Need your advice!

So as many of you know, we are moving from Rio to California to Alabama.  The Rio to California part is done, but the California to Alabama part is looming over my head.  While I've moved plenty of times, I've always stayed within the state of California and I always fit everything I owned into my car.  Now that Peter and I have been married for a year, we've accumulated some more stuff and furniture, have a bunch of wedding gifts, and have way too much stuff to fit in just one car (which is all we have, since Peter sold his car to help fund our move to Rio).

So here's our dilemma... the school is going to help out with some of the moving expenses, but it won't cover everything.  So what should we do?  What is the best and cheapest way to get all of our stuff from California to Alabama?  U-Hauls are pretty expensive... but so is shipping... we need to drive our car so we can have it, but it's too small to tow anything behind it...

Do any of you have experience moving across the country?  How did you fund it?  We're trying not to get into too much debt...

Share with me your wisdom! :)

Also, I've tried to find blog posts about this subject but haven't had much luck.  If you happen to stumble across any, please send them my way.

Much appreciated!

XO,

Julie