Love. Live. Laugh. Wed.

That's the sound you would have heard if you were in our apartment last week while we made some minor adjustments to our budget.

Two weeks ago, we met with an amazing photographer here in Rochester. I found her website and pictures online and instantly fell in love. I emailed her to get detailed pricing and package info and she responded almost immediately. Have I ever posted about how important timely responses are to me? I had already given one photographer a mental pink slip because he was so bad at getting back to me, even though I loved his work. Anyway, we set up a meeting and it went amazingly well. I had already drooled over every picture I could find of hers on the internet, but I was still amazed by her work at her studio. She was just as sweet in person and she really seemed genuinely interested in our wedding plans.

The next day she followed up with a few of my lingering questions and sent us a breakdown of her travel costs. Then Sean and I sat down and talked things through. Did we really click with her? Yep. Do we love her work? Yep. Can we afford her? Nope.

Travel fees and hotel accomodations added to the package that best fit what we were looking for added up to twice what we had budgeted for photography. Her work was amazing and she definitely wasn't overpriced for what she offers. But still, we just didn't think we could swing doubling the costs of what was already a big portion of our budget. So I emailed her and sadly told her we wouldn't be able to hire her.


I spent the next week looking for another photographer I loved as much. It seemed like everyone I found whos work I loved was either booked or way out of our price range. Everyone that still had the date available I was just "meh" about. At this point, I was starting to lose sleep over this. One night was laying in bed on my laptop (because I couldn't sleep) looking at potential photographers when I realized that this was crazy. I opened up our budget and thought of a few potential areas we could cut. The next day Sean and I looked through our budget and made some tough cuts.

Videographer? Gone.
Day of Coordinator? Gone.

Our photography package includes two shooters so I know we'll have tons of amazing pictures from our wedding which really puts me at ease with cutting out a videographer.  I had also been searching high and low for a videographer that I liked and hadn't been able to find one.

Cutting the DOC though hit me kind of hard. I really don't want either of us (or our family) to be running all over the day of the wedding trying to take care of things. I want us all to be able to relax and enjoy this one day. But, I think it will work out one way or another.

I'll reveal our photographer in another post, this one is getting too long! Did you have to make any tough budget cuts to fit in the things you wanted and thought were important?