Ring Dish Giveaway

You might remember a review I did on Wise Impressions ring dishes a while ago. Well, now you have a chance to win one for yourself!


Cindy over at Wise Impressions is offering a this free personalized ring dish to one lucky reader. She will customize the dish with your personal information. The personalized dish will take about 7 days to be completed after the contest is over.

To enter, head on over to Wise Impressions and take a look around. Then, come back and leave a comment with your favorite item.

To gain extra entries, you can do each of the following once. Make sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do. If you do not leave separate comments, your extra entries will not be counted!

1. Become a follower of Bride on a Budget
2. Tweet about the giveaway. Come back and leave me the link to your twitter profile. Make sure to tweet @brideonbudget
3. Blog about the giveaway and come back and leave me the link.

That is a total of 4 possible entries to the contest! Contest ends Friday, September 4th at 9am EST. Sorry, contest is open to US residents only. Please make sure to leave a way to contact you in your comment.

Micheals Ad and Coupon Changes

I just received an email from Micheals saying they will no longer be putting their ad or coupons in the newspaper. If you want to view that ad or get a coupon, you will need to do it on their website. Just wanted to give you a heads up.

New Wedding Items

The sweetheart Beth from All I've Ever Wanted gave me some great stuff for our wedding today. I have the same wedding colors she had and she was sweet enough to share her items with me. I can't wait to put them to use at my wedding.

Take a gander at the cute items and how she used them at her wedding.

Program Baskets

Bird Cage Card Box and I Do Letters

Chair Sashes

Here are a couple more items she gave me, but I can't find a picture of how she used them.

Salt and Pepper Shakers (she forgot these at home, so she never got to use them)

Mr and Mrs Letters

Thanks again for sharing Beth!

What a Week!

Wow...it has been one heck of a past couple of days for me. School started on Monday and that's been definitely busy. Since I work on campus, I've been having to deal with the craziness at work, and the stress of my own classes.

Well, yesterday on my way home from class, some girl didn't look before she merged and slammed right into my car. My baby is only a year old. Now she's in the shop and I'm waiting on an estimate. I have a rental car though, so it's not terribly horrible.

After I got home after the car accident, I got a nice surprise though. I had won a contest last week on facebook for a free bouquet from 1-800-flowers. I had completely forgotten about it until the knocked on my door and brought this gorgeous bouquet.

It was a pleasant surprise after a crappy day.

Wedding Cupcakes

Neither me or my FI really want cupcakes at our wedding, but we're entertaining the idea. We just had a cupcakery open up in Tallahassee and they have some amazing flavors. I contacted them to set up a tasting. They're $2 a cupcake, so that's cheaper than a cake and we don't have to pay a delivery charge. You can also make your own custom flavors!

Here's some of their signature flavors:
Blue Sky -- Lemon cake, lemon whipped topping, topped with fresh blueberries
Monkey Biz -- Banana cake, peanut butter topping, topped with chocolate chips
PB&C -- Chocolate cake, peanut butter topping, topped with chocolate chips and crushed pretzels
Snickerdoodle -- Vanilla cinnamon cake, vanilla buttercream topped with cinnamon

And here's the options for customizing:
Cake -- Banana, Carrot, Chocolate, Coconut, Cookies & Cream, Hummingbird, Lemon, Red Velvet, Vanilla, Vanilla Cinnamon
Frosting -- Chocolate buttercream, Cream cheese, Dark Chocolate, Espresso, Lemon, Mint, Mocha, Orange buttercream, Peanut Butter, Vanilla buttercream
Toppings -- Bling, Caramel curls, Chocolate curls, Chocolate chips, Pretzel sticks, Seasoned fruit, Crushed Oreos, Sprinkles, Toasted Coconut, White chocolate curls

I like the idea of being able to make multiple different flavors. When you make a special order, you have to order them in batches of 18, so we could have a bunch of different flavors if we wanted.

What combination of cupcake would you make?

NWR: Classes Start Tomorrow

Tomorrow I'll be back to classes. It's weird because this is going to be my last semester as a college student. I'm so excited, but freaked out at the same time.

