Place and Time

As the last month before our wedding creeped upon us, we were both overwhelmed with phone calls, details, meetings, little chores, planning, budgeting, etc, etc, etc. Octavio owns a DJ business, and we spent a lot of time hand-picking songs we wanted for our ceremony so that our friend could run the DJ system for us.

One of our greatest challenges was staying on budget, which pretty much proved impossible. We ended up spending twice as much as we wanted to--yet we picked the cheapest option of each element required. We got the cheapest cake, the cheapest flowers, the cheapest decorations, the cheapest centerprices, etc. Still, somehow, the costs kept increasing.
 
Another challenge was that our reception hall would only allow licensed caterers to serve or prepare food. Octavio is Mexican and wanted home-made Mexican food, which his family was more than willing to prepare. No catering companies made the traditional Mexican dishes he wanted (nopales, birria). Eventually, we discovered that the local ranch market had a catering license and made the dishes we wanted for cheap.

Final challenge--Octavio wanted to wear a traditional "traje de charro" or mariachi suit. We couldn't find one to buy online or in the area after countless hours of searching. We wanted to rent, but it looked like buying would be the only choice. The suit had to be ordered from Mexico, and we had to drive into downtown LA to order it (from the Palm Springs area).