Raleigh, North Carolina Wedding Tips

Compiled by Cheryl C Citron

I am going to try to sum up many of the sources we used to plan and carry out the wedding. I am the mother (Cheryl Citron) of the bride (Rachel), called MOTB in many web sites; you can guess what MOTG means. As it took months to do this, it may help some of you save some time!  Both my daughter and I are researchers and planners, so we did a lot of legwork.

A few general thoughts:
The average wedding for 175 people in the US is $ 29,000 and in Wake County it is $32,000. This includes the groom’s and the bride’s expenses usually adding in the rings and even the honeymoon. We did not pay that much, but did end up paying a big chunk of money in the end if you add in everything including clothing for all family members, hotel expenses, and gas reimbursement for Rachel who had to drive here from Wilmington many times. You can do weddings for a lot less, the venue and the catering is the biggest “chunk” of expense. Rachel wanted an outdoor wedding, so we went to many sites in the area and liked Highgrove the best, but this is clearly a personal preference.  They have won awards from "The Knot" (see below) for outdoor venues. Rachel had a Saturday night wedding in June, one of the months and night of the week in highest demand. The cost is always higher for dates in biggest demand.  

We did a lot of planning using the internet. In terms of places you can save money, we saved the most money on the dress, the flowers, the cake decorations, and the brunch for the out of town guests we did the Sunday morning after the wedding. In addition, Rachel is a computer whiz and did stuff like address the invitations on the computer, make her own table cards, and her own place cards.   Rachel made initial toppers for her cake by buying Swavorski crystals on line and using a special tool to glue them to plastic initials she bought. We also did not rent any kind of limousine, the bride and groom used their own car, highly decorated by groomsmen by the time they got to it.

The one thing I would do differently in terms of stress is not do both the reception flowers and the brunch for Sunday morning.  Most of this had to be done at the last minute and without family help it would have been impossible. I am not much of a flower arranger, it turns out, and while I was able to easily do tall Eiffel Tower vases with dendrobium orchids - I needed Will's (the groom) mom, Millie Griffin, to do the shorter arrangements.  Turns out I could not combine roses and baby's breath in a short vase myself and have them look good. Millie fixed my attempts and then made several gorgeous taller arrangements (Orchids, calla lilies, roses, stock, tree fern, leather leaf fern, bear grass, pittosporum, etc) for around the reception. All our flowers were white. Millie is self-trained in flower arranging and has great talent.  As I did trials ahead of time (very important) I knew my limitations. To reduce stress, I would have had the brunch catered. We did have Bruegger’s Bagels in Apex (highly recommended) bring us some coffee and trays of bagels and cream cheese, and we got a lot of other food and all the paper goods from BJ's in Garner.  The women in the deli and bakery there were more than helpful. 

Best Book:  Bridal Bargains, 8th edition, Denise Fields from www.amazon.com we got the workbook as well but Rachel did not use it. The book was very helpful, and we certainly saved money due to their advice.

Venue:  Highgrove at Laurel Lake in Fuquay-Varina, 50 minutes from here.  You rent the whole place - historic house, the outdoor wedding site, brick patio and the air conditioned tent as a package.  You also have to order food from their own caterer, but the food is so good this is not a hardship. All prices, including the service charge, are plus 8 % tax, and to all food and beverage is also added a 20% service charge.  Rates for using the place vary by day of the week, time and season. You are assigned a wedding coordinator (this is NOT a wedding “planner") and the price includes the rental of the tables, chairs, linens, dishes, votive candles, a champagne toast, etc.

website www.highgrove-nc.com

We also checked out many places in Chapel Hill, including The Carolina Inn, La  Residence, Matthews House, The Botanic Gardens, The Alumni Club (UNC),  Fearrington House (very expensive, we did not visit) and a place across from the Durham Bulls stadium in their new indoor/outdoor mall there. Some venues were too small for our guest list as we invited about 200 and had to assume 175 might come.  So, there were others that could fit 125 or 150 that we did not look at. Many of these were very nice places – a lot depends not only on your budget, but the kind of “feel” you want for the wedding. The alumni Club at Chapel Hill was very nice, but both Rachel and Will felt they wanted a less formal setting. And there was no place to get married outside there.

