Help Me Plan My Wedding

In My Humble Opinion
21

Save money by having the wedding at 2:00 or so. It’s after lunch and before dinner so you can server munchies and cake and that’s all. We had a couple of fresh-fruit trays, a cake[sup]*[/sup] and sprite/sherbert/ginger-ale punch stuff. Alcohol, wine, etc. will drive up your costs big time.

If you do the food small like this you can invite 100’s of people with very little addtional cost.

Get somebody to make you a food tray for after. I’ve had two weddings (!) and at neither did I get any food. You’re too busy in the reception line, shaking hands, etc. to get a good meal.

Stay the first night in a local hotel rather than starting to travel that night. Weddings are exhausting you’ll want to take it easy.

Have fun! It’s supposed to be a celebration - too much formalism just gets in the way IMO. Robert Fulghum had a point I try to remember, the reason that weddings are such a circus is that they’re high-state occaisions implemented by amateurs. If you keep the “high state” part to a mininum, you’ll have less worries & more fun.

I loved the pictures that came out of the disposable cameras. Attach an explanatory note to each one telling people what they’re for.

[sup]*[/sup]My only suggestion for the ceremony was that the cake actually tasted like something. Seems strange but pretty white wedding cakes taste like paste. My second wedding’s cake was yellowish & had fruit or chocolate fluff between the layers (depending on which layer). Yummy!

22

Thanks for the suggestions Hedra and Belrix. The reason why I scrapped the tent idea is because of the reasons you gave - it’s still $$, and it’s a LOT of fuss because you have to arrange to rent all of the tables/chairs/dishes/linens. The hotel idea is sounding better all the time.

I like the idea of cameras on the tables too.

A friend of mine offered to make my dress. I just may take her up on that. She’s an excellent seamstress - she made the dresses for those of us in her wedding party when she got married. Her mother makes wedding cakes, so I may ask her to do that for me.

23

Do your own floral arrangements or have a friend/family member do them if you’re worried about time and stress. FreshRoses (dot com) has good prices and ideas. If you have friends volunteer their services and you trust will do a good job (or you just don’t care that much), take them up on it! They can do it as their gift to you.

If you want to do party favors, get a bunch of glass containers. Put various candies and mints (jordan almonds if you’re traditional) in them – bonus points if they’re color coordinated. Put little scoops in the containers, set out glassine bags your can buy for cheap on the internet and have your guests make their own favors or not have one at all. It saves you time and people leaving their favors behind.

Some caterers will come with furniture, if you don’t want to worry about the hassle of renting those.

Remember: all the prices that a hotel gives you? For the most part, they are just the starting point. It never hurts to try and get more than 2 options for an entree for your tasting or certain fees waived. They want your business!

24

Our wedding hasn’t happened yet, it’s in a few months, but here’s what we’re doing:

Basically, we started our planning by discussing what was important to us, and we’ve eliminated or altered all the traditional stuff that didn’t mean much to us, and put the money we saved towards the honeymoon and towards not being in debt afterwards.

Most Important to us: A celebration with our friends & family where everyone can be dressed comfortably & have a good time.
Least Important to us: most of the decorative trappings associated with weddings.

The ceremony is a Friday morning at city hall. In attendance will be our “attendants” and their SOs, and our immediate family. Lunch afterwards for the 16 of us.
No wedding dress, tux, or bridesmaid dresses. I’m wearing a cream colored Jones New York dress I got at Frugal Fannie’s going out of business sale. At full price it was right about what I had planned to buy (not wanting a formal wedding dress), and at FF’s price it was 1/3 what I was planning to pay. Fiance is wearing a jacket & tie. Attendants are wearing outfits of their own choosing.

Reception is on Saturday, 11-5, at a local Irish pub. Casual dress. We’ll have an open bar (the place was primarily chosen for its good beer list). There will be an appetizer buffet to start with, and then lunch choices will probably be Shepherd’s Pie, Fish-n-chips, Guinness Beef Stew, & Grilled Salmon. Choice of soup or salad to start.

Our cake will come from our neighborhood bakery where we’ve been buying coffee & croissants for 5 years now. It’s not a traditional wedding cake, so that will save us big bucks, but it will be very tasty. We’ll probably have two cakes - one with strawberry filling & one with chocolate.

