4 Months, Tears, & Venue Proposal Revisions

First of all, thank you guys so much for your great comments! I'm glad so many of you are willing to offer your thoughts. Mr Pug and I talked and of course, were in agreement about getting rid of the fruits and the projector (the projector was a last minute "why not" of his, and the fruits were since we wouldn't be able to do a dessert buffet.) We are sort of ambivalent about the champagne... I said, "Remember at that wedding, there wasn't a champagne toast!" And he said, "Um, yes there was." Which says to me 1. I was too drunk and 2. If I, crazy Pugzilla Bride Blogger, did not notice or care either way, others might not either. Also, thanks Katerina from GirlWithARing who said her parents really cared about it... we realized before setting anything in stone, we should probably talk to our parents in case something is super-important to them.

Realizing what an "average" budget in your area is seems to be a hot topic. Many of you commented on it, and I noticed it on the Weddingbee boards today here. WB member Snake posted this Cost of Wedding site, where you plug in your zip code and find out the average range of the cost to get married in that city or town, not including the ring or honeymoon.

Ready for this? My hometown of Caldwell NJ has an average wedding cost of $41,918 and $69,863. Yes, seriously. Well, I guess to those of you in Beverly Hills CA ($57,216 and $95,361) would be jealous of that. (Yea that's right, I plugged in 90210!) Indianapolis IN comes in at $16,369 and $27,282, which I think is reasonable. With the $40+ a plate (for CHICKEN!) and thousands-of-dollars venue rental fees we found, I think that means a lot of Indianapolis weddings are smaller than our 200-guest goal. We had to venture north of the city to get a great cost ourselves.

Back to our proposal. I called my mom on the way home from work and had a good cry. I knew this all was coming- the 19%, the cost for drinks, etc.- but had to just cry about all the money we lost when I lost my job (and we had to spend all our savings to get by) or when we had the other money issues I haven't blogged about, and a leaky roof. I complained about the parents who give their kids 30 grand and say "have fun!" I lamented about not having people to talk to about this in my real life. She lets me vent and is so wonderful. She wishes she could help, but my Dad not having life insurance when he passed away really screwed her financially. (CALL YOUR PARENTS AND MAKE SURE THEY HAVE LIFE INSURANCE, NOT JUST FOR YOU, BUT FOR THE SURVIVING PARENT!) Her support really made me feel less gloomy though, and she told me to get in there and hug my wonderful fiance. Which I did!

Just after I went over the spreadsheet Mojito helped me make, Mr Pugs was playing X-Box Live and I was folding my mountains of laundry. And the phone rang. It was our venue's representative. She wanted to clarify a few things on our proposal which I had emailed her about. The first was that I had asked her about linens- and yes, they were included in the room rental cost, not left out accidentally. (YAY!) The other was the bar. (Gulp!)

We had come up with a few bar options we wanted priced, and had expected them all to be on the proposal. In her call she said that she could only put one in that program, but wanted to tell us our other details. What we had on our proposal was the most expensive option. The soda was included (I split it off in my spreadsheet) and it was all $7/person for the first hour, and $3.50/person for each additional hour. She said the other two options would be cheaper! First was the option to buy our own kegs and wine. Second would be to do a consumption bar, where we put any amount of money down, and then decided what drinks we would serve. If the money ran out, we could pay more money that night and keep it open.

Here are my thoughts about the options:

Host Bar Option:

This sounded like a good option, but I was having a hard time deciding how much wine and beer to estimate. I looked at the Real Simple and evite estimators and struggled with, "is this the right amount?" It would be different if we were buying them ourselves, but already paying an up-charge by buying through our venue, I thought consumption might be better. Plus- we'd still have to do the pay for soda versus no soda debate!

Consumption Bar Option:

This option is where we do a set amount. We can select which drinks are available (we'd do domestic beers ($2.75 each) and house wine or champagne ($5.00/glass) and maybe even a premium wine if that means Riesling! ($6.00/glass) Sodas could also be included then for $1.50 each- that way, we pay per soda ordered, not per person! This would be a good option for a couple wanting a signature drink- if we wanted to include, say, a Pugtini, we could make that available too and only pay for the ones ordered. Any other drinks would be available but for cash. I think a good amount to put down would be $2,500. Then, if we are getting close to hitting that mark, our coordinator finds us (or a parent if we designate them) and we can add more money to our consumption bar tab. Even if we go over the original bar cost we were quoted ($3,500) by adding more later in the night, that's money we didn't have to worry about paying in advance. That's what wedding gifts of cash are for!

Here's what our venue budget looks like:

The only thing different for total cost is the reduction of the bar cost to $2,500. Choice 1 eliminates fruits and projectors, and Choice 2 eliminates those plus champagne. I feel much better! We can also do a bit between Choices 1 & 2 by doing all sparkling grape juice.

