I LOOOOVE typography and unique wedding day ideas. This is what you get when you combine them. What a lovely idea! Forget wedding programs. Let’s face it. Your guests are probably going to toss it anyway. Your parents, in-laws and, perhaps, a few bridesmaids may keep one…but most are going in the garbage. Why not whip up a eco-friendly idea like this! Not only are you saving trees, but it’s an eye-catching conversation piece, too!

Want to see more unique chalk typography? Head over to Dana Tanamachi’s site here.

Thanks to Apple’s FaceTime application, bridesmaid Renee was able to attend her friend’s wedding virtually, via iPad.

The bride, Jamie, was very thankful for this technology which allowed her friend, who was 1,600 miles away, to interact with the couple, the wedding party and other guests. Check out the video below and you’ll see one of the groomsmen walking down the aisle, holding the tablet with Renee and her sweet smile beaming at the happy couple. You’ll also see Jamie and her bridesmaids posing with the iPad, proudly showing off an enthusiastic Renee.

How creative and thoughtful! Is technology playing a big role in your big day? Tell us about it below!

Well, regardless of what your budget is, you’ve got to decide what your priorities are, commit to those priorities and be willing to be more flexible with other areas of the budget.

Here are a few ways we stuck with our smaller wedding budget:

1) Save on flowers. Or consider a unique alternative. I had no desire to budget money towards something that was going to wither away and die. I spent weeks perusing blogs for floral alternatives. Thankfully I found my bouquet solution when I stumbled upon Amanda Heer’s amazing brooch bouquet creation. She created a beautiful piece of art that we now display in our home, plus 6 mini-brooch bouquets for my fabulous bridesmaids. (These also doubled as bridesmaid gifts.) We rescued some silk florals from one of my cousins who had recently gotten married and integrated those with our centerpieces for our reception. See below. If you’re set on real flowers, ask around. You may have friends who have connections and could help you get wholesale prices.

2) Serve guests buffet style. Philip and I LOVE barbecue. After a bit of research, we found that Whitt’s Barbecue could help us keep food costs under budget, while still serving a delicious meal. At the end of the day, we only spent about $550 feeding our guests…which came to approximately $4.75 per person. This included tasty barbecue, buns, potato salad, coleslaw, sweet and unsweetened tea, water, plus 2 people to help serve our guests. We felt like our reception was a fun, backyard barbecue!

3) Save on wedding stationary. It’s easy to break the bank with paper products like invitations, place cards, wedding programs, save the dates, etc. While these items are absolutely lovely, it just wasn’t in our budget to splurge in this area. The only paper products we used were wedding invitations, response cards, programs and thank you cards. I found a lovely wedding stationary design/set at Target and printed them myself. The paper was a cream color with an apple green letterpress-feel design. I setup the print design using a pretty purple font. See below. I bought a box of 50 invitations, envelopes, response cards and envelopes for less than $35 per box. Quite a deal! I also printed our programs using cardstock and scrapbook paper. Plus, I only printed two programs per reception table.  I did not print programs for every guest. This was one of my few DIY projects and I was very pleased with how they turned out and how much we saved.

So these are a few of the ways we stayed on budget with our $5,000 wedding. Many people think that lower costs means skimping on quality or losing the “wow” factor. I hope you can see that by setting priorities and staying flexible and creative, you can make your wedding a fun, thoughtful experience without going broke.

Are you planning a wedding? How are you splurging or saving? Do tell!

Ashley’s Bride Guide, plus the network of amazing brides I connected with throughout our engagement, provided such amazing inspiration and support as we planned our wedding here in Franklin, TN.

Had she offered the event I’m about to tell you about during our engagement, I would have been ALL OVER IT. Okay…so drumroll, please…You’re invited to…

This event is a three-week series starting next Tuesday, March 13 and will run through the following two Tuesdays as well.

While bridal shows and magazines are fabulous for inspiration, if the couple doesn’t have a vision or budget in place, the inspiration can lead to frustration. (And I can speak for experience on this one!) That’s why Ashley has created The Smart Bride Boot Camp to educate and offer the inside scoop on setting realistic expectations to plan the wedding of your dreams on a budget you can afford.

Last year’s first-ever boot camp was life changing for the attendees. Many of them still email Ashley, letting her know that their wedding was completely different as a result of real talk about weddings.

Click here to register and comment below if you plan to be there! Hope you’ll join us!

Inspiring you down the aisle and beyond…

Krista

Why hello, friends! It’s been awhile, huh?! I’m sad to say that, after doing a mass update with my WordPress plugins, my blog was compromised and somehow started promoting Viagra and Cialis. Very odd. Anyway…thanks to my amazing programmer friend Grant, we’re back up and running!

