Real Wedding: Shalyn and Cody

Today’s wedding is a super sweet backyard wedding, with lots of DIY details. This budget chic couple prioritized all the wedding elements to get everything they wanted without spending a ton.

The lovely bride Shalyn shares:

Our wedding was fabulous, it was everything I could have hoped for and more! It was in Cave Creek, AZ at one of my best friends backyards, the perfect setting for our Classy-Rustic theme. It started out early, but was just a fun, relaxing day – made all the stress of planning and projects worth it! All of my bridesmaids and flower girls got ready together while the groom and groomsman spent the afternoon hanging out until we met for our first round of pictures. I was very excited to do the reveal pictures, and thank goodness we were able to get so many of the pictures I wanted with the whole bridal party as well – time flies on your big day! The location for the wedding was gorgeous, Peggy Johnson and Ann-Marie Ashton were absolutely angels and had taken my vision/theme ideas and made theme so much more. These two ladies were my rocks throughout the whole process, hands down the best planner-duo! We had a mid-size wedding, about 115 people in total. The entire day was perfect from the getting ready girl time cocktails to the delicious meal (which people are still talking about) to working it on the dance floor when the night was over – PERFECT!

Due to the tight budget we had, our wedding was filled with DIY projects. I designed and made the invitations, the bouquets, table decorations/center pieces, seating assignment board, flower hair pieces that the bridesmaids and flower girls wore, flower girl baskets, and the thank you gifts. I was blessed to have the best Maid-of-Honor (my little sister, Dani-Rae Lougheed) who helped me with most of these projects.

I think that our wedding is proof that you can have almost everything you want, even on an extremely tight budget. My husband and I paid for the wedding ourselves, so needless to say I definitely prioritized what I wanted and than pinched pennies where I could. The most important things we wanted for our big day was that our family and friends were comfortable and able to just let loose, and who doesn’t love to let loose on the dance floor. We splurged on food, photography and the DJ – those were the most important to us. Those are the things you remember from that night. Another big item we both wanted was to make sure we included both our grandfathers who passed away before our wedding. Our pastor (a long time family friend of my side) was great, his sermon was everything we imagined and he took a special time out to remember our families – one of the most touching moments of the night was when he spoke of my grandfather who he was very close with as well. Not a dry eye in the house!