Location with Leeway

I was going to let Stephen write about finding out location and all that went on to get it since he really took care of it, and I even gave him my password to do it, but alas, I guess my communication wasn't clear enough.

We have a Location.

I suppose that is a very important thing. We weren't stressing, even though we only had about 3 months till the wedding date, we just trusted the Lord had it under control.

Sure enough we heard word from our pastor that the Church approved out wedding and we could have the downstairs chapel and cafeteria. Now it is not picture perfect, but it is free. And when we thought about it, the smaller area is really better suited for our wedding guest list since we would be dwarfed in the huge main chapel. We would fill maybe 15 of the 50 pews in the place.

The even more amazing thing is that they are like, "yeah you can decorate it however you want" (I am not sure they have any idea what they are getting themselves into).

Stephen and I went and looked at our future wedding local on a weekday free from church-goers and have decided upon an inexpensive and extremely time consuming way to decorate involving a ridiculous amount of paper and green. We shall see how that goes, but it'll be fun rounding up the families to decorate right?.....right?

It really is super exciting, and it's a good thing that in Korea things are done last minute or I might really be stressing over how we really have very little set in stone....like a caterer, or how much we'll pay our band, or if our pastor will be around for the wedding, or what shoes I'll wear, or were to get our flowers done. God thing God is on our side and knows exactly the perfect solutions to all our problems.

So my advice for a location? If you don't want to pay for the wedding halls (which are beautiful but want you to pay for make up for your husband...) then be flexible, and even the blandest location can be transformed with a little creativity.....at least I hope they can.

Invitations- The Korean Way

So there seems to be a trend as we are planning our wedding.....personalization is not the Korean way.

When I visited the wedding hall and asked if they could change the ugly red ribbons to at least a crimson or some other color, they said, "no, that is the only color."

When we asked if bridal shops would alter my dress, they said they only do their own. And they only do anything for you if you want the full package.

We went to an invitation printer today and we got just about the same thing. After telling them what we wanted they said it would be over 300,000 won and then-'Here are the sample books, pick one out and we will print on them in black ink.' HA! Then we were told of another printing place that could possibly do the job for us.

My original invite is two layers. The top layer a transparent rice-type-paper with a drawing I had done and our invite info on it and below a green bubbles layer......well turns out to print it, it will cost us around 250,000 won for 100 invites without envelopes.

So unfortunately for those who will be attending our Korea wedding, you will have to settle for a lovely Korean style wedding invite, a little remniscent of American weddings in the 80's. Still they did have a few lovely options and at prices as low as 500 won a piece with envelopes; that is hard to beat.

So dear budget, you are getting in the way of my perfect wedding, but then again, it wouldn't be a wedding in Korea without being told you can't do it your way :)

However this is good news for those non-do-it-yourselfers. You have a price range from 500 won to about 2,800 won an invite, most of them lying somewhere around 1000.

Still it is a bit relieving to know that I don't have to do anything myself.....yet.