{Reception Music} Band vs. DJ

I love music. I love music so much it gives me chills or brings me to tears or makes me dance like an idiot. It's because of my love of music that I REALLY want a band at our wedding. One of our first nights together as a newly engaged couple was spent with me playing Kyle song after song after song (over many painstaking hours for him) and planning out our entire wedding playlist.

We love the good old American Crooners like Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, and Dean Martin. We also love Ray Charles. All of this music involves several musicians and horns. Beautiful, loud horns. I can't tell you how many venues we had to pass up because they didn't allow horns! One of the major reasons we ended up picking the Headlands Center for the Arts as our venue was because they didn't have any restrictions on the music - a very rare thing around here apparently!

We've spent the last few months driving around to hear various bands perform and see if they would be the right fit for our wedding dreams. It's been tons of fun, but I've become a little paranoid that no one will dance, or the singer will be horrible, or the band will be boring. And, above all else... I've realized how desperately we need to take dance lessons.

So, I keep questioning my decision to have a band. A band can bring you back in time and really liven up the room. Who doesn't love a live show after all? But with a DJ, you can pick any music you want and change it as you go if you need to pick it up a bit! Plus you can do fun things like Allison did, and have your guests make hilarious song requests.

  

I was also thinking about getting a vintage record player and laying out a bunch of vinyls for people to pick and choose what they wanted to listen to. Maybe during the cocktail hour?

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

What are you doing for your reception music?  Have you been to a wedding with a band?  Or is a DJ the way to go?

Food Truck Phenom

First, let me just say that looking up photos of food trucks while eating the delicious dinner my fiancé made and enjoying a glass of wine is fantastic. Almost as fantastic as eating a delicious dinner and enjoying a glass of wine with my fiancé AT a food truck, but hopefully we'll get to do that next year. Second, I promise I'm not a hipster, but I love food trucks. They give me a warm, cozy feeling like you know it's a bunch of good friends getting together and chowing down. I mean, we all know food trucks are no longer the slimy, fatty, grease trucks with some vague semblance of Mexican food anymore. Now they're AWESOME!

It's quickly becoming a wedding trend to have a food truck at your reception to give it that backyard, home-cooked feeling that's better than dad wearing an apron and standing around the barbecue all day.

We aren't able to have a food truck at our wedding because our venue comes with an amazing organic farm-to-table caterer. While that fits one side of us perfectly, that other side of us loves greasy, delicious food truck food! So the compromise? We're planning on having a food truck for the rehearsal dinner.

Doesn't that look so inviting?

Seabirds in Los Angeles is one of my favorites

The girl below hired three food trucks for her 110 person wedding. How much did it cost her? $3,580.

Dessert trucks or mobile bars are also a really fun idea!

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Of course there are lots of restrictions to be aware of before hiring a food truck. Permits, permission, curb clearance, and potential lines are all something to consider. But hey, if you can do it, DO IT.

I am patiently waiting for the amazing No Worries Filipino vegan cuisine team to make their transition into the food truck world. Common guys!

Have any of you used a food truck for your wedding? Have you been to a wedding that featured a food truck? How was it?

Capturing a Love Story

I understand why most people don't hire a videographer to document their wedding. I've always thought of a wedding "videographer" as your fiancé's best friend who secretly has a crush on you and ends up only videotaping images of you, ruining the whole thing (Okay, fine. I totally stole that from Love Actually). I only recently learned that there are some AMAZING videographers who can take your 12+ hour day and turn it into an abbreviated love story that will make you laugh and cry in 3 short minutes.

I've swooned over far too many wedding videos at this point to not have our very own. Now it's a matter of deciding which is the best and most economically sound option for us.

Go All Out

Hire one of the many talented cinematography teams out there to document your day and edit it to perfection without any worry. Someone like Kiss the Bride Films in San Francisco and New York or Shade Tree Films in Los Angeles can turn your big blip of a day into something you can relive over and over again.

[embed width="590" height="331.875"] http://vimeo.com/31097286 [/embed]

P.S. I think I've watched that one a million times. It's my favorite. 'What Luck' by Shade Tree Films.

À La Carte

Hire someone to just do the filming, then after you financially recover from the wedding, pay to have it edited. Or if you know someone who is great with the camera but knows little about editing, you can send a company like Well Spun Weddings the raw footage, and they'll edit it for you.

[embed width="590" heigh="331.875"] http://vimeo.com/20255584 [/embed]

D.I.Y. Video + Professional Editing

A nice affordable option is to work with a company like Wedit or Storymix. They will send you the cameras for your guests to capture all of the important (and unimportant, but equally awesome) moments of your wedding, then you send the cameras back to them, and they do the editing for you!

[embed width="590" height="442.5"] http://vimeo.com/14491520 [/embed]

Do It Yourself

Have your friends and family send you anything they record on their phones or cameras, and use an editing software like iMovie to create your very own video, the way YOU want to remember the day.

[embed width="590" height="442.5"] http://vimeo.com/31070563 [/embed]

I've decided to cut my $5,000 photography budget in half, and use that other half for videography. It's been a struggle to find both a photographer AND videographer who will fit my budget and suit my taste, but I know it can be done!

What are you doing for your wedding? Did you hire a videographer for your big day? 

{Real Brides} Kalista :: Vintage Eco-friendly Wedding

Hi Brides! I'm really excited to share this roller coaster of wedding planning with you, get your help along the way, and hopefully have some fun pictures to show for it in the end. See you every Thursday!

Name:	Kalista
Location:	San Rafael, CA
Budget:	Let's see what we can do with $30,000
Age:	26
Occupation:	Manager of Donor Relations for a great non-profit
Wedding Date:	November 17th, 2012
Venue:	Headlands Center for the Arts
Planner:	Me! And Kyle too (when it's not too girly)
Photographer:	We're going to need your help with this one

Connect with Kalista on Pinterest

About Me: As a California girl, born and raised, who knew I'd fall in love with a New Hampshire boy? (I admit it, I wasn't exactly sure where NH was when I met him) I met my best friend Kyle on a sail boat in Long Beach, CA at 8 am. He was teaching the sailing class, I was half awake. We spent 2 days sailing and falling in love. A few months later when I graduated college, we moved up to the San Francisco Bay Area to find our new home. After 5 years together, Kyle proposed to me unexpectedly while on a trip to Jamaica, and just like all of you other lucky brides, I cannot WAIT to marry the love of my life! We're geared up and ready to stitch, paint, draw, and glue everything we possibly can for this wedding. If someone can do it, we can do it (at least we think so... let's revisit that in 11 months). Now, let's plan the crap out of this wedding!

Credits (top left to bottom right): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Wedding Style: It's important to both of us to step as lightly on the ol' earth as possible, so we're planning an eco-friendly wedding full of our favorite things: sailing, beatnik literature, travel, music, food, and craft beer. Our venue has a lot of personality, so that really guides our style. It's an old military building from 1907 that's in the middle of a National Recreation area, so naturally we want to incorporate rustic, vintage character, and bring the outdoors in as much as possible (tree rental anyone?).