Monday, January 14, 2013

Outfitting the Bridesmaids

We're well into planning our wedding these days. The date has been chosen, as well as our venue, photographer, and officiant. I found my dress over the weekend (SO EXCITED), and we're 99% sure we've got the DJ and venue for the rehearsal dinner! Yup, I'm crossing things off the list rather quickly, and I'm happy to say one of the easiest things was finding the dresses for my lovely bridesmaids (you can see how I asked them to be a part of my big day in this post). 

I'll start off by saying I never had a concrete idea of how I wanted the girls to look on my big day. I was pretty laid back and thought if they each wanted to pick a different style of dress in a similar colour that would be fine, but if they all liked the same dress, I'd be happy with that as well. 


mixmatched
{via OneWed}

So, once all of my girls had accepted my invitation to be a part of our wedding, I began searching online for some pretty and affordable dresses. Each time that I found a dress that I loved, I would pin it to my private wedding board on Pinterest (that each of the girls have access to) and had them tell me which one's they liked. 


matching dresses
{via brides.com}

This seemed to work really well since the girls still had a lot of choice from the dresses that I had found. I was also thrilled to be able to virtually do the dress hunt with my girls, who are in three different cities than I am. The biggest bonus was being able to find a large selection of dresses all for under $100! This made me happy since I know each of my girls have other financial obligations. Plus, if we're planning the wedding on a budget ourselves - why should I make my ladies shell out a ton of cash for a dress they will wear once.

In the end, we picked a beautiful dress from Ruche, that wasn't even part of their bridesmaid collection. Since I'm back in my hometown working on wedding planning for the next week and a half, I was finally able to see the dress in person! The fabric is soft and beautiful, and the colour is perfect. We saw a similar style to it at the bridal store yesterday and it was double the price of what my girl's paid. If you're wondering - they only paid $65 for the dress. 

Bridesmaid Dresses


I'm thrilled at how everything is falling into place... especially since it's not always easy to plan a wedding from across the country.

Next on my list is the hotels, Save-the-dates and flowers. I plan on getting ahead of my to-do list this week if I can help it.

Now I need to know - how did you save money when you were planning your big day? What did you find useful to save on and what did you really splurge on? I'd love to hear all of your tips and idea's for planning and affordable, and beautiful wedding!
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12 comments

  1. I'm so happy for you!! Congrats on finding the dress! We saved a lot of money, but DIY our invitations, decorations and flowers. I went to a wholesale flower supplier instead of using a florist and my gf helped my DIY our flowers we had hydrangeas and roses. We splurged on our cake & food :)

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  2. What other sites/stores did you look at? I am a MOH in a wedding in August and we are struggling to find something that will fit petites to plus-sizes and is reasonable in price.
    Oh, and we all live in different cities so shopping in stores is hard!

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    Replies
    1. Hi Casey! I'd say that the two best sites were Ruche and ModCloth. They had some really great options for really great prices! Just be sure to not only shop the bridal sections of websites! Hope that helps a little and good luck with the hunt! :)

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  3. Wow, those dresses look amazing!! My girls saved big on their dresses too (we were ALL on the same page not wanting to spend $100+++ on a dress they're going to wear once). We made our own simple centerpieces, got tulle for the aisle on craigslist, and didn't have our photographer stay for dinner (do I miss not having a perfect picture of our first dance? a little...but the other pics make up for it, including the ones of us practicing our dance on the golf course!). Enjoy the plannin g- I had so much fun crossing everything off :)

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  4. Love the peachy pink bridesmaid dress! Your wedding is going to be beautiful Kerry. We saved by not hiring a wedding planner so basically it was yours truly that planned everything. We splurged on the venue, the reception and the food, but I saved on wedding favours (some DIY projects involving LCBO), thank-you cards (went with off-the-shelf cards instead of custom-printing), and believe it or not, my wedding dress! I found a Vera Wang that fitted me perfectly with no alternation required at all and it was on clearance so I saved a couple of thousand dollars.

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  5. So fun to get to hear about your wedding planning, and so excited that everything is starting to fall into place. I found that after getting the venue I just felt so much more calm. I can't wait to see a picture of your dress!

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  6. I'm loving hearing about your wedding-planning so far, and the best is yet to come! :)

    We saved money on our wedding by making our own invitations and hiring a photographer who was just starting out with weddings (hence a reduced price), but had immense talent (I still see his work now, three years later and it's phenomenal!).

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  7. LOVE your choice! I can't wait to see more details!

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  8. Beautiful dress Kerry, congrats getting this all checked off the to-do list!! We saved a ton by having my cousin do our photography, we didn't have a wedding cake (opted for lemon meringue pie instead!) and a little extra by making my own bouquet.

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  9. I love the color of the dress! My best tip for saving money -- we had our cake made by a recent culinary school graduate. He was looking to build his portfolio so basically gave us the cake for cost. The best part was since he wasn't an experienced chef we negotiated a practice cake as part of the deal and were able to serve that at a family party a couple of months before the wedding. Caveat -- it wasn't a traditional tiered cake; we did five cakes on graduated stands like a pyramid. So delicious and I have the recipe for future anniversaries. We also saved by finding a florist that also did printing and gave us a discount for doing both. Our big splurge was our photography. Seriously, a third of the budget. I love those photos so much, though, and the photographers (a husband-wife duo) have since stopped doing weddings and are successful full-time art photographers, so I guess we chose well!

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