Venue search...

We finally have an appointment to visit T&S Farms on Monday Oct. 6th. I am so excited to finally go and visit. I am working on my list of questions to ask. I hope this location lives up to my expectations.

Mr. Jim LeBlanc

One thing we knew before we ever got engaged, was that if we did get married we definitely wanted Jim LeBlanc to play at the wedding. My fiance has been going to see Jim play on a regular basis for years and I have been going with him since we met. We love Jim! He is a very talented musician and we love the music that he plays. We always have such a good time singing along and that's exactly the vibe we want to carry over to our wedding. We are so excited that Jim has agreed to play!
Here is a picture of Jim playing one night at Delaney's in Five Points.

grading papers, bleh...

So one of the many joys of now being in graduate school is the hundreds of papers I get to grade each week now. School has pretty much entirely consumed the last week or so, with little time for wedding planning stuff. I have worked on our Christmas cards a little more. And I've bought most of the stuff for my cake decorating class now. We don't meet this week though. My mom is all excited about making this wedding cake now. The problem is, my mom's idea of a wedding cake, and what I want are two very different things. I absolutely HATE columns on wedding cakes. If I am going to have a tiered cake, it will not have columns. I am still not convinced that I don't want cupcakes, but if I do end up with a cake this is the one I want with slight modifications:

I am also considering having several small cakes displayed on pedestals.

diy projects... the beginning

My mom and I did a bunch of wedding crafts shopping today while my dad and FI worked on fixing my computer. I found the envelopes for our Christmas cards/engagement announcements. We also bought several purple flowers that were on sale. We also bought several more large birdhouses.

On Saturday FI and painted the smaller birdhouses that we had bought at the dollar store. Here is one of those birdhouse perched on top of the flowers that I have arranged. We are planning on having these on the tables.

And here is a mock up of our Christmas card/engagement announcements:

stamps

Yay! I got my bird stamps! I've been loving these stamps for a while and a finally have a reason to buy them and a 50% off coupon. I've been having fun playing with them and my new heat embossing tool tonight.

photographer=found

I am so excited that we have a photographer. We have a good friend (who just got married her self) who is a fantastic photographer. Before we could even ask her if she would do some pictures for us she excitedly asked us if she could be our photographer. This is fantastic news for us!

i love these photos

I came across the blog of Justin & Mary today and I am just in love with their photography. Here are some of my favorite engagement pics from their blog:





































Now I just have to remember these images for when we go to take our engagement photos (hopefully soon).

everything is cuter in miniature

I absolutely want to have cupcakes at our wedding. I love to eat cupcakes and they are just so darn cute. Plus they are cheaper, especially since we are going to make them ourselves. To help us with our cupcake decorating skills my mom and I are signing up for a Wilton Cake Decorating class at Hobby Lobby. (This class is 50% off in the month of September!!!) Hopefully by the end of the month we will feel absolutely ready to take on my wedding cupcakes.

Some lovely purple cupcakes from Martha Stewart.

a farm wedding?

My newest find in the search for a venue is T & S Farm. It is owned by Shealy's Barbeque, which has awesome food. We were originally not going to have the wedding catered and were going to try and do it ourselves. But the rental fee is much less than the other places we looked at so we would have more money for food and this would be way easier than trying to do it ourselves. Here a couple of pictures:
Outside Inside


























Things I love about this location:

• I love the chandeliers, although I still think I will hang paper lanterns
• I really like the idea of having long tables instead of round ones
• They provide tables, chairs, and linens
• I feel like this location has a lot more personality than a banquet hall or ballroom.
• I totally want to get married with me and my FI standing on this little bridge
• We can keep a very casual feel to the whole event
  

Things that worry me about this location:

• The closest "decent" hotels are 15 miles away
• It is about 35 minutes from where we and all of our friends live. The only reason this bothers me is because of people having to drive home after our reception.

So far the pros outweigh the cons, but then I haven't even been to visit yet. Here's a look at some great barn weddings though:


Photo credits: (Top) Real Wedding on The Knot (Bottom) The Knot

begin here

There are a few things that we knew for sure when we started to plan our wedding:

• We are going invite all of our family and friends and not leave anyone out
• We will have an affordable wedding (Under $5,000)
• Our friend and musician, Jim LeBlanc, will play
• Our main color will be purple

Well that leaves a lot of things left to be determined. First is choosing a location. This is proving to be a difficult task. I have spent many hours scouring the internet for venues I did not know about in Columbia, SC. I have found lots of places that I have not known about, but most of them do not have websites (gasp) so I will be making appointments to visit most of these in the upcoming weeks. Since there is very little information about these venues online I will try to provide as much detailed information as possible.
Today, we went to go visit Gibson Commons in Lexington, SC. They actually do have a website that you can check out. It is an affordable venue at $1,500 rental rate for an entire Saturday and includes use of the outdoor patio and gazebo, the ballroom, tables and chairs, and catering kitchen. They also allow you to choose your own caterer. One thing that has impressed me is that the event coordinator responds to all of my emails very promptly. This is much more than I can say for the other venues that I have attempted to contact through email. The outdoor area is very nice, however I am not so sure if I like the setup for a ceremony there.

Now with all of that business stuff behind us, let's talk colors. I think we have decided on this color palette: