Planning a Wedding on Short Notice - Part II

Only 19 days left until my wedding. The time is getting shorter. I still have a lot to do, but I have gotten a lot done in the last week or so as well, which is what I'd like to talk about.

First off, we found a suit for my fiance. A few days ago, we went out to look for suits, but not in the typical places most people would look. We only stepped inside one formal wear place, in which my fiance got measured for a suit jacket. Then we proceeded to stop at every Goodwill and thrift store we could find. Given, we didn't really find anything that looked good to us there... but there were plenty of options for someone who's not as skinny as my fiance.

After using up all our thrift store options, we headed on to Burlington Coat Factory. We had previously checked the Target nearby to see if they had any decent suits in stock, but they didn't... although according to my mom they usually have very good prices. Not as good as a thrift store probably, but still good. Anyway, as soon as we walked into Burlington and made our way over to the men's formal wear section, we knew we had found the place. Everything was beautifully hanging on racks, covering a good fourth of the store, and there were red "clearance" tags on practically everything. Suit jackets we had seen for $400 at the first formal wear place were marked down to $60 or $80 here. It was excellent.

TIP: You don't have to go for the most expensive suit (or tux) for your man, or for his groomsmen either. There are options (like Burlington Coat Factory) that allow you to BUY an entire suit for the same price it would cost to rent it, and your man will get to keep it, too. Make sure you shop around before you settle on anything, because you don't want to end up paying $150 to rent a suit one time, when you could have bought it for $120.

So, we looked through almost everything, and then picked out this beautiful suit jacket ($70) and matching pants ($30). Jordan tried them on, and they fit great! He won't even have to get anything tailored. So that was a pleasant surprise. We'll still have to buy him a shirt, but we can get that for $10 or so, max. I love finding things for good deals.

The other thing we've been working on this week is table settings for the reception. It's so hard to get all the tables arranged right when you have an awkward sized room like we do, and limited table choices to begin with... We were going to just use the 6 foot rectangular tables provided by the church, pushing pairs of them together to create bigger, square tables... But that cut down a lot on space because of the corners sticking out. And we were thinking about using some dishes from the dining room at our church (they would let us borrow them for free, so that was definitely a plus), but most of them looked pretty worn out--not something you really want for a nice wedding reception.

Thankfully, over the course of the week, we found two great solutions to our two problems. My mom talked to our caterer about the tables, and he gave her the name of a place that he rents tables from, which just happened to have exactly what we wanted, for a very good price. (TIP: It pays to use your references.) We will be able to rent round tables from them that fit 8-10 people each, and are significantly lesser in diameter than the square tables. The company will deliver them two days before the wedding if we need them to, which is really great, because a lot of places won't do that. Plus they're really cheap to rent, as I mentioned.

We actually solved the dish problem today. After church my mom asked someone about the dishes in the dining room, and if there were any nicer ones. Sure enough, they have some stashed away for special occasions such as this. So that will be perfect for us.

Our biggest accomplishment this week, I think, was finally getting our wedding invitations out. I bought the "print your own" kind, since I'm a graphic designer and would rather design them myself anyway, and also made maps and response cards to put inside. Then my fiance stamped them with a wax seal my mom got for us to use, and let me tell you, they looked fantastic. We asked them to "handcancel" the invitations when we sent them out via USPS, so that the seals wouldn't be prematurely broken as a result of being run through a machine.

Over the next week, I have goals to find out who I'm using for my hairstylist (and my fiance's and our two attendants), go apply for our marriage license, and get a pair of shoes to wear with my dress. So, I should have plenty to report on in the next installment...