Ways to Cut Costs on Your Wedding

Wedding expenses seem endless. Here are some ideas to cut costs and still have a beautiful wedding:

Prepare a budget. Decide what is a reasonable figure you will have to spend on your wedding and discuss what is a priority to you: perhaps a fabulous cake, beautiful flowers or an expensive honeymoon. What items can you do without? Do you need fancy invitations or little cameras on the table? Do not forget tips, taxes and officiant fees.

Consider a Friday or Sunday wedding. Many caterers offer a discount on any non-Saturday evening wedding time slot. Some times of the year are busier and some are slower, the slower times will likely be cheaper. It never hurts to politely ask for a discount, or to dispense with catering items you don't care about in exchange for a discount. Also ask if you can bring in your own alcohol without a "cork charge" or a wedding cake without a "Cutting fee". Will the caterer allow you to supplement the food with a family favorite, or bring in some supplemental food items to cut costs? Making a cheese and fruit platter is a reasonably easy thing. Catering is your biggest wedding expense, so consider carefully what items are necessary and what labor-intensive items (read: expensive) you can do without or limit. Think about weddings you have attended and what stood out as memorable, both good and bad. Now assess the proposed menu and decide what items you can and cannot do without.

A large variable is flowers. Many brides wish for ample flowers at their wedding, and this can get very expensive. It is important to determine how to get a lush floral look cheaply. Greens can fill in well, as can rented or borrowed plants. Dogwood and magnolia branches fill out an arrangement nicely and give it some height and width. Can you use local in season flowers instead of out of season imported or hothouse flowers? Find out what flowers are available locally the season of your wedding to cut costs, peonies and lilies are beautiful and fill out a bouquet well, but if they are not in season, they can get quite expensive. Roses are typically available for the same price all year (with the exception of Valentines Day). You may be able to supplement from your own garden, but allow for weather variations that may alter when your own flowers bloom and if they will be usable.

It is likely more expensive to pick one color as your theme and then try to coordinate all items to that one color, regardless of item price, than to select a color palette and working within that to select bridesmaids dresses, flowers, and color schemes for napkins, invitations, etc. Perhaps it is very important to you to use a certain color, or your bridesmaids look best in a certain color, but there is an extra cost associated with not having the flexibility of considering what items are on sale in one color and not in another when in the end, the quality of your wedding is not compromised by your theme color.

If you really want to use a certain color for your wedding theme, pinpoint if a certain holiday or event features that color (i.e. Christmas has gold, red and hunter green and fairy lights, Easter has pastels, Valentines Day uses hearts, pink and red, St Patrick's Day has green) and go to the after holiday clearances that have items such as colored napkins, tablecloths, candles, decorations, accessories, coordinating plates, cups, candies, etc. at a fraction of the cost. Picking up fairy lights, the tiny bulb string lights, after Christmas is much cheaper than getting them the rest of the year at a bridal supply store.

Do you really want wedding favors? Often at a wedding, many guests, especially men do not even bother picking them up, many people just leave them on the table at the end of the reception. They often just end up in the trash. You might have access to a mass quantity of an inexpensive item that is suitable for a wedding favor, but if you do not, consider seriously if this is a worthwhile wedding expense. Think about it: the typical wedding favor averages $2 - $7 per person, if you have 100 people that is $200 to $700. Would you rather spend that money on something else, perhaps an upgraded photography package or a limousine so you don't wrinkle your dress, or flowers or liquor? If you really want do have a wedding favor, consider one that does double duty, such as a flower on a place setting to help decorate the table. Can you make wedding favors yourselves, like a mixed CD, or a potpourri mix of dried flowers in a small fabric bag? Perhaps you or a talented friend or family member could make a decorative cookie shaped like a wedding cake?

