One of the most special events in any person’s life is their wedding day. Once you have found the partner of your dreams and know that you want to spend the rest of your life with them, getting married can be a natural affirmation of this love. Whilst planning a wedding can be stressful, it can also be one of the most expensive events in most peoples’ lives, which can add additional challenges.
However, a wedding can still be an exceptionally beautiful and special event when it’s done with a smaller budget in mind. Not all weddings need to be huge and overwhelmingly expensive. With some intelligent planning, every couple can have their perfect day without breaking the bank. In this article, five top tips on how to plan a wedding on a budget will be explored in detail.
1. Plan everything electronically
It should be recognized that one of the most important parts of any wedding is being able to plan the event thoroughly. There are literally hundreds of actions, ideas and preparations that need to take place for any wedding, regardless of its size or budget. Thankfully, the days of writing wedding plans down on pieces of paper or having to memorize lists are long gone. To plan a wedding well, it’s hugely beneficial to record everything on a good quality laptop. Click here to find a perfect laptop that will help to organize all your wedding plans.
Using a laptop can also help you to keep track of the overall wedding budget. By using a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel or a free spreadsheet app, you can factor in projected costs for all your wedding essentials and keep track of what has been paid for and what still needs to be bought. In short, keeping an electronic record of all your wedding plans will be a vital step in the smooth progress of organizing all the tasks and will help you stick to your intended budget.
2. Get married out of season
80% of all weddings take place between May and October. The most popular month for weddings is now October, when 22% of all weddings take place. It’s important to remember that wedding venues will be exceptionally busy during these periods and as a result, they will be likely to charge more to rent their rooms. It’s therefore possible to save significant amounts of money by having a wedding that’s outside the peak months, especially October.
You may be able to find a wider range of venues with spare capacity to hold your celebrations and prices for rooms are likely to be considerably cheaper. Also consider the day of the week when the wedding will take place. Saturday tends to be the most popular day for a wedding, so if you can manage to set a date during the week or on a Sunday, it’s likely that venue costs will be lower.
3. Plan a honeymoon later
Traditionally, the wedding couple will seek to jet off to a far-flung destination for their honeymoon shortly after the wedding. This is often a good idea, but for couples looking to limit their wedding budget, there’s a far better solution to keep costs down. A growing trend is to take a mini-moon vacation soon after the wedding. This could be a short trip to a romantic hotel for the weekend, or to visit a site of natural beauty.
Clearly, the cost of doing this will be far less than a full honeymoon and can slash the overall costs of a wedding dramatically. After the mini-moon, months can be spent saving for a full-scale honeymoon to an exotic resort that will be the trip of a lifetime. By holding back on paying for this trip before the wedding, your overall wedding budget will be slashed, and the honeymoon can take place once sufficient funds have been saved.
4. Consider a home venue
Another brilliant way to keep wedding costs down is to hold the wedding reception in your own home. Most couples spend between $3k and $11k on their wedding reception venue. Clearly, this is a significant amount of money and may be outside the budget of a lot of couples who are seeking to keep the overall costs down.
Having your reception at home gives a personal touch to the proceedings and allows every space to be decorated to your liking at a fraction of the cost. In addition, guests could be asked to bring a selection of home-cooked food to the house so that the guests can have a wide range of dishes to choose from and everyone contributes to the reception itself.
5. DIY where possible
It’s a fact that a wide range of the tasks, items and ornaments for a wedding can be created yourself with a bit of DIY knowhow and enough preparation. Wedding flowers can cost vast amounts of money, stating that the average cost of wedding flowers is $3.5K. This is a huge amount of money for something that will only be used for one day.
A far more budget-friendly option is to spend months growing your own flowers in the garden that will be in bloom during the week of the wedding. Consider also baking your own wedding cake or asking a talented family cook to do it for you. As a final point on DIY, it’s worth remembering that makeup costs for the bride on the wedding day can often cost large amounts of money. A better, more cost-effective solution is to practice applying some special wedding makeup in the run up to the wedding and then apply it yourself on the day.
To sum up
This article illustrates how a wedding day doesn’t need to cost a small fortune and can still be as glamorous and exciting as a big budget event. With some intelligent planning, a bit of DIY knowhow and by approaching the wedding and honeymoon with a flexible mindset, immense amounts of money can be saved.