The party to celebrate our wedding was so much fun! This posting shares resulting suggestions. Those interested in doing a budget wedding might be interested – but be warned, the entire picture described below is a match for .05% of brides. To start with, I am a very organized, detail-oriented person who does meeting planning as part of my job. Second, I am just as far away from a bridezilla as you can get. If my husband hadn’t wanted a party, I would have been good with going to the court house and having that be it. So if you want tips on where to buy matching flower settings for your tables, I can’t help you. Third, I was able to make the time needed to work on coordinating this. I organized a lot of things you’d typically hire someone else to do.
So here are the details:
· The general vibe: we were going for party, not a seated banquet. It was a standing reception with food and drink, with some seats. Plus dancing fun later in the evening. The actual wedding was out of town, so this was our DC celebration of it.
· The venue: The Goethe Institut, http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/was/uun/vm0/enindex.htm. This space has a gallery, with Gallery Place/Chinatown metro just one block away. We had the main gallery on the second floor, plus they let us use the space on the first floor as a lounge/sit-down area, plus a small classroom on the second floor that some older guests retired to when the dancing started. There was enough space with 90 guests for chairs on the side of the main hall – we had around 10, we could have put 15 easily. Their AV is great and included – just hook up your computer with a playlist to their system. And they have microphones for the toasts, also included. The screen where we showed a few videos and a slide show of us growing up cost only $75 more. Cost: $1160 for eight hours (five for the event, two for set-up, one for clean-up) Tomasz Marek of the Institut is super-helpful and really knows his stuff: tmarek@washington.goethe.org. He said most folks who contact him for weddings want a sit-down thing the space isn’t a fit for – but if you want a standing reception, go for it. Another thing about this space: they don’t require you to have a catering company serving the food or alcohol. I wanted to save money by hiring people directly and not hiring a catering company. The only venues we found that would let us serve our own alcohol were Goethe and All Souls Unitarian Church in Adams Morgan.
· Food #1: Crepes! We had a crepe table from Crepeaway and it was a huge hit. They stayed four hours, allowing folks to get savory or sweet crepes whenever they wanted. Things went super-smoothly, guests enjoyed it. Totally recommend them. $1,000.
· Food #2: Small items/hors d’oeuvres from Griffins. Griffins is an Italian store in Georgetown that offers gourmet-level take-out. They have a menu of reasonably priced small bites and hors d’oeuvres, see the link from http://www.griffinmarket.blogspot.com/. Friends picked the items up from their store that night. We spent around $700 total there.
· Food #3: Julias Empanadas. They offer mini-empanadas for 90 cents each. We chose Jamaican and spinach. They deliver if you buy 500 of them – we ordered fewer and had a friend pick them up. Total cost around $325.
· Cake: Georgetown Cupcakes. As much as I think the cupcake craze is completely overblown, these are perfect for a standing reception. They deliver for just $10 within the beltway. You can request your own colors/designs. We had them create a personalized stamp whose design was on a disc on all the cupcakes. Total cost $334.
· Drinks: Ace Beverage. This store delivers and has lots of experience for events. Consult with them for amounts needed. They also pick up returns afterwards, so if it’s not iced, you don’t have to pay for it. We used them for wine, champagne, sodas, ice, and bins. We bought kegs for beer, but we could have used Ace Beverage for bottled beer too. My contact there was Joe, joe@acebevdc.com. He had great recommendations for wine/champagne within our price range too. Total cost around $800. Kegs were an additional $400.
· Catering staff: I hired five people who I found through friends/contacts to work at the event. My idea had been to hire five responsible folks who were not professional caterers – fortunately I fell upon a contact who had a lot of catering experience and managed all the staff that night. With the mix of two staff with catering experience, three without, things went well. If you can work with a catering outfit that lets you buy your own alcohol, consider that; not sure if there is one that would let you buy your own food. With hiring staff as individuals instead of a company, I was responsible for buying and providing the cups, napkins, utensils, water pitchers (borrowed), serving spoons/tongs, etc.. It saved money, but this is a lot for most people to think through and take care of. Staff cost around $850; random supplies I bought $350.
· Music: A friend of mine DJs as a hobby, so doesn’t charge the exorbitant fees some DJs do. We put together a play list for him to work with, he also works without play lists. Matt Spangler, mbspangler@cox.net
· Equipment rentals: Frager’ Just Ask Rental, http://www.fragersjustask.com/, rents chafing dishes to heat food, linens, and a bunch of other stuff. For a fee they also deliver. Total cost for what we got around $250.
· Photo Booth: Having a photo booth at the party was a huge hit, everyone enjoyed it. We did not tell anyone ahead of time so it could be a surprise. I completely recommend having a photo booth. I would not actually recommend the company we used, Onomonomedia – they didn’t follow through on all promised (there was supposed to be overhead projection that didn’t work) and didn’t display the most professionalism (contacting me three days beforehand to set up earlier when we’d specified our rental space period months earlier, ridiculously slow response time from their designer working on our scrapbook pages, such that it was being finalized the day before.) Plus my understanding is that they’re slightly more expensive.
· Photographer: Since we had a photo booth, we didn’t feel we needed the whole wedding photography package. A contact of mine is a professional photographer (not weddings though) and he gave us a really good price because the only post-event work we wanted was him taking out the duplicates and terrible photos, and then giving us the CDs. My husband will do the rest.
· Hotels: If you use the Goethe Institut, there are six hotels within just a few blocks. We used the Monaco (upscale) and the Hampton Inn (budget); other hotel possibilities are the Renaissance, Embassy Suites, Hyatt, and Courtyard Marriott.
For those curious about other items, our priorities might be different, here’s what we did:
· Invitations: pingg.com has a lot of beautiful designs for email invitations. We chose a design that highlighted a photo of us. Pay the extra $5 or $10 to upgrade to Pingg Plus so you don’t have any ads. Plus you can pay to send a print version of the invitation to specific attendees (although it’s not 100% polished, the cover design was horizontal, and the inside text was vertical). We posted the rest of the details on a website I set up through theknot, the invitation linked to that. Having the invitation on-line is a great way to monitor your RSVPs/headcount and know whom you have to remind. Unfortunately you can’t remove the “maybe” RSVP, which only a small number of folks used – awkward follow-up needed.
· Hair: I had my normal hairdresser do my hair so it was nice and blow-dried. Hey, I needed the haircut anyway. My hairdresser’s prices for up-dos appeared to be reasonable when I asked initially though: Tigani’s is the place, Roberto is who I go to, 202 466 2626, near Dupont Circle.
· Flowers: The space was a gallery decorated with art, no flowers needed.
· Wedding dress: I bought a little-white-dress off the rack at Nordstroms for $350. If shopping on-line, one pretty option I rejected for the little-white-dress is a lace silver/white dress from chadwicks.com.
· Bridesmaid dresses: I’ve never had one I ever used again, who needs them? Instead friends helped with things like food pick-ups or creating the food labels.
· Tuxes: My husband has a lovely suit he never uses.
· Rings: I like my personally engraved rings, made by a jeweler at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria: http://www.ericmargryhandengraving.com/