It’s Spring- finally!  I love bright colors in weddings…  I sometimes wish I had gone with a more daring color palate (my colors are red and black).  It’s so hard though, your colors are one of the first things you choose and then your stuck with them.

Back to colorful, how cute are these centerpieces?  And, can we say cost efficient?

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?

Ooooh... the silver tones in that spatula handle really complemented her dress!

This weekend, I was helping one of my girlfriends with her wedding registry, and it got me thinking about… well… wedding registries. Go figure, huh? Anyway, her philosophy was basically this: “Screw practicality! I’m going to register for all sorts of things I probably wouldn’t buy myself.” Honestly, the “I wouldn’t buy it so someone else can” approach is fine, and it fits pretty well into the one-of-two standard wedding registry advice categories. The other standard piece of wedding registry advice is to register for things you need and only things you need.

As for how wedding registries actually work out, there’s generally a balance between the two ends of the registry advice spectrum. Instead of registering for only the practical necessities or only the “I’ve always wanted to have one of these in my kitchen” items, brides wind up with a nice blend pots and pans they’ll use every day, and Kitchen Aid Mixers that get turned on once every five years or so. It works for most brides, but here’s my little piece of wedding advice for the day. What if you could use your wedding registry to save money on your actual wedding?

The truth is, chances are good you’re not exactly “doing without” right now. Sure, your towels might be a little worn. Or maybe your pots aren’t the best for evenly cooking the perfect filet for your new hubby-to-be. But you’re probably not drying yourself with paper towels. And you’re probably still managing to eat dinner every night. So for all those brides who try to take the “I’m going to only register for practical necessities” approach, I think you’re kidding yourself. You’ve got all the “real” practical necessities because, well, you’re alive and reading this wedding blog right now, right? So what on your wedding list is an absolute need?

On the other side of the spectrum, if you’re registering for the stuf you’d never buy yourself, ask yourself honestly why you’re doing it. If you’re asking for things you’d never buy yourself, that’s a pretty good sign you can’t afford to buy those items for yourself (or, at the least, you’d prefer to spend that money in other ways). So why let someone else “waste” what could have been money for you buying something you wouldn’t spend money on in the first place?

When you actually think about wedding registries, they kind of don’t make a lot of sense, at least from a wedding savings perspective. But what if, instead of getting items you don’t really need or wouldn’t really want to buy, you could just get the cash and help pay for your wedding? I know, I know… you’re thinking, “but Jessie, I can’t just ask people for money… that’d be inappropriate.” And you’re right. It goes against most standard, American wedding traditions to ask for money. But did you know that in lots of places in Asia, couples actually make money on their weddings by taking cash gifts from guests? How awesome would that be? What if, instead of spending thousands of dollars on your wedding, you could actually make at least some of that money back?

Well, with a sneakily created registry, you can. Specifically, there are stores out there where you can return wedding gifts from your registry FOR CASH. That’s right… not just exchanges, and not just store credit. You can actually bring in that $200 mixer and walk out with a pile of cash-o-lah. So imagine you have a 200 person wedding, and you get about 100 returnable gifts averaging somewhere around $100.  Do a little quick math, and that’s $10,000 you can put in your piggy bank to immediately start your new life together. That’s $10,000 toward a new car, or $10,000 toward your down payment on the house you’ll raise your kids in. And while it might seem a little crass and uncouth to return gifts, in the long run, don’t you think your friends and family would be happier knowing they helped you buy the house of your dreams instead of the ice cream maker collecting dust in the cabinets?

Yes, I know that you know that less people means less money.  And believe me, I understand that you want everyone you know to come to your wedding.  Or, that you have tried to come up with a smaller guest list, but the must haves just keep adding up.

Well, most will estimate that 85% of all invited guests will attend.  However, out of town guests or elderly guests can drive down your retention rate to as low as 45%.  What that means to me, is you really have no way to tell how many people will come to your wedding.

To make our invite list, my fiance and I grouped our guest list into three tiers: “will come”, “might come”, and “probably won’t come”.   We hope that even if people switch tiers, it will all balance out in the end.  But because this is a wedding savings blog…  here are some of my tips to cut your guest list before you make tiers (in no particular order):

1. Don’t invite anyone that you don’t consider a great friend. Our wedding location is not local for most guest, so when inviting people, I always ask myself, would I fly somewhere for their wedding?  It doesn’t matter if they invited me to their wedding, or if we used to be really close.  I figure that they would feel annoyed to have to come anyway.  I’ve happily been working on a separate list of announcements to send out the day after the wedding.

2. Don’t invite anyone that you haven’t met before. This might sound strange but this is for the collective “we”.  My fiance and I have been together long enough that we should have met anyone “important” in either of our lives.  If we or you haven’t taken the initiative to see us in the past few years, I don’t see why you are “important” enough to come to our wedding.  Again, very happily adding this group to the above mentioned announcement list.

