What day is it? Who are you people?

The last few weeks have been extremely busy for me; thus begins my apology to you for the long gap between blog posts. Though it is no excuse, I have to say that there really hasn't been much movement in the realm of the wedding and honeymoon planning. We had a phone call scheduled with our Wedding Planner for last week, but at the last moment Danny was forced to reschedule, owing to some other wedding commitment he had that week. This has given us an extra week to compile our questions for him, most of which revolve around the planning kit we received a few weeks back. Tomorrow morning, I'll be getting up at the crack of dawn to make sure I'm out for my run by 7 AM, giving me enough time to run, come back in, and shower before the call begins. I must make this brief, then, to ensure my good sleep tonight.

A few minor things of note: we sent out our save-the-dates for our wedding (only to the limited number of wedding guests outside of Washington), as well as the first wave of electronic save-the-dates for our Seattle wedding celebration. The wedding save-the-dates were physical and went out via snail mail; Girl Scout Fiancée made some excellent faux-luggage tags that went out in sturdy, but small enveloped. These save-the dates are a thematic preview of the actual wedding invites, which Girl Scout Fiancée and I designed together (again, making great use of my Photoshop wizardry). Alas, these I cannot reveal until they have gone out to the relevant parties, as I don't want to spoil the surprise. The save-the-dates for our Washington celebration went out through Paperless Post, and are of a simple design that I think looks classy. Unfortunately, despite sending out over 80 e-mail save-the-dates, less than five people have been kind enough to send back a response with their snail mail addresses thus far; soon, I will have to crack the whip.

These were designed by Girl Scout Fiancée.

To be perfectly honest, the largest thing occupying my attention regarding the wedding has been the budget. I know it's gauche to talk about money, but this is something I have to keep track of, since Girl Scout Fiancée and I are paying for the wedding, honeymoon, and Seattle party ourselves. Though I'd done some preliminary budget sketches back last year after we made the decision to get married at Disney World, I had gotten the creeping suspicion over the course of the year that there were a lot of hidden costs I wasn't taking into account, so I used Excel to create a massive interactive budget, not only for the wedding but for all of our finances through the end of 2014. I'm a pretty fair hand with Excel, and even set it up to automatically adjust our budget as I input more precise numbers on costs. The initial results were a little grimmer than I'd hoped.

Part of the problem is that I've just been estimating a lot of our honeymoon costs, especially food. However, since I'd spent so much time in the lead-up planning out our honeymoon (in preparation for the all-important Advanced Dining Reservation booking, which is less than two weeks away), I knew, more or less, every restaurant we would be eating at during the entirety of our stay. Armed with this plan, I then went through the menu for every single restaurant and built out a total meal cost for every meal, assuming that Girl Scout Fiancée and I have an appetizer, entree, dessert, and drink at every opportunity. I then budgeted in things like breakfast, coffee, and snacks, filling out our schedule with our costs for each meal, and built a much better view of how much we'd need to set aside for food. Let's just say my initial estimate had been about $500 too low.

I need all this for breakfast at Chef Mickey's!

That's the story of this budgeting process. Even though I thought I was estimating high on things, I've been consistently off of my initial predictions. For example, my original estimate for the food truck for the Seattle party was about $400 lower than it actually will turn out to be. I forgot to include the PhotoPass+ cost in my initial estimate of photography, which is currently $149 if you buy it more than two weeks beforehand. I forgot to include the hair & makeup cost for Tammie, and had under-budgeted for our minister's hotel room.

It's my hope that there are an equal number of areas where I've over-budgeted; I know for a fact that Girl Scout Fiancée and I will not have an appetizer, entree, dessert, and drink each at every meal, but that's how I budgeted. I've got a $500 entry in the budget line for Miscellaneous, which is for any costs that crop up at the last minute. Throughout this, the real X-factor for the budget is the Honeymoon Registry. I have absolutely no idea what to guess for that; do I not budget for it at all, and am pleasantly surprised? Do I plan for a conservative amount? What is that amount?

I much prefer this X-Factor. Way easier to understand.

If anyone out there has any experience with Disney wedding and honeymoon budgeting, I'd love to hear how far off your estimates were, and where the surprise costs came from.