Make Your Wedding Inexpensive

Sit back and relax, because you’re in the right place. In this post, we’ll be talking about choosing a wedding date, the wedding budget, cost cutting, and developing a wedding planning checklist. Once I’ve gone through everything you will have a good foundation to use so that you can start to plan ahead.

Choosing a wedding date right away is vital to the success of your wedding. The wedding date is going to end up influencing other factors associated with your wedding such as the location of your wedding, availability of venues and needed services, as well as the cost of your wedding. Choosing the date should be at the top of your list of priorities after you’ve gotten engaged so go ahead and set that date!

The second thing that you should think about is setting a serious budget for your wedding. Really spend some time on this one. If you are fortunate the parents will end up kicking in some bucks to help you out. If not you will have to take a hard look at what you have now as well as how much money that you will be able to bank before the wedding date arrives. Having a good idea of what you will have to work with is going to determine everything from the type of venue you will have right down to how many guests that you will be able to invite to your wedding.

If you are trying to make your wedding inexpensive then it is going to be very important to be able to figure out where you will be able to cut costs. Cost cutting is vital if you are on a tight budget. This is why it is very important to leave yourself plenty of time and plan ahead.

One of the easiest ways to save is to start planning early. For example if you start looking for a dress early enough, you may be able to get your dream wedding dress at a discounted price. Another good example is that if you plan ahead by at least a year you will probably be able to save money on the rates for venues. If you wait and book it at the last minute you will always pay much more, so book early. Another good tip is that you should avoid to planning your wedding reception on Friday or Saturday if you’re on a very tight budget. This is because the rent for the venue will be much more expensive on Friday and Saturday

You can’t forget about your minister either. This is another thing that you want to make sure that you take care of early. If you have someone special that you are going to want to have do the wedding ceremony for you then you definitely want to make sure that they are going to be available when you will need them.

This is a major reason why you should develop a wedding planning checklist. Developing a wedding planning checklist is a huge part of getting yourself into the discipline that you will need to stay on track and plan your wedding There are simply too many items involved in planning your big day to leave it all to guess work, and you will need to list all these items. You will need to be certain that no detail is missed. You can find ready made wedding planning checklists online or you can use the one that is included in my book at www.makeyourweddinginexpensive.com

You’re engaged now. It’s a happy time so make sure that you have fun. Planning a wedding hopefully won’t be something you will ever have to do again. Enjoy the wedding planning experience and remember that not everything is going to be perfect. In this world, nothing is ever is really perfect, so if something goes wrong on your big day, remember the most important thing…you are marrying the love of your life and that love will last a lifetime.

I just wanted to take a break from our Family’s Holiday Celebration to say… Happy Holidays and the best of the New Year to Everyone!

It’s nice to be around the people you love and may not get to see very much except for when it’s the holiday season.

For me, it is also a time to be grateful for my life, for my family and for you whom I consider part of my extended family. It also gives me a break from work as I have a tendency to be a bit of a workaholic.  All too often I forget how special these times are, so reminders at times like this are great.

So, I want to extend to you my heartfelt wishes for a very joyful and loving Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Al-Hijra or any other seasonal event that you celebrate and a tremendously joy filled, loving and abundant New Year.

Great food, great friends, great people and great parties.  I hope you’re experiencing the same!

I have two friends that got engaged over the holiday. I’m so excited for them! I am sure that there are many others that have received such a glorious gift for the holiday. If you are one of those lucky couples or you know of someone who got engaged over the holiday I encourage you to keep an eye on this site and have your friends check us out too, I plan to do my best in the coming new year to give you the best tips that I can come up with to help you along on your journey and hopefully help you to save a bundle too.

One question that I often get from newly engaged couples is “When should we start planning our wedding?”

My answer is always the same, “The sooner the better.” People should generally start planning their wedding about one year ahead of the actual event, although some people have been known to start booking venues two years in advance. While planning a wedding can be a lot of work, it is manageable if you take the right steps, start a year or more ahead of the actual event and stick to a timetable for getting those things done.  My goal is to point you to the tools, ideas and resources to help you get there.

Thanks for being a reader and stay safe over the holidays.

Charles Powers

When attempting to make your wedding inexpensive, one of the biggest challenges that many couples face is trying to find cheap wedding flowers. Flowers play a big role in most weddings and are used in everything from bouquets for the bride and bridesmaids to centerpieces on the tables at the reception hall and it can get really expensive. The good news is there are plenty of ways to reduce your wedding flower costs.

Cheap wedding flowers are a good way to cut what could be a potentially large part of your wedding expenses. Certain flower types are a lot less expensive than others and when chosen and mixed properly will allow you to get a lot more bang for your buck.

When trying to locate cheap wedding flowers you should first consider your budget and what flowers will be in season or easy for a florist to provide at the time of year your wedding date falls on.

