The mission: to plan and put on a wedding for ourselves that is (ideally) free-of-charge.
The method: to invite family, friends, and community to provide the elements that will create the wedding. Ideally, everything from dress to wedding favours will be offered, borrowed, or donated. We are also allowed to utilize trade, whether we trade something we have for something you have, or if we can offer a good or service of our own to trade with yours.
Why contribute: Aside from the fact that we are a sweet couple who needs your support to have their special day? Aside from the fact that this is going to be a really cool experiment? Okay, aside from that, we will:
-give you a shout-out on our blog (even if we do not use your good or service in the end)
-promote you via word-of-mouth (the best advertising out there)
-include a shout-out to you in the programs at the wedding.
This is also an experiment, stretching the realms of:
-eco-stewardship on a budget
-social media and its magical powers of connection
-thinking outside the wedding 'box'
-utilizing local and indie vendors to create a stellar event
While some of those bulleted incentives may not seem that important to the non-businesses out there (the regular folk, strangers, friends, and family) who contribute, WE want to give you the same kudos to individuals sharing items with us, because you're awesome, too. We value the smallest and the largest contributions equally.
To maintain sanity: we stipulate the following to maintain some sanity in this process...
1.Bri and J maintain veto rights. There is lots of room for creativity in this wedding, because Brian and I are not married (haha) to one specific look or feel. I mean, granted, your Uncle Bo's stuff moose head may indeed make an interesting cake display, and I'm sure it could be quite tastefully used. (We neither confirm nor deny that this was an actual offer we received.) But it is our big day, and if we decide something isn't working for us that has been offered, we maintain the right to decline or go with a different offer. We still love you and we will still give you a shout-out, and Uncle Bo, too.
2.We encourage multiple offers for one good or service. We've offered a few basic ideas around what we'd like to have at the wedding. Other than a colour scheme, a commitment to being funky-not-stuffy, and a few other preferences, the planning is very open to interpretation. We think that it'd be amazing if we had, say, three or five wedding cake offers of donation, and we can see what different people come up with as ideas for the same wedding. As we choose each element, we will post on our blog what your ideas are. We will have final say in which one we choose, but the world will still get to see/hear your ideas and your work regardless of whether we choose it.
3. We may purchase elements for the wedding if the purchase is under $10. We're crafty persons, and to think that we may manage to get through this whole process without buying some beads to decorate my shoes, or buying some mushroom birds to add to boutonnieres, is not realistic. The commitment is, though, to keep any purchase under $10.00. (There is one exception to this rule: if we are not receiving offers on a particular good or service, or if the offers are simply not right, we may end up purchasing that element. We really hope we can avoid this, though.)
4.We're keeping it simple, because we're stupid. Neither Brian nor I have ever been involved in the planning of a wedding. So we are going to try to keep it fairly clean and simple. We're going to come up with a list of the bare essentials that we'd like to see happen; anything extra is gravy.
5. Cash donations are accepted. While we are true to our word in that we want to make this a cost-free wedding, that doesn't mean that no money is involved. For instance, if my aunt decided to buy the paper for our invites, I would still call that a donation of goods. The concept of this project is to keep the mountain of bills to a minimum; if someone wishes to contribute to lighten that financial burden, that's great. If Aunt Janie isn't interested in picking out the stationary and just wants to give us the money to make it happen, I can't fault her for that. We will spend the money on the items she suggests.
It is generally the consensus that we`d be crazy to turn down cash, and we agree. But, in the spirit of the adventure, we plan to do the following, when receiving cash donations:
1. Thank that person as any other donor to the project, if they`re comfortable.
2. Pool the money, where not stipulated by the donor, for things that simply don`t get covered by donations. There`s bound to be some stuff.
3. If we do not use all the money for the wedding, we will redirect it to the honeymoon...another giant fish to fry!
4. If the person has something specific they`d like the money to go towards (ie. flowers, etc) we will honor that, allowing for the possibility of donations or other monetary gifts that overlap their request.
