Wedding budgeting -
hints and tips for planning your wedding
More from Paper Alchemy's guide to saving money for your wedding.BUDGETING FOR YOUR WEDDING - PART TWO
As with any holiday, peak season will affect the price. You want a fantastic time and a holiday you will always remember - but don’t let that stop you from shopping around! There are so many travel websites offering amazing deals that once you’ve decided when and where you are going, take the time to phone, visit or e-mail as many travel agents as possible to see what they can quote. Try www.expedia.co.uk as a starting point.
7) Photography & videos:
Let’s start with photography first - you definitely get what you pay for, so my tip here for trimming costs is to
spend time discussing what sort of shots you want, and exactly how many. Think about whether you want
photos of the hours before the ceremony as well as the hours after. The fewer shots and less time your
photographer is around, the cheaper it will get!Video - do you really need this as well as the photos? If I’m being blunt, how many times will you ever watch this again in comparison to flicking through your photo albums. You will have to pay a fair amount to get a decent result so you could save the money here and get more photos instead.
If you really want to cut back, approach the local college and see if there are students on any photography or film & video courses that may be interested in the experience. Make sure you see a portfolio of their work first to have an idea of their style and talent. You will be amazed at the number of students that are desperate to get this sort of experience under their belts - and just how good they really are! You can find a list of colleges that run photo courses here, photocollege.net.
8) Wedding Invitations and Stationery:
Here’s a tip that can save you a lot! If you (or a friend) have a computer and a printer, then you’re half
way there. We have an enormous wedding department dedicated to people making their own invitations
and stationery. We provide free downloadable Word templates for all styles of invitations plus step
by step instructions and ingredients lists with photos of the finished results.Whether you want plain and simple card invitations or something with the magical touch of parchment scrolls in a rose petal filled box, then you’re in the right place! To look at our online store within Find Me A Gift, click here.
9) Florists:
Fresh flowers are beautiful, but they also come with a hefty price tag and sadly don’t last much beyond the day. Keep flowers to a minimum but with maximum effect! Cut the costs by doing the flowers yourself, or if you have a family member who’s good at arranging, I’m sure they’d be happy to help out. You, or a relative could always attend a night class for flower arranging at your local college. Flower arranging classes can last anything from 3 weeks to a few months - depending on how advanced you want to get.
You can look in Yellow Pages for a local flower wholesaler rather than paying full price from the florist - or take a look here for a uk list of wholesalers.
Instead of table centres, try floating nightlights in glass bowls with scattered rose petals and just
have one large floral centrepiece on your top table or cake table. How about tiny potted miniature
trees or box hedges on the table centres - you could even weave miniature lights through them for
a truly magical display. You can purchase the miniature battery operated lights at our online store within Find Me A Gift; click here to go straight to that page.
10) Cake:
Have you ever noticed how most wedding guests don’t get around to eating the cake? They’re usually
so full after the reception meal that there’s just no room for cake! One option is to make your
cake the dessert - and cut the costs of that third course. For this option, you may want to
onsider a more ‘dessert’ style cake like a croquembouche.Croquembouche comes from the French “croquant” meaning crackling and “bouche” for mouth. Thus croquembouche refers to the crackling in your mouth when eating this traditional dessert. The croquembouche is often the dessert at a French wedding. For full details and a recipe to make your own visit, www.boboli-intl.com. Alternatively, have a smaller cake with guests being served ‘fingers’ rather than slices.
11) Booze:
Unless you want a massive bill and a free for all, do not waste money paying for a bar. By all means go for champagne (or Bucks Fizz is a cheap and popular alternative), wine and water but guests fully understand that you can’t be expected to pay for everything. If they want to hit the alcohol, let them pay for it!
If you want to find the best prices for champagne, beer, wine and other drink, visit Kelkoo for great comparison shopping.
And finally....although budgeting and cutting costs will always be an issue, don’t let it give you sleepless nights. Your day is supposed to memorable and enjoyable and not a financial nightmare, so get the cost cutting and budgeting discussions out of the way very early on so you can enjoy the weeks ahead, rather than dread them.
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