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Update + Travel + Wedding Planning

January 18th, 2015 at 05:09 pm

So yesterday was a NSD - first for a while, I believe. Today, not so much. I finally transferred money over to the BF's account for rent (he pays it, and I thankfully have some flexibility if need be to pay it late). After receiving a few checks from clients, I decided to sit down today and round out my January payments.

- Transferred $500 to my savings account for taxes
- Paid the internet bill
- Transferred $200 to my Ally account for travel
- Transferred money from Paypal (book sales) to my checking account
- Transferred money from Amazon Seller Account (camera lenses) to my checking account

I'll be heading to the grocery store today, and I'm making a list to keep things on track. I've been really good this last week about not spending when I don't have to, and saying no to purchases that aren't priorities. I keep trying to put things in perspective: Would I rather buy ______ or take a trip somewhere awesome? Usually the traveling wins out.

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Speaking of travel, BF and I sat down today to plan out when we're going where. We are planning to move May 2016 to another city here in the states, and are going to take trips throughout this year to visit our potential cities and see which one we might like to live in. On the list: Nashville, Charleston, Kansas City, and Raleigh-Durham. On top of that, we both are planning on going out of town for our bachelor/bachelorette parties, and are taking a honeymoon likely to South America. So travel spending is going to be pretty intense this year. Hopefully our honeymoon will be funded through wedding gifts (we're asking people to donate to our honeymoon fund instead of buying us anything. We don't need any more stuff).

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In terms of wedding planning, we're going to visit what we think will be our venue tomorrow morning. Assuming everything looks great, we'll be signing the paperwork after seeing it. I'm really excited to have that task crossed off my list. Everything is really going to fall into place after that, I know. It'll be our biggest expense for the wedding for sure, but it gives me a frame for budgeting the rest of the wedding. We're shooting to fund the entire wedding for under $10k. I think we'll hit that mark because we're having a smaller wedding (around 75 people).

We're also allowed to bring in our own alcohol - which is huge. A friend of mine gave us the idea of having a "stock the bar" party instead of a traditional bridal shower. Every guest is asked to bring a bottle of liquor to the party, which stocks the bar and ensures everyone brings something they like. For 75 people, I'm sure that will more than cover what we need to purchase. We're hoping to only have to spend a max of $500 on booze. All of the other venues we looked at had alcohol packages closer to $2k. So that's a huge savings.

Oh weddings...

But seriously, I'm so excited! The cost is a bit of an ouch for any wedding, but thankfully I'm a serious DIY-er. Everything outside of the venue/food should be relatively inexpensive to pull off. I just have to find a photographer now. haha. 3 of my clients have now offered - including the ones who got married last night. They're hilarious Wink

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Okay, that's enough for now. Apologies for the novel! Hope you all have a fantastic Sunday!

5 Responses to “Update + Travel + Wedding Planning”

  1. bluesfemme Says:
    1421603027

    Have fun with all the planning :-) We had a wedding page and put some experiences on it that people could fund, if they wanted their money to go somewhere specifically (e.g., gondola in Venice, Leaning Tower of Piza tour, romantic dinner in Rome etc). Then, we also had a special picture to share with them on our return. Something extra if you feel like it!

  2. chloe Says:
    1421603284

    I'm curious why you're considering those potential cities -- do you have family in those areas? Where are you living now? I'd throw out Louisville as an idea if you're just looking for cool places to live in that general vicinity. I don't live there myself, but my bro-in-law does, and he LOVES it.

  3. rob62521 Says:
    1421617377

    I too wondered why you listed the cities you did. We have visited Savannah three times and hope, when I retire, to vacation there for a few weeks each fall and/or winter. We like Charleston, but like Savannah more.

  4. TD Says:
    1421702436

    @bluesfemme: That's a great idea, and I saw something like that in Blueprint registry's website. Did you use that site, or another that you would recommend? We might get a bit more in depth once we decide on a location Smile

    @chloe + @rob62521: We live in Northeast Ohio, and want to go somewhere a little warmer, but not *too* warm. haha. We've heard a lot about these cities being fun places with a young, hip scene - for a lack of a better way of explaining it, we've just "heard good things," and the weather is about right. haha. We're certainly not against looking at other places, though!

  5. bluesfemme Says:
    1421761889

    Sorry I can't remember the site - but it was nine yrs ago so it's probably defunct! It was american i remember that - i don't think we had anything here at the time. It was like saving advice blogs, i.e., yrnamechoice.weddingsite.com It didn't have the facility to remove a choice automatically - ppl had to contact my aunt and she put an update on the choice. I didn't put the web address on the invites, but included a separate info sheet, with map showing wedding & reception venues and details about the registry.

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