Friends of Mr. Heather and I recently got married but instead of having just a traditional wedding, the couple went on a wedding tour. They didn’t want/couldn’t afford a big blowout wedding, so they got married quietly with just close family and friends. Then, they had a few mini, low key, casual receptions to visit and celebrate with everyone else. It was so well executed that I just had to share the idea with all of you because it brings huge wedding savings.

One of the biggest wedding budget-busters is the ever growing guest list. And, one of the biggest wedding frustrations, is the “wedding surcharge” that seems to be added to normally reasonably priced items. This couple was able to have a very small, reasonable wedding because they eliminated the guest list. Their ceremony was intimate and folks were OK with that… they knew they were going to help celebrate later, and no one was left out. And, when they had their mini-celebrations, they eliminated the “wedding surcharge” because they were no longer purchasing a “wedding cake” or “wedding flowers”. In a smaller atmosphere, a handmade floral arrangement and music from the iPod was welcome. Not to mention, they were able to celebrate and focus a lot more on their guests.

If you have a lot of guests, think about taking your wedding on tour to find some savings… but be careful ladies, a wedding tour does not mean multiple weddings!

How about some free advice?  I think that helps with wedding savings, and it’s not coming from someone you don’t want to hear from like your future mother-in-law.

Platinum Events has provided a Wedding Rehearsal Check List.  Click here to see what you might be missing.

If you are early enough in your planning process, this post may actually help you!  Morning weddings are a great way to save on wedding costs and make your day less stressful.

First, there is less demand or competition for venues and vendors, so you should be able to negotiate for a better price.  Just think, how many DJs have morning gigs?  No, not too many!

Second, breakfast foods are less expensive.  Bless the incredible, edible egg because your caterer can give you great deals on brunch.

Third, your guests will consume significantly less alcohol, so your bar budget will shrivel.  Even the heaviest drinkers can’t drink THAT much before noon.  Well, they could but it’s even less wedding appropriate to be drunk at a daytime reception.

And finally, your wedding reception will be shorter, so your reservation costs will be less compared to those of an all-night affair.  There is only so much dancing people will do at 1:00 in the afternoon.

Mr. soon-to-be-Heather and I are getting married at 6:00 in the evening.  That’s a long time to have to wait to get married!  You will probably spring out of bed early on your wedding day.  Why not get the festivities started early as well?  Like I said, save money and save stress!

There is a saying, “be prepared for the unexpected” and unfortunately the unexpected can be expensive.  I’m not indicating that you will end up like this couple.  What I am saying, is don’t completely max out your budget because you don’t know what adjustments you might need to make down the line.  For example, do you have a rain plan?  Or, does your organized transportation have back-up in case something goes wrong like a flat tire?  And then there is the complete random like an infestation of bees and needing to call someone to remove the hive or run to the store for bee keeper outfits… or a polar bear blocking your entrance?

It’s  easy to loose site of priories with a wedding, especially when it comes to spending money.  Mr. Soon-to-be-Heather and I have two separate philosophies when it comes to our wedding spending.  I really want all of our guests to have an amazing time and think our wedding was fabulous (fun is more important than cost).  Mr. Soon-to-be-Heather thinks we’ve already spent enough money and is disappointed that we are blowing a lot of our savings.  The compromise is proving a fun event but not getting ridiculous with our expenses and trying to save money when possible.

This entry is as much a reminder to myself as it is an explanation to you.  Most weddings end up costing more than expected, but just because you splurge on one area or another, you don’t have to blow your whole budget.  Decide on your priorities- what is important to you,  stick to them and in the end you will save money.  I will give you two examples of extra expenses that I wanted to add to our wedding and have had to stick to my priorities about…

The first is appetizers.  I don’t want our guests to be hungry.  Yes, there will be fruit and cheese during the cocktail hour, then dinner will be served immediately following, and of course cake.  I’ve rationalized that extra appetizers are not a priority.  I mean logically I know they aren’t necessary, they would just be an extra nice thing to do.  My thought process is that when we get our headcount back, if less guests plan to attend our wedding than originally thought, then money will be free in my budget and the cost of appetizers for less people will go down.  And if not, then it’s ok because they are not a priority.

