Miracles and Headaches

I have to say, there were some issues along the way that made Hannah just want to elope or go to the Justice of the Peace. There were some issues with people, which caused some tears. I won't go into details, because really, this is about how we did all this on the really small budget we had to work with.
There were times I worried that we wouldn't have enough. For example; the deposit on the church; there were things that were worked out for us that made it so much easier to pay the deposit. nThere were a couple of times I nearly had a panic attack. There was a mistake with numbers that had it not been a mistake; would have eaten the money I had budgeted for flowers. I cried, thinking it wasn't going to work. Then the mistake was corrected, it was a mistake, not on our end,but it was taken care of. Before I go any further, I want to give a shout out to Angie, our wedding coordinator at Church.
Hannah's wedding was her first one to do alone, and she did an outstanding job. She was very patient with us. She was very nervous about doing a wedding alone for the first time. I have known Angie since she was in jr. High,and she is an amazing young woman. I really need to give a shout out to the Feather River Men's Center as well. They did the set up and tear down. They are not paid for that, it is volunteer only, and they were awesome. Then there was Santos,and Tara, and Bill, and the list goes on. We have an amazing church staff/church family. That made a huge difference!

The next thing we had to work on was invitations for the wedding. Since the wedding was not too far off, we knew we needed to get moving. My niece offered to buy and design Hannah and Collin's invitations for them as a gift.
That saved us alot of money,and they turned out BEAUTIFULLY! I have attached a picture, hopefully it does some justice to the invitations. I am not sure if it really shows how pretty they are.

The Planning Begins

Doing a Wedding on a 3000.00 budget proved to be a bit easier than I thought, but I have to say; GOD had so much to do with it! Obviously, the first thing is to find a dress and a venue.
Hannah wanted an outdoor wedding,but she decided that a wedding outdoors in July might make the Grandmothers melt, so we decided on an indoor venue. We found a place in Chico, The Chico Women's club. It was everything Hannah wanted, and we decided to go for it. A week or so later; we heard from God that this wasn't the best thing., so we called the church to see if that would work, and they more than graciously let us have the old sanctuary, which was perfect, since we were keeping it small. The main sanctuary already had a wedding booked the next day after Hannah, so that would have been too difficult anyway! (for those who may not realize, we all call the old Sanctuary "The Well")
We asked for,and were granted the well. That was the biggest part of our budget. For covenant partners, the total was around 800.00 plus the cost of cleaning tablecloths. Not bad, considering many places want upwards of what our entire budget was!
I immediately called and canceled the Chico Women's club. It turned out to be a much better thing to do the wedding here at home!

Knowing that we were walking in obedience to God was worth the extra cost, and the convenience of having everyone basically in one spot was a plus. I will continue this a little later...

The Beginning

About a year ago, my middle daughter met the man she would marry. Ironically enough, it was at the wedding of a mutual friend that they met!
One thing led to another, and In February, he asked for permission to marry Hannah.

We had taken out a home equity line so that in the event this happened, we would have some money to use. That door was shut when the housing market went down,and our equity line was canceled. We weren't really surprised, since our house appraised at what we thought was a ridiculous amount!

So, we had to start from square one. We asked for a little time, we were originally hoping for September, but they wanted sooner, so we decided to try and do what we could, and trust God for the money.

When we got our taxes done, we found we were getting more than we anticipated, so that was our budget- Around $3000.00.

So, taxes were done in April,and here we are on June 30. I will try and fill in the blanks as best I can.