About

When we first started talking about getting married, my fiance and I were thinking firehouse wedding. We kept saying things like "Keep it really simple and small. No more than 3 grand for the reception! We can decorate ourselves!"

I suppose we could have pulled this off if we were some other couple in some other time, place and phase of life. But the fact is, we're older than a lot of newlyweds (I'm 40, he's 38) and we have no delusions of grandeur. Both of us are self employed business owners just trying to meet mortgage and other expenses each month. We already have a son together who had just turned 2 at the time.

In other words: our life is busy and full. So an extremely frugal, "do it all ourselves" wedding just wasn't in the cards for us. Nor was a "soup to nuts" fairy tale wedding for a glamorous, June bride. We didn't expect our parents to foot the bill for our wedding, and fully planned to fund the entire affair ourselves. That said...

What we ended up with:

November nuptials, held at the Somerville Elks Club, on a Saturday at noon, with a local band that we know and love – The Willie Lynch Band. The band was our gift to ourselves, and the one thing that we didn't want to compromise price on, but everything else was negotiable. We had a GREAT time, and received many compliments from our guests, on everything from the priest to the venue to the food to the music.

Unlike so many other NJ brides for whom the wedding day is the be-all, end-all of occasions, I really set to the task of wedding planning with a practical and frugal outlook. You can think of your wedding as a princess-bride's dream come true... or you can think of it as I did: 5 hours that will slip by in a heartbeat – and you want to make those 5 hours as stress-free and enjoyable as possible. You also want to avoid spending time and money on things that, ultimately, no one is going to care about or remember anyway!

If this is not your NJ wedding philosphy, that's cool... there are plenty other wedding blogs out there which will be more to your taste. I'm a simple girl with simple needs. So in this blog, I'm going to show you ways to majorly trim expenses and get your precious time back, while still making your wedding tasteful and fun.

If you have your own ideas about this, please feel free to share them in the comments area!