And The Quotes Come Marching In.

I have this lovely little online spread sheet with my wedding budget. Three simple columns, Goal, Best Guest, and Actual. Up until now, there have been very few items in Actual, but they're filling in fast. Our first solid quote from The Iron Horse came in. $4,000 higher than our budget. But this was just so that we could trim ourselves. It looks like we might need to forgo the Kobe Beef Tartare and the $400 cheese plate. Ah, and that specialty cocktail I was dreaming of, well, I can keep dreaming. Mark enthusiastically asked be "but when else in my life am I going to get a $400 cheese plate?" and we agreed, for his retirement.

Prices are also coming in for our outdoor rentals. The tent, chairs, lights, sound system and dance floor are adding quite a few line items to the budget that I hadn't accounted for. Well, at least not $2,000 plus. It's all part of the big picture I know, but it really does seem quite ridiculous to drop $500 for a dance floor for one night. I think we can make due with dancing on the new cement, after all, we have a cheese plate to pay for.

Once those two quotes are out of the way, that should be the majority of our budget. I have been working on some ideas for decorating ourselves that should save us some money. I just bought some Dahlia tubers that I'm going to attempt to grow all summer for the wedding. Beautiful little red pom pom dahlias. Also, I think I'll be growing some tall grasses like I mentioned before, for the altar. I had the idea today of supplementing the design there with lots of clear glass trifted vases with candles in them. A sort of wall of hurricane candles in all different shapes and sizes, with grass coming up behind them, and river rocks below. Also, I was thinking about using river rocks as the sides of the aisle – although, i can just see them now, all kicked all over the place. We went to the most beautiful beach in Michigan for my friend's wedding and you could collect them by the hundreds. Maybe a summer camping trip is in order to go collect some. For the tent decor, Mark's aunt let me know that the branches I am in love with are actually curly willow, and she has a dying curly willow tree in her back yard that we can get branches from. Score!