Here’s a quick tip…One thing that you may want to try and do when talking to florists about cheap wedding flowers is to avoid using the word wedding. Sometimes the “W” word can be bad for your pocketbook so I advise you avoid its use whenever you can. There are many other occasions that people will require flowers like; anniversaries, retirement parties etc. It’s sad to say but many times when you use the word wedding for anything the price seems to automatically jump up a few notches and this will definitely work against us as we are trying to keep our wedding inexpensive.

Make sure you talk to more than one florist as prices can vary greatly in different parts of town. Get some quotes from them and work with the one you get along with the best and who understands what you are looking for. If you stress to them that you are on a really tight budget and your florist is smart they will do everything they can to help you stick to it; especially with the bad economy.

If you find that you really want to have a particular bloom that is expensive then you may want to talk with your florist about mixing in smaller quantities of that flower with less expensive flowers or blooms that match up well. You can also ask for more filler to be added to your wedding flower arrangements by using more foliage, which is cheaper to use. Now what might have been just a sparse little bouquet of roses can be a full and elegant bouquet of blooms such as daisies.

Another way to have cheap wedding flowers is to find some really high quality silk flowers to substitute for a particularly expensive bloom that you just have to have in your arrangements; on sale of course and at a good price (try eBay first). They can also be mixed in with real flowers and no one will ever know the difference either.

Another good source of cheap wedding flowers is to use a wholesaler. You are cutting out the middleman this way and thus, saving money. The flowers usually come from some of the finest farms in the U.S as well as both Central and South America. The flowers are shipped directly to you, usually straight from the farms.

The main challenge that you will have using this method to get cheap wedding flowers is that the flowers are shipped in bulk and you will have to know someone with great flower arranging skills to do your arrangements. When ordering your flowers this way, the wedding flowers are shipped to you 2-4 days before the wedding date. This can place a lot of pressure and stress on you if you don’t properly plan for this ahead of time.

As you can now see, getting cheap wedding flowers to help keep your wedding inexpensive doesn’t have to be all that daunting a task. Be creative and you will be surprised to see how cheap wedding flowers can give that same impressive look as if you had gone out and spent a small fortune on your wedding flowers.

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My wife once had a side business as a caterer. Many of the weddings that she did were for couples who wanted to make their wedding inexpensive. Since I got to help out with many of these weddings I got to learn a little bit about food options that would help save money on the cost of the reception.

Here are a few tips that can definitely help.

Rehearsal Dinner – Instead of having a typical rehearsal dinner, why not plan on an informal bar-b-queue for your group or even order pizza. That can be a laid back way to welcome visitors who have traveled from out of town to attend your wedding as well as keeping your wedding inexpensive.

Appetizers – You can still have fancy appetizers at your reception if you’re willing to put in a little work. The key here is to start way in advance (month’s) doing a little bit at a time. You can make small quantities of appetizers that can be frozen and if you make something each week, by the time of the wedding date you will have a nice variety available to your guests. I’m talking simple things like mini quiches, tea breads, baby crab cakes etc. I think you get the idea. The list of items that you can have is only limited by your imagination. You can also have your friends help out if you want some fresh appetizers like deviled eggs or spreads and dips when it’s close to the big day.

The main course – One way to make your wedding inexpensive is to have it at a none typical meal time, for example arranging things so that people will be eating around 3pm. This way you can get away with serving lighter snacks as opposed to an all out dinner. You can easily cut your food bill almost in half this way.

You can offer a variety of different salads and maybe a hot pasta dish or two. Also many foods such as roast beef, ham, cheeses for cold cut platters and lasagna are easy to prepare ahead of time in large quantities. You can also try making little “tea” sandwiches, with the crusts cut off and cut into shapes like triangles, circles or even diamonds. If everything is very nicely garnished you can keep your wedding inexpensive and keep your guests happy too.

Planning inexpensive meals for your wedding guests doesn’t have to be difficult if you use a little imagination. As long as the food is fresh, well prepared and well presented no one will care if it’s a buffet or a three course full-on wedding breakfast, so go ahead and make your wedding inexpensive with great food on the cheap!

Wedding Favors… those little keepsakes that the bride and groom give their guests.  Giving each guest a wedding favor is a big part of the tradition of the wedding ceremony and just can’t be ignored.

Bridal shops will have all kinds of  wedding favors to choose from but they can sometimes be pricey and that can really work against keeping your wedding inexpensive.  For a more distinctive  touch you can design and create your own style of wedding favor to give to your  guests. This will not only add a special touch to the ceremony, but a customized wedding favor can also save you money since you can usually buy the materials you need at any hobby shop.

I found a really good video on YouTube by a woman who calls herself weddingtips that really shows how you can keep your wedding inexpensive without looking cheap when it comes to your wedding favors. It’s less than 3 minutes long but she really makes the point. Enjoy!