Wedding!!!!?

Question

Me and my fiance are getting married in June. We are going to try to keep things cheap because we don't have a lot of extra money to spare but we would like to do something that looks nice. Does anyone have any ideas on how to cut down on costs?

I would also appreciate a neat idea for my birdesmaids!

Also, When my cousin got married they sent out little cards with their invitations were you put you recipe to a happy marriage on it. I was wondering if anyone had any cute ideas like that. I loved the idea but I don't want to copy what she did

Answer 1

We kept our wedding Cheap and it was beautiful! We found a wedding chapel ala cart style I guess you would call it, you could pick and choose what you wanted and didn't want to keep cost down. I had a family memeber do the cakes, we made a small cake for each table different flavors and the guest just LOVED it... We save on teh DJ because we had a family member that had it on trade.... I would call your family and friends and see if any of them are on a service trade program because you wouldn't beleive what you can find. The DJ ended up FREE because that was our wedding gift... And lastly we went with a Eagles club for the reception, they has their own caterer and the food was great and the place was gorgeous....

Now the otehr things i saved big on was the dress.... I got a $1800 dress for $150.00 on the discontinued area of the store!

Another tip on saving big.... Pick an odd time for you wedding... we had our wedding as the sun set over the lake...we had a lake front wedding and it was gorgeous... something in the evening or during the week

GOOD LUCK

Answer 2

Get married on a Sunday or Friday night. You can save thousands that way. Do the flowers yourself. Your town should have a wholesale flower district. For locations, try a backyard or a really nice public park. Restaurant receptions can save you money, but you should look into Italian restaurants, because pasta is cheap and pretty classy.

Use an Ipod instead of hiring a DJ or band.

Ebay is great for everything! From wedding dresses to centerpiece items. Also, use your resources. Have someone you know bake the cake. We're going to our favorite bakery and instead of having them make a "wedding cake" we're going to buy a bunch of cakes and arrange them ourselves. That's a few hundred dollar difference, and no cutting fee!

By the way, the great thing about weddings is the ability to copy other people's good ideas. It you like the recipe idea, use it, just customize it a bit.

Answer 3

How to cut costs...have someone you know take the photos...gather your entire family and make the food..keep it simple because it is an outdoor wedding..picnic style would be nice, finger sandwhiches, salads, potato chips, veggies and dip cheese and crackers. Check out Oriental Trading..they have some great items for a wedding at a low cost including gifts for your attendents.

As far as the invites go I saw some really cute ones on line the other day that you print yourself at home. The actually invite is a photo of you and your fiance. You could also make some magnets with your picture and wedding date on them so they can stick them on frig and not forget the big day.

Answer 4

For our reception we're doing a cocktail party, that cuts cost down on food by a lot. As well as the venue you are booking can be a lot smaller coz everyone is not sitting at table.
It also cuts the cost on center pieces, name cards.

I'm making my own invitations which are so easy to make now with your printer at home.

You can make your own favors, there is so many great ideas out there.

What kinda of idea are you looking for your bridesmaids, what the wear, what to give them?

I love the idea of sending in a photo. I might have to copy that!

Answer 5

One way to save on invitations would be to find a local artist and ask them to create an invitation for you. The you just make copies of it.

Answer 6

look up bed and breakfest in your area...they have beautiful gardens..I have seen alot in my area for $2,500 wich usually includes the honeymoon sweet, food, ceremony, minster and so on.

I would ask in the invite for everyone to mail in one photo of you, the groom or even together and state on it a date and where its from and why they love the picture. Build a scrapbook that will go with your wedding photos.

Answer 7

Seeing that you are on a tight budget I suggest you look at http://wedding-savings-for-bride-groom.com for ideas on wedding planning.

Answer 8

Consider ebay. I had a friend order her wedding dress from China. She got the dress for around $25 but $125 shipping. She took her measurements for every part of her body (not just bust-waist-hips) and it fit like a dream! Your bridesmaids could go to a department store right now (prom season) and you pick a gown out for all of them. That way they can go to a Belks near them and grab the dress on sale.

Ask around your church for previous brides. Many brides buy pew decorations and can't ever use them again. They'd love to give them away to anyone that could use them. My friend did a country wedding and had lil buckets on the end of each pew. She just has them piled in the garage. Things like candles for the tables. You never use the whole candle during one evening and then the bride ends up with 100 candles only to be used after a big storm when the power goes out.

