Hi ladies! I've been lurking for a little while now, posting here and there. I had to post because I'm already feeling really frustrated. I feel like my future wedding falls between the cracks since we have a teeny tiny itsy bitsy budget. ($8k total budget) I know that's not a lot for most weddings but it's really difficult for us to come up with that much! (We're paying for part of it and my parents are paying for the other part. But I just graduated grad school, I'm now a social worker, and my fiance is still in school finishing his degree.)
I'm trying to be reasonable with our plans to balance things out. We're trying to find somewhere to have the ceremony and reception in Miami. (My ideal would be a garden'ish wedding and a reception somewhere indoors.) We're trying to keep our guest list down to 85-95 people at the very most. Our ideal date is 9/2/12, a Sunday! We're open to any time or type of reception (brunch/lunch/dinner). So far we've only found 3 possible options. (And by possible I mean, venue and food within our budget and not in a church's hall.) Oh, we don't want a videographer, we have a friend that will get us our flowers at her distributor price, I prefer butter cream cakes over fondant and I'm totally willing to do lots of DIY!
I live in Tallahassee now but grew up in Miami (down by the Falls, south of South Miami but north of Homestead). Since my parents still live there and most of our guests will be from OOT (and that's a good place to fly/travel to) we're planing on having the wedding down there. I'd love any suggestions or thoughts, or even just words of encouragement.