I promise I'll try to post every day, but fair warning, that sometimes I might be behind a day or two because of school work. I have to get a decent amount done for the wedding during this semester because when it's over, we only have 3 more months until the wedding!

Anyone else starting school soon?

Winner of the Pink Lily Press Giveaway is...

#4, which is KJPugs from Miss Pug's Pawfect Wedding who posted:

The Pretty Poppy Personalized Notecards (ditto, Danielle- just noticed that you picked them too!) are my ABSOLUTE fave... I have always had a thing for poppys... not quite red, but not pink... what a great color. Thanks for doing this giveaway- about to go post it!

They are gorgeous, aren't they?

Even if you didn't win, head on over to Pink Lily Press and buy yourself some gorgeous note cards. They are the perfect excuse to splurge on yourself.

Thrifty Thursday

Here are the deals and giveaways for this week. As always, let me know if you come across something that I didn't cover.

Also, don't forget our Pink Lily Press giveaway, which ends tomorrow at 9am.

Discounts
Oriental Trading -- 20% off any order, Code: TWNTYA9
Wedding Paper Divas -- Free Shipping on any order, Code: FREESHIP
Exclusively Weddings -- Free Shipping on orders over $75, Code: S79
Adore Brides -- $50 off your rental price, Code: MODERNBRIDE50

Giveaways
Sweets and Life is hosting a giveaway for 200 free personalized postcards.
Brenda's Wedding Blog is hosting a giveaway for a Julianne Smith garter.
Ten23 Designs is hosting a giveaway for a free monogram.
With This Favor is hosting a giveaway for a handbag holder.

For those ladies in FL, Tab McCausland Photography is offering $100 of a trash the dress or engagement session when you book by the end of August.

Etsy Inspiration board

I created this board with stuff I found on etsy. I hope you like it!

Handkerchief -- mollyandmom
Clutch -- Babbsboutique
Garter -- elegantgartershop
Guest book -- enjibeck
Invitation -- embellishedbytiffany
Table numbers -- DEDesigns
Bouquet -- Amorebride
Favor boxes -- Chaiv
Monogram -- WeddingMonograms

Hair Comb is Here! Etsy Seller Review!

I got my hair comb from etsy seller koolkikitty and it turned out fantastic. I had posted an alchemy request and she was one of the responders. She had told me she did bead work in the past and I looked at them and was amazed. They looked awesome. So she made me a custom hair comb to my preferences. Here's my gorgeous hair comb for you to love:

She was very quick in making it and getting it out to me and she updated me with the progress throughout the way.

Here's a few more designs that you might like:



So if you're in need of jewelry or hair accessories, go take a look at koolkikitty on etsy. Hopefully you'll find something you love!

Giveaway Time!

The Giveaway Has Ended! Thank to everyone who entered!


Pink Lily Press makes stationary, notecards, and even wedding invitations. Everything is made to order and completely customizable. She also does custom requests.


Jennifer at Pink Lily Press has generously offered up a set of 10 notecards to the winner of our giveaway. The winner gets to pick which set of notecards they win and personalization and color choice are included.

To enter, head on over to Pink Lilly Press and chose your favorite item and come back and let me know what it is.

To gain extra entries, you can do each of the following once. Please leave a comment for each different item you do.
1. Become a follower of Bride on a Budget
2. Tweet about the giveaway. Come back and leave me the link to your twitter profile. Make sure to tweet @brideonbudget
3. Blog about the giveaway and come back and leave me the link.

That is a total of 4 possible entries to this contest! Contest ends Friday, August 21st and 9am EST. Sorry, contest is open to US residents only. Make sure to leave a way for me to contact you.

Bridesmaid Gift Bags

I found the cutest bags today to hold my bridesmaid gifts. They're reusable bags and in our wedding colors! I got the green ones for the bridesmaids and then the pink one for my MOH. The pink one actually has polka dots on the ribbon!

And you'll never believe where I found them. The Dollar Tree! They also have a purple/teal combo bag too.

I can't wait to fill these with great gifts for my girls.

PS. Sorry for the crappy pic. It was taken on my blackberry.

