Cakery and my Family

I think I found a cake bakery. Well, potentially 2. Oddly enough, one of them is Albertson's which is directly on the strip right in the middle of everything. As in, we could walk there and not pay delivery fees. The other one quoted me $75. I have to actually contact Albertson's and see if they can remake the cake I like.

Ok, so a totally different subject: My family.

Some of you know the story about my family and our wedding. If we don't have it in Miami, none of them can attend. If we have it in Miami, we can't afford it. If we have it in Miami, we will not have less than 50 guests. I'm not even talking about friends; that's my family only. They all live in south Florida.

It's purely a financial reason that they can't attend. But no way am I going into details here. For similar reasons, we cannot afford thousands of dollars for getting married there. Between the rabbi, the food, the tent, table, chairs, places settings, etc etc etc. I don't care how cheap everything will be for an intimate family wedding; it's still times a minimum of 50 people!

After much deliberation, a few date changes, and my suggestion, we chose Vegas. Jodie suggested SLVW as she and her husband used them for their wedding last year and said they did a great job. I contacted SLVW multiple times and finally worked things out. And my baby brother and his girlfriend (both of whom I adore!) will be in attendance. If I decided to walk down the proverbial aisle, he will be the one to escort me.

Our wedding will cost $399 plus $60 for the marriage license. (It's package 2, but the price was recently increased.) When I say wedding, I mean photography, ceremony, video, flowers, limo transportation, and music. We have to pick the location for the 2 picture locations, one of which will be the ceremony location. At the moment I'm thinking our hotel room and the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. But that could easily change.

Other expenses for any location are the cake, the ketubah (which we can hopefully afford), and plane/ hotel expenses. Our total budget is $1500 for Vegas. $399 (everything) + $60 (license) + tips for photographer, limo driver and reverend are gone already. They're fixed costs. The variable costs right now are our hotel and airfare. I'm estimating/ hoping to get us there and home, for 4 nights, for about $800. But we'll see. Orbitz, Expedia, etc don't even opening bookings for October 2010 until around November. Grrr.

By the way, we are exactly 1 year and 1 week away from being husband and wife!

Just thought I'd throw that out there. <3

vegas sign image source