Wedding Cash as gifts... Sure!

Ever since I got married, any time a bride-to-be would ask me for an opinion, I ultimately always answered: do whatever you want - it's your wedding! I still very firmly stand behind this advice. I know everyone wants to please their Mom or their friends or whomever - believe me, I did too! But ultimately, this is your wedding, and you want to do what will make you happy.

Photo taken from weddingrepublic.com*

A big debate amongst the wedding circle is: can I ask for cash as a wedding gift? Personally, I believe that YES you can! ...as long as it's done tastefully. But after doing some research on it, I could not believe how many people did not agree with me! Well, listen soon-to-be-brides, it is definitely becoming a lot more common to do so, so don't feel bad for thinking it. In fact, I have found some options that I think can appease everyone involved. It's all about compromise, right??

Photo taken from ourwishingwell.com

1. Include a very tastefully written Wishing Well card. Here is an example of one: "For those considering offering a gift at our forthcoming wedding, we both understand how time consuming and difficult it is to find the perfect gift. To save you that time and stress, we would be even more delighted with a cash donation instead. It would be the perfect gift for us." The wonderful Knot has some great tips as well: The Knot Wishing Well Cards. Or, just google "Wishing Well cards", and a ton of examples will pop up for you for some inspiration! 
2. Set up a wedding gift registry where your guests can contribute cash towards your gifts. I found this great site, ourwishingwell.com, where it looks like you can create your own list of items that you need, and your guests can indicate how much money they want to put towards that item for your wedding. This way, you will still get cash, but it will be put towards larger things that you may need more than your average toaster oven or dish towel.
3. Set up a Wedding Honeymoon Fund. Honeyfund.com is a popular one. In the same way that Our Wishing Well works, on Honey Fund you can set up lists for people to put money towards parts of your wedding honeymoon, ie: airfare, excursions, car rental, dining, etc. This way, the money you were going to spend on your honeymoon, can now be put towards something else for your future.
4. Register for gift cards only. I always thought this would be weird to do, until I found cardavenue.com! This website literally just gives you the means to register for gifts cards only for your wedding - so if you don't really need anything specific right now, you can register for gift cards at stores that you know you can use money at later down the road, like Home Depot, Target, Amazon, etc.
5. Word of mouth. So your Mom really wants to help you? Have her spread the word out to the family that you guys can really benefit more from receiving cash as a wedding gift... same goes with the groom's parents - they can tell their side of the family about your wedding gift wishes. Your parents can do the dirty work for you! ;)

I really do believe people would understand your need for cash over household items you don't need - especially those who have gone through the wedding business already! But it really is all dependent on what your guests are like. Only you and your spouse-to-be truly know, and so you will need to gauge on how you think your wedding guests will react to using any or all of the suggestions I've given you. If you do decide to go with a traditional wedding registry, then the key is to just truly pick what you only need, as well as only registering at places you actually shop at! This way, you can still add gift cards to the wedding registry as an option and you can also return anything after your wedding for store credit.

Ultimately, always be grateful for whatever your wedding guests may graciously give you - remember, gift giving is not an obligation for your guests, so the thought truly is what counts!

* This photo I found allowed me to stumble upon weddingrepublic.com, a great wedding site and blog that I think you readers can find some great advice on! It also has this blog post which furthers my argument that asking for wedding cash is ok! Top 5 Reasons To Use A Cash Wedding Registry.

Wedding Plan: Time's NOT running out.

Yes. Planning your wedding is stressful. Yes. You need to book things in advance. But if you plan your wedding right from the beginning, you can help prevent your brain from exploding. That means, from the moment you get engaged, go ahead and start the planning research!

Coincidentally, my friend just got engaged last week and she has asked me to help her plan her wedding. So what's the caveat? She wants to get married in 4 months. First off, if this ever happens to you, don't EVER tell your friend that it can't be done. On top of just stressing her out even more, the fact is, it can be done! Yes, you will have to let go of some things, and you really will need to keep an open mind, but that's just all a part of having a short engagement.

Image from hbaphotography.com

So what is it that I recommend to every one of my newly engaged friends? Work off a wedding timeline!! If you are not generally an organized person, this is the one thing I strongly urge you to take control over. Believe me, a timeline will allow your brain to wrap your head around everything you need to do and will keep your wedding planning on track!

Google "wedding timeline" and a whole list of websites will pop up to assist you on your journey. The one I personally like to use is from weddingcram.com.

