creative thinking - getting help - personal touches - beating the budget - planning tips

JENN WARE AND AARON APPS
AUGUST 15, 1999
MOUNT VERNON, WA

How do you organize a one-of-a-kind wedding without breaking the bank? According to this couple, using your own time and talent to create the day of your dreams is more than a cost-cutting step. Besides saving big on the usual wedding planning expenses, Jenn and Aaron say that the satisfaction that came with bringing their own ideas to life was priceless.

Inventive Ideas
With enough creative energy to give Martha you-know-who a run for her money, Jenn and Aaron planned on making their wedding day as personal as possible from the start. Even the wedding date was significant. It was the same day that Jenn's grandparents were married, 52 years before. Filling their wedding with special touches like this was very important to them both. "We really wanted our wedding to be unique and to reflect who we are, how much we love each other and how excited we were to be getting married," says Jenn. "Besides, traditional planners don't even offer a wedding like the one we wanted!"

"We wanted our wedding to reflect who we are," said the bride. "Besides, traditional planners couldn't create one like ours!"

Getting Help
Their vision was a daytime wedding with a wildflower theme in vibrant colors of yellow, red, blue and green. With five months to get it all done, planting fresh grass and wild flowers in time to bloom for the ceremony was a snap. But making 500 wooden flower-centerpieces (that would also serve as favors for their 300 guests) came down to one simple trick: calling in the troops. "So many people helped!" remembers Jenn. "A friend from high school even donated wood scraps from the cabinet shop where her brother works. And lots of people helped us paint them. We'd take anyone we could rope into it, or anyone that made the mistake of stopping by while we were working on them!"

On the next page: personal touches - beating the budget - planning tips

On this page: personal touches - beating the budget - planning tips

Getting Help cont.
Transforming a local granary into a reception hall was also a group job, but it was easy to carry over the ceremony's festive, floral tone by transporting the decorations from the church -- and adding a few extra touches. "My dad and I made a picket fence for the entrance to the reception, and my cousins painted it white," says the bride. "Uncle Paul did such an amazing job with the balloons. He made giant flowers that looked like something out of a cartoon. It was wonderful!" Guests munched on a dessert buffet created by the groom's mother and a white carrot cake (both Jenn and Aaron's favorite), decorated with stars and maple leaves to reflect their American and Canadian heritages (respectively).

Buying and Borrowing
Knowing when to get professional help was an important step in pulling the whole thing off. "We finally gave up on the idea of making our own food for the reception because we didn't want our moms to be in the kitchen all day," remembers Jenn. Another smart move was borrowing everything they could. For example, Aaron's parents arranged a loan from their church that covered all of the tables, plates and silverware. And, at the end of the party, after being showered in a collection of fresh rose petals and dried flowers (saved from bouquets that Aaron had given Jenn while they were dating), the couple headed for their honeymoon in Uncle Kevin's black 1951 MG convertible.

Getting Personal
What made Jenn and Aaron's wedding even more special? The personal touches that they were able to add by doing things themselves. "My mom made my veil," says Jenn. "She even used a piece of lace handed down by my great-grandmother." The unity candle was also a family heirloom. By melting down the unity candles from Jenn's parent's wedding, her grandparents' wedding and her other grandparent's 50th anniversary, the couple not only created a candle for their own wedding, but one that they plan to pass along to their children, too.

Beating the Budget
Of course the rising costs of weddings factored into Jenn and Aaron's do-it-yourself plan, but in the end, they were thrilled with the results of their completely personalized wedding. "There was nothing missing from our wedding because of the lack of money," says Jenn. "We just didn't pay people to do things for us because we did them ourselves, and with our families. I loved it because we did it exactly the way we wanted it. We got to be creative and resourceful -- and we spent lots of time together."

• Always ask for help
  
• Try to narrow down your ideas so that you can concentrate on your favorite few
  
• Don't be afraid to add new traditions, or if they don't suit you, leave the old ones out

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