The second is light bulbs.  When we choose our venue, we checked out photo albums of previous weddings.   A particular photo had stings of lights going across the courtyard (this is not that photo, but I wanted to give you an example) which had a lasting impression on me.  Needless to say, strings of big light bulbs will cost us around $1,000.  I will level with you and say that I did consider paying for this expense, but then I remembered all the other things that I still needed to pay for or would be more interested in paying for (like appetizers) and decided this was a very frivolous expense.  Light bulbs are not a priority and they can be left out of the budget.

Questions to ask yourself before you abandon your budget:

Will we be any happier if we do spend more money on these additions or changes… on the day of our wedding, the week after our wedding, or years later when we look at photographs?

Will our event suffer if we don’t spend more money on these additions or changes?

Will any of our guests say we should have spent more  money on these additions or changes?

Hello, my name is Heather and I recently got engaged!  I am going to start blogging with Jessie and hope you find some of my posts useful.

We (me and soon-to-be Mr. Heather) recently announced our engagement, and immediately got to work finding a venue and picking a date.  The economy certainly seems to have taken a toll on wedding vendors, many venues are running specials if you get married within three months.  Three months?!?  No, thank you.  I would like a year to get everything together, but will the venue I choose still be in business in a year?

While it would be tragic to try and find a new venue, florist, caterer or even DJ last minute.  It would be devastating to lose money!  So, I purchased wedding insurance.  The Better Business Bureau posted this article last year about bankrupt vendors and wedding insurance.  Sure, as wedding expenses continue to pile up, I could find savings by skipping the insurance… but in the long run I think I would rather spend the extra money on some sanity and not ending up looking like this poor bride!

Hi Everyone! I think it’s time to give you all a little information on me and why I’m the non-engaged (not-even-in-a-serious-relationship) girl who is still willing to updated a wedding advice blog every day. Is it because I’m like every other silly girl who spends far too much time dreaming about her perfect wedding? Well… I definitely do spend too much time thinking about my dream wedding, but that’s not really the reason I’m writing a wedding advice blog (OK… maybe it is a little). No, the real reason for a wedding advice blog is because I somehow end up at 1-2 weddings per months, and close to 24 weddings per year.  When you consider that people generally get married on weekends, and there are only 52 weekends per year, 24 weddings a year means I spend almost half my free weekend time at weddings. That’s a lot of experience, and just like anything in life, the more experience you have with something, the better you are at it.

You’re probably wondering why or how I end up at so many weddings.  Honestly, I wish I knew myself.  It’s not like I’m in the wedding industry (I work for a large NPO — non profit organization), and it’s not like I have a ton of friends.  But I guess I do have a pretty big family, I’m right around the age when everyone gets married (including a lot of my friends), and I guess, well, I do know a lot of people and, for what it’s worth, they seem to like me. So that’s good, I guess.

So no… this 20-ish weddings a year thing probably won’t last much longer. But right now, it’s what I’ve got going on, so I’m definitely able to manage a wedding advice blog. And having been to so many weddings, I can honestly tell you I’ve never seen a “perfect” wedding. Don’t get me wrong… I’ve seen a lot of great weddings. But since most girls dream of getting the perfect wedding, and I’ve never seen one that was “perfect” (even if you asked the bride afterwords she’d agree), it seems like there’s a lot of room for. So let’s get started with what I consider to be the most important wedding advice I can give every bride: always marry someone you’re in love with.

I can almost hear the responses to that statement over the Internet. “What!?!?! Always marry someone you’re in love with? What kind of lame wedding advice is that?”

The truth is to ask anyone who has ever settled (still married or divorced), and they’ll tell you it’s the best wedding advice there is. Take my parents for example. My mom and dad didn’t really love each other. Don’t get me wrong… they liked each other a lot. And they cared about each other even more. But were they in love? No… they weren’t. And now, thirty years after their divorce, they’ll happily tell as much and marriage was a big mistake. (Granted… that marriage produced me, so I don’t think it was bad. But they weren’t happy.)

