Category — the planning process

In Los Angeles, driving is a hazardous sport. For those who aren’t well trained at it (and often for those who are), disaster is lurking around every corner. Take it from us, who managed to total both of our cars within 2 days of each other, within 2 blocks of each other, last Christmas. Yep, it happened.

Roughly half of our wedding guests are out-of-towners, and we really didn’t want to subject them to unnecessary driving, especially given the mojito madness that we expect to ensue at our reception. We opted not to have our ceremony and reception in the same spot to allow us to realize our dream of marrying in nature, so that added yet another transportation hurdle to the game.

Even though our budget is super slim, we decided that shuttle service was a must-do for our guests’ safety and sanity. I can only imagine how late our wedding would start if we unleashed 50 midwesterners, New Yorkers and Europeans onto the mad streets of Hollywood to fend for themselves!

We checked into several options, but the one that won, hands down, was a no-brainer. Meet our double-deckered beauty, in all her glory!

(Topless Fun Tours? ‘Nuff said!)

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This week’s Advice From the Pros segment features one of the best photography duos on the planet, the fabulous Our Labor of Love.

Whitney and Jesse are two of the coolest people we know, and their amazing photography reflects their fun personalities. So we were very excited to interview them to hear what they had to say about weddings!

EAD: If budget is limited and there was one item that you advise splurging on, what would that be?

OLOL: Well, we will sound biased when we say photography, but from the benefit of our own, firsthand experience, we honestly mean it. When Whitney and I were having our own wedding, we thought, “Oh, we have so many amazing photographer friends that will document it for us that we won’t have to spend money there.” When we say “photographer friends,” we mean a friend who works at the NY Times, a stepmom who shoots for print magazines as well as weddings and a bunch of NY “kids” that graduated from Pratt–a good balance of folks to document everything from the traditional to the SX-70 Polariods. We thought we had it covered, but we were wrong, and it is the biggest (and, really, the only) regret we have. But we were also very picky, and the only photographer we wanted was 3,000 miles away and would have cost us $15,000. So, we have the half full and half empty ways of looking at this experience. On the half-empty side, we realize almost better than anyone that photos are the best way to remember the stuff you don’t want to forget and realized only too late that our friends were there to enjoy the wedding with us and not to work. But, on the half-full side, we understood from hindsight what shots we would have liked to have walked away with, and because we are photographers, we have gained from this experience an appreciation of each wedding as if it were our own, and we make sure to capture all that we missed from ours. (Oh, and we did have the Smilebooth set up which was AMAZING. My family is still ordering prints years later!)

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When we started planning, our number 1 goal (aside from the actual getting married part) was to ensure our guests came away saying “what a great time!” If we are going to spend this much money on a party, it had better be fan-freaking-tabulously fun, right? So, we’re trying to integrate lots of little activities or treats to keep our guests entertained and excited. I want to keep a few of these things under wraps to maintain an element of surprise, but I’m so excited about this one, I just had to share the news!

We *heart* photobooths. If we had all the money, we’d have one as a permanent fixture in the house, just for fun. And we’d probably jump in there once or twice a day to take some really silly cute, and sweet photos peppered by the occasionally obsene. Cuz that’s how we roll, yo. So, immediately we knew that a photobooth was a top priority for our reception. Lots of our friends are actors and/or hams, so mayhem is sure to ensue

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Hi everyone!

As some of you may know, my wedding is coming up in LESS THAN A MONTH now! November 15th, to be exact. Last Friday night, I met with my parents to go over the ol’ budget one last time and to see what else is left. Sounds like a pretty kickin’ Friday night, huh? Well, I have to brag a little, I was pretty much where I thought I would be. I am not one of those, what you would call, financial geniuses. Before we committed to anything major early on in the planning process, I did sit down and drew up a rough draft of the budget I wanted to try and stick to. From other friends’ weddings and lots and lots of internet research, I had some ideas of what things might cost and the prices that we needed to aim for. But the tracking spreadsheet?? Yeah, that was all my Dad. I got updates, and kept a notebook with all my contracts and info. I am by no means advocating that this is the smart approach… because it’s not. I should have been more exacting. But I wasn’t, and luckily it all worked out.

