Hey there, fellow brides! I'm super excited to join The Broke-Ass Bride team to share my experiences as a Real Bride Blogger, specifically about how I'm creating a wedding dress to wear for the big day. That's right - I'm sewing my wedding dress from scratch.

A little bit about me: I met my one and only, Chris, about four years ago when I started work at a new job in Boston. He has the thickest Boston accent I ever heard, at least to my Pennsylvania ears, and dating him went against all of my "rules" about dating people you work with. But I'm glad I ignored those rules, because I never would have met and fallen for the love of my life! We share a wacky sense of humor and we can just be ourselves around each other. Plus, he taught me all about baseball and I actually enjoy watching baseball games, a sport that I thought was the most yawn-inducing of all sports. If that's not love, I don't know what is!

Chris and I at Fenway Park

Our wedding is coming up on June 4, 2016, and is going to be at the Four Oaks Country Club in Dracut, Mass., literally right down the street from where we live. He comes from a large Scotch-Irish family, and mine is on the small side, thank goodness, which helps when it comes to creating a budget-friendly guest list. If I had as many people to invite on my side as he does on his, we'd be in trouble! We're targeting a guest list of about 60 people, which covers all of our close friends and family. Making our guest list small is the biggest factor in keeping our budget close to our target of $10,000-$15,000.

The average Massachusetts wedding in 2014 cost $34k - that's a nice down-payment on a house, not something we want to spend in one day! We're looking to cut costs wherever we can in order to come in at what we feel OK paying for out of our pockets. Our venue was a bargain compared to most in the greater Boston area, a big help in our overall budget. We're also taking a laid-back approach to planning our wedding and not getting hung up on details like finding the "perfect" photographer, DJ, etc. If we like their work, and they come in at what we've allocated our budget towards, then we're good to go.

Lace dress I made for a friend's wedding last year

When I first started researching what kind of dress I wanted to wear on my wedding day, I was shocked at how much companies think we're willing to shell out for a 100% polyester dress. After doing some careful thinking, I decided that I wanted to continue a tradition my mom started and make my own wedding dress, just like she did when she married my dad in the '70's. I learned to sew when I was 9 and make a lot of the clothes I wear on a daily basis, and feel that my skills are finely at a level that I can confidently make a wedding dress. Some of the things that are going through my mind lately are:

• Research! Gathering all of the appropriate resources and tools to make my dress
• Finding the right pattern that fits my style ... and is it really what I want to wear?
• Sourcing fabric and how to work with tricky, slippery bridal fabric
• Sewing a mock-up (aka a "muslin") to get the fit right

... and many other things that come along with making a wedding dress. I can't wait to share this journey with all of you!