Best overall websites:

www.weddingwindow.com       Rachel and Will paid a nominal fee to have a wedding web site here. You list all kinds of information for your guests here including : how you met, what you like about each other, where the wedding is, any wedding special events like the Friday night social the groom's family did and the Sunday brunch we did., hotels, directions, bridal registries with direct links.   You add your own pictures wherever you want to. You add music of your choice, as well; it’s a really cool site.

www.theknot.com       This was the other very useful site.  Rachel kept and maintained her guest list here, and used it to organize all the invitations and place cards, as you can import the files into a printing program.  It has so much information on the site I could never view even a fraction of it.  They have tons of photos people have sent in that you can view in categories like flowers, cakes, reception, invitations, place cards, table cards, dresses, bouquets, centerpieces, etc.  You can also look by color scheme and get all photos in one theme, like if you pick "white" it will include invitations, cakes, flowers etc., but they would all have that specific color theme. Rachel and I would look at stuff and e-mail, using their link already provided, back and forth to each other what we liked. They also have forums on many topics, and I used the "flower" forum the most.  You type in a question and then hope you get several replies.  People can be very helpful with suggestions and even links to photos. You can view slide shows of “real weddings”, and at least one of these was at Highgrove, which made it really fun to see.

Band:  We were lucky that Rachel's dad Andy is one of the lead guitarists of Third Time Thru.  They are a bunch (8) of neighbors and friends that have been playing together (most of them) for over twelve years.  They rocked!  They were fabulous!  They did special songs for us they had never done before such as "Carolina on my Mind" and "We are Family”. I can't imagine a band I would have liked better and everyone loved them.

Flowers:

I ended up getting our flowers from 3 sources:

1. Bridal bouquet, bouts and small posies for moms: The Flower Company of North Raleigh, owner Barb, website, www.flowercompany.org       She is off of Old Wake Forest Road, reasonable prices, and she made a bouquet for my daughter from a picture Rachel brought in that was exactly what she wanted. She can do the reception flowers, but we did these ourselves

2. Costco - the store in Raleigh, not the website.  Patrick Cottrell is a fabulous help, he can order many types of flowers and fillers at a great price, they were so helpful there I was amazed.  I ordered white vendela roses (16 dozen), white stock, white calla lilies, and several types of fillers. They were packaged very well; all flowers were in good condition. Costco has wedding flower packages on the web, but they are very restricted.  Costco in- store florists have many flowers you can order that you will never see at the store.

3. www.theflowerexchange.com     I got 100 stems of 24" white dendrobium orchids from them at $2.21 a stem, free shipping, from Thailand.  Florists will charge from 5 to 9 dollars per stem, so you can see the savings. Each one had a water tube attached and they last at least a couple of weeks at home after the wedding if you care for them properly.  Not at all delicate to work with.
These look great in a vase by themselves, or in tall vases with bear grass added.

Other sources on the internet that many "knotties" have liked (see The Knot, above)
www.fiftyflowers.com www.bridesnblooms.com www.costco.com

There are many other internet websites that people have liked, but a few had some bad ratings mixed in with good. Check out flowers at www.sierraflowerfinders.com , a website for florists that Barb suggested as they have lots of pictures and basic information on tons of flowers.

General DIY flower tip: Flowers are delivered fresh. You have to follow the instructions that come with them! The folks at Costco said many people do not prepare their flowers correctly. This means keeping them out of the sun, keep in an air conditioned room, NOT in the refrigerator, cutting off about ½ inch of the stem at a slant under water and immediately putting them in clean water in a very clean vase or pail or bucket, and adding something to kill bacteria in the water, like a few drops of Clorox or some standard floral preservative. Change the water about every 2 to 3 days. They will live! You can get tips on line.

Cake:  Hands down, we all liked the cake from Edible Art in Raleigh.  At the time we tasted cakes, they were all about the same price range from $3 to $5 a slice in cost, depending on what you order.  Cake was delicious, done to exact request in terms of decoration, and delivered and set up at Highgrove. We ordered a cake for 175 people, which is more then we ended up having (we had more like 140) so there were delicious leftovers.

Cake jewelry:  Rachel saw this in an English magazine for cake decorators at Borders.  Basically, they wrapped ribbon at the bottom of each layer and then draped this gorgeous beaded strand around it.  It was difficult to find the beads but we did: www.decoratingstudio.com

Invitations: www.costco.com It was worth it to join Costco just for this alone.  They have many styles to choose from, including well known brands such as Birchcraft at a discount of about 30%. You order them and they do the printing - they can do the response cards, inserts, thank you cards, etc as each is priced separately. They can send you a sample (not your own info) in the mail so you know what it will be like.  We were very satisfied with ours.

