Smitten Whittens: Expectations

Let me give you a direct quote from yesterday's post:

"Tomorrow, you can expect a post on how I asked my 'maids." 

So.... I don't know how to break this to you, but friends, it's 11:15, I'm just now sitting down (cough, laying in my bed on my phone) to blog, and that post isn't happening tonight. 

Here's why: I spent my day at IKEA buying stuff for the wedding, working with my mom on our table seating arrangements, working with John's mom on the same thing, and then, creating a chart for said seating arrangements. It was a pretty full day, as most days have been lately, and I love staying busy! However, I hate when busy pulls John and me apart, which it has sort of done lately. 

He's been working like crazy on our house after putting in long days at work, and I've been preparing for our wedding and starting to prepare for a classroom of six year olds (although honestly, even that has been pushed to the side with all the little wedding to-dos that are popping up left and right!). Between our two crazy schedules, it leaves very little "just us" time. 

Tonight, we desperately needed that. So he picked me up, we got ice cream at Chick-fil-a, and we drove around, just talking. 

Although we love to be silly, a lot of our serious talks throughout engagement  have centered on one thing: expectations. It's hard to go in to marriage without them, but they can be so dangerous. If you want to listen to a really enlightening talk on how damaging expectations can be, just watch this Andy Stanley sermon. It's super relatable, and I highly recommend it, whether you're engaged, married, or even single! 

Basically, desires are healthy, but when we turn those desires into expectations, where we become unhappy when they're not fulfilled, it can get messy. 

This semi-serious post may seem like it was more work than if I had just stayed true to my word and shown you how I asked my bridesmaids, but I want my blog to be an authentic space, where I share "real life" wedding planning with you- not just the cutest crafts and decisions. An important part of our engagement season has been working on and growing in our relationship, which isn't always easy. Ultimately this wedding is leading up to a marriage, and that's what really matters. 

Plus, I figured, hey, you've waited almost eleven months to see how I asked my bridesmaids, what's another day going to hurt?! ;)  

Smitten Whittens: Band vs. DJ

When I go to a wedding, there are a few things I will inevitably do: 
1. Get emotional when I see the groom watch his bride walk down the aisle. 2. Pretend to fix my hair so I can sneakily wipe tears from my eyes without looking dramatic. 3. Eat wedding cake.

Now, these are all guaranteed, no matter the wedding, but if it's a great wedding, there is a fourth inevitable thing I will do, and that is dance. 
And to dance at a wedding, I require music. (Gotta keep my reputation as a relatively sane human being.)
In my opinion, music, and the dancing that comes along with it, can either make or break a wedding reception. 
The southern girl in me loves shagging and swing dancing to beach music, and if the moment is right, you may find me wobbling or shuffling to a line dance (but seriously, at the right moment, with the right DJ who knows not to play the entire 5 minutes of the "Cupid Shuffle," because WOW that gets old fast). However, for me, it is never, ever grinding, because that just isn't me. Now, that's not to say I don't wanna hear songs like "Yeah!" by Usher, because I will totally dork-dance my way through that with interpretive dance moves! 

Can you say classic?!
Obviously, not everyone feels the same way I do about the same kinds of music, and that's what makes wedding entertainment so tricky! My goal is to get people on the dance floor, and I want them to stay there! However, when my guests range from ages 2-88 (true story), it's a little difficult to find music that will please everyone. 
I didn't know dancing at weddings could be so fun until last May, when I went to my first wedding with a band.... And it. was. awesome. The band was phenomenal, playing the most fun songs that kept people of all ages on the dance floor all night, and as if that wasn't good enough, they had these backup singers and dancers that looked like they were straight out of the movie "Dream Girls." I was sold. I knew when John and I got married, I'd book a band.

Ugh, can Bey just come play at my reception?!
Until I realized that booking a band means paying for a lot of people. And really good bands have really steep rates.
I talked to many people about many different bands, but for the kind of band I loved- the kind of band people would talk about for years after the wedding, we'd be spending more money than I'd be comfortable spending on one element of the day, no matter how important that element may be.
I almost signed a contract with an okay band; in fact, I did sign a contract with an okay band, but ripped it up before I put it in the mail. Because I had a realization: I would rather find an awesome DJ, and pay more for him than the average DJ, than find an okay band, and pay more for an average band than I would for an awesome DJ. Does that make sense?? Basically, awesome DJ who was a Blue Ribbon Vendor with Southern Weddings (AKA the wedding gurus, in my book) = less money than "meh" band who did covers of Prince my parents weren't crazy about. 
I'll end this with a short pro/con list about bands and DJs, but ultimately, I think John and I will be very happy we saved that money from my parents and put it towards something down the road, like six months worth of mortgage payments! ;) (I wish I was kidding, but price is definitely a good bands biggest con...)