When has something bad improved for you in wedding planning? And who do you go to for venting purposes besides your fiance?

ps... I'M GETTING MARRIED FOUR MONTHS FROM TODAY!!!!!!!!!! HOLY $(@*#!!!!!!!

Holy 19%, Batman!

If I could tell any newly-engaged girl a tidbit to help her, I now know what it would be.

DON'T FORGET THE SERVICE CHARGE.

Looking at venues, we would do math in our heads, looking at either per person cost, or the minimum, etc. We knew that most places have an 18-20% service charge, but didn't really think about it. I guess in my head I maybe thought it wasn't that much? Well it totally blew our venue budget. Remember when we went over what we wanted at Palomino, and she said she'd type it up and send it to us, and then we could add/change/delete? I got that email. And it blew me away. I made it into a spreadsheet, which I am going to share with you in a minute.

Before you read on, I want you to note that it wasn't an easy decision to share this with you all. A lot of money to one person is nothing to another, and vice versa. Some of you have posted your budgets, or I've seen some on wedding sites, and a lot of the time I'm sort of judge-y. You know, like, "They think that's a budget wedding?" So I'm asking you to put yourselves in my shoes- remember the cost where we live, remember that we're paying for the wedding ourselves, and remember that we are very, very poor and this is a lot of money to us!

Okay, off soapbox. Onwards!

Here's the beginning of the excel document I made. I did this so I could add columns where I could then omit items and see where we stood. The total cost is for everything listed on the proposal.

Above are the food items. This could change depending on what people order, and most importantly, how many people come! We selected the fruit and strawberries thinking it would be nice, as not everyone loves cakes. They will be getting a dinner salad and rolls, meal with sides, garlic bread, drinks, and cupcakes- $840.00 more? For that they can stop at Arby's on the way home if they are honestly still hungry after the schmorgasboard. SORRY! Geez Louise that's more than we're paying for cake!

Below are the non-food details... not so bad! I LIKE OUR SUBTOTAL! That's just above where we were hoping to be.

Wait a second... there's more.

Yep you can't forget that SERVICE CHARGE! It was nearly 2k for us, and for more pricey areas/higher budgets, this could get expensive and quick. But that wasn't all...

About 3k above where we would feel comfortable. I calmed myself down and thought through the details. I was really upset that to have a cheaper bar, we'd need to pay $2 per person for soda. They get free water, coffee, lemonade, and iced tea, so chopping this was an option. (Soda comes with any open bar package, but we chose just domestic beer and house wine.) The fruits are definitely out, as well as the projector and screen. We thought it would be nice to show a slideshow during dinner, but for that cost, the $25 bar TV's showing our slideshow will be enough. Something to do while waiting for drinks!

I took these considerations and made a few choices.

Choice 1- All options except the fruit desserts and projector. This would run us $10,116.01.

Choice 2- Same as above, but also no soft drinks. This would run us $9,608.01

Choice 3- "Bare Minimum." Same as #2 but also no champagne toast, uplighting or ceiling swags. This would run us $9,036.51.

Choice 4- "Desperation." Same as #3 but also cut our decorative mirror monogram, candle-lit window, and our sweetheart table chargers. This would run us $8,849.82.

I emailed with two of my blog gals, Laura from With This Ring, I Thee Blog, and Stephanie from I Do at the Zoo. Stephanie was kind enough to send over her bar and food spreadsheets to compare! And Laura added columns detailing what she though would be necessary versus what could be cut. Here's the spreadsheet with her additions on the right:

Luckily, Laura is also crazy about excel. I'm sure you can't read this, just trust me, it's a magnificent document.

I feel confident that Mr Pug and I can make this work. We'll be cutting things for sure! What smaller things on my list would you cut? For example- would you be ok with lemonade, water, coffee, and tea? Would you prefer to see the tulle swags with twinkle lights go, or the green uplighting? Do you think the champagne toast is more important than soft drinks? Should it be all sparkling grape juice to save money? Would you be baffled if there wasn't a champagne toast?

Thanks for not judging, guys! And thanks Laura and Steph for listening! We're going over this tonight, will probably sleep on it for a while, and then have to give the final go-ahead from our proposal in early January. I'll letcha know!

Tasting, Yo!

We had our tasting tonight at Palomino!

Granted, we knew what we were ordering, but... we wanted to taste it! Plus ours were free! We invited Mr Pug's mom as well. We tried the Caesar salad as well as the garden salad. Their honey mustard dressing was an A+ (my favorite) and Mr Pug was ga-ga over their ranch (it is homemade!)

For our meals, I started with the chicken. It was lightly breaded with some sun dried tomato cream sauce drizzled on. The flavor was great! It came with mashed potatoes (also A+) and green beans. We all loved it.

