Even
low budget weddings can take a huge bite out of savings and often end in huge debt obligations.
Planning a wedding yourself not only saves money but, gives that personal touch that provides lasting family memories.
Personal touches like creating your own
wedding favors and planning your own reception can be particularly satisfying.
You will take great pride in your accomplishments when planning a low budget wedding. Not only in your creations but in the huge savings you will boast about.
A low budget wedding will have much the same wedding costs as the higher counterparts, but you can save money in each area to stay within your budget.
The only way to avoid the costs is simply not to have a formal wedding. If you're footing the bill yourself and just can't see yourself starting your married life with a financial burden, you could always opt for a courthouse ceremony and intimate dinner.
A formal ceremony can then be planned well in advance. A re-taking of wedding vows is common practice today, and it's a very romantic anniversary date! Consider this if your funds are extremely limited and you will be financing most of the wedding budget.
However, if it breaks your heart to forego the formal ceremony, and you have limited funds, save as much money as possible using low budget wedding ideas. Here's a real wedding budget saver that can reduce the cost of the wedding reception greatly.
The Wedding ReceptionThe reception alone will bust your wedding budget if you're not careful. Of course, the most obvious way to save money on the reception is to keep it small.
Where you host this grand occasion could make or break you.
Your low budget wedding remedy? Find a reception location that's free or low cost.
A free location may include, your home, or a friend or family member's home. A low cost option might include the Church reception hall, the local fire department's reception room, and club hall rentals. Most will have a kitchen area for preparing and serving food.
Sometimes you will even find a local restaurant that specializes in low budget wedding receptions. These will likely offer a package for the reception which may include dinner and limited beverage with the rental of restaurant space or banquet rooms. Check hotels in your area for banquet rooms as well. Some may rent the banquet room alone and/or offer reception packages as an option.
Leave no stone unturned in your search! You may happen upon a gem of a deal that will save you a lot of money. Ask around. Get recommendations from friends and family. Do a local search on the internet. We have several plantations in our area who offer wedding reception packages. These are elegant locations and are usually competitively priced; including options for the low budget wedding.
Make a list or chart to record all your findings. Record not only price but services available, and packages available. Then you can compare where you will get the most for your money.
For instance, you may be able to rent a space for a really cheap rate and hire outside catering for the dinner. But, if you find a location that costs more but will offer you a package that includes the catering, it may be the better deal in the long run.
The one big exception to this scenario is if you opt for a potluck reception. Many guests may be pleased, if not relieved, to be given the choice to bring a reception dish in place of a wedding gift. You will find that low budget reception packages usually come with a low budget menu as well.
If you choose this option, you will save greatly on catering expenses. I am certain your guests will be more pleased with the menu selections. This would be your best low budget wedding option and will save the most money.
To have a free bar, or cash bar? Such a difficult question to answer. Of course, it would be fantastic to offer a free bar to all your guests, all day, but with limited funds, it’s not a realistic option for most people.
- Booze Budget Cost Saving Tip:
The ideal in this instance is to use a venue where you can bring your own booze. I was lucky enough to be able to do this at our wedding and managed to pop across to France and buy 180 bottles of wine and 240 beers, plus Pimms and cassis for under 1500$. We had stacks left and our guests were restricted to beer, wine or soft drinks, but no one seemed to mind.
Another option is to come to an arrangement with the hotel regarding corkage. A friend got married in a hotel, which charged 20$per bottle of wine. She arranged a flat fee of 1500 for all of her beer and wine opening. Although it seems like a lot, it meant that she could afford to supply beer and wine for her guests.
With most bridal dresses starting around 1300 and running into thousands of dollars, this is a huge expense.
- Bridalwear Cost Saving Tip:
You can still look fabulous for a fraction of the price and feel that you’re minimising the eco-footprint of your wedding by buying a ‘pre-loved’ wedding dress.
Many charity shops have specialist ‘bridalwear’ departments where you can purchase new and designer dresses that have been worn once. You can try the dresses on before buying and you’ll get a warm glow from doing something for ‘Charidee’.
If you’re a little braver, you can venture online, where there are some fantastic bargains to be had in the ‘pre-loved’ lines. Take a look at some of the ‘For Sale’ forums of the popular wedding websites and you’ll see bridal dresses, veils, tiaras and those Jimmy Choo shoes that you know you want for a fraction of the cost.
