- We found tons of amazing photographers by searching hashtags on Instagram related to photography in our area.
- There are also tons of apps to help with wedding planning, vendors, and budgeting.
Monday, June 29, 2020
On another note, last week we got a sneak peek at our engagement photos and will be seeing the rest this week. I am seriously so excited. I absolutely love how the photographer we chose edits her photos. They have a beautiful blue/green undertone without having a super stylized or filtered look. Her associate took our photos and made it so fun! Sean and I had never taken photos together so I was pretty nervous and she made it awesome. I will share more details with you guys later!
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Happy Wednesday everyone! I thought I could start a mini series on here called "Wedding Wednesday" that I have seen some other bloggers do. I won't have one every week, but expect to see more in the future!
Today's topic is my bridesmaids' gifts. My inspiration for these gifts came from this blogger's post. In addition to cute I also wanted for my gift to be practical so I chose monogrammed cosmetic bags since I felt like those could be used for a ton of different things. Bags are from Etsy, as well as the champagne labels. I purchased the boxes and stuffing from Amazon because it was 10x cheaper on there than anywhere else. If you ever get champagne labels I highly recommend watching a YoutTube video on how to properly remove the original labels - it made it was easier.
Little tip: a couple of my bridesmaids don't drink, so for them I labeled iced coffee bottles so they would still have the same gift, but it was non-alcoholic.