Mr Pug started with the vegetarian lasagna. It had spinich and carrots in it. None of us are vegetarians so it was more of a side dish to us, but we think it will be a hearty option for our vegetarian friends. It came with green beans as well.

On a whim we ordered FMIL Pugs the pork. It was herb encrusted and FMIL Pugs, who normally doesn't love pork, was all over it. We'll have to look at cost and see if we might offer that as an option if it's only $1-2 more than the chicken. It came with roasted potatoes (delish!) and a lemony broccoli.

Naturally, I forgot my camera (I'm a little distracted by something going on with our Bugg) but made Mr Pug take a picture of the bar area on his phone.

I forgot how HUGE it is! All around this room there are tiny tables with 2 of those red chairs at each. There are also 2 TVs that can have our photos on repeat. I think this will be great for our wedding!

Did you do a tasting before picking your menu?

The Dreaded Venue Meeting

So, Thursday was the day. The day we banged out the details with our venue. Anyone ever see that one episode of Say Yes to the Dress where a girl comes to get her dress and claims it's not the right dress? I was afraid that it would be a case like that. We remembered thinking we could do some things and then not seeing them in the pre-meeting packet they sent us. We booked in January, so there have been months and months for our memories to evolve. I comforted myself pre-meeting with some bacon white cheddar mac! YUM!

That only helped for so long since we fought in the car about the situation. About what we remembered... and how much it cost. About how we would do it all differently if we knew then what we know now. About how we would pay for it all. It was miserable... we don't do well with uncertainty. Luckily we arrived and Anita, our Palomino Ballroom consultant, was chipper and super kind. She has 7 or 8 dogs and so we obviously connect with her.

We luckily found out that we didn't have to commit to anything that night. We would go through her list and give her information (what time we'd arrive, number of wedding attendants, who our vendors are, etc) and pick things (linens, do we need appetizers, what type of table set up, etc) from their options. She will be sending us the print out in a few weeks, that she warned would be 14, 15, maybe even 20 pages! That will have the total and we can cut/add as necessary in the privacy of our own home.

Something nice was realizing that Anita was pretty much our DOC but just for the venue. She frequently asked what drinks we like (alcoholic and non) and what type of cupcakes we'd like- so she could arrange for us to have them. No asking the MOHs or Best Men to take care of us! She also sets up everything. They were all set up for today's wedding on Thursday, minus a few items. Check it out:

It was great to see it set up. Those table # holders are free! Now we need to think of what we want on there! We are also doing these chairs... covers or nicer chairs are out of our budget. We took the pictures in full light for photo purposes, but with the lights dimmed and candles (and black linens) the chairs are less noticeable.

There's that gorgeous window! I think she said each candle in it is only $1... much less than I thought. They did a head table, but we'll do a sweetheart table with our family and wedding party members at the rounds around us.

Below shows a table set up.

Ours will be black tablecloth with a damask table runner made by 'maid H's mom. The napkins will lay flat and spill off the table for color- they'll be green! Our centerpiece will be from the florist as mentioned, but we'll also rent votives. They rent for 50 cents each. We'll then lay our menus on top of the napkins. Voila!

What, no champagne with the pugs picture like I planned? Nope. Turns out Indiana is pretttty strict on a lot of laws. They needed names of wedding party members under 21 (sorry MOH R... looks like you'll be scroungin') and GM brother J. No alcohol can be put out because of that liability. We also found out that our dessert buffet is o-u-t OUT! No food from non board of health approved sellers. Our cupcake lady is fine but nothing homemade. To remedy these, we'll probably do the pug sign on the table #'s, and then we added fruit trays for each table and a chocolate covered strawberry display to our proposal. The strawberrys would be the first thing to cut if we're over budget, but the fruit will be smart for some healthy and delicious late-night snacks in addition to the cupcakes. Plus, some people aren't that into sweets.

Other great news? The venue previously told us that cabs wouldn't come that far north. Still true. But now the bus/van company that you can rent from also can be "reserved" to be like a taxi. AKA, our guests would pay instead of us! We couldn't afford a shuttle so this adds a great option for people who might drink too much.

Speaking of drinking, the bar was our biggest issue to discuss. Food is a great price- the entrees we chose were under $20 each. But the bar options are so endless. We were pretty much set on doing wine and beer with a cash bar for all else. Unfortunately, we realized that would mean if we want to offer free soft drinks, we'd need to pay the fee per person for that. So while 90% of our guests wouldn't get a soft drink, we'd have to pay for them all. Kind of poopy. (Note: they do provide lemonade, iced tea, and coffee for free!) Anita suggested doing a host bar. We put down a dollar amount and set our limitations (ex: no top shelf, no shots, etc) and it's an open (yet restricted) bar until our money runs out. When it's close, Anita would tell us and we can choose to add money and extend it. We would have to pay by the end of the night though. And how do you guess/know the cost before hand? The pro of beer and wine is that we know what we're paying. But- there could be leftovers, plus the soda costs, which would be a waste of money. (We'd purchase the kegs and wine cases of our choice.) However we could always add on a case of wine if necessary. The host bar would be nice but I think it could get pricey fast- and I'm not sure that providing liquor drinks will be that smart, or necessary really.

