People pretty much thought we were crazy. A wedding for under $2,000? On a Saturday evening? In July? With just seven months of planning?

At times, we thought we were crazy, too. As we piled 64 rock-hard avocados into our shopping cart at Sam’s Club four days before the wedding, I wondered, “Can we really make guacamole for 80 people on our wedding day? Will these avocados even ripen in time? What were we thinking?”

But it was important for us to make it work. We were tired of all the propaganda from the Wedding Industrial Complex telling us that we needed the perfect flowers or the perfect centerpieces to make our day perfect. We didn’t want to obsess about surface details or let the wedding overshadow our relationship. We wanted our wedding to be sincere, authentic, and memorable—a wedding focused on community and connection, not my wedding dress. We were convinced that we could make it work in a budget-minded, hand-crafted, eco-friendly way.

And—with the help of good-natured friends and family, a little luck (the rain stayed away), and a solid plan—we managed to pull off a stress-free wedding that was the truest expression of ourselves. It was better than we expected. It was full of seriously fun quality time with our friends, family, and—most importantly—each other.

Over the next five days, I look forward to sharing the story of our wedding planning process from its conception in a Mexican Restaurant to its climax with a choreographed dance to Prince’s “Kiss”.