10 Ways to Hold a Budget Wedding

A wedding can be one of the most exciting events in a person’s life. It can also be one of the most expensive ones. Weddings can be very costly particularly when they are large with lots of guests. The cost can do a lot to throw cold water on the entire event. That’s why if your last name isn’t Gates or Rockefeller there are still ways to have a great wedding at a fraction of the cost.

1. Check into local resources: A website that you need to check into is called A Grand Wedding. This site gives you a list of vendors that have something for weddings for a cost of a thousand dollars. They also have a section where couples can find each other for buying, borrowing or sharing wedding items.
2. Use the talent of your friends and family: Let your friends and family help if they offer it. If they have some useable talent such as photography, baking or cooking, by all means, let them assist you.
3. Buy or borrow used decorations: The decorations for your wedding aren’t required to be brand new. You can save a lot of money with well-maintained used ones.
4. Buy a bridesmaid dress to use as your gown: Before you turn up your nose at that idea, consider bridesmaids dresses. Many of them are beautiful and would work perfectly as a wedding gown.
5. Forego traditional registration items for money: This is a great way to pay for your wedding. If you request money in lieu of actual physical gifts, you can get a lot of help in paying for things.
6. Have a limited guest list: This may be difficult but if you limit your guest list, you can save lots of money. You and your partner need to go over this together to avoid conflicts.
7. Don’t hire a caterer to do everything: Get a couple of larger dishes catered and let the guests serve themselves. Get some friends to help set up, replenish, and clean up afterwards. When you choose to do this, you can serve your own alcohol.
8. Prepare your own flower arrangements: It doesn’t take major talent to pick some beautiful flowers and put together your own flower arrangements. If you can find a flower farm, they only charge by the bucket. Used vases can be found for rock bottom prices at yard sales and estate sales. Get your wedding party to help with this.
9. Limit yourself to only the “Must Have” things rather than “Want to Have” things. Think of how many times you’ve gone to weddings that you’ve even noticed the party favors or extra table decorations.
10. Give yourself plenty of time to plan: The longer you have to plan, the more innovative you can be with your budget wedding planning. If you’re rushed, you may be tempted to spend more money.

There are some other areas that you can save some money such as making your own invitations, but these are the top 10 tips that will get you off to a great start.

Until Death Do Us Part Becomes Until I’m No Longer Happy

Marriage can be a beautiful and wonderful thing for many couples. It signifies their committed love for each other and their desire to be together long-term.

People love weddings. There are weddings now that cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The recent royal wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton was estimated to have cost $34,000,000. Of course, not everyone can afford to shell out that kind of money for a one-time event, especially if this one-time event happens frequently.

Weddings ARE beautiful and gives people a chance get all dressed up, enjoy free food, music, dancing, and drinking. But what happens AFTER the wedding?

Too many couples focus on the event rather than the marriage. Everything is so busy and the couples are so high on excitement that it can actually be a bit of a letdown once they ride off in their Just Married vehicle. Now they’re stuck with each other. Imagine that!

Granted, if couples enter into a marriage for the right reasons, being together isn’t a problem. It’s just that too many people no longer get married “Until Death Do Us Part”.  Instead, they go into it with the mindset of staying together “Until I’m No Longer Happy.”
Even the most devoted and in love couples are going to have issues from time to time. It’s just not possible for two people to live together and never disagree on anything. If that does happen, that couple must lead very boring lives.

You’re ALLOWED to disagree and argue on occasion. It doesn’t mean that you no longer love each other or that the marriage is over. It simply means that you need to calm down a bit and enjoy the great makeup sex.

In years past, people simply did not get divorced. If you married someone, you better have planned to STAY that way because it didn’t matter what the issues were, divorce was typically not an option. Worse yet, if you were a divorced woman, you may as well have worn a Scarlet A on your chest. Thankfully, that time is long past. But it seems to have reversed itself. Now, people that get married do so knowing that if things don’t work out, they can always get a divorce. This, too, is a sad state of affairs.

Couples should never enter into a marriage with that attitude. A successful marriage takes work. This means that there must be give and take on both sides for a marriage to be a happy one. The commitment and vows you make to each other on your wedding day should mean something to both of you. That’s why many couples have taken to writing their own vows.

If you don’t feel that a traditional wedding is fitting for your lifestyle, choose the type of ceremony that works for YOU.   Whatever else you do, remember that your wedding is the event that’s meant to be the start of a marriage for a lifetime. Go into it for the long term, not just until your first real fight.