cheap wedding inspiration

{Real Wedding} YiOu + Sean’s Marathon (yes, marathon) Marriage!

This is one heck of a real wedding where the bride and groom truly made sure to show their loved ones and friends who they are as a couple. Huge thanks to YiOu, the bride, for taking the time to talk about her and her love, Sean, and their big day!  Congratulations again to Sean and YiOu!

“Sean and I met in Cambridge, MA in February of 2008 while I was a student at MIT and he was working in an MIT lab as a research assistant. We met in a coffee shop called Toscanini’s. Sean had stayed up the night before working on taking scanning electron micrographs of a particularly good experiment and was in the coffee shop showing off the pictures to the barista. I came in, saw the pictures on his laptop and was very interested in them. He picked up his laptop, sat down next to me and started explaining away! Pretty soon we discovered we were both runners and both training for the upcoming Boston Marathon. We made a date to meet the very next morning for a run. That first run we did together we went 6 miles through the streets of Boston in a gently falling snow. The day after that we met up and went on an 18 mile long run together followed by a delicious breakfast at Toscanini’s. We’ve been running (and eating) together ever since!

Our ceremony was held in late morning on the shore of Alpine Lake, below Bon Tempe Dam in the Marin Municipal Water District. The closest town is Fairfax, CA. Immediately after the ceremony, we had a 5K run around the perimeter of Bon Tempe Lake. After the run, we all headed to the home of some dear friends on Belvedere Lagoon and had a lovely catered lunch. The guests all drove, but Sean and I and a few of our other diehard running friends ran another 8.5 miles from Bon Tempe Lake over Mt. Tam and to downtown Mill Valley, where we had a car stashed to drive ourselves to the banquet. After all, we were still in training and needed to get our miles for the day in! Then that evening we held a Chinese Banquet at the restaurant House of Banquet in San Francisco.

Our wedding favors were jars of home made marmalade; made from citrus we picked in friends’ backyards! We made over 120 half pint jars and designed and printed custom labels. We also baked all the apricot bars served after the ceremony. The table decorations for the lunch in Belvedere were seashells purchased from a craft store, along with potted succulents we picked up at the local florist.

After the ceremony and 5k run, we had champagne, orange juice, strawberries and homemade apricot bars. Lunch in Belvedere was catered by Fred and Jennifer Martin and was California fare: green salad, grilled beef tenderloin, chicken with romesco sauce, corn salad, green beans and various nibbles like olives and cheeses. The Chinese Banquet was twelve courses including lobster, beef, steamed whole fish and more food than anyone could possibly finish! Wine was from Cline Vineyards in Sonoma. And instead of a wedding cake, we had 12 stone fruit pies from Fat Angel Bakery in Fairfax, CA and ice cream from Three Twins Ice Cream in San Rafael, CA.

Sean and I are very fond of delicious food, so that is where we chose to splurge. Our largest expenditures were for the catered lunch and the banquet. We also splurged on a wonderful photographer (Sara Wolfram) who did a fantastic job of capturing the event-filled day. We also got a DJ for the banquet. The lunch food by Fred and Jennifer Martin Events was exquisite and amazing. And the Chinese Banquet was also stupendously delicious.

We decided to save on location costs. Sean and I are avid runners and our favorite place to be is out on the trails. We thought the most gorgeous and fitting place to have our ceremony was outside, where we could see Mt. Tamalpais and celebrate the outdoors. Our ceremony and 5k run cost us a $100 permit from the Water District. For the lunch afterward, we went to the home of our friends Joyce and Marty Griffin who live right on the water on Belvedere Lagoon. We have known them for a long time, and would often visit in the summer to go swimming or kayaking. They were kind and gracious enough to let us have the party at their home. The restaurant where we chose to have our banquet has a huge banquet space with more than enough room to accommodate our party, and even had a dance floor.

My favorite moment of the day was seeing how many of our guests participated in the 5k run after the ceremony. My dad ran and it was the longest he had ever run in his life! We also had all the younger cousins and kids running around on the trails having a blast. Another favorite moment of the day was watching all our guests swimming and boating in the lagoon. Everyone from young kids, to teenagers to adults and grandparents LOVED getting in the water, splashing around and paddling. And then the highlight of the evening was watching Sean’s former roommate (a very geeky materials science graduate student from MIT) break out some killer dance moves to the sound of Lady Gaga.

Sean and I personally spent ~$6000. The catered lunch was a gift from his parents, and my parents covered the banquet. I would say the total cost was ~ $16,000.  If I could have done things differently, I perhaps would have consolidated the day into two events instead of three. While we had a fantastic day, it was very tiring to get through three major parties in a single day! We decided to have the banquet in addition to the ceremony, run and lunch because the location of the first two events limited the number of attendees. Mostly, there would have been a parking issue at the trailhead and at Joyce and Marty’s home. So in order to include more people, we added the banquet. I think it would have been more ideal to schedule the banquet for the next day!”

YiOu’s advice to brides planning a wedding right now:

“Don’t sweat the small stuff!! There is an endless list of tasks and if you don’t get to them all, it’s not the end of the world. Prioritize 2 or 3 things that you want to happen and don’t obsess over all the other details. And most importantly, make sure it is a day you will enjoy and remember fondly.”

Many thanks also to Sara from OneLove Photography for these images from this rad wedding.  Other vendors involved include:

Caterer:  Fred Martin Events

Floral Designer:  NancyAnn Flowers

Invitation Designer: RAM Print and Communications

Cake Designer:  Fat Angel Bakery

DJ:  highlite media

Tuxedo and Mens’ Attire:  Joseph A Banks

xoxo,  Lydia from Ever Ours