We did not get someone to do calligraphy on the envelopes as it is expensive, but Rachel did it on the computer in brown ink to match the invitation and it came out great. She imported stored names and addresses from The Knot.

Programs:  You can go to Michaels and get blanks and print your own, but for the minimal extra cost and less aggravation I'd go with www.wiregrassweddings.com  They were reasonable, around $125 for about 175 tea length, and looked great. We added ribbon to the top ourselves.

Vases:

I bought the short vases at the Dollar Tree , same ones they sell at Michael's but "only a dollar", and the tall 24 inch Eiffel Tower vases at AC Moore .We picked up other larger vases at various places like TJMaxx, Marshall's, Tuesday Morning, etc. The Dollar Tree is a very good source for votive candles and they have many styles.

Bridal Gown: 

We looked at David's Bridal, and they had some nice dresses, but they have a less than sterling reputation. See Bridal Bargains (book, listed above) for details.  We looked at Alfred Angelo dresses on- line, Rachel found the one we liked at a boutique in Wilmington, then ordered it on -line from Dori Anne Veils for half the price.  It came in half the time they said (they said 6 months but it was three) and was perfect.  Gowns always need to be altered. Bridal Bargains rates tons of dress vendors and they are very helpful here.

MOTB - dreaded mother of the bride dress. I did not want to order this on line.  I returned many, but found that Dillard’s and Belk's had the best selections of dresses I could stand to wear.  And the stores at Triangle Town Center had the most.  Nordstroms's will order them for you and you can return them there for free, they had a lot on line to choose from, but they do not keep them in the store. I wanted a long dress that was not too stuffy and "old" looking. If you can wear a short dress there are lots more places to choose from.

MISCELLANEOUS:
www.idoengravables.com Instead of a guest book, which is definitely cheaper, we got a large picture frame that people wrote their name on with a diamond tip pen and that we had a 8”’ X 10” picture of Rachel and Will in. They also carry engraveable trays, and a kind of slate, for people to sign. 

www.ribbonfactory.com They have all kinds of ribbon ( We bought from the “satin” section) that for a small fee they will cut and heat seal into lengths you want, like the ribbons we put on our wedding programs. 

www.papermart.com   Best prices I found on bags we made up for out of town guests (most of our guests) to put in the hotel rooms. These were little tote bags we put personalized stickers on from www.myownlabels.com Paper mart also had good prices on huge rolls of wrapping paper so I got some of that too, for general use. I also got pearlized tissue paper to fill the bags with, but they have every type you can imagine and then some.

Hotels: We had to get our hotel rooms in Fuquay-Varina as it is far enough away from Raleigh that it was really not practical for us to drive, let alone guests from Wilmington or out of state. We reserved blocks of rooms in advance, at a discount to our guests, in the Comfort Inn and The Holiday Inn Express. Neither place will let you reserve blocks of rooms in excess of thirty, and over a year ahead of time, 30 rooms were already booked at the Comfort Inn by another wedding party. These properties were about 10 minutes from Highgrove, and less than a mile from one another.

The Comfort Inn also had a meeting room we were able to reserve, for a special price of $75, for both Friday night and Sunday activities. Both places had very nice rooms, all equipped with a good size mini refrigerator and a microwave. I suppose there was a nice TV in the room, somewhere…. We had all the brunch materials and flowers in our suite, so it was hard to tell. I will say that the better experience, from our point of view, was at The Comfort Inn. There is a Bed and Breakfast in town, it was booked for another wedding and I do not know how large it is.

Special Note: We invited 204 people, but only about 140 came. There were about eight to ten people that we paid for, who said they were coming, but who did not show up, I think this is common. We did have a lot of out of state people we invited who did not come, as we predicted, Unfortunately, we had to call “way too many” people to see if they were coming as they did not respond by the time we requested on the invitations. So make sure you have everyone’s phone numbers, and e-mail is also helpful. If that is you on the other end, RSVP!

That about exhausts my list, I hope it is helpful, it is to me just to have it in one place. No, I would not wish to be a wedding planner! Any questions do not hesitate to ask, but I am starting to lose some of the details already…

Document prepared by:

Cheryl Citron, June 28, 2008