Packing, Planning, Organizing, and Finally Getting Up to the Lake

Getting Up to the Lake

When we started talking about getting married, my immediate reaction was to elope. I didn’t think that we could have the kind of wedding I wanted on our tiny budget with my insanely large family – so I figured we should just forget about it. Our families ended up contributing about 1/4 of the budget which helped us tremendously, and my fabulous husband had some money tucked away that made it possible for our dream wedding to happen.

Despite all the do it yourself, garage sale-ing, thrift store, craigslist, small town goodness, I think our total budget came in under $15,000 (this includes housing for 45 guests in houses and another 20 or so camping or in loft space, rings, clothes, van rental, flowers, day of coordinator, invitation paper, the whole shebang).

Even up to moments before we left for the wedding, I thought I would regret having spent that money. Now, I would never give up the experiences, the laughter, the togetherness, and the love for all the money in the world. It was totally worth it.

Mishaps along the way:

We rented a pick-up truck to deliver the garage full of vases, wine glasses, cases of wine, 15 8’ tall branches, etc. When we arrived at the enterprise location (about 30 minutes away to save $200), the truck was way too small. Lucky fix: they gave us a more expensive cargo van for the same price!

After my original flower order was canceled by organicbouquets.com about three weeks before the wedding, I ordered flowers from Sequoia Flower Mart in Santa Rosa (about half way between our house and the wedding location). I was specific in my order (25 bunches of white ranunculas and 10 bunches of babies breath). I had done all of my planning around white ranunculas and babies breath.

I talked to them a few days before pick up, gave them a deposit, and we were good to go. After Bubbs and I packed up the van and drove away (at 8am), I headed straight there to pick up the flowers (we brought two large plastic bins to put them in). When I arrived (with my future step-mother in law in tow) they showed me 7 bunches of PINK half dying ranunculas and 13 bunches of freesia. I calmly explained that my wedding didn’t have color in it at all (and if it did, it sure wouldn’t be pink), and that it just wouldn’t do.

Thank goodness for my days of relaxing and my motto for the weekend "at this point, you can't do anything about any problems - go with the flow." I repeated that motto to myself over and over again as the days went by. AND it worked.

Lucky fix: they gave us beautiful lisianthus and freesia, and about 100 extra stems for the same price as the ranunculas – had we ordered the lisianthus to begin with our cost would have been double!

We ordered our beer in kegs from the local organic brewer. It was a little confusing making the order and we had difficulty getting a hold of the right person (which was a lot of our experience in this sleepy Mendocino town). Hardly anyone works on email which is my preferred method of communication.

When Tim arrived to pick it up they didn’t have the correct order ready and he had to wait about an hour (after a two hour drive with another hour to go) to get the kegs. When he arrived at the Lake, I realized that they had given us the wrong size and amount of kegs and charged us too much. We called and they came out to fix everything. Lucky Fix: to make up for their mistake, they substituted the regular stout we ordered with an amazing special brew aged stout that blew people’s minds.