The wedding season is upon us. In a few weeks, we will be seeing weddings and happy faces all around us. The followings is a list of wedding tips and stories submitted by readers like you and me. Please be sure to read the comment section for details and follow links to articles on other blogs.
The Best Wedding Tips and Stories
Click on the link at the end of the entry to go to the comment below, or to the blog article that links here:
- Save Money With a Frugal Wedding at Being Frugal
- Choose unconventional date like Friday night in December (FFB)
- Try out alternatives to catering services (Meutia Chaerani)
- Go to wedding shows for giveaways and discount, ask friends and family for contact, create your own invitation, book your photographer early. (Jackie)
- Don’t be shy with the gift registry (Writer’s Coin)
- A story of Las Vegas wedding, and a tip to buy a smaller cake. (Beth Kimber) — Good story
- Cut out the frills (My Dollar Plan)
- Use a wedding planning web site (CarolBEE) — Must read
- Be selective with your invitation, shop around for the best price, keep it simple, take advantage of sales, don’t spend money on bells and whistles, and DIY when it makes sense (Bunny)
- A story of DIY backyard wedding (Pamela Munro) — That’s how one of my close friends got married too…very nice
- A lot of frugal tips every aspects of a wedding (Tina)
- Cut Your Wedding Costs With A Few Simple Tips at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…
- A story of spending only $2,500 for a 100-guests wedding (Nina)
- Pete shares his wedding story and a few tips to safely cut out some expenses when planning your wedding (Pete)
- 10 wedding tips based on her own wedding (Susan)
- Our frugal wedding at Basic Financial
- Hold your wedding after your church’s Christmas service (Nancy)
- Six frugal wedding tips, three of which involve Costco (Kari Carlisle) — Interesting
- Frugal Ideas for a Wedding at Prime Time Money
- Confessions of a Frugal Bride at My Daily Dollars
- Wedding Planning: It doesn’t have to be stressful at Sher’s Corner
- Wedding Tips – Involve Your Family and Friends at Cash Money Life
- Ginger tells us to elope! — well actually… (Ginger)
- Kelly shares tips from her simple and very meaningful wedding (Kelly)
- The Nespys’ Guide to Frugal Weddings! at Mrs. Nespy’s World
- Our Wedding: Nearly Everything That Could Go Wrong, Did at Naturally Gluten Free
- Weddings and Wedding Favors: a Chance for Real Frugality at Mrs. Micah
- A Frugal Girl’s Decidedly Not Frugal Wedding at Be This Way
- Be careful with your prescription, especially on your honeymoon (Chris)
- FinAidGirl offers a variety of tips and her best tip is: “Ask around, compare deals, do-it-yourself!” (FinAidGirl)
- Mrs. Budgetsaresexy on frugal wedding-ness at Budgets Are Sexy
- Cheap Wedding Ideas: Keep Wedding Costs Down at Prime Time Money
Please add your tips and story below.
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Pinyo Bhulipongsanon is the owner of Moolanomy Personal Finance and a Realtor® licensed in Virginia and Maryland. Over the past 20 years, Pinyo has enjoyed a diverse career as an investor, entrepreneur, business executive, educator, financial literacy author, and Realtor®.
The best tip that’s worked for us was to be unconventional with your date. Most weddings are in the Summer, usually a Saturday night. Nothing wrong with that but it can get expensive finding a place in such demand. We found a beautiful location but they were booked up through the next year (for Saturdays and Summer months) and expensive. We really didn’t want to start off in debt because of our wedding. A friend who was married at the hall called up and found out they had a Friday night available. In December. The day before New Year’s. We… Read more »
One of the best thing that we did for our wedding is to NOT have catering service. Instead, we placed bulk order to local specialty food producers. Since we held the wedding in a village in Indonesia, the producers are usually street vendors (peddlars) selling traditional food in carts. At the end, we had unique array of traditional local food in our wedding receptions menu from five different street vendors. It’s also cheaper than having to go through catering. Moreover, we’re helping the local food producer making a living and promoting their business to the wedding guests. We’re being frugal… Read more »
Well my fiance and I are getting married 8-8-08! Here are some things we have done to save: -Go to every wedding show that you can (that are free) put your name in all those giveaways. We won half off a DJ and a free wedding coordinator. -Ask family and friends if they know anyone. My grandma knows a seamstress that is doing my dress for very cheap and it looks awesome! My aunt knew a caterer…ect. -Invitations are not worth the money, people just throw them away. It was hard to spend money on them. I designed them on… Read more »
The best money tip for weddings is not to get married! Saves you so much money on the wedding the divorce! Plus if you have bastard children that you don’t care for, you might be able to get out of paying for their upbringing and education!
