A Feminist Wedding: Our Venue

Picking out our venue was one of the first things we did after getting engaged, and it really has been one of my favorite parts of wedding planning. There are countless possibilities, and different venues shape the look and feel of your wedding so significantly.

We knew from the beginning that we didn't want a traditional ballroom or country club. Both of us really loved the idea of having the reception outside under the stars, and we wanted something that felt cozy and slightly backyard-ish. We wanted it to feel slightly vintage, in the sense that we wanted it to be more like weddings in the "old days" when everyone celebrated at the bride's house (except no one was celebrating in our tiny apartment). I was really inspired, as strange as it might be, by the wedding scenes in Little Women and Little House on the Prairie. I also knew that I wanted it to feel slightly southern, but absolutely did not want a plantation. They were too grand for the type of feel we wanted, and I didn't like the idea of getting married at a place that was so deeply rooted in slavery and oppression.

Logistically, most of our guests are flying in and I wanted it to be fairly easy for them to get to the wedding from the airport. That meant I had to forgo any dreams of having a wedding in the North Georgia Mountains, which would easily be a couple hours drive.

In the end, it came down to two venues: one an old bed and breakfast and the other a polo farm. I thought the polo farm would be the easy choice, because I am obsessed with horses, but when I went to tour it I realized a.) that I would be walking around in my wedding dress on straw and gravel inches from horse poop and b.) that turning a working polo farm into a wedding and dinner-space is actually a large amount of work. In the end, we settled on the bed and breakfast.

The Veranda Inn is in this cute little town of Senoia, right next door to where I grew up (fun fact: it is also the filming location for The Walking Dead, so I get to see lots of zombies on my trips down there!). The Veranda was built in 1906 as the Holberg Hotel. It has fireplaces, tons of character, a huge wraparound porch, rocking chairs, and an old red barn in the back. It couldn't be more perfect for us and I am absolutely in love with it!

Here are a few photos, if you'd like to see.

 

 

A Feminist Wedding: Putting Together Your Wedding Planning Binder

This week, I thought I'd get into the nitty gritty of actually planning a wedding. Unfortunately, planning a wedding it isn't all just about pinning a million photos of dahlias and juliette garden roses to your pinterest board. At some point, you have to start choosing vendors, signing contracts, keeping track of guest lists and flight information, figuring out where to put the tables, etc.

If you don't hire a wedding planner to do all of these things for you, you need to be organized. Like, really organized. You don't want to run around on your wedding day trying to find the phone number for your florist in a big stack of papers on your desk. Or worse, have the flowers never even show up because you lost your contract and didn't know when the final payment was due.

I didn't like the idea of buying a pre-made wedding planning notebook. After looking through a couple, I either didn't like the way they looked and felt in my hands or I didn't like the information they had in them and the way there were formatted. So I decided to build one from scratch using lots of lists and spreadsheets and Martha Stewart office products (the BEST). Here is how I did it!

I bought a blue 1" Martha Stewart binder from Staples and two sets of blue Martha Stewart paper dividers. I had a really difficult time deciding how to organize my binder and label my dividers. In the end, I did it this way:

• Important
• Ceremony
• Reception
• Photography
• Flowers
• Decor (rental info, receipts, spreadsheets listing what goes where, etc.)
• Attire
• Paper
• Rehearsal
• Honeymoon

These categories have worked really well for me, although I'm thinking about switching the honeymoon tab to be a "guest" tab (and using it to keep track of my guest list, flight info, etc.) and making a separate honeymoon binder.

Within each category, I have different subcategories. To make these dividers, I bought a big stack of cardstock, hold punched it, and added cute little tabs to label the subcategory. Subcategories include my checklist, vendor contracts, food, cake, seating, music. etc.

In addition to dividers, I also keep a little thing of stickies and additional tabs in the front of the binder and a big zipper pouch. To be honest, when I first got the zipper pouch I wasn't sure how useful it would be. But it is the best! I used Printable Press' color chart to help pick my own colors and printed and cut out the colors that are part of our palette. I also went to Home Depot and picked out paint chips in the colors that I like. I keep them in the little zipper pouch, along with business cards, a sweet thank you note from the owner of the store where I bought my dress and veil, and a few other misc. things.

As far as worksheets, spreadsheets, and other lists, I've used a combination of things from google doc's wedding templates, A Practical Wedding, Russell + Hazel, and Martha Stewart. I love Martha's wedding planning timeline/checklist, and while I know you don't really have to get anything done by any certain date, the way she breaks it down helps me set deadlines and focus on smaller groups of things at a time. This helps me avoid any nervous breakdowns or panic attacks, which is always a good thing. :-)

A Feminist Wedding: The Budget

When I got engaged, I think I secretly thought that somehow the amazing-party-planner inside me would just emerge. That I would know whether my invitations look better printed on white or ecru, how to pick a good florist, plan a party with perfect flow, and learn all the secrets of Photoshop. I quickly learned, however, that my little ring was not full of magical powers. And that the only thing you really learn when you get engaged is that weddings are insanely expensive.

