BridalBuds is great new site for wedding tips and inspiration from real brides. You can follow Buds (engaged brides) as they go through the joys and frustrations of planning a wedding, or Blossoms (newlyweds) who reflect on their experience.
The site is a great resource for budget friendly ideas, DIY projects, and vendor recommendations. They also have contests with great wedding related prizes. Their current giveaway is a free subscription to MyInvitationLink. Since the site is relatively new, you have a better chance of winning the prizes, so hurry up and enter before the secret gets out!
It is not proper etiquette to have a cash bar at any wedding, so you’ll have to do a little investigative work to save some money and stay on budget. Pash Weddings has collected some of the top tips out there, so that you can make it look like you spent a fortune on your champagne and bar offerings.
Explore the world of wines at www.winespectator.com, where you’ll read all about the best-rated wines out there from all regions of the world, and find great bottles of wine under $20 apiece (sometimes at $10 apiece!) that taste amazing. Wine connoisseurs have named these vintages as the best, so you’re offering high quality at 1/3 the price.
Talk to your chef about doing wine and food pairings as part of the cocktail party and dinner, and you’ll be able to save money by bringing those wines out from behind the bar and serving them with specially-chosen dishes and bites. This seems like you have a wide range of drinks going on, but in pairing them with foods, you’re really able to limit the number of pricier full glass versions at the bar because you have tons of options around the room. It looks like you spent a fortune.
Just serve a great variety of beer and wine at the reception, rather than a full bar of hard liquors. When you offer a great list of wines in a variety of tastes and boldness, your guests won’t miss the pricier hard liquor drinks. Serve unique microbrew beers as well as the usuals for the look of extravagance without high prices.
Just have one or two mixed drink options at your bar, such as martinis and Jack and Cokes to limit the amount of hard liquor needed.
Serve sangrias in a variety of flavors, both white and red, for a unique offering that doesn’t cost a lot. Guests love having something they don’t get everyday.
If you’ll serve hard liquor, choose mid-shelf varieties rather than top-shelf for extra savings.
Make it a rule that no shots will be served at your bar. That’s too much hard liquor consumption.
Don’t serve after-dinner drinks with alcohol in them. You don’t need Sambuca, or Irish coffee if you’re on a budget.
Have the bartenders stop opening fresh bottles of wine an hour before your reception ends. You pay for any bottles that have been uncorked, so make it a rule that nothing is to be opened after a certain hour unless there are no opened bottles left and the bar is still open. You want to avoid having ten opened bottles of wine with just one glass poured out of each.
Arrange to take any open bottles of wine with you, corked for safe travel and legal transport in your car or to be brought up to your hotel suite.
Don’t have a champagne toast. Guests can toast you with whatever’s in their glasses at the time. This will save you a lot of money.
Have the site serve regular water, instead of imported bottled water.
Provide a selection of great soft drinks, including iced tea and lemonade for summer weddings. Guests do want refreshing drinks, and many will only have one glass of wine.
In cooler months, ask about the pricing on hot spiced cider or hot chocolate. The hot chocolate bar with all the fixings is going to cost less than an international coffee bar, so ask about this creative twist as a fun way to end your winter wedding.
Close the bar an hour before the end of your reception, with only coffee service remaining. It saves you hundreds of dollars and is safer for your guests.
Ask the site about their ‘dead stock,’ those bottles of wine they have in their basement that used to be on their wine list and haven’t been returned to their supplier yet. Can you have them for a discount? This is a great way to save hundreds on your wine supply.
Find a great discount liquor store and supply your own wines, beers and drinks if you can, and use this option for any showers or pre-wedding parties.
The end of your wedding day leads to the beginning of your honeymoon. If your romantic plans far exceed your travel budget, consider setting up a honeymoon registry. HoneyFund eliminates this financial burden by allowing wedding guests contribute to your honeymoon budget online. Their service is free, which means you have nothing to lose except your potential trip to Jamaica.
Save the Dates are important because they announce your wedding date and set the tone of your wedding. If you are looking for something less formal, magnets or postcards may be a good option. Magnets come in a variety of sizes and can be customized with text or pictures. Magnet Street offers a variety of templates to play with.
If you are on a tight budget, postcards may be a better option. Target and WalMart offer photo postcards on their website that can be printed for about 33 cents a piece. These can also be customized with photos and text, and can be picked up at a local store or delivered directly to your home. These postcards are a professional and inexpensive way to announce your wedding.
If you haven’t set aside a large portion of your budget for wedding favors, why not make your own? A friend of mine baked an assortment of her favorite cookies and gave each guest a small gift box to fill it up at the end of the reception.
Another option is to create a candy buffet. You can put out all of your favorite treats for your friends and family to enjoy. Both buffets are a budget friendly option and provide a yummy treat for your guests.
Threadbanger recently posted a webisode for a fun DIY save the date card. With a little creativity and a couple of pictures, you can have a one of a kind creation.
Wedding cakes can be quite costly, running in the thousands of dollars depending on the size and style. For brides with a tight budget, you can have your cake and eat it too.
Instead of ordering a large multi-tiered cake, get a smaller cake and a few undecorated sheet cakes. You can still have the joy of cutting your pretty cake with your husband, and your guests will never know they are eating sheet cake.
Not to damper the mood, but I Do Now I Don’t offers beautiful “experienced” wedding rings. Since their owners are interested in a quick sale, these rings can be nabbed for well below their retail price. I found one ring with a current bid price of $100 that was originally purchased for $6,800.
As long as you don’t believe in bad omens, these rings are a great find.
When my best friends accepted their invitation to be my bridesmaids, I promised them an inexpensive and cute dress. Little did I know that a chic and low cost bridesmaid dress is hard to come by! Most of the dresses I found were either far beyond my price range or were frilly monstrosities that looked like they belonged in a Disney parade.
After countless hours of searching, I finally found NetBride. This budget wedding haven offers designer dresses at reasonable prices. I chose a simple black Bill Levkoff dress that was under $100. Since this is a popular designer, the dress was available in local bridal shops (for double the price) and my bridesmaids could try on the actual dress to find their size. I ordered the dresses on NetBride’s website, and received them two weeks before they were scheduled to be delivered. Cute, inexpensive, and on time….can’t get any better than that!
The hardest decision I had to make was what to give my husband on our wedding day. As a poor grad student, I didn’t have the means to buy anything fancy, so I had to be creative. I finally decided to get him cologne. I picked out a scent that I liked, put it inside a Mr. Potato Head Spud Trooper (he collects them), and had my maid of honor deliver it to him the morning of our wedding.
Later that day as I walked down the aisle, I was met by the smell of the cologne. During the reception, I could still smell it as we danced to our wedding song. Now when he wears it, I am taken back to that day and remember the joy and romance of our “I dos” and first dance.
