Are you looking for an architect or looking to go cheapo? There are sme cheap and good architects around right now.
I'll bet you can get a good deal on an architect, Unfortunately for them, architects aren't making any money now according to Forbes.
Our daughter was an architecture major at MIT. Thank God she changed majors. Can you imagine if we had paid that much money for 4 years, then she would have had to do a masters, and then a two-year internship just to get a real job? MIT only offers need-based scholarships (we didn't qualify) because anyone smart enough to get into MIT is deserving of an academic scholarship so they don't give them (unless you're a minority, and then you can get in with a 1200 SAT as our daughter's best friend did).
If I had another child, we'd check Hispanic, and that child would get into every Ivy League school plus MIT plus any other top-ten school with a scholarship.
She did get a full-ride for a 5 year bachelors and masters degree at our alma mater, Tulane. But how can you turn down being accepted at MIT.?
I digress. I think you can find a reasonably priced architect. Do either of you know Sketch-Up? Hubby does. and he built a 3-D graphical model of what we wanted which futher decreased our architectural fees.