Modern Invitation Etiquette

Anna Post (the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post) wrote an article on invitation etiquette for the modern day. This throws out some of the out-of-date rules that we were still going by, while also keeping the ones that should still be used.

Anna Post on Etiquette

Seating Chart vs. Escort Cards

Lately I've been debating on whether I want a seating chart or whether I want escort cards. I love the organized look of a seating chart.


I love that you can tailor escort cards to a theme though. If we did escort cards, we would make paper cranes out of pink paper and then write the seating information on the wings. Then I would place them in palettes of wheat grass. I saw this done at a friends wedding and it look awesome. Japanese culture was what brought J and I together too, so it would be really fitting.

What are you doing for seating?

Become a Fan on Facebook

Bride on a Budget is now on facebook! Become a fan on facebook and show your support.

Wedding Price Book

Unless you are a couponer, you probably have never heard of a price book. Well, I keep a price book for every day life, so I figured I'd create one for the wedding as well.

A price book is a way to keep track of prices at a bunch of different stores, so you make sure you get the best price on everything.

For the wedding, I bought a small notebook and created a page for each thing that I need to buy (ex: flatware, tealight candles, Bud Light, etc.) Then, I went to all the stores in my area as well as websites and researched prices. Then, I figured out the unit price for each item by divide the price by the amount of the product (ex. rose petals -- $5/200). That way, when I something goes on sale or someone sells something on the Trash to Treasure board, I'm able to go to my price book and see if that price is a good one or whether it would just be better to buy the item from the store.

Here's an example of a page from my price book:

Bubbles
Michaels
36 ct. $7.99 UP: $0.22

The Knot
24 ct. $4.95 UP: $0.21
48 ct. $8.95 UP: $0.19

Efavormart.com
24 ct. $4.69 UP: $0.20

Oriental Trading
24 ct. $4.99 UP:$0.21

Exclusively Weddings
24 ct. $5.95 UP: $0.25

Walmart
100 ct. $15.00 UP: $0.15
24 ct. $3.50 UP: $0.14

Without any sales or coupons, the best price would be the 24 ct. package of bubbles at Walmart for $3.50.

Say though, you have a 40% off coupon at Michaels. That would bring the price of a package down to $4.79, with the unit price of $0.13. So with this knowledge, you know you should go ahead and get the bubbles at Michaels while you have the coupon.

Hope this helps you save some money on your wedding items.

Chalkboards at Weddings

I love the look of chalkboards at weddings. Since we decided on our venue, I knew that I was going to use a chalkboard for our menu. I was originally going to make my own, but then I got lucky and got 2 for free.

One of the local knotties made these two chalkboards for her wedding. Afterwards, she sold them to another local knottie. After that, the chalkboards have been passed around for free to be used at different weddings in the panhandle. I am the seventh bride who will be using them in our wedding. Each girl has painted the frames in their colors and used them in a different way.

Here a couple ways the chalkboards have been used:



Here are the chalkboards sitting in my kitchen just waiting to be painted. I'm going to paint the frame on one pink and the other one green. One is going to be used as a menu and the other is going to sit outside of the reception hall welcoming our guests.

Bridesmaid Dress Shopping: Round 2

I went shopping with another one of my bridesmaids today and we had so much fun. Here's a few of our favorite dresses she tried on.

I love this one and it has a bow in the back, which I adore. It doesn't come in very many colors though, so if I chose this one, I'd have to use a brighter pink or a brighter green than the colors I'm using in the rest of the wedding. That's not a huge problem for me though because I'm thinking about using bright pink peonies in my bouquet.

This one is really pretty (this is the color the dresses will be by the way), but a lot of my bridesmaids said they were uncomfortable wearing strapless dresses.

I still absolutely adore this dress and it has been the favorite of almost all my bridesmaids. I have a feeling this is going to be the final decision, but still waiting for my MOH to go try it on.

This one looked a lot better on B than it did S. So that probably rules it out because it looked horrible on one of my bridesmaids. Isn't B so cute though?

Shutterfly Photo Guestbook Review

I got my Shutterfly guest book in last week and I was very happy with the way it turned out. The photos were all crisp and clear and the cover was nice and sturdy.