1. Ceremony stuff
Justice of the Peace - Matt Loter, www.getmarriedct.com. He works on a sliding scale (basically he asks to be paid in proportion to your wedding budget), was very laid back and easy to work with, and he did a wonderful job.
We ended up moving our ceremony indoors because of extreme heat on our wedding day, but originally we'd planned to use my brother-in-law's backyard for the ceremony so I had looked into a couple of rental companies that had good rates and were easy to work with:
Chair rentals: General Rental Center in Hamden had a good selection, good rates, and for a small group you can choose to pay for delivery or, if you know someone with a truck, just pick them up yourself and save some $! A deposit was not needed for our small reservation, which was nice when we had to move indoors and had to cancel! They also rent wedding arches and other wedding-related things, just FYI.
Porta-Potty: My bro-in-law's septic tank is tiny, so we planned to rent a portable toilet to put his mind at ease. We reserved through United Site Services, and they had very fair rates and excellent customer service. For a standard restroom (1 step up from the construction zone orange ones!) it was about $145 to rent for an entire weekend, including delivery and pickup! AND they refunded me 100% when we ended up not needing this (due to the whole moving indoors thing).
In the end, because we moved indoors, we had our ceremony at our reception space, which leads me to...
2. Reception stuff
Venue & Catering: Our reception and, ultimately, our ceremony, was held at Pequonnock Yacht Club in New Haven. Pequonnock Yacht Club is the upstairs floor of Sage American Grill restaurant, in the Oyster Point neighborhood (near the Sound School). Both overlook New Haven Harbor, and both levels have beautiful decks where you can take photos and have cocktails outside. You can either rent out Sage's restaurant itself, depending on the day & time of your wedding (I think you can only do this for daytime/lunch weddings on weekends), or rent the space upstairs from the Yacht Club for a $350 fee, and use Sage for the catering, which is what we did.
This is the PERFECT place in the New Haven area for a small wedding, and it's the main reason for me writing this, because it took me so long to even find out about it that I know that other brides probably don't know about it! I had been to Sage before, but didn't like the idea of having a lunch time wedding and I didn't realize at first that you could rent the space upstairs from the Yacht Club, so I kind of overlooked this at first (their website is NOT updated w/private party info, FYI). Then I learned that you can rent the space from the yacht club and went to visit... The second I walked into the space upstairs, I knew I was going to have my wedding there! It is the perfect size for a smaller event (I wouldn't have more than 50 people in there for an event with dinner, although I'm sure for just a cocktail reception you could fit more). There's a small dance floor (so you don't have to miss your first dance, etc. even though you're having a small wedding) and they have a stereo system you can hook up your iPod/laptop to. It's decorated with a simple nautical style (old photographs of the marina on the walls, a couple of big fish mounted over the bar!) but otherwise they let you decorate however you want.
The dance floor actually ended up being where we held our ceremony. The backdrop is a brick wall that's basically a blank canvas for you to decorate however you want (we were too worried about other details and just kept it simple w/small tables with flower arrangements on them, framing the spot where we stood), and then the windows overlooking the water are off to your right side. My dad & I walked from the back room out along the deck so that we could come from the back of the room by the bar to walk down the aisle... in case that's helpful to anyone trying to figure that out. You may be able to setup in front of the windows with some prior planning & help from the staff. It was simple but perfect! My hubby & I then left for a few minutes with the photographer to take photos on the pier down the street near the Sound School - a great photo spot on the water, and really close by.
Sage handles the catering and most of the room setup, and the yacht club handles the bar service. They know each other well, so you don't have to do too much coordination. Sage's food is AMAZING and got rave reviews from our guests, and was affordable at about $40/person for a buffet (a feast really) of prime rib, salmon, chicken, and a bunch of sides. We had so much leftover that my husband and I ate for a week afterwards! Sage also handled our champagne toast, would have served cake had we wanted them to (we did cupcakes and people just grabbed them), and brought a few extra beautiful flower arrangements for the food displays - a nice touch. There isn't a time limit on your space rental, so you can get there early to decorate and stay as late as you want. On our weekend they even had OK'd us coming the day before to setup, because they didn't have any other events that night, but we ended up just sending our families over that morning instead. Half of the room is windows looking out onto the deck and New Haven Harbor, and the deck is pretty much private. Our friends & fam were going in and out all night to enjoy the deck, it was gorgeous!
