Long Time - No blog - Where we have been!

Well, it's been awhile since our last blog! Here is a little bit of what I have been up to:

I got married! The big day was on August 22 at the Overlook Hotel (Masonic Home) in Charlton, MA. Yes, this year for us has been really crazy as we were helping our clients with their weddings while also planning our own! Needless to say, the wedding was perfect! Great food, great music and just a wonderful day. Our vendors were excellent. We had Chris Phillips as our Guitarist for the ceremony, and he was excellent! We had two GREAT photographers in Tammy Woodard as well as Tim Mulcahy - our photos came back super fast and were outstanding! Music on Wheels provided the entertainment and kept the dance floor moving, and finally Aaron Cadieux from Big Operations Productions filmed the ceremony for us (and we will be editing it ourselves, once all of our client videos are done for the year).

I always tell my clients is that your wedding day goes by like a blur, but until I lived it myself - I had no idea how right that statement was. We had a short ceremony, a five hour reception, and then an after-party (that went for another few hours) and it just FLEW by. I am just so glad we got the photos and the video to look back on, as there was just so much that we missed!

One thing that we learned is that a big wedding also doesn't have to cost a ton either, if you plan things out and are not afraid to get your hands a little bit dirty. Being in the business helped up out, and we know what (though experience) what was needed and what was typically wasted at weddings - so we planned our budget around that. No special favors (we donated to a animal shelter in lue of favors) - Flowers were bought the day before at a super-market and put together by the bride and a friend. We had two great photographers and two videographers that we were able to barter with - helping to cut down our costs. All favors and decorations were made by hand by my talented wife - saving hundreds in paper costs. Overall, our biggest expense was the food (which was excellent). Luckily for us, The Overlook is not a well known wedding location, and thus prices were very reasonable. So, in the end - we spend about $7000 total on our wedding. Proving that you don't need to spend 30-40 grand on a nice wedding - you just need to get 'creative' in how you approach your budget.

The Second big news that has kept me from blogging is that I took on a new "day job" as a Senior Web Developer/Designer at a large insurance company. It has just taken me a little bit of time to get acquainted with the new job - and thus stuff like blogging and marketing Lakota Den took a back seat for the moment while I focused on the .

For those that don't know, I only do weddings during the summer time and on a part-time basis - the "day job" allows me to pay my bills and not have to worry about "getting the next wedding" to pay the bills. Doing weddings part-time also allows us to be fresh and give our clients more personal attention. Since we work with a smaller group of brides, and only do one wedding on the weekends - we can spend a lot more time focused on that one wedding - instead of juggling multiple jobs at the same time.

So those two things are the reason that I haven't posted in awhile. We've been a little busy adjusting to all the new and wonderful things that have happened! I am hoping to get back to posting more often!