Productive Wednesday of Wedding Planning!

So I’m super excited to share that three big things have been checked off the wedding to-do list!

Zach purchased our plane tickets for Morroco! (The best part of it all, is that we get to fly out of Richmond, and we only have a brief layover in New York.! And to top it all off, we arrive on Monday, rather than Tuesday, giving us an extra day!)
The Florist is officially booked! (Vogue Flowers – Zoie the event coordinator has been wonderful to work with!)
The caterer is booked! The food is going to be super delicious! I would tell you, but I would hate to ruin the surprise for you!

So, Wednesday was a great day in wedding planning in my mind….LOTS of things checked off the list! Wahoo!

HONEYMOON!

As some of you know, Z and I have settled on a honeymoon destination…MORROCCO!!!

We wanted to pick somewhere that neither one of us had ever been, that wasn’t a cruise or resort, a place where we could experience the local culture, somewhere we could get the biggest bang for our buck (a.k.a. not in the euro zone), and have unique once in a life time experience for just the two us. I think we’ve succeeded in picking Morrocco?

So…being that things are on a tight budget for the wedding we definitely want to make each aspect our honeymoon be as affordable as possible.

Money Spent in Country: Not too big of a stressor for since things are supposed to be affordable in county… from what we’ve been reading, we should able to get by on $100 a day or less for the two of us
Flights: This is where we need to be as smart as possible with our money! Getting to Africa isn’t cheap….but it’s definitely terribly much more than say going to some other places. We also keep reminding ourselves, that yes the flights may be a little more than we would like to spend…but it’s going to be cheap in country.

So here our adventures of finding the best flight prices…..

Idea 1: Fly out of Richmond into Casablanca (Mohammad V is the international flight hub in Morrocco) – this is ideal since we would not have to travel far, wouldn’t have to pay for parking (someone can drop us off…right mom?), just wake up and go. BUT, this plan costs the most…current flights are going for $1161 *ouch!*

Idea 2: Fly out of Washington D.C. into Casablanca – when we first checked on this idea, flights were around $800-$850….not a terrible prices….but much more than say going to central America. Do we really want to spend this kind of money on plane tickets?

*INTERLUDE* Well we then went back to the drawing board. We toyed around with the idea of going to Central/South America/Carribean: flights to Costa Rica were only $280 round trip out of D.C.; free if we used my frequent flyer miles for me to some countries (but why not save it and go somewhere in USA for both of us free) ; I wanted to go somewhere non-Spanish speaking; didn’t want our honeymoon rained on (it’s the rainy season and/or hurricane season).

So we decided this was a bad idea…we still wanted to go to Morrocco!

We just needed to figure out the most affordable way…and then came idea 3!

Idea 3: Fly out of Richmond into Madrid, then take an EasyJet flight from Madrid into Marrakech. Flying to and from Madrid was about $650 (could get one ticket free if we used my miles)….then flying on EasyJet would only be 36.98 Euros. This didn’t seem like too bad of an idea….$49.49 per person….but then we realized the luggage issue! It was going to cost us 22 euros ($29.44) per suitcase! Not too bad if we weren’t planning on taking much or bringing much back! We talked with friends who had used EasyJet…and the resounding theme was not to check 2 pieces of luggage each to accommodate or clothes and goodies. *UGH*

Back to the drawing board we go!

Idea 4/Idea 2 revisted: Washington D.C. to Cassblanca! After playing with flights, we think this is going to be our best bet! Last week flights were $852….then the volcano erupted in Iceland…the flight is now $997!

So now, I’m just trying to be patient (yeah right for me!) for the flights to come down….I will go on my honeymoon to Morrocco and it’s not going to cost me an arm and a leg!

Stressed about invitations…to no longer stressed

Like I was saying yesterday…

I lost it, I was completely stressed out about wedding invitations, frustrated with all the companies, and irritated that I couldn’t settle on the right invitation….

I went to Michael’s with my mom. I found one do it yourself invitation that was okay…

Then we went to Party City. I looked through one binder with my mom, and made 1/4 of the way through a second binder, and then I thought I was going to scream. After looking through 1 and 1/4 binders, I didn’t see a single one that I really liked. The thought of looking through the rest of that second binder and the several other binders that they had was pure torture to me. So I told my mom, “I QUIT! I can’t take it anymore! If I look through one more binder, I think I’m going to vom. Let’s go please.” She easily agreed, and said she was willing to come back another time if I wanted. I LOVE MY MOM!

So for the rest of the week I suffered through looking at countless websites American Wedding, Wedding Paper Divas, Rexcraft, to name a few…

THEN….Last weekend Zach and I went to Michael’s to have another look, and we found two that we sort of liked…

Zach came up with the great idea of simply designing our own. So we got a picture of one more invite that we liked, so we would have some inspiration….

Then on Sunday, Zach and I went over to his parent’s house and his mom and I spent the afternoon looking at invitations…having some idea of what we both liked and knowing that we either wanted something grape/winery/vineyard themed or with some type of design like the pictures above, we looked through the catalogs she had, looked at websites, looked at the options for designing our own

Then we stumbled upon Invitations By Dawn! Within minutes of looking through the website, I found an invitation that Zach and I both thought was okay….

The sample arrived a few days later in the mail…the sample was not like what I saw online and I realized, this invite was not what I wanted after all. *UGH* All this searching, and I thought I found what I wanted…

But all was not lost!

When Zach’s mom and I were browsing the internet, we found Wedding DNA, a website for downloading the graphics or templates that you like. I knew there was something on there that I liked, showed it to Zach, he liked it too…and the decision was made…we created an account with Wedding DNA, got the graphic we liked, and began designing our own invitation!

Now it’s time to work on the honeymoon!