I think I also assumed that if I went into the wedding planning process not demanding the most expensive things and not buying into the idea that I had to buy all the things (customized hangars! garters! sparklers! mustache props!) that my wedding wouldn't cost that much. But the problem is, no matter how much you don't want the most expensive things or think it shouldn't cost too much, the people in the wedding industry think that it should cost an absolute ton. Around $27,000 to be exact.

According to USA Today, the Knot.com, and the Wedding Channel, the average couple spends around $27,000 on their wedding. $27,000! That is the average. And that is a ton of money! Here is where they say that money goes:

Because the average couple spends $27,000 on their wedding, people stare at you like you are some kind of crazy person when you say that $3,000 for photography is out of your budget, that $1,000 for a DJ seems ridiculous, or that $35 for a bouquet of baby's breath seems like a little much (they are $5 a bunch at Whole Foods people). I thought spending less on flowers would be easy, but when I started looking at florists, half of them had minimums of $1,500. I couldn't even choose to use less flowers or use less expensive flowers. It felt like I was being forced into spending money I didn't want to spend on things I didn't even want. And indeed, isn't that half the point of the wedding industrial complex? To make you feel like you HAVE TO spend a ton of money (or set ridiculous minimums and prices to basically force you into spending it)?

Brett and I knew from the beginning that we didn't want to spend a ton of money on our wedding. And that we absolutely would not accrue any credit card debt to pay for the wedding. One of the first things we did after getting engaged - before I looked at a single dress or venue - was think about what we wanted our wedding budget to look like. For us, that meant not just thinking about what we could afford, but also what we thought was an ethical amount to spend on what is essentially one night and one party (albeit a very meaningful and special party). For us, $27,000 just seemed to high. And to be honest, for Brett, almost any amount was too high. We had a few difficult conversations about what seemed ethical and right for both of us and struggled with the fact that what seemed "reasonable" to us was still probably considered a waste of money to people all over the world. We both felt guilty that we were spending money on a party when other people lack food, shelter, and clothing.

But ultimately, we want a wedding. We want to be able to invite our closest family and friends, feed them yummy food, give them a space and some music to dance their little hearts out, and dress up a little. And that costs money. So we came up with a number much lower than $27,000 that we felt comfortable with and that, luckily, our parents felt comfortable contributing. Because let's be honest, Brett and I have no money and quite a bit of student loans. If our parents weren't contributing to our wedding, this wedding blog series would go something like: "I bought a little white dress. Brett put on a blazer. I picked up a bouquet of flowers. We went to the courthouse and got married. We celebrated by drinking margaritas and eating lots of cake." And while that actually sounds quite awesome, it wouldn't involve all the people, yummy food, and dancing that we'd like to have.

So, thanks to our parents, we can still have the wedding we want without going into debt. I'm happy that we're resisting the idea that we have to spend $30,000 on a wedding and hope that our wedding can be an example to others that you can have a wedding for less than that (if everybody refuses to spend a ton, i have a small flicker of hope that the wedding industry might change). I enjoy the process of thinking creatively about how to spend less, prioritizing what is important to us, and have been overwhelmed by the amazingly crafty and generous things friends and family have offered to do and make for the wedding. I'm ridiculously excited about getting married, about crafting a meaningful ceremony, and about throwing a fun and pretty party. Whenever I get sad that I can't afford something (which does happen from time to time) or think that it wouldn't be that big of a deal if I go way over budget on something, I remind myself that this does not have to be the wedding to end all weddings, that this is not the only time in our lives we'll host a party, that we are not planning a photo shoot but a wedding (they're not the same!), and that this doesn't have to be the most magical, wonderful, happiest, and most perfect day of our lives. Because if, at the end of the day, we end up married, I know we'll have a magical, wonderful, and happy life together. And that's what really matters.

P.S. If you were hoping that this post would actually include some helpful tips about budgeting, I recommend downloading the budget template from Google's wedding spreadsheets. I've found it really useful (although I totally ignored all the recommended percentages/amounts). I also highly recommend an idea that I picked up in the book A Practical Wedding: make a list of things you care about and things you don't care about before you do any wedding planning. When you start thinking that you have to have letterpress stationery or get bummed that you can't afford to have flowers absolutely everywhere, it is nice to look back at that list and remind yourself that a few months ago you didn't care that much about paper or flowers.

A Feminist Wedding: My Engagement Ring

Last week, I wrote about how I'm beginning to plan a feminist wedding. But in reality, the planning process began before we were even engaged. It began by thinking about what we wanted to do for an engagement ring.

Ever since college, I've known that I wanted a vintage engagement ring. This is primarily due to the fact that I don't want to support the diamond trade or buy conflict diamonds. I can't stand the thought of funding rebel groups such as The Revolutionary United Front, who have a well-known history of violence (especially of violence against women and girls). To me, it seems too difficult and expensive to distinguish between conflict diamonds and "legitimate" diamonds, and the entire diamond trade - even the "legitimate" one - still seems to intersect with issues of colonialism and exploitation in ways that make me uncomfortable.