Many couples feel that photography is a major part of the day and are prepared to pay upwards of 4000$ for a beautifully presented wedding album. Photographers have confirmed that it isn’t the actual photography, which is the major part of this expense, but printing and preparation of the formal wedding albums.
- Wedding Photography Cost Savings Tip:
Many photographers are prepared to attend your wedding day and then provide you with a DVD of your photos for around 1000. With the DVD, you can then use some of the fantastic online services to prepare your own ‘Photo Book’ - costing much less. Or, as many guests will no doubt have digital cameras with them, combine place cards with little notes asking them to share their wedding photos on your online directory.
Another excellent tip for having a photo keepsake of your wedding is to use several Instant Photo Guest Books, which combine Polaroid Instant Photos and hand-written sentiments from your guests. These photo guest books are ready to enjoy the "instant" your wedding is over -- and creating them adds great fun to the wedding reception!
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With the
average wedding now costing 20000, many couples are now looking for ways to have a ‘
celebrity’ stylish wedding, without the celebrity price tag. The first tip is simple – ask for a discount.
The worst that can happen is that they say ‘No’. You might be a bit embarrassed, but what have you lost? We’ve pulled together 5 other top tips to help you create your
dream wedding on a shoestring budget.
- Choosing The Wedding Venue
Your venue is probably going to be the single biggest
wedding expense that you’ll have to pay, with many of the more popular venues charging 2000 upwards. But you don’t need to spend this sort of money to have a fabulous venue.
- Wedding Venue Cost Saving Tip:
Many village halls, golf and rugby clubs have suitable rooms available for a fraction of the price. The trick is to see past the existing décor and imagine it sprinkled with hundreds of fairy lights or candles – think of Ross’s wedding on the hit show Friends that Rachel ruined!
If you’ve found the wedding venue of your dreams, but it looks as if it will be out of your budget, don’t despair. Many venues offer significant discounts for mid-week or ‘out of season’ weddings which can run into thousands of pounds.
Deciding what kind of menu you want to offer for your wedding can be difficult enough without having to see the price tag that goes along with it!
- Food Budget Cost Saving Tip:
There are lots of ways to cut back on your food budget, and still have a memorable day. Selecting a venue where you can bring in your own caterers is often a much better value than using the existing
venue catering. You can even go as far as preparing all the food yourself, though be careful of taking too much.
If you don’t have a choice about which caterer you use, there are still ways that you can trim your spending costs. Try replacing the starter course with canapés, instead of having both. Or, replace dessert with your wedding cake – so often wedding cake gets forgotten about because guests have already had so much to eat.
A new idea that brides are buzzing about is the wedding ‘cheese’ cake. Literally, it is three slabs of cheese turned into a wedding cake for that special ‘cutting of the cake’ photograph and ceremony. Why not combine the two instead of having a separate cheese and cake course? Or serve this with crackers, chutney and pate for your evening guests?
This is a no-brainer. Retail stores will discount up to 70% of the original price of the mother of the
bride dress, depending on how desperately they want to clear the racks of the current season's clothing to make way for the new season.
Spring/summer lines start showing up on the racks from January through April, while fall/winter dresses are introduced between June and September. Therefore, you will get bargains around these times as well for the last season's mother of the bride apparel.
The mother of the bride should start shopping for her mother of the bride outfit as soon as she knows the colors of the wedding. All too often she takes care of all the details that go into the wedding, while forgetting her own needs.
She should spend this time with the bride going over styles, fabrics, accents, accessories, etc. Late shopping only brings on more stress and possibly more money spent on things that were purchased in haste and then returned with "buyer's remorse".
Quite a few
bridal shops do not take back returns or offer refunds once the mother of the bride walks out of the store with her dress.
There are tons of reputable and traditional
bridal boutiques out there that have an online store on the immense "world wide web" nowadays. The costs of running and up keeping a brick-and-mortar store are escalating and definitely cut into profits.
Any savvy shop owner knows full well that they will have to own a "web store" to fully maximize their sales and therefore, profits. Check their Better Business Bureau record or see if the site has a BBB online reliability logo, if you are still not comfortable shopping online. Once you start using your fingers to do the shopping, you will never stop!
The "youthful" mother of the bride can opt for a
bridesmaid dress which are normally priced less expensively than a
mother of the bride gown. Seek the tailoring expertise of a bridal dress seamstress to add on beads, sequins, and other exotic trimmings to create a uniquely appealing look.
- Search for ' Discount' Dresses Online:
The
mother of bride can open up more options for herself if she is computer literate and able to do a search using the keywords "discount" or "cheap". Example, search for discount mother of the bride dresses.