Table arrangements are a large variable in expense. You can do simple candles and votives, or an elaborate display costing several hundred dollars. Most wholesale clubs like Costco and Sam's Club have roses and other flowers at a reasonable price. Simple vases can be purchased at a craft store. Ask a friend to pick up flowers and arrange them simply in vases per table. If you use candles, make sure the facility you are using allows open flames. There are several online wholesale flower distributors, these may or may not be a better bargain than your local wholesale suppliers. Remember the color selection may vary, so you might not be able to get a specific light pink color, red might just be available. Visit your local warehouse in advance to see what colors are typically available, and try to coordinate with your color scheme. For instance, at my local warehouse, they always have red and yellow, and generally not enough pink or white to do all the flowers for table centerpieces, so I would make sure my reception theme colors would coordinate with red. Your local warehouse might be different. Another option is to have a florist to one big arrangement for the ceremony and transport this to the reception hall so it can do "double duty". You can try to use some of the same flowers in simple table arrangements yourself to coordinate the look.

A question to ask yourself over the big ticket items, such as the wedding cake, the decorations, the apparel, and the catering, is if it is reasonable to do it yourself or not? Secondly, who are your talented friends, and are they reliable and able to assist on a big-ticket item without too much stress?

Barring special talents, it is reasonable to make your own favors, your own thank you notes, those cards that tell people where they are sitting (place setting cards), or supplement the food with a cheese plate or purchase the beverages (such as soda or liquor) yourself. It takes a little flare but it is easy to make some decorations or simple floral arrangements, making your own cookies or desserts, etc. It may not be reasonable to sew your own wedding dress, but you might be able to make simpler things such as a money purse or bridal veil. Be realistic with yourself and what talents you can and can't learn before the wedding, as it is most expensive to try to do something yourself, realize it is not working, and then have to hire a professional at the last minute.

When you decide what do it yourself wedding items to do, think realistically about what will make you run around the morning of your wedding doing things the last minute? The bride needs time to dress, get her hair and makeup done, and relax. Is this do-it-yourself item something the groom and ushers might be able to do for you the morning of the wedding? If you have never done it before, is it reasonable to do your own wedding cake, your own catering, or your own wedding dress? Perhaps you have enough time to become proficient, but consider if you will have to purchase supplies you will not use again in order to "save money". Do you really save money if you have to buy these items, such as special cake pans and cake decorating supplies, for using just this one time? Do you have a back up plan if things go wrong?

There are some items that if you attempt to do them yourself, you really need to assess if you will be able to do this yourself cheaper than a professional can. Wedding cakes run from a few dollars a slice, up to $15 a slice! While many cakes are beautiful, when speaking to your baker, stick with what they have experience with and do the best, asking them to experiment with a style they are not familiar with will cost you more money. You can get a simple plain wedding cake done at Wal-Mart bakeries for about $100, this might be a better option for you than trying to figure out how to make tiered cakes and use the dollies to make the tiers. You can always add a nice cake topper or edible flowers to spruce up the cake. The Frugal Wedding book "Bridal Bargains" suggests getting a smaller decorative tiered cake and then a second supplementary sheet cake that matches the colors and flavors of your cake, and keep it in the kitchen so nobody sees it.

Do it yourself invitations may or may not be cheaper. First, decide realistically how proficient you are with the computer. Do you make a lot of printing mistakes? Can your printer handle thicker paper or just letterhead? By the time you buy ink, paper, envelopes, and a template and spend the time printing your own invitations, you might have spent about as much as you would have with some of the wedding invitation catalogs. However, if you like scrap booking or are very crafty, you might be able to put together some invitations yourself with a nice personal flare. Check out places like JoAnn, AC Moore or Michael's Crafts for coordinated stock scrap booking papers. Use a search engine to query "wedding invitation templates" for a basic layout of wording and text placement that you can use in your word processing program such as Word.

When considering do it yourself items, it is very important to decide not just what wedding items you can do yourself, but how many do it yourself projects you can take on at once. I have heard many stories of brides who were capable of doing their own flowers, invitations, favors, and making alterations to their wedding dresses themselves, but got so busy doing these things all at once, that they stayed up to the wee hours of the morning before the wedding or spent the whole morning of the wedding working on something like the wedding favors, and then they did not have time to do something else important to them, like do their nails for the "wedding ring on the hand photos". At this particular brides wedding, I personally never noticed what the wedding favor actually was, but the bride regret rushing around and being so tired on her wedding day for an item that really was not that important. You can certainly save money by doing things yourself. It is very important to allow more time than you actually need for any do it yourself item. As a rule of thumb, the best do it yourself items are the ones you can do well in advance of the actual wedding day.