When people ask you what they can do to help with the wedding, like close friends and cousins and aunts, you can always ask them to feel free to bring some bars or cookies to the ceremony. One of my close aunts took it upon herself to order a huge tray of Italian desserts from Sciortino’s bakery and bring them to the ceremony. She let us know ahead of time, so that we would save some table space for the desserts. I think she easily spent $100 on the chocolate cannolis and pastacciotti, but her desserts easily got the most attention! Our guests loved them, and I was so touched by her thoughtfulness! The desserts are traditional Italian goods, homemade, and easily the best tasting treats in the city. When I think back to it, small desserts that people can pick up with napkins make so much more sense than getting plates and forks and knives out. Having your close friends help you with your wedding also makes sense, too.

Our parents are really great, and for our wedding present they gave us the gift of a romantic weekend at the Pfister hotel. It was really, really nice, and really romantic. The front lobby is beautiful, and our room was the nicest room I had ever stayed in. The hotel staff adds extra little charms, like champagne and truffles, but it’s being on vacation in your own city that was the winning ticket. It was really generous of our parents, mainly because they had helped so much with the planning of the wedding. I checked with the front desk to find out how much a room is a night: over $250 a night! Nice, but even better as a gift!

There was a bit of a debate on having the reception at a park pavilion, mainly because people associate parks with graduation parties. I didn’t really care what people thought, the price was right to me. I also wanted the reception to be about talking with my close family and friends rather than trying to impress them in a stuffy restaurant. Mike and I planned this carefully, getting our brothers and sisters involved so that they could take care of the setting up while we took our wedding pictures. There is a full kitchen in the pavilion along with tables and chairs, and it can accommodate 80 people comfortably, but the limit is 90 according to park rules. My number one suggestion would be to have everything packed carefully the night before.

We wanted to have the ceremony in the park, which meant that we needed to find an officiant who would perform the marriage outside. When we applied for our marriage license at City Hall, they gave us a list of people who would perform the service. Jim was a great guy, and he gave such a beautiful speech on love and marriage at the park. It was funny, and lighthearted, and I think everyone enjoyed it, even our grandparents. He is able to go with you to the park to practice the ceremony beforehand, which is nice, for an extra $100. I really liked that time, because he made sure that we understood the value and purpose of marriage. It was great pre-marital counseling!

This is one of the stores that I love in Milwaukee, it has lots of cute vintage things, some really strange things, too. I was looking around at the clothes, but them came across a stack of well-kept vintage wedding cards and valentine cards. These were “Congratulations on your Wedding” cards, but I loved the vintage image. Each card was about $3.00 each. I decided to buy a bunch, color photocopy them, and then make my own invitations out of them. We were expecting about 80 guests in total, most of them couples or families, which means that it wasn’t that hard to make my own wedding cards. Brides need to remember that 200 guests doesn’t necessarily mean 200 wedding cards! We got the extra lace and ribbon we would use from a Goodwill. Over two weekends, Mike and I did about 6 each a day, and we added glue and gold paint and ribbons to make them extra nice and added a touch of vintage. I think it was a great combination of recycling and creativity, and I know that each guest appreciated their original wedding invitation!

For the wedding day, lots of attention is usually given to the bride. I was taken care of, but I want to draw attention to the salon that my husband went to on the eve of our wedding day. His sisters made him the present of a treat at the Men’s Barber Shop, with a hair cut and hot towel wrap and a nose/ear hair trim! He said that it was really nice, and I think his skin was really soft on our wedding day!

Mike and I had just bought our first house, and we decided that it would be great to have as a wedding present flowers and other items needed for the garden. We made a list of plants and shrubs that we would like, and had it passed around to our guests. We made it clear that we didn’t want presents, but that if someone really wanted to get us something, they could help us make our house nicer on the outside. For the reception, we also bought some beautiful flowers and decorated the room with them. Other guests also brought the perennials they had bought us, along with some birdfeeders. It was a really nice atmosphere! We were able to plant them afterwards, so it we got our monies worth with the flowers. I think Kellner’s is one of the nicest things about Milwaukee, it’s three big greenhouses that you can walk through and see flowers all year long. We went in March to find out what kind of flowers they would have in stock in June, and there was so many people in there enjoying the warmth and beautiful flowers.

There is a few places in the O’Donnell park that can be rented for an outdoor ceremony, such as the North Garden Plaza and the South Garden Plaza. It cost a little under $600 to rent the South Plaza, but I think the price may have gone up since then. Both South and North Plazas are beautiful, and both need to be booked as soon as possible because they are popular. What makes the South Plaza a good place is that there are picnic tables available, and we were hoping for a nice day so that we could hold the ceremony and part of the reception outdoors. It was great because we could spend time with the people who came to the ceremony but who wouldn’t be at the reception. Having a set-up like this makes it easier to invite colleagues, because you can offer them cake and a drink but then say that the reception is just for close family. I think people appreciate that. Friends and family were able to hand out by the tables where we put out small sandwiches and fruit plates while my husband and I walked around the park and posed for pictures. It was beautiful, and I think everyone liked being outside before the reception.

My mother and I visited lots of grocery stores and caterers in the area to get ideas on prices and what have you, and we ended up going with big platters from Wal-mart. We also ordered a cake from Wal-Mart, which was ready on the day of the wedding and we sent my dad to go and pick it up and bring it to the park. We weren’t bragging about where we got our food from, but the salads and sandwiches tasted nice and feed lots of people.

This is a lesson is going with what fits your wallet, while supporting your local co-op as much as you can. We ordered lots of stuff for the reception in bulk from the co-op, like blue chips and salsas, which was a great deal, too. Ordering from two places (here and Walmart) was easy, because everything we got from the co-op wasn’t perishable so it was able to sit in the car for three weeks.