As most of you know, I got engaged on March 7, 2020. Yes, the week before the worldwide pandemic started! Crazy timing, but that has given me lots of extra hours to meticulously plan out every little detail of our wedding. I decided to blog the process for several reasons. The first reason I wanted to blog was so I have this to look back on in years to come. As a bride, you put so much effort and energy into wedding planning that you forget so many of the small details that went into it. Another reason I wanted to share the planning process was because we have decided to have a small elopement wedding, we are introverts with extroverted careers, and want this moment to be intimate with just our families. We want our friends to feel like part of the process, even if it’s just online! Looking back this may have been the best decision we made considering the times. Lastly, I wanted to blog to help other brides & grooms planning their weddings. I know what the average cost for photography in the Charlotte, NC area is but before this process started I was oblivious to most of the other costs involved. I could always suggest vendors but only based on personal relationships or their end product. I promise during this journey of blogging the Wilmoth Wedding to be as transparent as possible when it comes to finances as well.
Once we decided on the date and the venue, which also decided our guest count, the next step was the start with our Save the Date stationary because our engagement is only going to be 8 months to the day. Most of our guests have never been to our venue, besides one couple, heck we hadn’t even seen our venue but more on that later! I really wanted unique stationary for the wedding and because we had a smaller guest count I figured I would be able to do that. I teamed up with a graphic designer who specializes in wedding stationary online and began the planning process. I sent her over a picture of the venue and asked her to create a Save the Date by digitally watercoloring the venue and adding florals that are from the area of the venue. We decided on a combination of two fonts, one more scripted and the other feminine but blocked. I asked her to stick with our wedding colors of emerald, navy, and dusty rose. I was very happy with what she came up with. I paid $96.02 for the custom digital design. I believe she was very happy with it too because she now offers our design in her shop for $30 less. You can check out the listing here.
Since I’m a photographer myself, obviously, I decided to use my own professional printing lab to print the Save the Dates. I ordered 5x7” flat cards, double thick with a linen texture. They cost $31.25 to print. They did come with white envelopes for that price but I wanted to use more of our wedding colors and was very drawn to the darker envelopes. I was deciding between emerald and navy envelopes but ultimately went with navy as the options for greens were very limited. I loved the pointed flap envelopes because I intended to put our return address on the backside but honestly I forgot when it came around to it. The envelopes cost $11.64 on etsy. The one thing I knew I wanted was to have the envelopes hand addressed. I thought I wanted calligraphy but that was only because I didn’t know the difference in calligraphy and hand lettering. I had a super talented industry friend Candace Sharpe do the hand lettering for me. In case you’re local, she not only does amazing hand lettering on envelopes but also is an amazing wedding planner! I’ll be honest, she did them for me for free even though I tried to pay her. (She did write out the addresses completely, I just photoshopped out the street address for this post.) I never knew how complicated writing addresses for formal events could be, there are so many rules especially when you have military family members, divorces and juniors…of course I have all of the above!
Now that I had the Save the Dates printed and the envelopes addressed the next step was deciding how I wanted to present them. I turned the Pinterest of course and saw the vellum sleeve, which I loved. The vellum jackets I also found on Etsy for $28.90. The Pinterest inspiration I liked had ribbon and a wax seal to hold it all together. I love simplicity but also texture. I went with a raw edged ribbon, 1/2” wide in color nude pink. The ribbon was $19.84 for 2 spools, found on Etsy. I’m sure you’re noticing a theme here, most of what I purchased lately has been through Etsy! I really wanted a custom wax seal with a W on it but Jonathan said not to overuse the W because I was going to become sick of it before it even becomes my last name so I settled on a two toned white with gold flakes wax seal. I have actually helped a previous bride and high school friend of mine with wax seals for her wedding. Let me tell you, they aren’t easy to perfect and I am slightly OCD so I found a self adhesive seal. So easy and so worth it! The wax seals came from, you guessed it, Etsy for $23.94.
With this next part, you might think I’m a little crazy but I promise it happened organically and mainly I blame the quarantine for this ridiculous yet perfect discovery. I looked on the USPS site at their stamps and saw they had a wedding section. The selection was adorable but only included 3 options and unfortunately those were full of corals and oranges, which didn’t match my theme. I really wanted to tie back in the flowers from the Save the Date into the stamps so I googled magnolia stamp. Apparently the Southern Magnolia stamps were only created in 1998 and are 32 cent stamps. I had NO idea before this that vintage stamps were a thing but after some quick research, I decided I needed to have them. I ordered the Southern Magnolia stamps which I had to source from 2 different companies to have enough, 18 cent Pink Dahlia stamps and the 1978 American Trees 15 cent stamps. I spent a total of $98.64 on stamps but that is enough for not only the Save the Dates but also the invitation suite which will be designed and sent out in a few months. I linked what I could but I purchased all of the Southern Magnolia stamps from both places that I found them.
This blog ended up much longer than I intended but welcome to the life of wedding planning with the (soon to be) Wilmoths!
Grand Total Spent on Save the Dates: $310.23