Well congratulations
As implied by HenHappy's post
, make sure you have an indoor alternative if your main plan is for outdoors. Make sure the indoor alternative either has good air conditioning, or LOTS of windows AND FANS available -- a whole buncha people packed into a small space gets awfully hot awfully quickly (thinking back to my wedding, 16 people eating buffet-style in our apartment, sweating to death
)
Also, for outdoors, I suggest having wasp traps on hand. Even if you are not normally a wasp trap kinda person. Again, ask me how I know
Cakewise I second the suggestion of something involving strawberries, if it's July. Otherwise, perhaps a white or lemon or coconut cake. (Ours was carrot cake, but only because that's what my m-i-l decided she was Going To make for us <g>)
You can make nice invitations quite inexpensively by going to a store that sells artsy handmade-type paper and finding something that suits your taste. We had a really nice handmade paper that had leaves and bits of fern etc in it, used as an outer 'card', with a handwritten insert giving the actual invitation info. You could computer print the insert if you preferred, I don't think many people these days run a fingernail over it to check if it's engraved or think poorly of you if it's not
I heartily recommend the small homestyle wedding thing -- we had our ceremony in a local park's greenhouse, reception in our apartment, 16 people including us, my dress was a nice floral print from a dep't store (I was too busy with moving/immigrating things to sew, unfortunately), honeymooned at DH's family's cottage on Georgian Bay, and the total bill for everything came to like $400 or so. Which left us a WHOLE LOT more to spend on a house and land...
Good luck,
Pat