The only minor privacy issue I will mention is that because the Yacht Club has paying members, they aren't able to close off their bar to members completely. So while most of the room itself is yours, the club members are able to hang out at the bar if they happen to stop in for a drink. During our wedding, there were anywhere from 0 - 10 yacht club members in the bar area at any given time. They also sometimes went out onto the deck, so while no other passerby or restaurant patrons can use the deck, you might have share w/the yacht club folks. Everyone was really nice and they stayed out of the main part of the room, so while it was a bit strange, it really didn't bother us too much in the end. I also think this impacted how loud they let us turn up the stereo system - it seemed to keep getting turned down a little bit every time we tried to make it louder, which was annoying but honestly I was so distracted by having just gotten married and being totally ecstatic that I never even bothered to bug them about it - I'm sure if I had asked them nicely to keep the volume up they would have. But all just things to be aware of!
For more info you can start by contacting sage at www.sageamerican.com - if you are interested in the upstairs yacht club space just ask Amy, Sage's event person, about it and she'll get you their contact info.
Flowers & Decor: We ordered all the flowers for bouquets & centerpieces in bulk from Sam's Club online - 2 colors of hydrangea along with sunflowers. Had them delivered to my house 2 days before the wedding and my MOH and I put them all together the day before. They were beautiful, bloomed perfectly in time for the wedding day, and we had a great time doing it! About $200 got us more than enough flowers for 4 bouquets and a bunch of various-sized centerpieces. Took us about 4-5 hours to put everything together from start to finish.
We used a variety of old, antiquey-looking bottles & jars, mostly ones collected by my uncle on his hikes around my home state of new hampshire over the years, as the containers for the flowers. We also bought a few more Ball jars (super cheap at the grocery store, or you can get bigger nicer ones at a craft store) to make sure we had enough. I ordered rolls of burlap fabric that was already cut to the width of a table runner from PaperMart.com, super cheap and they worked perfectly! All we had to do was cut them to the right length and voila, instant, incredibly cheap table runners.
We sat the guests at 4 long-ish tables of about 10 people each. My husband and I opted for a sweetheart table in the middle, despite the small size of the wedding - we didn't want to choose which divorced parent to sit with, which friends, etc... and in the end it was an awesome decision. We had a lovely few minutes of conversation together over dinner that really helped us to relax and soak in the day, and didn't have to play favorites.
Favors: We had 2 small, fun favors. One was beer koozies from totallyweddingkoozies.com. They were really cheap and they had cute colors and designs! Most importantly, I had been a little nervous about how they'd go over, but our guests were OBSESSED with them. People were stealing extras to take home. People were wrapping them around their wine glasses. Everyone was commenting on them. I was psyched! As a little extra favor, I had bottles of lemon-lime seltzer (I'm a big seltzer fan) with custom labels that matched our wedding invitations. I got them from Avery's Beverages, which is local to CT and is very affordable, about $1 per bottle plus a setup fee. (averysoda.com). They were cute and made good keepsakes, but I have to say people liked the koozies better!
3. Photographer
Krista Verito, Truth be Told Photography (truthbetoldphotography.com). We haven't received our final photos yet (takes ~8 weeks), so I will withhold a full endorsement until then, but I can say this: her prices are very affordable, she was a pleasure to have around all day, she was on time, she helped with weird little things that were way out of her job description (i.e. at the last second she helped my bridesmaids re-wrap the ribbon around their bouquets because it was falling off! haha), AND the 4-5 "sneak peek" photos I have seen so far are gorgeous!
4. Hotel & After party!
Most of us stayed at the Premiere Hotel & Suites on Long Wharf, which is less than a mile from Sage/the yacht club. You could technically walk it if you wanted to, although we all just called cabs to get over to the hotel at the end of the wedding. They gave us a free upgrade to a big apartment-style suite for our wedding night. You get a big comfy suite & full breakfast at a really fair rate (we weren't able to stay downtown that weekend due to all of them being booked for Yale Alumni weekend), they have a free shuttle around the New Haven area (not for groups and stops at 8:30pm, but if you have any guests who need to get to the train station or somewhere else the next day, this is good). It was a cheap, short cab ride from the hotel to downtown. While it would have been nice to stay at the Omni, we were happy here! If you have people on a tight budget, the venue is also not too far from West Haven where there are lots of cheap hotel options under $100/night.
After we got freshened up at the hotel, most of the younger people grabbed cabs together downtown. It was a blast going out on the town all dressed up and we got so many well wishes from everyone! So glad we did this!
Overall, we had a wonderful wedding day! We had a little family drama (OK, a pretty good amount of family drama) because of our small guest list, but 99% of people got over it quickly, and honestly back when we were originally planning for a much larger, more traditional wedding, there was STILL family drama, just about things other than the guest list. So I think the level of drama depends on more on your particular family than the size of your wedding! My husband is really shy and private, and he was so dreading a big wedding. I wasn't dreading it for that reason, but I had literally been having panic attacks over the budget and staying up at night worrying. In the end, doing a smaller wedding was right for both of us and we were both happy! AND, we have a lot more money in our house down payment fund now than we would have if we'd had a big wedding :-) Yay!