4th of July: Booze Breakdown

Between the flower delivery on Thursday, and before we got started on the flower making, the boy's brother had gotten into town. My sister R, the boy, his brother P, and I all headed out to buy the massive quantities of beer we would be needing. A trip to Costco, Sam's Club, and Marc's later, the garage looked like this:


This was actually quite stressful, so I would recommend doing it some other way. The stores were packed, mostly because of the impending holiday. We took my dad's truck, and my sister's car in order to have enough room, and were stuck in lots of traffic going from store to store to get what we needed. After the first 3 stores, R and I came home to work on the bouquets, and sent the boys out to finish up. Neither of them are from the area, so they ran into a few problems. They went to Giant Eagle, only to be told by several nosy customers that they would find better deals at Marc's, an area discount store. After loading up the cart at Marc's (for the exact same prices), they wheeled up to the checkout, only to find out that they do not take credit cards. Leaving the cart, they head to the bank next door. Unfortunately, the ATM inside is broken, so the boy is forced to use the drive up ATM in the parking lot. On foot. I received a call containing alot of swear words around this time, right when I was showing my grandma how to wrap a bouquet. I'm giggling remembering the story, but two very frazzled boys returned awhile later.

I think we more than doubled our original alcohol budget, but I didn't want to think about it at the time. The good news was that we didn't run out! I'll do a budget break down in a later post, but I had felt that around $1,500 would be enough to buy beer, wine, and liquor, considering the boy works in the wine and liquor business. A quick note to people buying their own alcohol- we could have done it for even less than my budget. We had massive quantities of leftovers. I think we purchased around 25 cases of beer and had around 10 leftover from a wedding of 200 heavy drinkers. We also bought two cases of vodka, and had over one whole case left. There were half cases of all the other kinds of liquor and we had leftovers in everything except the Patron, which sold out. There were also a case each of 3 white wines, and 2 red wines. This is where we had the most leftovers. I think maybe a case and a half of wine was drunk total. This was the area where we went the most over, but my in-laws insisted, and since they were paying I didn't want to turn it into a huge argument. We ultimately brought 5 cases of beer home with us, which meant I didn't buy any all summer! We also have extremely well stocked liquor and wine cellars! But for those of you on a budget, know that it is possible to spend ~$1,000 on alcohol for your wedding.

Wedding Industrial Complex

Ok, because of the current state of the economy in the US, I thought this would be a good time to bring this up. I am a budget bride. Before I started all of this, I had no idea what weddings cost. Depending on who you talk to, the average cost of a wedding in the US is between $14 and $43 thousand. Now some people say that the higher numbers come from polling by wedding magazines and wedding websites, which are sure to skew the numbers a little. Brides with lower budgets are probably not participating or responding to these sorts of surveys.
It pains me to spend that amount of money on a wedding. Not when there are so many people in our world who don't know where their next meal is coming from. Some days I feel like not having a wedding at all, and other days I get caught up into the hype the WIC feeds us all. It's a difficult struggle for me. I want to make my family happy, but I want to put a cap on the spending as well. We were lucky to be given a fairly large budget from both sets of parents. However, I feel that it is not necessary to spend all of this- we have a house and other responsibilities.
I know I got a little bridezilla- ish when searching for the perfect venue. It just so happens that the place I fell in love with costs over $3,000 in rental fees. It is really hard for me to justify this cost- which is why I've been so back and forth on the whole eloping/ destination wedding thing. However, I feel like its all or nothing. I either want to elope, or have the beautiful wedding of my dreams. There is no option that lets me have a big party in my parents' backyard. I kind of wish I would feel very decisively one way or another. My ambivalence is making it difficult to start planning.
But in the end, I want my family there. I want my 92 year old great- grandmother to watch us say our vows. I want my parents (yes, both of them) to walk me down the aisle as a sign of love, not to give me away. I want my cousins to tear up the dance floor.
Next up- how I try to have the wedding that I want without all the bills....