We had Anita put both packages on the pricing, so we could compare their cost.

We are also able to decorate the area outside the ballroom. Above is the left side when you walk in. There are two of these tables, and we thought we could add some photos of us, the pugs, and on one table, memorial photos of our deceased family members. The table in the hallway area will be our gift table. The mirror above it can have a monogram of our names put on it- another thing we added to the list that can be cut if necessary.

Below is the view of the more right hand side. The room with the buffet things is a small additional fee. It's used for buffets where there are more than 200 guests or for a cocktail hour if you get married and have your reception in the ballroom. We aren't doing either so we are not renting the room.

The door to the right is the coat room. The table to the right will be decorated like the one above. The glass table will have some sort of guestbook and a floral arrangement. There will also be easels with the seating assignments. Anita suggested splitting it in 2 easels at least (A-M, N-Z) for traffic flow.

Having everything laid out in front of us actually made us feel better! Have you had this kind of meeting with your venue? What plans didn't work, and what things did they offer that made you excited?

Also- we got our photo request cards this week!

I love getting those little Vistaprint boxes!

Like my convenient finger coverage?

I'm really happy with how they turned out! Now I just have to figure out how to distribute them...

Now, off to a wedding today! I'll update you all tomorrow!

Twinkling Candlelight

One of the things that Mr Pug and I loved about the Palomino Ballroom was their massive decorative window. We'll be putting our sweetheart table in front of it, and since we're having a nighttime (dinner) reception, we'll be utilizing these:

Photo by the one and only Erin Hession Photography, who shot a beautiful wedding there recently.

The Palomino Ballroom offers a lot of in-house things that you can't rent out yourself- everything from their catering to their chairs to these wonderful window candles. It's their way or the highway. Their way for this window will cost you something like $100. Could it be done for less? Absolutely. Is it so beautiful that we're doing it anyway? Yep. Mr Pug especially loved this. And it's just under 50 candles so it would have at least cost us $50 to DIY. One less thing to worry about that will have a huge visual impact.

What wonderful, unique things drew you to your venue?

Our Venue... The Palomino Ballroom!

As promised, I have returned with reception venue information! We are actually doing our ceremony and reception at this place:

The Palomino Ballroom! It is in Zionsville, a suburb due north of Indy. It's a tiny bit of a drive but a very easy straight shot there. It is one ballroom which is nice for us, since it makes it more personal-service, not like "bride one, bride two, bride three" being cycled all day through multiple rooms.

They have this wonderful window, which I think we'll put a sweetheart table (like above) in front of. For a small fee they will do the windows with candles like you see above and below. It's absolutely worth it... just think of the photos! I am so excited! (And so is Erin, our photographer!) I love below, the look of it at night. I want our ceremony to start as late as possible for that reason. See the chairs? We can't afford to upgrade, unfortunately, so this is what we're using (can we register for chair covers?!?!?! LOL!) as of now. I think at night they are less noticeable.

The people at Palomino are great to work with. It is family-owned and operated, on a bunch of beautiful land.

Below you can see the room with chair covers. Clearly, much better. However, we really had to think of our budget. If we are going to blow it on things like that, why did we ever try to find a more budget-friendly place to begin with? Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm not on some platinum weddings TV show, and I think it's important to ground yourself before you go crazy on tiny, expensive details. That was hard for me to do but I know our wallets will eventually thank us.

It can still look good without chair covers, right? (below)

The decor alone is so simple, so there is a lot of room for easy personalization: one of the reasons we fell in love. The other reason was clearly the food, but that's for another post!

They also have a built in dance floor, in front of a stage for the band or DJ. We are going to be very non-traditional and do a cabaret-style ceremony with reception immediately following. Basically, the DJ will be set up on the stage but with a curtain hiding them. We will get married on the dance floor with everyone sitting in their seats like below. It will be a shorter, more personal ceremony, with the party immediately following! Since many guests are traveling tons of miles just for us, we'd like to make it easy for them when here, and not traveling between a ceremony and reception site makes it easy. It also helps our budget- no church fees or decorations, as well as no cocktail hour while they break down a church-style setup (what would have had to happen if we did a traditional ceremony at the Palomino.)

I really like the black tablecloths... I think with dimmed lighting and some beautiful green accents, it could pop!

All of the pictures are courtesy of the Palomino Ballroom website.

What does your venue offer you that you love, or don't like so much? And what sacrifices do you have to make there for budget?