Looking back on our wedding one year later, it truly was one of the best days of our lives. We kept the wedding planning stress-free, the wedding day simple but beautiful, and the cost down.
On July 8th, Curt and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary! We’ve been together for a long time—we went on our first date in August of 2004, moved in together in 2011, and bought our first home in 2015—so getting married didn’t really change our relationship that much, yet at the same time, it made it so much better.
Our wedding day was more than we could have even hoped for. The ceremony took place on a very warm evening in the gardens of an old-style home followed by a cocktail reception inside the house. We had some live music, enjoyed a ton of delicious food, and you could just tell that everyone was having a great time.
When we started to plan the wedding, we wanted to keep the stress to a minimum. Stress can have such a negative impact on your health and we also didn’t want any negativity clouding the memories of such a special day. We had just over a year to plan everything after we selected our date and secured the venue, and we were successful at keeping the process virtually stress-free! How did we do it? We planned our wedding on our terms and didn’t let the opinions and expectations of others dictate “our” day.
Right from the get-go, we knew that we wanted our wedding to be quite small. We decided to invite only our immediate family and closest friends, and the small guest list allowed us to have the time to visit and truly celebrate with everyone during the evening. A small guest list also helped us keep the cost down!
Speaking of cost, weddings are expensive; there’s really no way around it. It was really important for us not to spend all of our savings on one day, so we decided on a fairly modest budget and stuck to it by making a list of items to splurge on and items to save on.
We decided to spend a bit more of our budget on photography, food, and music.
We knew photography would be a significant chunk of our budget but it was important to us. We wanted to have beautiful photos with lots of candid shots to reflect back on and Willow and Wolf Wedding Photography delivered big time. Andrew and Bec did an amazing job of capturing all the special moments and you can almost “feel” the day when you’re looking at the images.
The food was catered by our venue and it was absolutely delicious. We had a cocktail reception so there wasn’t a structured dinner and we didn’t have to worry about seating charts. There was an abundance of food (maybe even too much!) and our guests were able to mingle while they ate and enjoyed the casual setting.
Music has always been a big part of our lives so we wanted to have some live music during the ceremony and at the reception. The venue also had an upright piano in the living room that we wanted to take advantage of! We hired a cellist and violinist to play during the ceremony (so beautiful), and had a guitarist/singer and pianist perform an hour set at the reception to get the dance going. It was definitely worth it for us to pay a little more to incorporate some live music into the celebration and we went with a simple playlist on our laptop to help dance the rest of the night away. It worked out perfectly!
On the save list? Our wedding cake, the flowers, and my wedding dress.
About two months before the wedding, I made the decision to bake our wedding cake myself. Deciding to DIY the cake Curt and I would cut and enjoy wasn’t made solely to save on the cost; in some ways, it just seemed easier for me to make it myself with the dietary restrictions we would require. The wedding cake was made using a double batch of our favourite Coconut Zucchini Brownies that I baked in three 6-inch cake pans. I used the dark chocolate avocado frosting to stack and frost the layers, and my mom fancied it up with a few flowers and fresh berries the morning of. I also baked and iced about 150 mini cupcakes for guests and everything was displayed on a 5-tier cake stand. I was happy with the way it all turned out and it was definitely delish!
For the flowers, I just wasn’t willing to spend a small fortune for one day. And when I discovered a bridal bouquet could be upwards of $300? Not a chance. The flowers ended up being the other big DIY I took on and I went the Costco rout, spending just over $100 on all the flowers and supplies. I kept everything really simple; the bouquets were made from light yellow and blush pink roses, the men had yellow rose boutonnieres, and the remaining flowers were used for a few table centerpieces at the reception. The beauty of getting married in a venue that is a house was that there was very little required in terms of decor. We didn’t need extravagant centerpieces or large flower arrangements; the natural aesthetic of the home already offered so much.
The aspect of the wedding I was a most worried about in terms of the budget was my wedding dress; a dress I wanted to love and feel beautiful in but would only wear for about 8 hours. After a couple of shopping trips with my mom, I found “the one” and it was exactly what I was looking for. My wedding dress was a lace overlay strapless dress with a sweet heart neckline, fitted bodice, and slight flare in the skirt, but the best part (and the part I was most excited to tell Curt about) was that it came in at just over $500! I didn’t need any dress alterations and I got my shoes for $50, so my whole “look” was less than $600. It’s easy to get more wear out of my wedding shoes and I wore them for our anniversary dinner out, but I so wish I could wear my wedding dress again. Instead, it hangs in my closet in it’s pale pink garment bag and I take it out from time to time…
Although planning the wedding was essentially stress-free, I’m not gonna lie, in the couple weeks leading up to the “big day”, I was slightly worried I might become overwhelmed the week of the wedding. The cake and the cupcakes and the flowers were things I couldn’t prepare in advance; they had to wait until a day or two before the wedding. In the end, everything came together smoothly and by the time our rehearsal dinner began Friday night, all the items on our to-do list were checked off. It helped that we had a lot of people around us that we could reach out to if we needed an extra hand and I was able to let go of my perfectionist tendencies. I got really good at saying “it’s good enough” or “that’s as good as it’s gonna get”, and I was okay with that!
This year, on our first anniversary, we had a wonderfully relaxed day. We went for a bike ride around the area where we got married, had a lovely dinner out, and ate the rest of our wedding cake that my mother-in-law froze for us (I knew the brownies froze well, but even after a year, they were still pretty darn decadent!). We looked at our wedding photos and reminisced about the day, wishing we could re-live it over again. And again, and again.
Other highlights from our best day ever?
- My niece and nephew doing the cutest job as flower girl and ring bearer.
- The thoughtful and kind speeches from our friends and family.
- Curt jumping in to play with the musicians during one of the songs at the reception, a complete surprise to me!
- My sister and her little family hitting the dance floor with an amazing choreographed dance to Michael Bublé’s “I Believe In You”, another great surprise!
- Seeing the closest people in our lives all together in the same room.
- All the smiles and laughter and love around us.
What were your favourite moments from your wedding day? Did you find the planning process stressful? Do you have any anniversary traditions?
Tina is successfully optimizing health and healing illness (and helping others do the same) with the help of her husband, Curt. Read Curt & Tina’s inspiring story, “From on our heels to On Our Heals”. Feel free to send them a message.