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GO NEWS
Pro organizer shares tips from her own wedding
Courtesy of The Sentenial, Bridal Guide 2004
For AP Special Editions
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| Eamon Reilly and Maureen Gainer kiss at the reception after their fall wedding in Chicago. The bride and her friends created the hollowed out pumpkin floral centerpieces — part of her strategy to stay within a budget. (Steve Matteo/Associated Press) |
CHICAGO — Maureen Gainer's boyfriend of four years, Eamon Reilly, proposed to her in New York's Central Park on Dec. 30, 2002. Before they had rung in 2003, Gainer had booked the church and reception site in Chicago and purchased bridesmaid dresses.
An overeager bride? No, just an organized one. As a professional organizer in Chicago, Gainer strives to keep everything running for clients in an orderly manner — and she wasn't about to let her wedding plans take any wrong turns.
"Being organized keeps you from turning into a bride who bites everyone's head off," said Gainer, 28. "Do everything you can possibly do early. There's no reason the week of your wedding you should be doing Mass books or table cards."
Right away, she and Reilly, 29, realized they had a challenge on their hands. They both come from large Irish families in tightknit Irish communities — Gainer is one of six children and grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and Reilly is one of four and was raised in Dumont, N.J. — which was one of the things that drew them to each other. However, when they started drawing up their guest list, they found themselves struggling to cut the number down to 425 invitations. The final tally at the Oct. 4, 2003, wedding was just under 300.
Budget main concern
"Budget was our major concern," said Gainer. Both families contributed financially and the couple made up the difference, but keeping the cost of a Saturday night wedding below $40,000 took a lot of ingenuity.
First, they agreed on what was most important to them: a beautiful and meaningful Mass and a reception where everyone had a great time. "Food and drinks we weren't going to scrimp on," she said.
Their biggest splurge: A 12-piece band, which played everything from Frank Sinatra to '70s songs. On the band's breaks, a friend played bagpipes and they put on a CD of Irish set dances (the Irish version of line dancing). They didn't cut corners when it came to taking care of their guests, 100 of whom came in from out of town. A trolley shuttled everyone to and from the wedding, and out-of-towners were also treated to a trolley tour of Chicago and dinner and drinks at an Irish pub the night before.
They made sure the celebration paid homage to their Irish heritage, from the Celtic seals embossed on the invitations to the Guinness on tap at the reception. After all, the two met in Greenwich Village when they both went to hear a concert by a small Irish band. At the time, Gainer was working in New York for a non-profit housing and social services agency, and Reilly, an environmental scientist, was living in New Jersey. Gainer returned to Chicago in the summer of 2000, and Reilly agreed to give Chicago a try. It turned out to be a "perfect compromise," Gainer said. "I'd never live in New Jersey and he'd never live in Manhattan. Chicago is enough city for both of us."
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| Stylist Tony Favaro adjusts Maureen Gainer's bridal veil as reception festivities get underway after her wedding to Eamon Reilly. The bride borrowed her wedding gown from a friend and she picked up dresses for her attendants — including her sisters, Sheila, left, and Nora Gainer — for just $25. (Steve Matteo/Associated Press) |
Gainer saved thousands of dollars in four ways: She borrowed whatever she could, she accepted friends' services as wedding gifts, she designed and crafted many of the wedding elements herself and she skipped things she couldn't afford. She kept the theme simple and easy to carry out, opting to play up the season by using autumnal colors in the flowers and bridesmaid dresses, pumpkins in the centerpieces and leaf-shaped seating cards.
Borrowed her gown
What's more, none of her cost-cutting measures cheapened the celebration; in fact, they enriched the day by making it more personal.
When Gainer walked down the aisle at St. Barnabas Church in a strapless satin Lazaro gown, she was able to claim the dress as her "something borrowed."
"I wanted a plain strapless dress," recalled the bride, who is not the least bit sentimental about stuff — especially a dress you wear once that can clutter a future home. When a friend who had gotten married the year before offered hers, Gainer happily accepted. Her veil, handbag and jewelry also were borrowed, and she bought a bolero at a consignment shop to cover her shoulders in church. Her ring and her shoes were about the only things that were new.
Friends and family members offered their talents as gifts. An aunt baked the four-tiered wedding cake accented with fresh roses. A sister did the calligraphy on the invitations. A hairstylist friend pulled her hair into a sleek updo.
Gainer has always loved do-it-yourself projects and she enthusiastically took on the save-the-date cards, invitations, Mass books and seating cards. She embossed copper cardstock from Paper Source, a chain of paper stores, with a Celtic stamp and held the invitation closed with sheer gold ribbon. She printed a sample on her home printer, then had the rest done at Kinko's. In the gift bags for out-of-town guests, Gainer included a CD of Chicago-themed songs that she made on the computer and a votive candle from Ikea, on which she drew a city skyline with a silver pen and wrote "Thanks for coming."
She hired a high-end florist, but saved money by making the vessels for the centerpieces out of grayish green pumpkins.
She and her mother drove to a farmstand in Michigan to buy the pumpkins (which were $5 less apiece than in Chicago), then invited friends over to carve and shellack them while they ate lasagna and drank wine and beer. The florist filled the pumpkins with roses, hydrangea, hypericum berries and apples, then scattered fall leaves on the tables.
"It was that careful selection of which things to make and which to buy that made it special without turning it into an arts-and-crafts project," said Bridget Gainer, the bride's sister and maid of honor. "She found ways to personalize the wedding and make people feel connected to it that really added to the day."
Among the things she did without were flowers in the church and guest favors.
Instead of an expensive floral arrangement on the seating card table, she placed framed wedding photos of both of their parents, votive candles and a guest book.
"There were things I would have loved to do, like favors, but if I couldn't do them the way I wanted to, I chose not to do them," she said. "We saved a large amount on things I don't believe make a difference in the ultimate celebration."
Dresses were just $25
Among her favorite bargains were the bridesmaid dresses, which she found while shopping with friends at H&M in New York the day after she got engaged. Gainer was thinking she would keep the chocolate satin full-length gowns in mind as a possibility, until she saw they were marked down to $25.
"I've been in weddings where the dress is $250 and it's hideous," she said. "I was determined not to impose that on my bridesmaids, who I knew would be my sisters and his sisters." She was having six bridesmaids but bought eight dresses in case they needed extra fabric for bags or shawls. The size 16 she bought for extra fabric turned out to be invaluable; by the time of the wedding, her sister Bridget was seven and a half months pregnant, so their mother altered the larger gown to fit her.
During the planning process, Gainer kept everything on track by setting up a master Excel spreadsheet with workbooks for categories like the mailing list, budget, master to-do list, seating chart and song list. "I worked exclusively off the spreadsheet so there was no information in different places," she said. She kept folders for contracts, invitation samples and readings for the Mass together in a portable hanging file.
All of her list making and careful planning paid off with a wedding that ran as smoothly as one of Gainer's flowcharts. Sure, the groomsmen forgot their flowers and the bagpiper didn't get the cue to come into the church at the end of the ceremony, leaving the couple waiting at the altar for an excruciating four minutes.
"Little things go wrong, but who cares?" said Gainer, who never lost sight of her desire to show guests a good time. "Everyone danced the whole time. That's a successful wedding to me."
This article also appeared in the The Dodge Globe, Sioux City Journal, The South Bend Tribune, The Centenial Online, and The Asheville Citizen-Times.
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