WEDDING PLANNING & EVENT MANAGEMENT


April 11, 2007

Five money-saving wedding tips
By L HAYES

Most brides-to-be are looking for ways that they can save a little money when it comes to planning their nuptials. With all of the different wedding services and vendors offering such beautiful (and expensive) ideas for a fairytale wedding, it's sometimes hard to choose which ones to say "no" to. Well, here are a few ideas that can help you trim down that perfect wedding without sacrificing style or beauty.

Bridal Attendants - The bigger your bridal party, the bigger your budget needs to be. Think a little smaller here. If you are going to have six bridesmaids, you will have to buy six bridesmaid gifts. The same is true for groomsmen. By curbing the size of the bridal party to three instead of six, or two instead of four etc., you are able to cut your budget for wedding favors by half. Now, make sure you don't leave out any person that should be in your wedding, but it's probably a good idea to not put that 3rd cousin you haven't seen in ten years in your budget-conscious wedding.

Out of Season - June/July and September/October are the most busy time for weddings. Give some thought to a winter holiday or early spring wedding. What you will find is, it is much easier to negotiate your pricing with regard to reception locations, catering and other services if you plan your wedding when these vendors are in need of the business.

Photography - Consider having a friend who is familiar with photography and has a good camera take your formal pictures at the ceremony. Caution! It's important that you really trust this person. If this is not feasible for you, hire a professional to take pictures only at the ceremony. This can chop your wedding photography bill in half! Also consider putting disposable cameras on your reception tables for your guests to take. It's amazing how often I have heard that these photos, taken by family and friends , are the most prized by the couple.

Dessert - It's now very popular to have a groomsmen cake at receptions. In fact, one of the recent trends at receptions is to have a dessert buffet, known as a Viennese Table. Save your cash and do without some of these extras. Let your wedding cake be what it was designed to be. Dessert! Your only dessert! It has worked well for a century and it will work perfectly fine on your wedding day.

Entertainment - Instead of hiring a live band at a thousand dollars and up, or a DJ at five hundred dollars and up, to entertain your guests, dust off that music collection of yours (and your friends) and burn your own customized wedding CD's. This way, you will ensure that every song you just have to have is played and played at the time you want it. Use your imagination and burn several CDs with different song types and label them accordingly (dance, slow, background, father/daughter, etc).

The key to this is as follows. Find a trusted friend to put in the correct CDs when needed. It's a good idea to write up a brief outline of what type of music to play and approximately when you want to play it and give it to your friend. Don't make this too complicated. If you reserved the reception hall for 3 hours, then divide the music schedule into 30 minute sections or whatever works best for your taste. If you have to bribe your friend $25-$50 to make sure they keep track of the CD schedule, then do it! In the end, your wedding guests will enjoy themselves and you will have saved yourself a big portion of your wedding budget!

Finally, the idea here is that you don't have to compromise having the wedding of your dreams because you don't have a movie star budget. By planning ahead, you can still have that fairytale wedding without the huge budget that normally comes with it!


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About the author: L Hayes is a wedding professional and owner of Wedding Favors Emporium. They offer a large catalogue of memorable wedding favors in addition to bridal shower gifts, bridesmaid gifts, and groomsmen gifts. Visit their site for great ideas about wedding planning.