One Day : Megumi and Ben

This week on One Day : Megumi and Ben! This wonderful couple was married in Granville, Ohio on October 17, 2009. After being engaged for 8 months (and dating for 7.5 years) the couple enjoyed a beautiful fall wedding and implemented their $10,000 budget wonderfully. For those brides in the process of planning their fall wedding, take notes! Megumi created many aspects of her wedding day herself and it made all the difference!

1. What wedding projects were DIY?

– Save the Dates: I had fun creating bird illustrations for this in Illustrator and InDesign.

– Invitations: I used a combination of my own design, with a boxed set I had bought from Target. It saved me a lot of money because the boxed set had most of the pieces I wanted for the invitation, but I was able to have some creative freedom in how I designed the text.

– Ceremony Programs: Taking my idea from the invitations, I used the same design and then from the save the dates, I used the bird illustration.

– Centerpieces: My wonderful sister-in-law owns a business with her mother where they sell dried flowers, she helped me to design the centerpieces. I never knew how many options there were with dried flowers! I used coffee beans as a filler, and made a mixed arrangement of browns, oranges, and greens in dried flowers. Plus, after the ceremony is over, I was able to take them all home.

– Cake topper: Using a Martha Stewart love birds cake topper I found for $2, I took off the cheesy looking flowers, and added a birdcage veil and top hat to the little birds.

– Bridesmaids gifts: Jewelry and hairpieces – Michael’s, Joann Fabrics and Hobby Lobby were my favorite stores during wedding planning. I made necklaces out of colored pearls and ribbon, and made flowers out of fabric that I attached to hair clips.

2. Now that you look back on your wedding, what do you remember most about the day? I remember the last 30 to 45 minutes of the reception, getting on the dance floor with Ben and our close friends and bridal party and just dancing like crazy. We didn’t get to dance much before that since we were talking to guests. It was awesome.

3. What was the vision for your wedding day before you started planning? I wanted something simple, but elegant, creative/vintage-ish, but not over the top. We wanted a location where we could have an outdoor ceremony and indoor reception.

4. How did that vision change by the time you were finished with the planning? The day of the wedding it was 40 degrees and almost snowing so needless to say we had to move the ceremony indoors. It wasn’t how I had imagined it all along, but that didn’t matter. It ended up working even better than we had planned.

5. What difficulties did you face while planning a wedding near Columbus? Finding catering that fit our budget. We ended up going with a caterer from outside of Columbus who was willing to drive to our location.

6. What was your least favorite part of wedding planning? Table and seating charts. Enough said.

7. What was your favorite part of wedding planning? I loved coordinating the colors with my theme. Also, I am an organizer…so I loved that whole aspect of coordinating everything and checking things off the list…weird, I know. Most of all, I love that how we arranged our ceremony and reception, it totally fit our personalities. I felt that we really were able to reflect who we are through the scripture, message, songs, etc. For example, the scripture was read in Japanese by my mom and in English by Ben’s mom to reflect our cultural backgrounds.

8. How did Ben (the groom) fit into the wedding planning process? He actually did a lot! I put him in charge of all music (ceremony and reception), marriage license and honeymoon details.

9. If you could go back in time – what would “married Megumi” tell “engaged Megumi” before the wedding planning started? Rest, rest, rest. Unfortunately, when I get stressed, I tend to loose my voice. On my wedding day, and the days leading up, I was extremely hoarse. Also, while I stressed over the littlest details, in the end it didn’t matter because at the end of the day, we were MARRIED!