Good And Cheap Wedding Series: Summary

Wedding always impart some kind of lessons. In the case of my sister's wedding, small cute dogs like parking their butts on the cushy trains of white wedding gowns. Don't let them!

The good and cheap wedding series was a hit based on feedback I’ve gotten (though I hope more people will eventually leave it on the blog and not just tell me but hey, I’ll get feedback wherever I can get it!). I learned a few new ideas from every couple, even people I thought I knew really well already.

Here were a few of the common themes:

1. Churches and town halls will hook you up.
They aren’t looking to make a quick buck; they just want their folding tables back. I had no idea that for $0-$100, one could reserve a room as long as it gets cleaned up afterwards. Nice!

Good And Cheap Wedding Series: Sean and Stacy

I’ve always wanted to do a series about inexpensive but great weddings and since it’s a busy end of the week, I thought you’d appreciate getting to know a few more cool people. The following three days will feature three couples and how they had the day of their dreams without sticker shock.

The Happy Couple: Sean and Stacy
Location of Wedding: Popham Beach (Phippsburg, ME)
Date: October 11, 2003
Total Cost of Wedding: $9000 (eek!)
$150 ceremony
$2000 Maine Maritime Museum (reception)
$2000 plated meal
$1000 open bar
$500 band
$200 flowers
$75 car
$3000 honeymoon

Tell us about your wedding day. (How many people were there, what was the ceremony like, overall impressions, etc.)
The ceremony was at Popham Beach on a beautiful, unusually warm fall day in the late afternoon. It was a pretty informal setting – our friend officiating, the ceremony area was delineated from the rest of the beach with stones and seaweed, and we had to shout our vows to be heard over the ocean.

The ceremony itself was non-demonational and we drew from Native American readings and wedding blessings. Within minutes of the ceremony being over, a huge fog bank swept over the beach! So we have some pictures pre-fog and some in the fog.

Good and Cheap Wedding Series: Paul and Tobyn

I’ve always wanted to do a series about inexpensive but great weddings and since it’s a busy end of the week, I thought you’d appreciate getting to know a few more cool people. The following three days will feature three couples and how they had the day of their dreams without sticker shock.

A special thank you to my friend Ally for putting me in touch with this couple. They seem like fantastic people who know how to throw a wedding!

Name of Happy Couple: Paul and Tobyn
Location of Wedding: Ceremony-Old, out of use UU church in Westbrook Maine, Reception-The backyard of our apartment in Westbrook Maine
Date: July 9th, 2009
Total Cost of Wedding: Including rings our total cost was around $5,000, without the rings it was around $3,300

What are some of the ways you saved money?
We saved money in almost every thing we did just by planning the type of wedding that we did. With this said, I have gone through our wedding step by step below. I have found the easiest way to portray what we did is by breaking it up into its various components to give a small taste of what the wedding itself was like as well as the planning.

Good And Cheap Wedding Series: Cherie and Michael

.I’ve always wanted to do a series about inexpensive but great weddings and since it’s a busy end of the week, I thought you’d appreciate getting to know a few more cool people. The following three days will feature three couples and how they had the day of their dreams without sticker shock.

The Happy Couple: Cherie and Michael
Location of Wedding: Jordan Pond, reception at Hulls Cove Schoolhouse (on Mount Desert Island, Maine)
Date: October 4, 2003
Total Cost of Wedding: around $3000

Tell us about your wedding day. (How many people were there, what was the ceremony like, overall impressions, etc.) We got married outside on the lawn at the Jordan Pond House, with about 80 people watching. The wedding was officiated by the Deputy Town Clerk using our own twist on a traditional secular ceremony. We chose October with the hopes that we would have good foliage (we were actually a little early for it that year, but it was still pretty). We didn’t have a wedding party, so we picked our witnesses by drawing random numbers (we had numbered everyone’s programs). We purposefully kept the ceremony short and personal. I wore a simple blue silk dress; Michael actually agreed to wear a suit–which we had to buy because he didn’t own one. That was actually the second most expensive part of the wedding.

No Cash For This Clunker

Why I’m Keeping My Old Car

In the middle of this winter, on a sad day, I looked down at my odometer which was at roughly 95,000 miles. I vowed to myself I would be in a really interesting place when it turned 100,000. That event should be happening sometime in the next month.

I have the quintessential Maine car: a 2002 Subaru Forrester. It has taken me up mountains and through snow storms. It is an unassuming silver color, a great hider of dirt. And when you open the door, it smells slightly like a mixture of slightly stale coffee and my dog. It is not beautiful but certainly functional.

My Subaru, even when covered in snow, remains unconcerned about the weather.)€”Sarah Amend photo

I would like to say I am not particularly attached to this car. I bought it after the car I actually loved plowed into a moose about four years ago. I still haven’t forgotten what it’s like to plow into 700 pounds of massive animal going 60 miles per hour. My car was of course totalled.

I was moving the week after the accident though and if I wasn’t going to buy a car before I moved, it would take me awhile to get one after. The nearest car dealerships were over an hour from my new island home and as anyone who visits Maine knows, there is almost no mass transit here. In short, to be independent outside of Portlant, you need a car.

I’ve considered Cash for Clunkers (CARS as the acronym for the Car Allowance Refund Program). I’ve ultimately decided against it. Here’s a few reasons why:

Why I Love Reading Old Books

I’m a new school kind of gal. My job is almost entirely online. My ginormous computer is probably the second most valuable thing I own (after my car). I text, blog, and tweet and yes, all those verbs didn’t even exist ten years ago. I’m so new and shiny.

I’m also a little old school though. Eighty percent of my blog posts are written on scrap paper before getting typed(this one included). When I send cards, they are real life cards. And I spend time reading loads of books I’ve either bought from garage sales and used book stores, or borrowed from friends.

We could argue this last fact makes me a cheap, cheap person but there is, as usual, a little method behind my madness.

Reason One: I will eventually get to read the bestsellers, it’ll just be after everyone else.
I just finished ‘Water For Elephants’ a couple weeks ago, borrowed after my friend Susan read it with her book club. No doubt everyone else has already read it but I still enjoyed it, a year or so after the craze. And since bestsellers are, well, bestsellers there are a lot of copies kicking around, prime for the borrowing or purchasing for 50 cents at a used book store.

Sort of like scoring a piece of clothing one season late, I really feel like I’ve delayed gratification rather than missed out when I wait an extra year to read a bestseller.

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