Black Ballerina Flats . . . from Ebay!

Happy weekend everyone! I hope yours was as nice as mine was. After being gone the last 4 weekends, I savored my time at home and filled it up with lots of sleep, house cleaning, hammock time, weeding the garden, a movie, hosted a fire-pit s'mores party and drank lots of iced-tea.

Anyways . . . I love a good deal, so I just have to show you my new favorite shoes in case you need some fun black flats too. These were around $11 from ebay. They came from China (sorry, I still haven't quite bought in to the whole buy-American thing). They aren't going to last a lifetime, but they are perfect for casual wear, or to dress up a little. These also come in teal, watermelon and cream colored. I'm tempted to buy another pair. I think what I love most about them is that they are plastic, so I can easily wipe the dust and dirt off that's just a given living in the mountains. Winner winner!

DIY Wedding Guest Seating Tags

Ok, it seems like it's time to once again post some little details and projects from our wedding last September. I'm trying to spread out my wedding posts so that I don't use up all my good photography in one fell swoop :-) Here was how we did our seating assignments for our guests. First, we borrowed the door frame (gotta love free wedding decor!), bought mini clothespins from ebay or Amazon, bought some jute string, made the chalkboard ourselves (wood, a saw and chalkboard paint), and then my sister in law hand-wrote all the names on little tags that we punched out on paper we got from Michaels. Oh, and we borrowed the tag punch too. I couldn't tell you exactly, but this whole project probably cost around $30. Perfect for our do-it-yourself wedding on a budget!

Wedding Lesson #1: Use what you have

Using what I have access to has already been the biggest money saver in planning our wedding. The price of wedding venues is through the roof . . . often costing more than the entire budget I have. They (whoever they are) say that a venue may be up to 50% of your budget. I say no, that I'd rather have it be 0% of my budget. So that's what we did.

I may not have a lot of things for a wedding, but I have a lake. One of the perks of being on staff at the camp where my fiance and I work, is that we have the option to have a wedding on the grounds. At $0, that was an easy decision for us. It's free, it's beautiful, it's our home and we get discounts on lodging for our guests. It's perfect.

Wedding on a Budget

To my faithful blog readers . . . .

I have decided to add another category to my blog over these next few months. With my wedding being 4 months away, I figured it would be fun to share my process of planning a DIY wedding with a budget of $5,500. I love the challenge of putting on a great event and figuring out the most efficient and budget friendly way to do it. I will be totally open about finances and ways that I'm saving (or losing) money. Hopefully you'll find my journey entertaining, inspiring and helpful.

I will probably keep some of my projects a secret and then post them after the wedding. At least some things need to be a surprise for our guests!

Enjoy!