Usually when you rent the church you get the church fellowship hall for free. most brides don't use it but if you did you'd save a good deal of money by not renting another hall. You could just do a cake and punch reception. Thats really cheap and its what my friend did. They were leaving for their honeymoon that night and with no dj, no food, just cake and punch--people left after just a couple hours and they could go ahead and hit the road. You can do punch and cake for probably just $200

Also consider a freestanding standing (non-tiered) cake stand. Like these
http://www.thebakerskitchen.com/WEDDING_SHOPPE/Wedding_Cake_Stands/Acrylic_Cake_Stands/Acrylic_Cake_Stand_lctcr.JPG

You can just make (or have a friend make) the round layer cakes and it's so simple b/c there is no tier. 3 round cakes can be bought at a grocery store for like $25 too.

Look for people new in the business. My cake person did desserts for a living but she didn't do wedding cakes. She did more mediterranean desserts for conferences. The cake was wonderful and rather inexpensive for a 150 serving cake, b/c she was just starting out. Some will even reduce the fee if you let them put out their cards and talk to people about the cake.

Consider a more casual wedding. The country wedding allowed her to use sunflowers (which they grew themselves or cut out of a friends yard b/c they grow like weeds). They are huge so she just but one sunflower per table and used the rest just around the place. She also did a bbq for her reception. A friend cooked a hog as his wedding gift to her. They called a bbq place and ordered potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans, and buns. Probably spent around $100 on catering.

I ordered my flowers from Sams Club or Walmart. I talked to the florist who does the ordering and told her I wanted 100 stems of glads. She ordered them and we picked up the boxes. We got a discount rate (close to their wholesale rate) as the florist didn't have to do any work for it. I had to do the arranging but since we picked a flower like glads that have multiple blooms per stem, it made the arrangement have way more blooms as if it was more expensive. Thats what we put on the tables, but I did have more money for my bouquet.

No alcohol. Alcohol is one of the greater costs of a wedding. The biggests costs in mine were the food and the photographer. The caterer also rented all my linens/tableclothes/silverware/glasses though. But if we had not served alchol, we could have saved hundreds. A bottle of wine probably serves 2-3 people. So if you figure on 100 people, thats probably 40 bottles of wine. But if you have it on church property a lot of them demand no alcohol.

Negotiate with your caterer to bring your own beverages. You can get beverages much cheaper than your caterer can. Negotiate if she has a cork fee (if you do serve alcohol) and negotiate the cake cutting fee. Some charge nearly $2 per slice to cut the cake and thats another couple hundred on her bill. Some charge a flat fee of $100. Mine did it for free.

Quickly buy those "forever stamps" at the postoffice since you are going to get married right after another stamp rate hike in May. And if you sent it out with stamps, your guests might not be able to sent back the RSVP cards if you don't have the forever stamps on it. an extra couple cents adds up when you are talking 4 cents per invite.
http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/2007/03/19/daily12.html?from_msnbc=1

As far the recipe idea, we did something similar. We had a luau for my rehearsal dinner. We had what looks like wallpaper, but I'm not sure. Thick paper cut up into many different sizes. Everyone who came in was told to pick up a piece of paper and write some advice to the couple. My mother in law rolled each one into lil tubes and put them into a colorful box which she gave us when we returned from the honeymoon. One friend had a poleroid camera and as everyone signed the guest book, he took their picture and attached it to the book where they signed. The only problem was it made the line a lil slow but his was an outdoor wedding so everyone was just milling around anyway.

And have an odd time wedding. I don't know that I would pick Wednesday or something since people won't be able to come, but Fridays are cheaper than Saturdays. Morning weddings or early afternoon are cheaper. The place could still rent it out for that evening. And guests don't expect as much--they don't expect alcohol and don't eat as much food.
Plus since they are shorter, you could get a cheaper deal on a photographer. They usually do 4 hours and that way you could have the whole thing in that 4 hour window without having to add additional hours.

Those are all my suggestions for having a cheaper wedding. It really depends on how much money you are talking about though. Some consider a cheaper wedding $8,000 and some consider cheaper meaning less than $500. So it all depends on what budget you have. But memorable doesn't have to be cheap. You could have a wedding someplace that you don't have to decorate, like on the beach or buy a lake in a gazebo. You wouldn't need to spend money on flowers or decorations b/c nature would already be there. You could ask friends to help by decorating a cake, or bringing something potluck style.