As you can see, the list of tasks needed to do for your wedding is on a certain time schedule in order to ensure you do everything you need to. In the case of weddingcram.com, your planning spans over a 12 to 16 month period. So what do you do if your wedding is significantly in under a year? ... say in 4 months? Simple: adjust the wedding timeline to fit your needs! For my friend, I took the timeline from weddingcram.com and figured out her own wedding timeline in which she needs to get certain things done. You can use what's already there as a guide to know how early and how late you can start on something. Before you know it, you will have your own wedding timeline that you feel comfortable working with.

Tips on your wedding timeline:

• Remove any tasks that do not pertain to you. Maybe you don't feel the need to put an engagement announcement in the newspaper - scratch it off. Or maybe you aren't having an engagement party - scratch that off. The more tasks you can scratch off from the start, the better you'll feel about the amount of things you have on your list. Think about it: the list originally has just under 100 things to do. I guarantee that you won't need at least 25% of what's on there - Bam! now you're 25 steps closer to completing everything!
• Do not jump ahead! This is probably the most useful advice I can ever give a bride-to-be. Stay within the schedule on your wedding timeline. Seeing how much more you have to do will only stress you out! And if you take on too many tasks that you can handle, you'll be ready to kill yourself. Each task is within a specific time range for a reason - so follow it!

So, I hope this is a good start for you to begin your journey to your wedding. Simply having a timeline will work wonders on your planning and will prevent you from having as many freak outs as you should!

Wedding Diva? Maybe just a little.

I thought it would be a good idea if before I start throwing tips and suggestions at you, you knew a little about myself first. I mean, how can you trust someone with your wedding planning if you don't know who they are??

Well, to start even before that, I met my husband when I was 19 at Indiana University. After we graduated, we did a year of long distance while I went back home to Chicago to pursue my MFA and he stayed in Indianapolis to purse his MS. After his program was done, he moved to Chicago, and he's been living here ever since. Surprising to most people, we took a few years to "get to know ourselves", and it wasn't until we were 26 that we got engaged... that's 7 years after being together! Seems long, but when you start dating at 19, it's just what seemed right :)

Before I go on, I think I need to clarify that I am not a girlie-girl... like at all. But when it came to my wedding... wow! you would have thought I was a completely different person! My wedding was when I pulled out all the stops to make myself a princess for my special day.

So now to the fun stuff! After we got engaged, I pretty spent every single day for the next 1.5 years planning the best wedding I could for my husband and myself. I am Filipino, and if you know anything about Filipino weddings, they are MASSIVE. We invited 310 people, and about 230 came - and yes, we were close with almost all of them except for maybe 5 or 10 people that my Mom made me invite. In Filipino fashion, I had 18 bridesmaids/groomsmen, 20 Primary sponsors, 6 Secondary sponsors, 4 readers, 6 ushers, 3 flower girls, 1 ring bearer, 1 coin bearer and 1 Bible bearer.

As you can imagine, the planning for this wedding was extremely intense... but I had a BLAST doing it! And honestly, I would jump to the chance to do it all again! And the best thing about it? I totally kept my costs down as much as possible. Ohhh that's what you've been waiting to hear! Don't worry, I will get into costs often, as this is 98% of the time, a huge factor when planning a wedding. 

Now I am 30 years old, married for over 2.5 years, 1st time home owners in the suburbs since this past June, no kids yet, but parents to 2 very funny looking dogs. 

St. Giles Catholic Church, Oak Park, IL

So now that you know a little bit about my wedding experience, I hope to help you with yours! Please come back often as I will update my blog with as much useful stuff as I can.

Happy Planning!

Wedding words from yours truly.

I am by no means an expert at planning weddings, and I don't claim to know everything there is to know about such events. But what I do know, is that 4 years ago when I got engaged, I spent the next 1.5 years planning my dream wedding to huge success.

They say that you must prepare yourself for something to go wrong the day of your wedding - and they're true. You really should. But would you believe me when I say that there was not one thing that went wrong on the day of my wedding? Or at least, I fully prepared myself for anything that I thought might go wrong. Either way, it is extremely pertinent to stay ahead of the game to try your absolute best to get things right. Because at least then you know you did the best you could!

And here is how I hope to help you. I will try my absolute best to give you a blog forum where we can all share tips, give advice and suggest options to help make your dream wedding come true!