These words can conjure up an image of herself in a cheesy, polyester dress but you will be surprised what will show up online that are not quite cheesy despite being made of polyester. By the way, there are 40 blends of polyester and almost all synthetic fabrics for special occasion wear are made of some type of polyester.
- Shop Regular Evening Wear:
Add on a shawl or jacket or buy fabric to make a unique, one-of-a-kind jacket to cover the shoulders and arms for modesty or for providing warmth.
- Wear a Teal Length or Cocktail Dress:
These are priced less than the floor-length gowns and are more versatile, as you can surely wear them again at another special occasion.
Weddings performed during and immediately following the medieval era were often more than just a union between two people. They could be a union between two families, two businesses or even two countries.
Many weddings were more a matter of politics than love, particularly among the nobility and the higher social classes.
Brides were therefore expected to dress in a manner that cast their families in the most favorable light, for they were not representing only themselves during the ceremony.
Brides of an elevated social standing often wore rich colors and expensive fabrics. It was common to see such brides wearing bold colors and layers of furs, velvet and silk. Brides of a lower social standing often copied the elegant styles of wealthier brides as best they could.
Over the centuries, brides continued to dress in a manner befitting their social status—always in the height of fashion, with the richest, boldest materials money could buy. The poorest of brides wore their best church dress on their
wedding day. The amount of material a
wedding dress contained also was a reflection of the bride's social standing and indicated the extent of the family's wealth to wedding guests.
Today, there are wedding dresses available in all price ranges, and Western traditions have loosened up to include a rainbow of colors and variety of lengths, which are now considered acceptable. Women may purchase ready-made gowns, wear a family heirloom, or they may choose to have a dressmaker create one for her. In addition, today many bridal salons have samples of wedding gowns in their stores where the bride selects a certain style and orders one to be made to fit.
Wedding dresses have traditionally been based on the popular styles of the day. For example, in the 1920s, wedding dresses were typically short in the front with a longer train in the back and were worn with cloche-style wedding veils. This tendency to follow current fashions continued until the late 1940s, when it became popular to revert to long, full-skirted designs reminiscent of the Victorian era.
Although there has always been a style that dominates the bridal market for a time, and then shifts with the changes in fashion, a growing number of modern brides are not choosing to follow these trends. This is due in large part to non-traditional and non-first-time weddings, and women who are marrying later in life.
Today, Western wedding dresses are usually white, though "wedding white" includes creamy shades such as eggshell, ecru and ivory. Philippa of England was actually the first documented princess in history to wear a white wedding gown during a royal wedding ceremony: she wore a tunic with a cloak in white silk bordered with grey squirrel and ermine).
White did not become a popular option until 1840, after the marriage of Queen Victoria to Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Victoria had worn a white gown for the event so as to incorporate some lace she owned. The official wedding portrait photograph was widely published, and many other brides opted for a similar dress in honor of the Queen's choice.
The tradition continues today in the form of a white wedding, though prior to the Victorian era, a bride was married in any color except black (the color of mourning) or red (which was connected with prostitutes). However, in Finland during the 19th century, it was popular for brides to wear dark colors, especially black.
Later, many people assumed that the color white was intended to symbolize virginity, though this had not been the original intention. (It was the color blue that was connected to purity.) The white gown is in fact a symbolic Christening gown.
The are a variation of the white surplice worn in the Western Catholic tradition by members of the clergy, church choirs and servers and the gowns worn by girls making their first communion and at their confirmation and also by women making religious vows. Today, the white dress is normally understood merely as the most traditional and popular choice for weddings.
- Bring the entourage, but don't buy.
It's fun and useful to bring your mother, friends or sisters on the
dress-shopping expedition. It gives you a buffer against an overbearing sales staff, and it's fun to see if your impressions of perfection are shared by your loved ones, not to mention how they'll love being part of such an important decision.
But no matter how enthusiastic everyone gets over a certain dress, don't buy in the heat of the moment. Give yourself time to reconsider and buy with a cool head later, alone. The vast majority of dresses are non-returnable, so when you've bought it, you've bought it.
- Don't buy too early unless you must.
Bridal gowns can take four to ten months to come from the manufacturer, but there's no reason to buy over a year ahead of time, unless your chosen style is going to be discontinued. Give yourself some time to sit on your decision. Once you pick a gown, you'll see a hundred others nearly like it. You'll become a walking encyclopedia on that style of gown. All the better if you still have room to choose.
