This week on One Day : Megumi and Ben! This wonderful couple was married in Granville, Ohio on October 17, 2009. After being engaged for 8 months (and dating for 7.5 years) the couple enjoyed a beautiful fall wedding and implemented their $10,000 budget wonderfully. For those brides in the process of planning their fall wedding, take notes! Megumi created many aspects of her wedding day herself and it made all the difference!

1. What wedding projects were DIY?

- Save the Dates: I had fun creating bird illustrations for this in Illustrator and InDesign.

- Invitations: I used a combination of my own design, with a boxed set I had bought from Target. It saved me a lot of money because the boxed set had most of the pieces I wanted for the invitation, but I was able to have some creative freedom in how I designed the text.

- Ceremony Programs: Taking my idea from the invitations, I used the same design and then from the save the dates, I used the bird illustration.

- Centerpieces: My wonderful sister-in-law owns a business with her mother where they sell dried flowers, she helped me to design the centerpieces. I never knew how many options there were with dried flowers! I used coffee beans as a filler, and made a mixed arrangement of browns, oranges, and greens in dried flowers. Plus, after the ceremony is over, I was able to take them all home.

- Cake topper: Using a Martha Stewart love birds cake topper I found for $2, I took off the cheesy looking flowers, and added a birdcage veil and top hat to the little birds.

- Bridesmaids gifts: Jewelry and hairpieces – Michael’s, Joann Fabrics and Hobby Lobby were my favorite stores during wedding planning. I made necklaces out of colored pearls and ribbon, and made flowers out of fabric that I attached to hair clips.

2. Now that you look back on your wedding, what do you remember most about the day? I remember the last 30 to 45 minutes of the reception, getting on the dance floor with Ben and our close friends and bridal party and just dancing like crazy. We didn’t get to dance much before that since we were talking to guests. It was awesome.

3. What was the vision for your wedding day before you started planning? I wanted something simple, but elegant, creative/vintage-ish, but not over the top. We wanted a location where we could have an outdoor ceremony and indoor reception.

4. How did that vision change by the time you were finished with the planning? The day of the wedding it was 40 degrees and almost snowing so needless to say we had to move the ceremony indoors. It wasn’t how I had imagined it all along, but that didn’t matter. It ended up working even better than we had planned.

5. What difficulties did you face while planning a wedding near Columbus? Finding catering that fit our budget. We ended up going with a caterer from outside of Columbus who was willing to drive to our location.

6. What was your least favorite part of wedding planning? Table and seating charts. Enough said.

7. What was your favorite part of wedding planning? I loved coordinating the colors with my theme. Also, I am an organizer…so I loved that whole aspect of coordinating everything and checking things off the list…weird, I know. Most of all, I love that how we arranged our ceremony and reception, it totally fit our personalities. I felt that we really were able to reflect who we are through the scripture, message, songs, etc. For example, the scripture was read in Japanese by my mom and in English by Ben’s mom to reflect our cultural backgrounds.

8. How did Ben (the groom) fit into the wedding planning process? He actually did a lot! I put him in charge of all music (ceremony and reception), marriage license and honeymoon details.

9. If you could go back in time – what would “married Megumi” tell “engaged Megumi” before the wedding planning started? Rest, rest, rest. Unfortunately, when I get stressed, I tend to loose my voice. On my wedding day, and the days leading up, I was extremely hoarse. Also, while I stressed over the littlest details, in the end it didn’t matter because at the end of the day, we were MARRIED!

Welcome to the third week of my new series, One Day, where I am able to feature a couple who recently got married. This week, I’m excited to introduce Michael and Mary Kate! After a 9 month long engagement and a budget of $35,000, they were married at Old St. Mary’s Church (the first and oldest Catholic Parish in Chicago) and celebrated the night away at Salvage One. I was able to design their invitation set + program and I will always remember their style and personality. Enjoy some tips from Mary Kate, a inspiration board revolving around their chocolate brown-green-butter color scheme, and take a peek at some of their GORGEOUS photos.

1. Now that it has been about 6 months since your wedding day, what do you remember most about the day? I remember I was in a church filled with 200 people but it felt like just Mike and me. I remember our MOH and BM speeches. I remember the day and night just felt truly magical. Great vibes!

2. What was the vision for your wedding day before you started planning? Before we got engaged we discussed a destination wedding or maybe even eloping!

3. How did that vision change by the time you were finished with the planning? We did a little research on a destination wedding and when we realized our grandparents wouldn’t be able to make it, we decided to stay local. After the decision to stay local was made, we had no clue what our wedding would look like.  Since I work in the meetings/events industry and have been to several banquet hall/hotel weddings we knew that’s what we didn’t want, but we could not pin point what we did want. The key for us was baby steps, taking one task at a time. Visualizing the big picture was impossible. Once we found our venue, we could start to picture it coming together. What we finally ended up with was a traditional wedding in an nontraditional spot with personal touches.

4. What difficulties did you face while planning a wedding in Chicago? Being able to afford a unique venue in the city of Chicago with great food. AKA BUDGET! Also weather, Chicago weather is so unpredictable so we planned for a hot day, but we had a back up plan for a cooler day.

[From top to bottom: flower girl dress via J.Crew, chocolate brown wedding programs via theknot.com, cowboy boot image via theknot.com, potential rehearsal dinner dress via Anthropologie, apple favor idea via theknot.com]

5. What was your least favorite part of wedding planning? This may sound odd but choosing my hair style for that day was my least favorite part of the entire wedding planning process.  I could not decided and when I did, the styles I tried looked terrible on me.  After several hair trials, I just said just decided to not worry about it.

6. What was your favorite part of wedding planning? Negotiating with vendors. Vendors want your business. Being able to negotiate with the vendors I was able to save us a lot of money.

7. How did Mike (the groom) fit into the wedding planning process? Mike choose the reception venue.  We worked together on budget, rings, music and menus. He also styled the groomsmen.

8. If you could go back in time – what would “married Mary Kate” tell “engaged Mary Kate” before the wedding planning started? Eat everything.

All of Michael and Mary Kate’s photography was taken by Emotia.com.