While planning for your wedding day can be a magical activity, you have to be realistic about your budget. Don’t allow yourself to get in over your head. Despite a limited budget, you can still plan a beautiful and meaningful wedding.
Learning how to stay within your budget when planning a wedding can be challenging—since it’s always tempting to hold a luxurious one. Splurging all your savings in a day isn’t worth it, especially if you don’t have any money left after the wedding and you’re stuck with numerous debts. A fun, memorable, and beautiful dream wedding doesn’t always have to be the most expensive one.
This article will give you some ideas on how you can achieve the wedding of your dreams while staying within your budget.
1. Plan Your Wedding Early On
The first tip is very simple and straightforward. You need to start planning your wedding at least six months before your wedding date itself. If you don’t take the time to plan, you’re only setting yourself up for financial disaster. The earlier you plan, the more deals you can score.
There are wedding suppliers and venues that give great discounts for early booking and prompt payment in full. This is especially important if you’re planning a destination wedding, where there are other additional expenses at stake.
When you plan early, you may even be able to join bridal fairs. During these events, suppliers post their best deals, which are limited only to the attendees. Don’t miss out on those fairs and events within your area.
2. Set A Spending Limit
Another very important tip to follow in your pursuit to save money for your wedding is to set a spending limit or a budget. This may seem like a piece of no-brainer advice, but going beyond your budget will most likely happen if you’re not careful once the wedding planning goes in full swing.
In every step of your wedding planning journey, don’t forget your spending limit. Always remember the amount of money you’ve allocated for the whole wedding and stick to that. This will prevent you from overspending. It’s never worth going into heavy debt just to have a grand wedding that you can’t afford.
There are still many cheaper options to choose from if there’s something in your dream wedding that’s just astoundingly expensive. Know that there’s always a cheaper version for the priciest things.
3. Create A Wedding Website
Weddings today are evolving not just in terms of design and color scheme, but also with the planning aspects. In fact, so many weddings now have their own website or social media groups. This makes planning so much easier and cheaper.
For one, you can skip the physical invitations and go for digital invites from e-invitation services such as Greenvelope. Aside from being more convenient, online invitations also help preserve the environment by skipping the use of paper for printing.
Wedding invitations are always necessary, but they can be expensive. More so, they mostly end up getting thrown away after your wedding. You can slash out printing expenses not just for the wedding invitation itself, but also the wedding program. You can post infographics or media copies of these programs, and your guests can save these on their phones instead.
Your wedding website can also hold your registry. This can give you a good start for your marriage, especially when you’re on a budget. This way, all the gifts you’ll receive are those you truly need.
Taking advantage of technology for your wedding won’t make it any less special. In fact, it makes the whole event more convenient for you and the guests.
4. Take Time To Shop Around
As you plan your wedding, take ample time to shop around. Even if you’ve got a wedding planner helping you out, don’t settle immediately for the very first suppliers you come across. This is also why you have to start planning early. It gives you more time to window shop and find better options.
There are many wedding suppliers that can give you high-quality results, but for a better price than others. A good rule of thumb is to compare the price of at least three vendors for every need (e.g., three for flower suppliers, three for cake, etc.)
For instance, shop around for your wedding gown and entourage dresses months ahead. You can save so much in terms of expensive last-minute alterations.
AveryAustin has wedding dresses for under 500 dollars for all budget-conscious out there.
5. Consider An Off-Season Wedding Date
Yes, most girls have been dreaming to become that June bride one day. But the truth is that your wedding is going to cost you so much more if you force it on these dates when weddings are in season. Your wedding won’t be any less memorable if you choose an off-season date instead.
You can save so much money on everything, including all your suppliers, during the off-season. Of course, this will depend on your location. Who knows, June might not be so popular among the brides in your area.
Plus, there are so many other advantages you can gain from having an off-season wedding. One of these is that friends and family can travel to be present during your special day. Most importantly, it can take a huge stress off your shoulders when you and your wedding planner won’t have to go full Bride Wars mode with other brides, fighting for the same venues and caterers during the busy wedding season.
6. Buy In Bulk
Buying in bulk is an old-time trick of saving money for every purchase. If you think you’re going to need lots of flowers for your wedding, then go ahead and buy in bulk. Suppliers can be very generous with the price and discounts when you go bulk.
For instance, stick to having around three to five different kinds of flowers. Then, buy each in bulk. You’ll be surprised at the discounts you’ll receive from your supplier. They might even throw a small freebie in there.
Along this line, when you order blooms, another money-saving technique is to order greens too. Don’t underestimate the beauty of foliage. They can help beautify the empty areas in the venue, plus they’re very inexpensive as well.
Conclusion
Every engaged couple certainly has their own dream wedding. But once you discover every aspect of this dream wedding, you’ll be startled at how costly they are. Cutting back on these other facets won’t necessarily make your dream wedding any less memorable. As you start planning your dream wedding, these tips might prove to be helpful. That way, you can stay within the budget you’ve set as you embark on this journey to a lifelong commitment.