Which brings me to my second reason for wanting a vintage engagement ring: I don't need or want my engagement to be marked by an exaggerated display of consumerism. It seems like there is something inherently wrong with the idea that making life-long promises to a partner you love MUST be marked by spending thousands on a diamond, and I detest the way consumerism has become inextricably tied to the decision to spend your life with someone else. To make matters worse, this consumerism is also intrinsically gendered. The idea that the man must save up thousands of dollars (in 2011, the average engagement ring cost $5,200) in order to buy a ring that will dazzle the woman into saying "yes" seems a little too similar to a bride price (the amount of money or property that a man and/or his family pay to the parents of a bride). I don't need to be bought, thank you. A man shouldn't need to prove his worth via the size of a diamond. And the decision to get engaged should have nothing to do with how big of a diamond you put on your finger.

Of course, one could eschew the entire tradition of the engagement ring entirely. There is no real need for it, after all. If any of you have done so - Bravo! But, if you still want a little something sparkly without all of the baggage and expenses that comes with a diamond ring, I think a vintage engagement ring is the perfect way to go. There are really two options: you could buy a vintage engagement ring (Brilliant Earth and BHLDN both have some gorgeous ones) or you could use an old family ring (or convert something like an earring into a ring). Both reuse materials and don't support the diamond trade, and buying a vintage engagement ring often costs significantly less than buying a new ring. If you use an old family ring, you're not buying anything!

I have always loved the idea of using an old family ring because of the history it embodies, the eco-friendly nature of it, the ethical aspect, and the fact that it is FREE. So after remarking to my mom that I wanted something like a ring she wore (a gift to her from my grandmother), she said I was more than welcome to have it! And sneakily, this past June when we all got together to see a Red Sox game, she gave the ring to Brett who hid it until the proposal. I am absolutely in love with it. I love that it is unique, and beautiful, and old. I love that it was a gift from my grandmother to my mother, and then my mother to me, and one day will be a gift to my daughter, granddaughter, or great-granddaughter. I love that the ring is a symbol of love and family - both of my old family and our new one, my heritage and my future.

My ring! :-) 

A Feminist Wedding

B and I! Photo Source: Joanne Warger Boland, photographer extraordinaire

When I got engaged, I promised I wouldn't turn this into a wedding blog. And I'm promise I'll stay true to my word!

That being said, I know that it will be helpful and fun (to me at least) to write about the entire wedding planning process. Writing always helps me process my own thoughts, and wedding planning is a crazy and overwhelming process. Writing about it will definitely help me stay sane!

Besides, I think there is really something amazing about turning patriarchal traditions into feminist ones. About exploring wedding customs, traditions, and rituals from around the world. About looking at what weddings have looked like throughout history, and recognizing that the "traditions" and "must-dos" espoused by many wedding blogs and even family members aren't really that traditional at all (people have not been renting tuxes from stores in malls since the dawn of time). I think there is something powerful, liberating, and romantic about tearing down the commercialized Wedding and throwing your own wedding, a meaningful celebration of love where you get to marry your best friend and then do something fun afterwards to kick off married life (in our case, eat tons of cake and dance until we can't anymore).

I also think its an incredible experience to sit down with your fiance and think through all the symbols and rituals that surround marriage. To determine what - both as individuals and as a couple - you find meaningful and what you find problematic. And to figure out how you convey that to the world and to your families. It's very good practice for life post-wedding! As one of my favorite aunts said recently, "It's your wedding. And your life. So you two do what you want to do. Make decisions together as a new family. And then let your respective families know what you've decided. If they don't like it, they can all get over it. But don't change your life or miss out on things you two wanted to do to keep other people happy - even when that other people is us." That was a long quote, and she's said it to me about other things even pre-engagement, but Brett and I remind ourselves of it quite a bit so it was worth quoting in its entirety.

Also, besides all these serious, feminist thoughts I have about weddings, I have to confess that I simply love wedding blogs. Even the not-so-feminist kind. I love the pretty photos and the creativity and love that goes into weddings, especially DIY weddings. I love seeing how people make weddings uniquely theirs. And I really love seeing how people plan weddings on a budget; the decisions they make, the things they cut out, and the cost saving tips they come up with along the way (everybody says a wedding will cost way more than you expect it will. I always thought I would be soooo savvy that it would cost less than I had even thought it would. That was stupid of me. They're out-of-this-world-seriously-what-is-wrong-with-this-industry- and-who-are-these-people-spending-this-much-money-on-cake expensive. Cost saving tips matter!!!).

So, like it or not dear readers, be prepared for some wedding stuff over the next few months. And if you have any thoughts, suggestions, tips, or advice, please always feel free to share in the comments or shoot me an email!