GO DJ: less expensive than bands of equal caliber, more variety in what they can play- not stuck to a certain setlist of songs, take up little space

NO DJ: generally not as interactive with the crowd, can be bad at reading what people actually want to hear, not as exciting or special seeming as a band (I mean, my eighth grade dance had a DJ, and the MAC counter at the mall seems to have one every weekend)

GO BAND: live music is more special, gets the crowd going, looks phenomenal
NO BAND: costs more than a DJ (I mean, you're paying for more people, duh), takes up way more space than a DJ (this is also a factor I hadn't thought about, but with our covered pavilion space being precious at the reception, this is another reason I'm actually grateful the band thing didn't work out)

Tomorrow, you can expect a post on how I asked my 'maids! (Over ten months ago... #oops)

Smitten Whittens: My Best Wedding Planning Advice

We’ve all heard the advice: enjoy your first few days of engaged bliss, and then, when you’re ready to take on wedding planning, the first thing you should do is talk budget.

Now, I’m here to tell you this is fabulous advice (heck, I talked about that with my parents a little before John and I got engaged… Curiosity got the better of me one day when I had a feeling a wedding might be in the next couple years!), but I’d like to give you even better advice. Don’t just have a budget talk; have a numbers talk.

A “numbers talk” includes budget, but it isn’t limited to just money, because for me, budget has not been the trickiest part of wedding planning. The real thorn in my side has been the guest list.

Now, you should know I’m a total planner, so I wanted to get down to business ASAP. However, I didn’t want to freak our families out a few days after our engagement by sitting them down, and asking them to help create an estimate guest count. I also wasn’t worried about just families; I was worried about John. He is not a huge fan of awkward conversations, and a conversation where you’re essentially asking your parents how much they’d be comfortable contributing and how many people they’re thinking of inviting versus how many you’re hoping to invite is, well, awkward. 

Now, in hindsight, I say embrace the awkward, because ultimately, it will save you a lot of stress, guilt, and frustration. You’ll go into venue-shopping with a clear idea of capacity requirements, and you won’t want to cry when you think about how much more the catering (and bartending, and linens...) will cost than you anticipated. Let me tell you how I can say all this with confidence...

Like I said, I didn't want to force awkward on everyone, so I decided, “No need to freak everyone out! I will just create a ballpark guest-list myself!” (Can anyone else tell how terrible of an idea this is already? Yeah? I thought so.)

In my mind, the guest list was great. It included all of my family, all of John’s family (plus a handful or two of question marks where great-aunts and second cousins would naturally go), plenty of family-friend spots, and John’s and my closest friends.  The list was right around 150. So, when John and I found out our dream-venue maxed out at 200 people? That’s fine! We aren’t expecting any more than 140 people to actually come! Our favorite venue was the perfect size, so we signed the contract immediately!

I later realized I was way wrong. I asked for a guest list from John’s family, and went through my family’s address book. I told my parents I was being “cut-throat,” and my poor, selfless parents just nodded and let me decide which of our family-friends made the cut, even though they were the ones footing the bill. I was determined this celebration would be about John and me, and it only made sense to invite people who would be in our future. Will they be on our Christmas card list? Nope? Well then, they're off the list. 

Now, when I received the guest list from John’s family, I realized how selfish I had been- John and I couldn’t just decide who was important enough to invite to our wedding. Our family's opinions mattered too. After understanding my embarrassing mistake, I went back to my parents, and apologized. I had been overly aggressive when I was trying to keep the guest list small, and I didn’t even consider whom my parents wanted to invite.

Ultimately, when all was said and done, our guest list was a little over two hundred people. Yikes. I had sorely underestimated our guest count, because I shied away from a numbers talk with our families.

Now, obviously there are people who won’t come, but a lot of my guests are family (both of my parents come from bigger families) and a lot of John’s guests are family-friends who live nearby, which means lots of people will come. And we are so, so excited about that and very blessed to have so many loved ones! We are also very thankful we are right at our venue's limit and not way above it!

Whew. That was a lot, but I just wanted to give y’all our story, so you’d understand why it’s important to have a numbers talk! Now here is a short list of how to have a productive numbers talk:

1. Come in with grateful heart. No matter what your parents can contribute, they should have some say in your wedding. I don’t care if they’re renting out Disney World or cannot contribute financially. Either way, they have supported you since you were born, and they will give crucial emotional support leading up to the big day. If you go in with no expectations, you will be delighted with whatever comes!

2. Come in with an open mind. Know that what you think is a reasonable guest list and what your parents think is a reasonable guest list might be two totally different things.

3. Have the same talk with both families. Don’t do what I did and be super strict on one side and not even address the other! If you are truly going in with no expectations, no one should feel offended that you brought this up; it's just part of wedding talk! 

4. Do what makes you happy. Yes, I've been saying to be flexible and open-minded, and while I had to learn to do all this, I never gave up my vision for what John and I wanted: an intimate, casual yet classic, Southern wedding about the marriage. Thanks to my mother’s great advise she’s given me for a long time, I’m a firm believer a wedding should be what you and your groom want. So if you are set on a certain venue that you know has a capacity constraint, or you are dying for a small, intimate wedding, go for it!  However, make sure you’re clear about this during your numbers talk so everyone is on the same page with how many guests to invite!

Is anyone still with me? I know it's a long post, but I promise, doing this will make you the happiest bride-to-be in all the land! I also promise my future wedding posts won't be nearly as wordy or boring! Next up: music.