I’m REALLY excited to tell you about an upcoming event that I’m apart of with Ashley’s Bride Guide…but you’ll have to come back tomorrow to learn more.

Ashley will be covering an incredible variety of topics, so whether you’re a seasoned blogger or you’re still not quite sure what all the fuss is about with social media, it will be well worth your money to attend the event and learn from the panel she’s put together.

I’ll be discussing best practices with Twitter, Facebook fan pages and Google+.

Here’s what attendees had to say about Ashley’s last Blog Camp:

Click here to learn more and/or register. Hope to see you there!

(Here I am at Wedding 101 for the Wish Upon A Wedding Nashville Launch Party with the fabulous woman behind Ashley’s Bride Guide.)

If you’re a local wedding vendor, a professional in the health care industry or just a guy or gal looking for a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, consider hanging with the board members and wish granters for Wish Upon A Wedding Nashville on October 23 in Smyrna for our first annual “Pins For Love” bowling tournament.

The cost to participate is $20, which includes two games and shoe rental fee. Contests throughout the event include noncash prizes for the winning team, most strikes, spares, highest individual score and highest series. Drawings for door prizes will occur throughout the event as well. (I’m giving away a few fabulous Rodan+Fields products.)

To read the full news release about the event, click here. Ready to register? Get registration info here. Hope to see you there!

I’m proud to share that our chapter was successfully launched in May and we officially have every board member position filled! (Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re not always on the lookout for help. If you’re interested in volunteering with our board, leave a comment on this post!)

One idea I’d come across was a wedding wish jar. I initially found the idea over at the Marsha Stewart blog, however, the jar we ended up using was an adorable little “wish pot” I found at Swoozie’s in Green Hills (which is now closed).

This adorable little wish pot now sits in our living room on a shelf. It’s full of paper hearts upon which friends and family wrote sweet words of wisdom and encouragement. I love lifting the lid now and then to read a few of them.

Another idea I discovered thanks to Natosha over at Big Spoon, Little Spoon is a wedding tree print. She found it on etsy and shared it with me. There are a variety of “wedding tree” posters there which you can customize to your heart’s extent. I just did a search for them and here’s what I found. Here is what ours looked like:

This was a super-cool way to personalize our guests’ signatures and create another memento to enjoy for years to come.

Are you doing a guestbook? Have another unique idea for capturing guests’ signatures in place of the guestbook? Please share!

In the words of Minnie Pearl…How-DEEEE! I’ve missed you, friends! As you’ve probably realized, this blog has been on a brief hiatus for the past several months.

Towards the end of June, I quit my job to pursue my passion. That’s right…Mrs. Dial is now a full-fledged business owner and entrepreneur! Due to business, Becoming Mrs. Dial had to take a back seat for a while. I’m very happy to say, however, that she’s back up and running! (If you’re a business owner too, please go check out my other blog – Revealing You. Over there I’ll be covering social media, online marketing business tips and insight from other business owners too!)

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will open up about some of the things I’ve learned in my transition from “maiden to married”, offer insight for how you can get beautiful skin for your wedding day (and beyond!) and, as always, provide insight and inspiration about how you, too, can create a dream wedding on a budget.

I do hope you’ll sit down, kick back and stay awhile. I’m really glad to be back and can’t wait to stir up some great conversation with you…

Warmly,
Mrs. Dial

Thanks to technology, however, I got a front row seat!

The British Monarchy has an official YouTube Channel fittingly called TheRoyalChannel and I was able to catch the entire ceremony  in one clip! I’ve uploaded here for your enjoyment:

Kate was absolutely stunning. Simple, elegant and breathtaking.

I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate the Royal Wedding than meeting up with my girlfriend Suzanne, who is a wedding planner (and actually woke up at 3am to catch the wedding in real-time!), and meeting up for a Royal Tea Party at Lulu’s in downtown Franklin. Here we are enjoying lemon tarts, petit fours and tea, of course:

Did you catch the wedding? Were you up early like Suzanne this morning? Or were you a straggler like me, coming in late to the party? What was your favorite part?

My favorite part was the vows. You could sense a bit of nervousness…(as I can only imagine…being on a world-wide stage!) However, I loved the way the seemed to gaze at each other. It’s the way I remember Philip and I looking at each other almost a year ago, when we were encircled by our closest family and friends. So hard to believe it’s almost been a year! Time sure flies!

In honor of the Royal Wedding, I’ve created a clip about how you can give your skin the Royal Treatment…but you’ll have to head over to my other blog, The Skin CEO, to see it.

Wishing you much love and joy on this beautiful Spring day!