The Smiths
I wanted to say a huge THANK YOU for making our wedding so easy to plan!
I'm a (recovering) serial over thinker so I went into wedding planning with a goal of not becoming an anxious mess by the time the wedding came around. I wanted not only the day to be fun and relaxed, but also the whole planning process.
Using the directory was a life saver as it gave me a curated collection of options to pick from which saved me from picking through hundreds in a google search. Of the options on the directory I looked closer into a couple of each that suited me and picked from there, so easy! This seriously saved me so much time, I had picked basically everyone that we would use in one evening!
It also gave me so much peace of mind knowing that the vendors on the directory have been tried and tested especially as we couldn't meet them as we were planning from the North Island. On the day everything turned out a million times better than I could even have hoped for, and everyone we dealt with were just super professional, kind people who slotted into our day like family.
The actual day was just the best! (of course we all say that haha) right from the start I knew we would be doing things a bit different from the usual. Both my partner and I hate being in the spotlight too much so used this as an opportunity to pick apart the whole "wedding' day and only include things that were important or had meaning for us. I'm so so so glad we did this, it saved us not only a huge bunch of money but we ended up with a day that was perfectly us!
The first thing that went was the long wait between the engagement and wedding. We got engaged in August and originally thought we would wait a year but as we dug a bit deeper into what we wanted we realized we would be having just a small gathering so there was no need to wait a full year.
Out went bridesmaids, the huge guest list, cake, groomsmen, a wedding arch, chairs, speeches, table linens and a whole bunch of other wedding traditions we didn't feel the need to have. We settled on a evening ceremony with just immediate family (8 people) at Godly Heads followed by drinks and dessert with friends and a few more family members (30 total). Although our day was small numbers wise I did still want the things we did include to be beautiful. At this point I went straight to the directory to book in our vendors asap as I knew we would be booking super late for the coming summer wedding season!
I just want to say again a huge thank you for setting up the directory, it made planning so much easier and we connected with such great people to help with our day. It was just the best!