What makes a wedding perfect?
Is it the fully-beaded wedding gown with its mile-long trail? Or the exquisite flowers lining up the church’s aisle as the bride makes her way to the altar? Maybe it’s the playlist that captures the mood of every moment of the ceremony or the good food and drinks during the wedding reception.
Whatever it is, it’s not just one thing that makes a wedding perfect. It’s the combination of all the planned-out details that magically fall into place, exactly how you imagined it, on your wedding day. It’s when what you’ve envisioned as the perfect day turns into a reality.
Truthfully, what makes a wedding perfect is the union between two people, and everything else is just secondary. But to add a touch of magic and a dash of perfection, a wedding ceremony is planned down to the smallest detail.
Every girl is different, and their dreams of a perfect wedding differ from everyone else. Some brides dream of a rustic barn wedding, while some prefers the classy and elegant appeal of hotel weddings. Unfortunately, any type of weddings can’t be cheap, and the ideal fairytale-like weddings can sometimes be beyond your budget. Fireworks at the end of ceremony and designer bridal gowns might mean more expenses than you can afford.
If you have the money to burn, planning your wedding day can be relatively easier compared to when you must stick to a budget. Making sure you don’t go over budget is often the most difficult part of wedding planning. There are already countless reasons to have wedding jitters, going overbudget shouldn’t be another one.
At this point, learning how to cut cost on weddings can already be considered an art. To do so, you might need the seek the advice of those who have done it before and hiring a wedding planner to help you budget everything might even be necessary.
For starters, here are some ways you can cut cost on your wedding and still come up with the perfect day.
1. Go for a digital wedding invitation
Invitations are pretty little things, but to give one to each guest can be costly. You can skip this one altogether or only give custom-printed invitations to the primary and secondary sponsors.
Going digital is the key to saving on invitations. Each invitation ca cost $2 per print, and to print out copies for every guest and pay for post can set you back up to $200 to $300. For couples on a budget, this isn’t cheap.
There are invitation software and applications you can use for free online. You can also hire a graphic designer on for hire websites to design the invitation for you and just send out digital invitations via email or social media to your guests.
2. Do research before buying or renting materials.
Before buying or renting anything for your wedding, weigh all your options first. There are instances when you’d want to forgo buying, thinking you’ll only get to use it once. However, you’ll be surprised to learn how some materials are cheaper when you buy it in bulk comparing to when you rent it. Buying linen online to use for drapes or as tablecloths can even be cheaper than renting
3. Join online wedding communities for tips and recommendations.
Listen to those who’ve done it already. There are a lot of wedding communities online where members share their experiences with suppliers and give full details on how they planned their weddings. Learn from their experience on cutting down wedding costs and pick out what you can apply on your own. Members of these wedding communities are keen on helping others and answering questions posted on the boards. You can ask for recommendations, opinions and their own experiences about certain suppliers before hiring them.
4. Search for local suppliers and talents.
When planning your wedding, you don’t always to have to look far to find the best suppliers and talents. And sometimes, the ones considered the best by others may not be the best for you. Before searching outside the state or going to different cities to bring to your locality, why not search from home first?
Do not underestimate homegrown talents. Look for suppliers who are just starting. They may still be at the stage where they’re still learning the ropes, but their fees are smaller than the big names in the industry. As for your wedding singer or band, source for local talents who are looking into making extra cash and would want to get their names known. Of course, pay them well and appropriately for their talents and service. They may be just starting out, but even local and new talents deserve to be paid well.
5. Enroll for online event planning courses.
If a wedding planner is way too much for your budget, learning how to do it yourself may not be too much of an issue. There are tons of event planning courses available online for free or for a small fee. While there are articles that will tell you how to plan your own wedding, following a definitive outline and learning the foundations of event planning can go a long way. From searching for and hiring suppliers to estimating costs to making deals to organizing everything, these courses will prepare you for the months ahead till your wedding day.
You may not have an event planner by your side to help with the preparation, at least you have the fundamentals down pat to make sure you can execute the wedding of your dreams.
6. Restrict your list of guests.
As much as you’d like to invite all the friends you’ve made from grade school to college and all relatives from both sides of the family, your list of wedding guests must be limited. The smaller the wedding, the more intimate the ceremony will be. The bigger the wedding, the more expensive it gets. Limiting the number of guests may mean you won’t be able to invite everyone, but it will hurt your budget less and make your wedding day more sacred.
You cannot put a price tag on a perfect wedding. After all, it’s the memories you’d make on that day and the sacred ceremony of the communion of two individuals that make the day priceless.
Weddings can get pretty expensive, but there are multiple ways to make your dream wedding affordable. With proper planning and budgeting, even you can have that fairytale-like wedding day.