Rings we’re not skimping on - we’re both getting plain platinum bands. We’re plain people, so no stones or fancy styling, but we like the look of platinum over the less expensive gold & silver options.

We haven’t decided if we’re doing favors or not. If we do it will probably be something along the lines of a tradeshow freebie. A stress ball or pin-back button with something silly on it. Or maybe church keys.

25

A great website for tons of info is theknot.com. You could drool over dressed for DAYS!! That’s where we found some good invitation companies that sent free catalogues. I think we spent less than $200 for about 150 invitations, envelopes and RSVPs.

Try silk flowers for a cost reduction. My mom and I spent a couple of hours one day with them and whipped up some lovely bouquets, corsages, and butonniers (sp?). We also got some simple flowers and flower pots (on clearnce at JoAnne Etc!!) for table centerpieces. We skipped the favors.

We got married at a local park property that had a lovely garden w/gazebo for the ceremony and a large patio for the reception. They charged $50/hour for the whole grounds. The only decorations we used were an couple of silk garlands - ivy and white wisteria - over the “doorway” of the gazebo. Chairs were on-site and rented for $1 each. They even had picnic tables that we arranged in a circle, leaving the middle open for a dance floor. There was a house on the property with AC for those who needed a break from the 80 degree heat AND a professionally outfitted kitchen for food prep (my mom and I did most of it the day before). It also had a Brides’ Room and a Groom’s Room for pre-ceremony preparations. We spent less than $3000 (maybe less than $2000) on the whole thing. We had champage-spiked punch and regular punch for the guests and some cheapy bottles of bubbly for the wedding party for toasting purposes (we had Moet & Chandon).

We got a great deal on a DJ - even talked him down $50 on the price because we didn’t need the disco-lighting package!!

And we had a harpist play our music for the ceremony. That is something that I HIGHLY recommend doing. You only have to pay for one person (as opposed to the string quartet I REALLY wanted), and that was the most comment-on aspect of the whole wedding. To find her, I called some local colleges and got recommendations of local talent. Wonderful.

Good luck and keep us posted!!

26

P.S. It might help to give your location - maybe some local Dopers could offer some more specific tips.

27

Don’t worry about open bar. I just chatted with a firend of mine, and she has decided that the bar will be “open” during the cocktail hour and before dinner, they will put wine on the tables and after supper the bar turns to cash bar.

Basically, they will pay for you to ahve a few drinks and toast them, but if you want to get wasted, you are doing it on your own dime.

I don’t know where you live, but if “socials” are the norm to raise money They are NOT WORTH IT!

The best advice has been posted already, this is your day, make it your own. I had a parade before the reception with a bagpiper. A friend of mine had her groom walk down the aisle to “The Good The Bad and The Ugly”.

Make it your own. Everyone else will just enjoy themselves, or stuff it.

28

Unless you have a friend or family member who is experienced in flower arranging/corsage making, DO NOT try this at home. One of my friends thought she’d save money by having the florist make the bouquets but buying flowers herself to make corsages and boutonnieres for the people who helped out with wedding stuff.

It took a long time with several people helping, we ruined many of the flowers and it just wasn’t worth it; in the end, those things weren’t used because the person handing out corsages thought all the flowers were together. There was an obvious difference in quality (the florist had made corsages/boutonnieres for the parents) and I wouldn’t recommend tormenting people like that anyway.

That dinner was in the church basement and the bride greatly underestimated the amount of work she was making for herself. We were at the church until 2:00 am the night before the wedding and then had to drive 70 miles back to town.

Maybe I’m just resentful because I had to buy the ugliest dress in the world for it.

29

Avarie537 - I’m having the wedding in London, Ontario. It’s most central for the guests.

I’m going to have Jelly Bellies in pretty boxes for the favours - whimsical and fun and not that $$.

30

ladydisco - great favor idea!

31

While the website www.etiquettehell.com is full of wedding horror stories, it also has a very useful suggestion of reception foods for inexpensive receptions, as well as other useful advice on how to throw your own wedding with a minimum budget.

What everyone else said, though: Make it your day, and have fun!!!