Push hard for an 42′ LCD TV for the shower, it CAN happen. It did for us and still no one can believe it. They’re like “Ohhhh I should’ve pushed for that.”
Push for what you REALLY want. You just may get it.
We had our wedding in Las Vegas for a number of reasons- most importantly price and family issues. I said I wouldn’t do it, I said it was tacky, I said it was cut rate. I was wrong, and encourage anyone to take a second look at what a wedding means and whether Vegas fits the bill. After my mother started suggesting “bright colors” and taking over and I spent the first two weeks of my engagement period crying, I decided that Vegas had everything I wanted- a good time for everyone (me- no one could control my wedding, my… Read more »
Skip the stuff that isn’t important. I didn’t care about favors or elaborate centerpieces, so we didn’t have any. Same with a video; still pictures were just fine.
Wedding websites are quickly becoming a necessary wedding tool for today’s bride and groom. It allows the newly engaged couples to communicate with their family and friends. The couple can introduce their partner to out-of-town guest, showcase wedding plans for the big day, and is a great way to help your guest do their wedding shopping. There are countless reason for you to invest in a Wedding Website. Below is a list of just a few good reasons: This is a great way to get those baby pictures from Mom. When I was engaged to Don, I talked to his… Read more »
1) Invite only close friends and relatives. There’s no need to invite everyone you know.
2) Survey, survey, survey everything to get the good price.
3) Wedding invites don’t have to be too fancy – as people just receive them and toss them aside. It’s not like it’s going to be framed.
4) Buy anything you need for the wedding during the sales.
5) Don’t spend on extra details that wouldn’t really matter.
6) Anything that you can do on your own, do it. Example: no need to hire a wedding planner, etc.
The story of our DIY wedding at home – When my husband and I got married a few years ago, we decided to make it a family reunion as well and hold it in the backyard of our family house. It had just been refurbished for renting, so it was empty, and we could all sleep there on mattresses, saving considerably on housing. The biggest cost was all the airplane tix! I see people citing $10,000 for a wedding as a bargain. Well, we had much better things to do with our money! We decided on an afternoon garden wedding… Read more »
Based on our wedding a year ago, I’d like to offer the following tips: Miscellaneous: – Even if you’re super-busy, you really don’t need a wedding planner. Just allow extra time. – Make/ print the invitations yourselves – Try to invite only half the people you originally want! This is really the single biggest factor which determines the cost of the wedding. – Don’t tell any of your vendors that you’re planning a wedding. Say it’s a birthday party. Yes, even when you order all-white bouquets. Ceremony: – I know some wedding etiquette sites frown on this, but we asked… Read more »
My tip is to combine all of these tips! My husband and I only spent about $2500 on our wedding for about 100 guests…yes, you read that right…we were CHEAP!…and of that, $400 was for my dress, $300 for the site, $300 for the cake, $200 for flowers. We picked a Wednesday to get married, chose an out of the way site that was naturally green and beautiful so we didn’t need to decorate much, didn’t cater (Grandma got us trays from Sam’s Club instead), bought my dress off the rack and had it altered, had the minister’s wife sing… Read more »
My wife and I got married about 6 years ago now, and our wedding was a beautiful affair. It was catered with a reception held at a local country club, we had over 200 guests, and we spared no expense on flowers, decoration, dresses, DJ and party favors. After all was said and done we ended up spending over $30,000. Luckily for us my wife’s parents were the ones paying for everything, and they wanted to pay for it since my wife is their only daughter. Looking back my wife cherishes the memory of our beautiful wedding, but if I… Read more »
A couple tips on how we saved: 1. One of our bridesmaids’ boyfriend is a professional videographer. They offered that as their wedding gift so we totally lucked out 2. Since the bride (me) is allergic to flowers, we ended up with cupcake towers as the centerpieces so people got more to eat! 3. We opted for a Saturday lunch reception so that definitely cut down on cost and we also opted for a hosted bar which ended up being a good $10,000 cheaper than an open bar 4. http://www.netbride.com saved us $70 on each bridesmaid dress 5. We made… Read more »
One of the biggest cost cutters in my wedding was to choose to be married after the Christmas service at my church. The church was already decorated for the season, so we didn’t have the florist cost that we might have had.
