Well, Target has had a coupon out for a bit now for $2 off any Archer farms deli purchase over $2. You know what that means right? Free deli stuff!!!

Well, the downside for me is, there are NO Super Targets in the Louisville area. The closest one is an hour and a half north of us by Indianapolis. Last weekend we had to take the kids to my parents house, and also paint the area for the wedding, so we decided to head up to Supertarget after that was done. We got LOTS of packages of deli meat (about 1/3 lb packages), and cheese, plus some salads and fruit packages. Total before coupons was well over $100, after coupons was less than $20 (including the rest of the painting supplies, etc.). We were planning on using all of this for our wedding food, then my mom told me she had found someone who will do 100 lbs. of BBQ pork for $80. And a friend of hers wants to cater the rest of the wedding for the cost of food only, as her gift to us. So we accepted that offer, adn will use the lunchmeat for school lunches, etc.

Gotta love those Target coupons!!!

We wnt shopping today, to David's Bridal. I didn't want a traditional wedding gown, I just don't feel that is appropriate, so I went straight to the bridesmaids dresses, etc. I had looked around penneys and a few other places last week and found NOTHING that wasn't "summer flirty", which was just a bit too casual to wear to get married in lol. So anyway...I found my dress!!! It's Beautiful!! Just the right amount of class, but still informal enough to be able to wear again.

http://www.davidsbridal.com/social_dresses_detail.jsp?stid=1665&prodgroup=54

Now granted, I'm not nearly as thin as the girl in the picture, but I slipped it on, 2 sizes smaller than I expected to get (WOOHOOO), and it fits like a glove. Absolutely perfect!!!

Until you look down....I'm only 4'11, so I have to get it hemmed, and they want $30 to do the alteration there, so I am going to look around and see what I can find.

Also, based on a few things I read elsewhere, I decided what to do about the wedding cake. I am going to get the smallest "wedding cake" I can find, for my DBF and I, and our parents, etc. Then I will bake a sheet cake (with cake mix and frosting I got for free after coupons of course!), so that should cut the cost down on those considerably!

Now if I could just get the darn invites done....

OK, so Im really not trying to have all my posts seem negative, but today my chore is to get our wedding invitations done and ready to send out. My printter evidently thinks vellum is the devil and is having a hard time printing it. So its a very slow process. I just have to keep telling myself its better this way lol.

So I decided if I want to meet my goal of having the invitations go out this week, there was no way I could make them all by hand without staying up 24/7. So we were at Target last night, and found BEAUTIFUL invitations to print at home for $30. Much better than $200 to have them done by a printer! So I'm going to get those all done today and sent out.

My parents came over today and we talked about the guest list. Added 4 more people. I think I've actually decided to buy some cheap invitations and print them out at home. Still cheap, but less time intensive than doing them by hand. Realized our potluck reception idea had some flaws, so we decided to just opt for some meat trays, etc. and register at Target and Penney's for gifts. Oh well..maybe people will get us stuff for our house right? Still more than thrilled to be getting married!!!

We finally sat down and made a guest list tonight. All in all, 28 people invited. I am making the invitations myself, and they are probably 1/2 done on the intial crafting, just need to finish designing them. We decided that instead of the potluck reception we were planning, we would get some meat and cheese trays, some sparkling cider (we don't really drink), and the cake. Should spend around $300 on that including the cake. I found shoes today in my own closet (gasp!) that I'll wear, they're cream and gorgeous, ones I had bought for my sisters wedding years ago. So that's out of the way! Making progress..step by step!

Ok, so I havent gotten married in a while (almost 10 years to be exact) lol. I never planned to get married a second time, but sometimes the man upstairs knows better for us than we do. So..enter my fiancee. He won my heart, and finally technically proposed to me on Friday night. He took me to this place call Clifty Falls, where there are TONS of beautiful waterfalls all through the park. It was raining a bit, but he had found one area where you could go down and you were beneath an overhang, but still looking out over one of these amazing waterfalls. He got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. It was beautiful, and so romantic, and well worth the wait!

We've already decided when our wedding will be, October 7th of this year. We've also decided to get married at my parents house, under their gazebo. So no costs associated there. We want to have a "potluck" reception where guests bring prepared dishes instead of gifts. Does anyone have any suggestions for wording on the invitations? We'll have to buy a cake of course, so that will be approximately $200. I'm not going to get a wedding dress per say, I've done that once, and we want this to be low key, personal, and quite casual. So I'm going to look at Penney's, etc. for something, hopefully spending under $100. Add shoes and accessories for maybe another $40 or $50.

We have my rings already, purchased at 75% off and they're BEAUTIFUL! A $2K set for just under $400, plus we received $30 in coupons for another purchase of anything in the store (bought at Kmart). So we still have to get him a band, but he just wants a plain silver band, so figure maybe $50 or so for that.

I need to call around about renting chairs and tables for the "reception", I have no idea how much those will run. Also, going to rent a large tent just in case it rains.

Anything else I'm missing? I am going to hand make all of our invitations, already have part of them done. They are being made with my scrapbooking supplies I have on hand, so no real out of pocket cost there.

Any input is always welcome!!!