So in the interest of helping other brides just starting their planning, I thought I would share the rough rundown of my budget, where it went, and any tips I may have unknowingly picked up along the way.

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It’s been a real joy to be able to tell you about my experiences of planning our wedding. As a wedding planner the pressure was on from day one to produce a spectacular day (!) but I think we did an amazing job and couldn’t have done it without our friends and family behind us.

I thought I would leave you with a juicy selection of my favourite shots from our day. It’s been almost two months since we got married and it still feels so fresh. I feel really emotional pouring over these photos-hope you enjoy them…

This was taken just before the bridesmaids left the hotel for Pembroke Lodge. Nervous wasn’t the word!

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We have a new feature here on EAD - a little thing we like to call “Advice From the Pros”. Each week, we’ll be featuring one of the greats of the wedding industry and they will answer some of your most burning questions!

Our first pro is the incomparable Sasha Souza, owner of Sasha Souza Events, writer of the Sparkliatti blog, fire fighter, therapist, accountant, and all-around amazing event planner! Sasha is located in Napa and Beverly Hills, CA but has planned events everywhere from Tokyo to the Bahamas. She has been honored as one of the top three event designers in the country by Modern Bride magazine and has been featured on television shows and segments such as “Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?”, Eye on LA, and the CBS Evening News. We are so thrilled to have her stop by Elizabeth Anne Designs today!

EAD: What is the single best piece of advice you can give to brides and grooms as they begin to plan their event?

SS: There’s a lot of pressure with reading all the blogs, magazines, books and talking to friends. Just remember that a wedding is a very fluid and the planning won’t last forever. Things change – styles, guest counts, size & shape of bridesmaids…try to take everything in stride because you can make yourself crazy pretty quickly. The more flexible you are the more you’ll take everything in stride and enjoy your wedding planning.

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“What??” I hear you cry “you mean planning your wedding caused you problems?? How can that be?!”

I’m going to be totally honest. Planning our wedding wasn’t the most wonderful process. It was stressful, we argued constantly, fell out with family-you name it, it happened. Unless you’re in a situation where you have a massive budget and a wedding planner to take care of everything, it just won’t always be a bed of roses. You’re going to disagree on a lot of things and suddenly the issue of money becomes a really touchy subject.

From the moment we tried to set a date, I’d managed to upset my mother. Initially we wanted a June wedding so that our honeymoon wouldn’t cost a fortune at peak time in summer. However, as mum is a teacher, she has six weeks off from the end of July through August and she felt this would be a better time. To an extent it would be, but for us we would be fronting more money just to marry during summer (it gets very expensive in the UK). She wouldn’t talk to me for a week and refused to listen to my reasoning…and so we ended up booking for August.

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When you first get engaged, logistically you assume that the wedding is all about you. However in reality, once you’re a little further into your planning, you discover it’s 60/40 all about your guests and the further we got into our planning, the more we realised! Suddenly you’re worried about them being hungry, bored, overwhelmed-you name it.

In hindsight, there really weren’t any major problems for us and our guests had the most wonderful day (we’re still hearing about it now) but at the time it seemed all we did was worry about everyone being happy.

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It’s a real pleasure to be guesting for Rebekah and Ami this week. I’m a UK based wedding planner who writes her own blog about vintage weddings, but having recently been married I wanted to share my experiences with US brides and so I contacted Elizabeth Anne Designs. I hope I don’t disappoint!

We had an intimate budget wedding in August at a beautiful Georgian mansion called Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park on the outskirts of London.

{Pembroke Lodge}

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I consciously wanted to avoid not only the first dance, but also all of the other obligatory dances (father-daughter, mother-son, etc.) To me there’s always something forced, and slightly uncomfortable, about them. I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it. My (now) husband agreed. So you can imagine our horror when no one would start dancing until we danced together. It was frustrating, to say the least, and even a little embarrassing, since we hadn’t planned on a first dance and the first song to come off the iPod playlist was, ahem, Neil Diamond. We tried to make the best of it.

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