- If you've bought "The One," stop shopping
Any more window-shopping at this point will only lead you down the road toward the dreary land of Two-Dress Brides. What you need to do instead is remember that blissful feeling of having tried on The One. Go get The One out of the closet, put it on and stand in front of the mirror. You'll remember exactly why it's The One.
- If you've bought "The One" and can't stop shopping, get a second opinion.
Show your first and second choices to other brides. Be honest -- tell them you've already remortgaged your condo for the first dress, but you think this second dress might be it. They'll be truthful, too -- the first one was better. You'll feel reassured.
- Don't tell yourself "I'll sell the old dress and choose a new one."
This old saw of the Two-Dress Bride just won't work. You'll never get more than a fraction of what you paid for your first dress if you bought it new.
- Don't be afraid to aim high -- no matter what your budget.
Some brides knew from the start they wanted a designer label, but life just didn't cooperate by making them heiresses. Yet all is not lost if you're willing to shop courageously. At any given moment, a better-heeled bride is selling her once-used St. Pucchi or Ulla-Maija on eBay. She paid thousands upon thousands, but you, smart shopper, will pay half that or less.
To take this road, you must shop earlier than other brides so you'll have a choice of gowns. Always pay with a credit card so you'll have recourse if the dress doesn't arrive in acceptable condition, and again, shop early so you can buy another if necessary. Shop courageously, but not recklessly.
- Shop online, but never send a check.
Bridal gown businesses sometimes have a way of disappearing overnight. No matter what the proprietor tells you, never make a purchase as large as a wedding gown without the chargeback protection of a credit card. If they say they can't take plastic, move on.
- Don't hold out forever for The One.
Some brides never find The One. What they do find is a few dresses they look beautiful in. If you're this bride, try starting your planning from the theme instead of the dress. You'll probably eventually get sick to death of dress shopping. When that happens, "good enough" really will be good enough. Concentrate on other aspects of the wedding that mean a lot to you, like the venue, the food, or the inevitable adoration of your soon-to-be husband.
Your
daughter’s wedding is announced. She has butterflies in her stomach and one thousand and one things to do. Her "butterflies" becomes yours and your thoughts are racing just like hers.
You, as her mother, will help her plan her dream wedding, just like your mother planned yours. At the back of your mind……"What am I going to wear? Will I look just as beautiful as my daughter on her wedding day? So many people are going to be looking at me as well…."
Fret no more. Here are the RULES but like all rules, they may be broken or should I say improvised and revised to suit you. I say….whatever makes you and/or your daughter happy!
1. Confer with your daughter. She will come up with a color scheme for her wedding.
2. Ask her whether she wants the color of your dress to complement her wedding color/colors or almost match it. Examples of complementary colors to a red color theme is burgundy, wine, claret red, dark pink, and purple. As for a "match", it would certainly be difficult to have an exact match of the colors, as your dress will be of a different manufacturer, style, fabric, and dye. So, do not stress over this.
3. You, as the mother of the bride, will decide on a color or colors, after consulting your daughter. Suggest to her to be flexible on the choice of colors—perhaps two or three choices would be great. Mother of the bride dresses are not made like bridesmaid dresses, the latter being preordered and tailored months ahead of time for the occasion. Shopping for a mother of the bride dress can be a headache and nightmare rolled into one, especially for the plus size woman or if you live in a rural city.
4. Do not forget to involve the mother of the groom. After you have an idea of what color you would or should be wearing, inform her. She will definitely appreciate that as she will be in a panic mode as well, going through the same motions as you will soon be, looking for that perfect "mother’s" dress.
5. Shop as soon as you can. Finding YOUR dress is important too. Understand that you are shopping for a specific style that you like and look great in, a specific color, and then a specific size.
Then, you will need to allow sufficient time for professional tailoring of the dress, to get it to fit just right! Also, what about the accessories like shoes and jewelry.
6. Shop bridal or department stores first. You can get a first hand look at the styles out there and the type and quality of fabrics. Do not ignore online formal wear stores. Visiting an online store is easy and stress free as they are sources of good ideas of what you would like to wear on that special day.
7. Take care of yourself in these nerve-wrecking times of preparation. Remember, you need to look good as well, although it is your daughter’s wedding.
8. Now, sit back and relax. You have found your most perfect mother of the bride dress and have a few more weeks to spare. Give yourself a big pat on the back!
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