Summertime means Wedding Season. Your wedding is an important day, and it can be a very expensive day. Many brides fall into the trap of spending a ton of money for their wedding cause they want it to be beautiful & perfect. Totally understandable, but you do not have to just go spending crazy for it to be beautiful. You can find many tips and tricks to save money. Trust me every little bit will help because things will add up quick. Plus if you are like me, and a bargain shopper you don’t like paying full price. Nothing puts me in a good mood like a good deal. Here are some ways to save on your wedding day.
Budget
Setting a budget, and sticking to it is hugely important. Probably the easiest would be to first come up with an amount you want to spend on the entire wedding. Then list out everything you will be needing to spend money on. Make sure your list is easily editable, because you will be editing it a lot. Once you have the list look it over and determine the things that are most important to you, and allocate money for those. Then look at how much you have left, and allocate it to remaining items on the list. This will give you idea on how much you can spend on everything, and where you can save money. Probably a good idea to keep this list in your phone so you can easily adjust the budget as you setup things. There are tons of things that will come up, and this will help you make sure you don’t go over your budget. Plus will help you keep track of what is paid, and what you still have left to buy. Of course they even make apps for this to help you out like this Wedding Planner App.
Micheal’s, Hobby Lobby, and eBay are some great places to find things that are cheap, and will help you stay on budget. Best part is you can usually find a 50% coupon to Micheal’s or a 40% off coupon to Hobby Lobby. I know I was constantly going to Micheal’s and Hobby Lobby to pick up something, or picking up little things here and there off eBay. Loved that on eBay I found some firemen wedding items like my guarder that said “Today I Marry the Bravest Firefighter”, and our toasting glasses. Fell in love with the toasting glass cause it said Groom and had a fire helmet.
DIY Projects & Pinterest
Fun way to save money on the wedding is have fun doing some DIY projects. Save some money on the reception by getting some friends together and making centerpieces. Just buy some wine, and you will have no problem finding someone to help. Pinterest has a whole section dedicated to weddings with some great ideas on DIY projects, and ways to save money on your wedding. To me this is a Win Win because not only do you save money but can make some great memories with family and friends. You will remember that more than just going out, and buying it. For my wedding I made my own invitations. To do that I bought the invitation card stock at Micheal’s with my 50% off coupon (They run those coupons all the time, so you should have no problem finding one). The invitations included a template to design the invitation. After I got it the way I wanted it I saved it on my thumb drive, and took to Kinko’s to have it printed. All in all it cost me around $50. Lot cheaper than I could have had them done for. Also bought some velum & ribbon that I added to the invitations myself. DIY projects are probably the easiest way you can save some money. Another project I did was made flip flops for my bridesmaids, and myself to wear.
Set Limits
Biggest way to save money is to set limits on the guest list. If you don’t you will spend a ton of money. One of the biggest expenses for the wedding is the cost of the food. If you do a sit down dinner you pay per plate. The more people you have to accommodate the bigger the place you need and the more money you will have to spend. Keeping the guest list small can be a very hard task, because you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Jeremy thought we would have a small guest list since we just invited close friends and family. He was shocked when we started making the list and it ended up being 150. That is what happens when you get married close to where you live, and have a big family (If you have a big family might want to consider destination wedding cause could save some money. Just saying lol). You will be amazed how big the list gets when you start writing down people along with there spouses, and children. The guest list can seriously get out of control. The place we got married at you bought a package and your price depended on the amount of people you had. If you went over the amount to the next package size you had to pay extra, so you had to make sure to stick with the number you had told them. We just had to say ok this is our limit, and no more people. Setting a limit to your guest list will help you keep within your budget, and save you from having to pay extra fees.
Ask for help
Most of the time you probably have people you know that can help with someone things. Like maybe someone in the family is a florist, or a photographer. Ask them if they would mind helping you out and do the flowers or take the pictures. This would help you cut cost on those things. My photographer was actually a guy I worked with that does photography. He did all our wedding, and engagement photos.
Use Technology
You can save money on the invitations/save the dates if you want by just doing electronic invitations/save the dates. Doing it this way the invitations/save the dates would not cost you a thing. Even will help you track RSVPs. Evite is a great site to use. Something free you can do is create a website on The Knot (Site I did for my wedding). You could use this just to share wedding info with any friends and family that would be interested, and it allows people to RSVP. This is how I let people know our venue had to be moved when the place I had booked decided to close 1 month prior to wedding (Yes the invites had already gone out). You can find tons of discounts on wedding things online. Found the bridesmaid dresses online from David’s Bridal. They were ones they had online only, and were on sale.
You can find tons of other ways to save on your wedding day. Hopefully you found these ways to save on your wedding day helpful. The biggest thing is just be happy, and enjoy your wedding. You spend all this time planning, getting ready, and then it is over in an instant. Just make sure to take the time to sit back, and enjoy. Don’t waste time stressing about all the details, cause most likely something will go wrong (like you venue cancelling that I mentioned earlier). Have yet to hear of a wedding where everything went perfect. Most of the time some little thing goes wrong, but usually it works out. As long as you focus on the fact that you are marrying the LOVE of your life you will have a wonderful wedding day.
What other saving tips would you share with a future bride, or something you wish you had known?
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