Create a Smart Budget and Payment System: Money Saving Tips
By: Crystal and Jason Melendez

Authors of e-Plan Your Wedding:
How to Save Time and Money with Today's Best Online Resources


As you work on solidifying your budget and making important wedding decisions at an early stage, it’s essential to know what the main cost factors are likely going to be. If your budget is especially tight, there’s no time like now to get a handle on the best ways to save. You are probably still at an early enough place in your planning that you can cut the guest list down, for example, or decide to opt out of hiring certain vendors that may not be important to your priorities, like a fancy limousine or that expensive florist. You might even want to change your wedding date (or set it, if you’re still looking) to an off-season month to take advantage of lower costs.


Know Your Biggest Cost Factors

Let’s take a look at those things that most directly influence the cost of a wedding. Cutting back or modifying these factors will greatly reduce your overall cost, and should help wrangle an out-of-control wedding price tag to one that’s more compatible with your budget. You’ll find that most ideas to cut costs (whether they’re from this book or any other outside source) will relate to these four basic fund factors. Where you decide to cut and compensate will be a decision you need to both make together, based on your wedding vision and your own individual priorities.


Guest Count

This is arguably the most influential factor. Your overall costs for the biggest ticket items, like catering, are priced on a per-person basis. And, more wedding guests mean more tables, which mean more china, flatware, floral centerpieces, and overall space. A bigger tent, if you’re having one. More beverages. You get the idea.


Formality

As you might guess, the more formal the wedding, the more expensive the overall cost. Meals, attire, location, and decor are some of the many details that will require more flow the higher up the formality scale you go.


Timing

First of all, your engagement length can make a big difference since the longer your engagement, the more time you have to build up funds. Your wedding date itself makes a difference as well, depending on the season and day of the week. During peak wedding months (June, August and September are the busiest, followed closely by May, July, October, and December), vendors are more in demand, and so are wedding locations, which results in higher prices for just about everything. Likewise, since there are only 52 Saturdays a year, the demand for locations and vendors for Saturday weddings are huge. Friday and Sunday weddings typically cost much less.


Elbow Grease

Pretty much anything you can do yourself, or have someone you know do for you, will save money and personalize your wedding even more.


Ideas to Help Cut Cost

Great cost-cutting tips and suggestions abound in every chapter of this book. As you step through your planning, revisit the appropriate references and make use of the time- and money-saving e-Resources whenever possible. The following are some considerations to make right now as you try to design a budget you can afford for the wedding that you and your sweetheart envision.

Remember that no matter what your overall available budget is, you can capture your wedding vision by focusing on your priorities, thinking creatively, and working with a good, categorized budget strategy. You’ll be compromising in certain areas, but the important factors—the ones that make it your wedding—will be there, just as you envision.


Guest Count

One of the quickest and easiest ways to cut down a wedding’s cost, without affecting the quality of any of your services, is to simply limit the number of guests you’re inviting. Instead of 150, try for 100. Instead of ten attendants, have four. If you’re really strapped for cash and the idea of a big wedding isn’t that important to you, consider an intimate gathering of only your immediate families and close circle of friends.


Formality

If formality is not a priority, consider loosening up the affair a bit. Rather than having a sit-down meal, have a pasta bar, casual brunch, or a lunch buffet with the food catered by the platter rather than the plate (this can cut your catering bill by 20 or 30 percent!). Hire a good DJ instead of a band. Less extravagant location and floral arrangements will be easier on the budget as well. Just remember to tone down the formality, not the professionalism. Hire only the most professional and reputable vendors to provide your service and your wedding will shine regardless of the formality level.


Timing

If you haven’t yet set a date, consider a longer engagement to help build up your funds, and start saving now. Unless season is a priority, consider a wedding during the off-season, especially in winter (December is an exception). Vendors will be able to devote more time to you, you’ll get better service, and they’ll usually charge less. Think about a Friday or Sunday wedding instead of settling on an expensive, over-booked Saturday. If you choose a Saturday wedding, make sure your engagement is long enough to book the best vendors well in advance, at the best rates. And lastly, morning or afternoon receptions can usually be pulled off for less than those held in the evening.


Elbow Grease

Are you or is anyone you know especially creative? Does a friend or family member have professional expertise (a friend who’s a florist, or an aunt who bakes cakes, for example)? You might want to consider requesting their assistance; tell them it’s their wedding gift to you, and that you’re looking for their special, personal touch. It also helps to put some thought into who your attendants will be: recruit those individuals who are going to help out! Think of anything you can do on your own or with others to save on vendor costs: do your own calligraphy or use an elegant computer font and print your own stationery. Buy your own alcohol in bulk at a discount, or purchase your flowers from online wholesalers and have a talented friend or relative help you create your own arrangements.

Just be wary of a couple of pitfalls here: don’t take on so much yourself that you drown in planning and details (planning and coordinating everything is a big enough task without also having to do the work). And you don’t want to get stuck trying to do something so fast and cheap that you wind up regretting it later. Be smart, creative, and use your resources wisely. You can save a lot of money without compromising quality.
.


-------------------------------------
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Crystal and Jason Melendez are the authors of e-Plan Your Wedding:
How to Save Time and Money with Today's Best Online Resources
(June 2006; $18.95US; 1-933457-00-3).
For more information, please visit http://www.eplanyourwedding.com

more wedding articles and tips