Where to go? (Wedding Sites, please!)

[thudfactor]

OK, I don't have a site post, but I was hoping for a site suggestion. As you may (or may not) know, I am getting married in September. We're trying to plan the wedding, and we want to make it as non-commercial as possible while still inviting a lot of people. I've been looking for help online about planning this sort of thing, but all the sites I've found steer us towards expensive, corporate-like stuff. Anything out there on how to home-grow a wedding? Web is great, books would be nice, too, and a friendly online community would be bonus!

(I'd google it, but I'm not sure what to call it. DIY Matrimony?)

[sheila]

Have you picked up copies of Modern Bride (or whatever other Bride magazines are available)? They sell at the grocery store check out or wherever you buy magazines. Usually has good wedding planning tips.

[thudfactor]

Yeah, we picked a copy of Modern Bride up, but seeing as 3/4 of the magazine was advertising we didn't trust it to tell us how to do the wedding-on-a-string-budget thing.

[Dunx]

Congratulations! My fiancée and I are getting married in March next year.

We're using the Bride Magazine wedding planner. It's got a nice mix of tips, checklists, and example forms to use.

Haven't been looking at magazines all that much, but we did get a copy of the Bravo Wedding resource directory which is excellent (obviously have the Portland, OR edition - don't know if they do others).
Good luck!

[skolnick]

John,

I was married last September in Fairfax. Second time for both of us, so we were at once more relaxed and more clear about wants and "don't wants." You could describe what we did as throwing a party at which a wedding happened. We got married in my/our back yard.

We signed up for a couple of (free) on-line services that we didn't use once we grabbed all their checklists. The Washington Post has a pretty good one.

Stream of conciousness:

Caterer -- references help, tasting "parties" help, but don't forget to be clear about what happens to leftovers. We got a better deal renting a tent, tables, and chairs seperately from the caterer.

Music -- make sure there is enough power. We had a live band, and I made sure I had a lot of heavy duty extension cords and access to outlets on three different circuits.

Cake -- [warning - strong opinion follows] simple is good -- reduce the chances of a disaster in the driveway durng delivery. The cake guy wasn't probably the single biggest pain of the whole thing.

Pictures -- photographers are expensive or bad or both. Take a deep breath and deal. Sorry.

Parking -- if you are somewhere with no lot, an attendent to park cars for parents, officiant, etc and wave everyone else to where they should go solved a lot of problems.

I built a web site with a formmail type contact page for RSVPs. We were really surprised -- out of about 200 invitations, we got about 5 phone calls, 20 or so old fashioned hand-written responses, a few e-mails, and over 150 people who used the form (which had links to directions). I'll PM you a link. You can have all the code, although the page is a bit ugly at the moment (can't find the CSS).

[JWM]

An online friend of mine runs the WedFrugal site: http://www.wedfrugal.com/

Lots of good articles and resources on getting hitched without breaking the bank.

jim

[Tom]

You might snoop around theknot.com... with things like 99 ways to save. Might also look at their index which even has some local links.

Best wishes,
Tom (19 years this month)

[thudfactor]

Thanks, all! I'll check these out when I get a breather today.

[Mandi]

No advice or links, but congrats to you and your intended !

Edit: This book sounds interesting. I got a bunch of likely hits with "alternative wedding*" and "inexpensive wedding" too.

[thudfactor]

thanks, Mandi! We'll probably order the "Alternative Wedding" book. Right now, things seem to be coming together, though. We're planning on getting married on a farm belonging to the parents of one of the bridesmaids and having a pot-luck reception. :-)