Yup, you read the title correctly. In a span of 8 months I had 4 wedding events... to the same person. 4 different cities (none of which we lived or currently live in), 4 different states, and somewhere around 90 different guests in attendance grand total. Let me take this opportunity to get a few things out of the way:
It was a TON of work.
I am a professional event and travel planner.
I am also a disabled human living with chronic conditions.
Yes, I really did love doing it the way we did, stress and work and all!
Khali Titsch, the wonderful human at the heart of KMT photos reached out to me back in September of 2022 letting me know she had been contacted by Rock N Roll Bride about wanting to feature the photos of our Portland, OR wedding event (June 2022) and me being me absolutely did not hesitate to say yes! The paperwork was done and parts of our epic wedding story were shared. We heard back in December that they anticipated releasing the feature sometime in early 2023. Turns out that would be on January 9th. The following beauty hit the internet:
A matter of hours after it hit the web I was contacted by a journalist with SWNS media group in the UK and we arranged a time to do a phone interview. Several days later and some more paperwork... and well... we hit the internet again with the "shocking" news that we didn't find our 4 events to be excessive and that managing to pull them all off for around $16,000 also wasn't excessive. Sometimes perspective can make a huge difference.
In the end of the day I am beyond proud of the events we threw and the budget I achieved to make it all work. That said the $16k is focused on the events themselves and does not include the vacation home rentals we stayed in while visiting family around the Big Days or the other not-wedding things we did in Las Vegas with our friends. It does include: the wedding license, 3 venues, 3 catering services, 3 florists, 3 professional photographers, 2 photo booths, 2 open bars, the wedding favors we had for our guests.
Some of the ways we cut costs:
I focused on working with venues that had packages that were right sized for us. Each venue and the package that went with it was right sized for a maximum of 30 people.
We opted for family style on our catering. No individual plates and everyone could literally serve themselves portions that made sense for them.
Each wedding event had a limited time frame. About 4 hours per in Troy, NY; Portland, OR; and Las Vegas, NV. Which is to say we "right-sized" our social commitment so that we both never felt rushed or burned out during any of the events themselves.
We're both music nerds - rather than trying to find DJ's, bands, or musicians for each location I made our playlists and adjusted them for each event. We made sure that all of our spaces could accommodate this so that all we had to do was have our playlist available on Spotify and *done*.
I'm a performer and public speaker so we broke the mold some and I MC'd all of our events.
We requested each photographer to capture more candids than traditional wedding photos. We wanted to spend our time with our families and friends and not arranging them.
You can go check out some other articles written up about the series of Big Days here:
So now I can officially say to some capacity "I'm big in the UK!"
Oh life you are a funny funny thing sometimes.
So if you happen to be planning your own nuptials, or vow renewals, or elopements... and you want some help in the event or travel planning portions of the event(s) absolutely feel free to drop me a line and I'm here for you my wild boos!
I'll be making another post in the days to come with all of the amazing vendors I worked with to make our year a year to remember.
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