There’s a lot of things I could say about why marrying someone you love is important (and maybe in some future post I’ll talk all about it). But for now, i want to approach it from a strictly “wedding” point of view. What most people don’t consider is that the key to an incredible wedding is marrying someone you love. Marrying someone you love changes the focus from “having a great wedding” to “relishing the opportunity to commit yourself to the man you love.” See how that’s different? When you’re looking forward to marrying the man you love, suddenly the flowers that are one shade of yellow too bright don’t matter as much. The fact that your mom has tried to make your wedding into her personal “status symbol” party for her to show off to all her friends isn’t really a big deal. And when the chicken is overcooked, or the DJ plays YMCA twice, or the wine runs out, none of that will matter nearly as much as the fact that you just said “I do” to the one person in this world you’ll always want to be with.

I promise… this post is almost over.  And to be honest, I won’t harp on the “love” thing anymore. But it needed saying. This isn’t feudal Europe anymore. People don’t get married to increase land holdings. They get married because they want to. And if you’re serious about having an incredible wedding, you need to be serious about the person you’re marrying.

Oh… and if you want to relate this post to wedding savings, let put it this way: the best way to save money on a wedding is to not have to throw a second wedding. Now that’s some practical wedding savings advice!

My first (informational) post as editor of Practically Ever After, and although I said I was going to switch the direction a bit away from wedding savings advice, I found an article too good to pass up. Well, it’s actually a three-part blog (with the third post not being released until tomorrow), but I figured I’d go ahead and post it now anyway because the author makes a great point.

Basically, the writer’s trick to wedding savings and how to have a fantastic wedding on the cheap is two-fold: First, do a lot of research; and second, don’t be afraid to make a phone call. You see, in this economy, even the most sought-after wedding vendors — like that great florist who always manages to have the most gorgeous lilies known to man, or the caterer with delicious lobster raviolis — are hurting. And they’re hurting even more because the frugal brides without a huge budget don’t even think they can afford to hire the best. But all it takes is a little research (on places like Google and wedding blogs like Practically Ever After) to find the names of the best wedding vendors in your area. From there, it’s just a matter of picking up the phone, giving the vendor a call, and telling them your budget.  Sure, one or two might not want to work with you. But the vast majority of top-shelf wedding vendors will be so grateful for the work, they’ll figure out a way to make your budget work.

And let’s be honest for a moment.  Even those beautiful lilies don’t exactly cost the florist the $50 a centerpiece she’s charging you, let alone the $500 she might be charging someone else, so it’s not like she’s not making a profit

If you’d like to read the entire article (and all three parts), you can go check out “My Mac Book Pro Bride” here. And if you’d like to save thousands of dollars on even the best wedding vendors, remember one thing: Make a phone call. It can’t hurt!

We are all aware how much a wedding can cost. It can really be very expensive if you don’t plan your wedding well. Instead of “till death do us part,” you might end up in “till debt do us part”. Hi, this is your fabulous Wedding Diva, Richard, with another wedding blog post about wedding savings.

How can one have an inexpensive wedding? This is a question most couples are asking these days. The truth is there are a lot of ways to having an inexpensive wedding. All you have to do is plan your wedding well. If there are unnecessary things which add to the burden with regard to budget, then simply scratch it off the list. Why buy when you can create your own? These are but the few things you can do to have an inexpensive wedding.

Below is a video from Money Talk. Stacy Johnson features Victoria’s Bridal Couture in this segment. Here you will learn more techniques on how to have an inexpensive wedding. Just click the video and learn more about wedding savings from this video. This is your Wedding Diva hoping you’ll have a fabulous time planning for your wedding. Toodles!

Hello beloved readers. Today, I’m going to link you to a wedding blog, written by MP Dunleavey for MoneyCentral.MSN.com. Here, she revealed her secrets on how she had a wedding savings amounting to $15,000 for her big day.

Some of her secrets are not new to us. And we have been preaching it over and over again. Some, though, are completely contradictory from what other wedding sites have been preaching. So click the link and learn how to have an inexpensive wedding from a different point of view. Bye for now, and plan your wedding well.