Pinterest proved to be our saving grace when it came to planning our wedding in three-months. My Wedding Bells board had acquired over two-hundred pins from the last seven years so I quickly took to it, weeding out the definitely-no’s and getting giddy butterflies over the definitely-yeses. We knew we wanted a lot of greenery and, obviously, a lot of white. We decided on more of a clean, Rustic Wedding theme.
We visited a few venues together, aka five local parks, the last of which I literally cried at (cue the, “We’re never going to find a venue!” reel). Daniel, being the patient fiancé that he was, promised to find the perfect venue and, lo and behold, the first site he and one of our groomsmen looked at turned out to be a dream – he called in and made a deposit that day. Mind you, I had not even seen this venue and it was already ours. It wasn’t until about two-weeks later that we finally ventured out together and I once again cried. “This is PERFECT!”
With the venue chosen, we were able to better plan the next largest task: the tent. To be honest, I was completely against this idea – I had always wanted an outdoor wedding and a tent, to me, equated to an “indoor wedding”. (I see your eye rolls.) And, I thought, tents are tacky; like for high school graduation parties. However, because the weather in Wisconsin is so unpredictable, I knew it was a necessity. That and the fact that weather.com was saying there would be rain the whole week of October 6. Minor details. Because we were on such a tight budget, we went through the local Party Store (think Halloween costumes and happy birthday balloons) to order what they called a Party Tent that came with yellow string lights. At this point, I kept trying to remind myself that we needed to be as frugal as possible and tried to contain my inner diva screaming NO to the tent with yellow string lights. But picturing a “party tent” in my head did not go over well, not to mention the yellow string lights. (Both of which turned out to be amazing, FYI.) From this same party store, we ordered one hundred white wooden chairs.
As for the dinner tables, my hairdresser knew of a girl from high school who had started her own wedding rental business after getting married herself and having the hardest time planning out all the decorations, etc. Genius and also super convenient for us. I was able to find her rentals on Facebook Marketplace for about a third of the cost for the barn wood tables we were originally looking at renting. Pro Tip: Join as many Wedding Groups on Facebook as you can, especially those in the area; people are always trying to sell their lightly used wedding decor, giving recommendations for caterers, designers, etc.
The menu was probably the easiest part to throw together – think comfort food. Barbecued meat, mac n cheese, mashed potatoes and corn. Not much of a color pallet but, and I’m biased, the best food for an October wedding. And did I mention, only the meat was catered. We had looked into catering options but with plates starting at $17 a piece, we quickly wrote that idea off. One of mine and Daniel’s co-workers has a little smoked meats side hustle and gave us such a good deal on multiple large pans of the most am-a-zing meat. Two nights before the wedding, my mom and aunts had gotten together to peel pounds and pounds of potatoes that they then mashed and froze (the butter, milk and salt would be added the morning of). Most importantly, in my opinion, was the mac n cheese. My dad is about as big of a foodie as I am – when he heard I had wanted to make boxed mac along with the potatoes two days prior, he wouldn’t have it. He decided to wake up early on the morning of our wedding to make the homemade mac n cheese. My mom and I hauled all of the ingredients for the homemade food items from Costco – the most bang for your buck especially if you’re planning to feed seconds and thirds to one-hundred guests! (I honestly just texted my mom this past week thinking about that morning; we met in the parking lot exactly one minute after Costco had opened and traipsed through the store, Starbucks in-hand, buying way too many ginormous cans of corn.) Lastly, for dessert, whenever our family would ask if they could contribute in any way, we always responded with, “Bake a pie!”. We had a huge pie spread for dessert as well as little homemade wedding cookies baked by Daniel’s aunt and cousin; for our dessert, we cut into and fed each other homemade G.F. pumpkin cheesecake (to die).
All photos in this post were taken by the wonderful Lindsey Cole.
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