My husband and I did several things to keep our wedding to a budget. First, my crafty mom put together simple, but incredibly elegant, bouquets of red roses from Costco. Second, we’re real outdoorsy, so it was an appropriate favor to make bags of trail mix, again from Costco. Third, our rehearsal dinner was an informal party at the church, catered by Subway. It really took the edge off the stress. Fourth, and I’m not recommending this, we made our own wedding cake. We spent a lot of time picking out flavors (three different ones!). We bought a Wilton cake… Read more »
In a word – ELOPE! But, when that is not your style, the word should change to PLAN. Allow at least a year for prep. Backwards plan everything. Break every segment of the wedding down and scruitinze it heavily. Make a master list of needed supplies for each segment of the wedding. Decide on an overall budget. Purchase the must haves first. Work to get the largest discount on everything. Six months out, re-evaluate everything and see where you stand. See if you are ready to re-prioritize the “wanna haves” and work on adding in a few at a time.… Read more »
Last summer, we finished our master’s degrees, got married, and moved so that I could start my PhD: all in the span of a week. Crazy! Since my parents were traveling to the Midwest from Oregon, we did not want them to spend excessive amounts of money for the wedding. They ended up spending around $1000. It was simple and very meaningful, and I would not trade that for all the money in the world. One piece of advice: don’t buy things from the wedding section at stores. If “bridal” or “wedding” is in the name of the product, they… Read more »
You can see my post here:
http://mrsnespysworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/nespys-guide-to-frugal-weddings.html
I posted my crazy wedding story here:
Titled: Our Wedding: Nearly Everything That Could Go Wrong, Did
I spent most of my Honeymoon in Maui, naked on the bed with a cool breeze blowing through the room, listening to the waves crashing on the shore. Unfortunately, I was naked on the bed for all the wrong reasons. I was taking a new antibiotic perscription I had never taken before and had erroneusly not read the label. One of the precautions was to stay out of the sun while on the medication. This was not a good combination for sun drenched bueatiful Hawaii. Nor was the three hour drive in the convertible around the northern end of the… Read more »
Best tips: Ask around, compare deals, do-it-yourself! Photography: Almost everyone has at least one friend or relative who is a talented photographer. Ask as many people as you know whose photos you like and who won’t mind taking pictures to be the “unofficial” photographer. Having at least two people do this is probably best so they can also enjoy the festivities. Music: DIY! If you have musician friends, ask them to play. As for dancing, my favorite part of my wedding day was planning the music playlists. My DJ cousin hooked up my laptop to speakers and we just let… Read more »
Craigslist Services is a great way to find local wedding vendors of all types and bugets. Most of them offer testimonials and are more than willing to let you see their work before hand. So far, I’ve booked my photographer ($200 for 4 hours), my cake vendor ($125 for 2 tiers & 50+ servings), my ceremony & reception venue (8 hours), wedding planner, officiant, and 2 servers – including tables, chairs, linens, bar, sound system, and a customized cermony ($1350 for all), and my dress alterations ($25) by using services found on my local Craigslist! That’s only $1700 for everything… Read more »
In planning my wedding I have learned that being unconventional is saving me tons of money. I didn’t like the pressure of buying a wedding dress in a shop so I bought a J. Crew wedding dress that I love on E-Bay for $125! This kept with one of my promises to myself for wedding planning. I refused to spend more on something “because it’s my wedding day” than I would normally spend. This means less than $150 for a dress, less than $30 for shoes, less than $25 for my wedding lingerie…etc. This has been a great way to… Read more »
My fiance and I have been trying to get married for almost two years now and thanks to the help of a crazy x and my wondrefull family I was beginning to wonder if it was worth all the herat ache. My biological father and his wife decided to be complet a** holes and tell me in their forever drunk state, that since my younger sibling and fiance have also decided to get married this year that our wedding is much less important than theirs; and that since they had told us that they would help pay for the cost… Read more »