3.  No “and guests” invites. If you have not heard about a significant other, then they don’t need to be invited to the wedding.  I sometimes wonder if an “and guest” invite is almost a challenge for singles to find a date.  Certainly you can try to be flexible with people and they come back and ask if they can bring a date.  A kind response would be: “we don’t have a lot of room in our budget for guests, but let me get back to you when all of rsvp’s come back, if we get enough declines we would be happy for you to bring a guest.”

4. No coworkers or children. If you are really close with some of your coworkers, or if you are close with some little one’s, and your day would not be the same without them then these would not be a good cuts for you.  These two blanket policies are great to eliminate numbers from your guest list and not hurt feelings.  As in “I’m sorry we really want an adult affair” or “We’re having a really small family wedding”.

5. Don’t send out save-the dates to everyone. This might sound a little fishy, but unless someone is family or a timeless friend, they might fall out of favor.  Waiting until closer to the wedding to commit to invite recent friends, local friends, coworkers, or friends of friends.  The decision may be easier then you think in a few months!

Good luck choosing who will be invited to share your special day!  Your wedding guests should all be people you love and who should be there to witness your happy day!  But if worse comes to worse, they should be people that you want to spend money on, and if not, cutting them from the guest list will increase your wedding savings!

Listen girls, have you and your significant other ever thought of choosing a date now that you are planning to get married? Or are you thinking that picking the date is not that important? If you are thinking the latter, then you need to change the way you look at scheduling your wedding date. The date of your wedding is one of the most important things you have to consider when getting married.

Why? Because everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, will depend on it. If you plan your wedding around the perfect date, well, I assure you can garner the wedding savings newlyweds aim to have. Plan carelessly and choose an unideal date, chances are, the inexpensive wedding of your dreams may end up being a wedding that busts your budget .

Besides, it is the day the two of you are going to celebrate for the rest of your lives. So here’s a link to an article which give details on why it is important for the two of you to choose the date of your wedding carefully.

Your wedding is supposed to be happy, fun, and memorable. It’s your special day. You’ve got the license to do whatever you want. And the most popular thing to do nowadays is go Bollywood on your guests!

Yes, surprising your guests with a dance number seems to be a hit on wedding days. You know, the kind where newlywed couples dance a traditional wedding dance, then suddenly they break the monotony and decide to go wild with the guests with lots of shouting and cheering. Here are some really surprising and funny first dances of couples as husband and wife.

Here, a couple surprised their guests by dancing a cool and fast swing dance. The newlyweds showed so much energy that the crowd roared for more.

This couple was really cool. Groom entered with Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”, while his bride entered with Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love”. They locked lips and their first dance as husband and wife was L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole. But this modern day couple put a little twist in their first dance by mixing “Crank That” by Soulja Boy and ending it by switching back to the classic song again.

Here’s a couple dancing to the tune of the classic song “Unchained Melody” from the movie “Ghost”. In the middle of the song it seemed that the spirit of Sam Wheat (Swayze) returned and possessed this couple to dance to the tune of “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix A Lot. These two ended up being featured on the “Inside News” for having such a wild and fun first dance.

As you can see, there are lots of creative ways to having an inexpensive, but fun and memorable wedding. I hope you learned a thing or two from these couples and may your wedding be as fun as theirs.

Here’s another wedding savings idea we can share with you. If things you need for your wedding day is not meeting your budget, then it’s time for you to DIY. Well, you don’t have to do everything yourself. Just choose the one wedding feature you think you can greatly save on if you do it yourself, if it’s quite easy to accomplish, and if you can still squeeze it into your busy schedule.

Hey, getting married is a once in a lifetime experience (I hope) and giving a little extra time to it would be beneficial for you and your husband-to-be. So, here’s a link to an article that gives you an inexpensive wedding tip on how you can be your own wedding florist.

We as individuals want to be unique. We want to be different from everyone else. And sometimes, because of this need to be different, people tend to get weird at times. Here are some tips on how you can have a unique and uncanny wedding.

Most weddings are celebrated in a traditional way, but those are for squares. Here is a link where you can see different kinds of weird wedding motifs you can only imagine seeing in the twilight zone. Click the image for more pictures.

The Wedding Of Sweeney Todd

Here is a link where you can see weird wedding dresses. Some are really outrageous and bizarre. Some of these wedding dresses may not be the inexpensive wedding dresses you are looking for, but somehow these odd creations can make you look cheap.

Eat Your Heart Out, Gomez(Literally)!

Okay, so some people can’t go beyond the traditional way of celebrating a wedding. But they want to be unique just the same. One way to be different is to make their wedding cake topping different from the usual. Just click the sample image to see some outrageous examples.

For Anorexics