Help
This is a little long, but please bear with me and help me if you can.
My brother proposed to his fiance on Valentine's Day this year. Shortly after their engagement, Jessica, my sister-in-law to be, asked me to be her maid of honor. When I said yes, I had no idea that apparently I'm supposed to be doing a huge part of the wedding planning. Whether that is true or not, Jessica has a hard time getting things together. They set their wedding date for March 21, 2009 and as of right now, almost no plans have been made. I have been trying to get her to make up her mind about things but its difficult.
Our first problem is that her parents are being very difficult about the wedding budget. They gave her sister a $20K+ wedding and decided they were only going to shell out $5K for Jess (I understand-take what you can get-but the fact that her parents are ridiculously rich just makes it irritating).
She and my brother, Matt, had a really hard time finding a venue for their wedding but they finally decided (to save money) on Jessica's grandmother's backyard-which apparently is huge. I have yet to see pictures.
As of right now, Jessica has the wedding party picked out, she has a dress, she knows what dress she wants her bridesmaids to get, I don't know if she has decided on flower girl dresses or not,
and we have a venue.
This still leaves: invitations (and making a guest list), flowers, catering, dj/band, dance floor, tables/chairs/chinaware, possibly port-a-potties, sound system, officiant, and God knows what else.
I've never planned a wedding before (obviously) and despite the fact that Jessica really needs to be doing a lot of this, I'm afraid it won't happen in a timely manner or at all and for my brother's sake (and hers), I'd like to do anything I can to help this event go smoothly. I don't know much about timing with things like when to send out invites, when to hire a caterer and dj so I'm really stressing out about getting these things done.
With such a low budget, I'm looking for ways to "cut corners" and still have a beautiful/elegant ceremony that is cost effective.
If you have read this to the end, thank you for taking the time and if you have any suggestions/advice/help to offer, I will gladly take it.
Thanks,
Jeannine
PS--I was also thinking it would be much less expensive and not horribly difficult to make the invites by hand so if anybody has done this and has tips/ideas, please share them.
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