I sure hope raising kids is as tough as I think it is, but not any tougher. I always thought wedding planning was a piece of cake and that people got bent out of shape over them for nothing. Like how hard could it be, really? You pick a date and location, you decide on food (which can be as tedious or simple as you want it to be), send your besties invites to be part of your wedding party, get a photographer, pick some colors and dresses, and boom! Done! Right?

Tim would get married at the courthouse if I would stand for it. Simple and straightforward without missing the point on a marriage. But marrying outside of the church is a non-negotiable for me.

With that in mind, after we got engaged, we found ourselves in an interesting predicament. A tiny idea we had turned into a big one. We will get married with two months to prepare! It will be small and on a budget.

We are only splurging on a photographer since the wedding itself is at a park that we are paying $50 to rent. Yes, our venue cost is $50. It doesn’t get much better than that if you ask me!

When we agreed to a date and location, we didn’t have an officiant from the church lined up. We still don’t! (And if you’re wondering if that is stressing me out, the answer is yes. YES IT IS.) We are still working on finding someone to marry us with less than eight weeks to go.

Luckily, we are keeping it super simple and only inviting our immediate family, grandparents, and wedding party. Period. That’s 25 people including spouses of wedding party members.

Food was easy to figure out since we already knew the best food place in town and turns out it’s relatively cheap to cater.

Now to the dress: I’m praying to find a dress under $500, knowing there will be about $600 worth of alterations because – hello! – that’s how being a woman works!

Whether this is realistic is debatable, but I’ll find out soon enough. I think I’ll find something for $800 that’s perfect but needs alterations and I’ll need to take a deep breath when I hear that the price is non-negotiable because – hello! – again, that’s how being a woman works.

Flowers. Who knew something so pretty could be so freaking pricey! Holy cow, you guys! It’s absolutely crazy! I went to a large chain craft store to scope it out and get ideas. The tiniest, semi-decent looking bouquet I could put together was $50 without any coupons or roughly $25 with a good coupon. What?!?! Renting flower bouquets may actually be more expensive than making new bouquets. Why??

I went to an actual florist out of curiosity. She told me she could make me a bouquet of about five fake roses starting at $60. Uh, see ya!

Tim and I discussed other options after I stressed about this for approximately one day. Should each bridesmaid have just one rose? No, that would be too obviously cheap. Should each bridesmaid have something else like a purse? No, that would be too awkward.

Tim voted for no flowers at all. (Yes ladies, I rolled my eyes, too.) Just because society tells us to have flowers doesn’t mean we have to…but we do need a suitable alternative, which was clearly not going to be craft store flowers.

We researched articles that suggested wreaths, lanterns, and other items that seemed too cheap and tacky to us. Finally, we found paper flowers. Woah! They are close to the $25 mark per bouquet and are made out of any number of kinds of paper – specific books, comic books, cre paper, maps of specific parts of the world, recycled paper – you name it!

Planning even the smallest, simple, budget-friendly wedding is turning out to be a bit more chaotic than I expected. Tim would like to step back and not have to plan anything, and I’m starting to understand why, even though I thoroughly enjoy regular (non-wedding) event planning.

It’s going to be a learning process for us to get there, but we will. All that matters is that when the day ends in two months, I will be married to my best friend and he to his.

It’s about planning the marriage; not the wedding.

Until then, does anyone know a good officiant from the church? 😉

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