It's been smooth sailing up to this point with the planning. Since our budget is tiny we're trying to nail everything down that's going to cost us, and keep on track with our savings.
Getting our reception site to confirm has been trying my patience, but I actually made progress a few weeks ago and started to get it finalized, and then devastation reared it's ugly head.
We're planning to close down the bar we met at and always hang out at, for the reception, but this particular bar is located in the middle of a certain, shall-remain-unnamed nightmare of a bar crawl that happens around the time of our wedding. Our contact at the bar is hesitant to close it down if the crawl is the same day of our wedding, but I'm having a hell of a time getting answers out of anyone.
We're T-minus 5 months till the wedding and reception location options are running out. Apparently October is a big month for weddings now a days and places are filling up quickly. We don't want to just rent out any old place but our budget is slim.
Our options at this point are 1- do the whole damn thing in Ted's mom's backyard, but then we wouldn't be able to invite anyone other than the small group invited to the ceremony; 2-scramble to find another location and pick up a part-time job on the side to pay for the new expenses; 3- Vegas anyone?
I'm starting to twitch about the whole thing mainly because everything is resting on the reception. We haven't set the ceremony time because we don't know what time we can close the bar down for the reception. We haven't sent out save the dates for our reception guests because we don't know how many we can invite (already cut down the list from 500 to 300 and are willing to go lower, but not by much). We haven't reserved a block of rooms at the hotel we are planning to use since it's close to the bar, and if we have to change the reception location who knows where it will be held and we don't want people cabbing super far. Our budget is just lingering out in limbo because we have no idea what the cost of the bar's catering, booze, etc will be. Let the shay melt-down begin...
So, how long should we wait before scrapping the whole idea and coming up with a new plan? I've emailed all the details multiple times to this person we're working with, but haven't heard anything for a few weeks. Suggestions?