Shay and Ted's Amazing DIY Wedding

See Ted and Shay's Engagement Session

Ted and Shay's Wedding Website

Cake: Cake Eater Bakery

Dress: Shaylyn Bernhardt

Howdy Strangers!

Yes, the wedding is still happening even though I haven't posted about it in almost 2 months! I've been a little busy, as you'll see below.  Budget is limited, and everything is on the two of us, so this is what we've been occupied with to make this shindig happen:

Whew! Details to come, just let me catch my breath-

xoshayox

The crying and hair pulling has come to an end....for now.

With just a little over 2 month until the wedding, we've made a drastic decision: we're canceling the reception at Grumpy's. GASP!

It's my fault, I'm too stressed out. My plate is overflowing with so many choices that I'm going to need to make a decision about in the next year, that I just can't handle planning what has become two separate events for the wedding. AND more than that, we just can't afford it.

We have some pretty big plans for the next couple of years; moving half-way across the country, new jobs/education are on the horizon, we're getting older...we just can not justify taking out more loans and putting ourselves into more debt to make the reception happen.

Unfortunately this decision has been made AFTER the invitations were sent out, so now it's time to grovel and beg for understanding from the people we can no longer accommodate.

I feel like a dick, but it had to be done. I guess this is my less-than-formal apology, but it will have to do.

The wedding is still on; the ceremony is still taking place we just can't have 350 people there.

New plans are in the works and new invites will arrive in email inboxes shortly. Onwards and upwards, right? I'm retreating to my parents' house in North Dakota for a long weekend and will emerge a shiny happy person.

Peace out-

shay, the defeated bride

Three years of awesome eating!

If you know Ted and I, you know we love all things cooking and eating!

From shopping for food and growing food

To entertaining with binge/purge-worthy feasts

To by-any-means-necessary tactics of getting food

Special occasions are always a treat no matter which one of us takes on the cooking tasks.

For our three year anniversary, and the last of our dating anniversaries (which is a good thing cause we made the date up since neither of us could remember the actual date of our first date...July 1 sounded good enough), I came home from work to the most amazing smells of potent garlic, pungent cheeses, and creamy butter sauces.  Voila!

Home-made hummus, my favorite triple creme cheese, seared scallops, blue cheese-bacon risotto, and plenty of Founder's Cerise, Sauvignon Blanc and Prosecco to wash it all down.

Oh yeah, and he gave Penny a bath so she didn't smell too bad either!


Back off girlies, I've got this one locked down. 

Sincerely,

The luckiest gal in the world

We're more practical than cheap, or practically cheap

I love all things ephemeral: clippings from magazines and newspapers, postcards, note cards, labels, photos, etc. Our living room is cluttered with shelves and stacks of old novels, atlases, how-to books, you name it. I guess I'm a sucker for visual inspiration in the physical form, which is why it totally bums me out to not send actual invitations to everyone.

Due to our financial situation, I long ago gave up on doing what other people expect from a wedding, so we're going digital! Email invitations felt tacky to me at first, but after looking at a couple of different sites that offered such services, I met my new friend, Pingg!

It's probably similar to all of those other sites, but Pingg's site design is so clean and crisp, it made me feel less cheap about the whole idea.

You can design your own invite, or use one of their templates. We ended up using the same graphic of our mugs that I stamped onto the coaster save the dates.

Pingg lets you email, text or snail mail the invites, which I thought was pretty cool.  And they track all of your RSVP info and send follow-up emails to folks who don't respond.  Oh yeah, and it's FREE!

My favorite thing about their invites, is when you receive the email and click on the link, it takes you to a site with an envelope on the screen. When you click on the envelope, the invitation slides up! Fun!

In an effort not to confuse people, we're only sending these out to the masses that are invited to the reception, not the small group invited to the ceremony and reception, to whom we already mailed invites.  I'm totally over thinking this, and I'm super worried that people who received our snail-mail invites are going to be confused about not getting the Pingg invite...Should I just send the Pingg invite to everyone, or leave it as is? Am I starting to lose my mind? Maybe a little....

xoshayox