Category: Wedding Favors

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Wedding Invitations and Other Wedding Budget Bombers

Wedding Items You Can’t Do Without

When you receive wedding invitations, you already picture the event, if it is a flashy or simple one. After the wedding, you remember the beautiful bride in her stunning wedding gown, the beribboned wedding cake, and the romantic wedding venue, everything straight out of a fairy tale.

Now you are planning your wedding. At the top of the list are your wedding dress, rings, wedding cake, wedding invitations and wedding venue. Ridding one item is unimaginable so you juggle your funds. Redo your calculations to stretch your budget because there are the wedding accessories, wedding photography, DJ, wedding officiant, wedding planner, the wedding entourage, wedding videography, and the pre-wedding dinner to host.

A hefty chunk of the budget goes to the wedding gown, rings, wedding cake, wedding invitations, venue and corkage. Unfortunately, you cannot choose to ignore any of these because the stuff makes your wedding memorable. But you can save hundreds of dollars if you know how to trim down your expenses.

Money-Saving Tips

Wedding Dress

Before entering a favoured bridal boutique inform the sales clerk you are looking for a dress within a particular price range. This done, you are shown the appropriate items. If you do not or forget to tell the clerk about your preference, expect to be shown top designer gowns you cannot afford and chances are you end up with a pricey wedding dress because you get upsold.

Wedding Invitations

Wedding invitations and stationery that are professionally printed are not cheap. These have fancy designs and printing techniques and before you know it, you are spending more than you have planned. Avoid more expense by choosing simple invitations or making your own personalized wedding invitations if you are feeling adventurous.

Wedding Rings

You can easily be distracted with flashy rings so tell the clerk upfront you want wedding rings within certain price tags. Be ready with your finger sizes to avoid ending up with rings that do not fit, it is again a waste of money.

Wedding Cake

The cake is costly because of baking pans and baking accessories are expensive. Bakers also use quality ingredients for tasty cakes. Ask the hotel if their pastry chef can bake your cake. Brides who have done this route swear they saved money on their wedding cake. Also, consider a “dummy” cake for the centerpiece.

Wedding Venue

If you want 100 guests to break it out on the dance floor or an intimate bunch to lounge in an outdoor setting, visit the venue to see if it suits your style. So before signing the contract for the venue, check out what is included and not. You might get stung with a ruined budget because of additional fees.

Corkage

Find out the corkage cost for wines. This can cost you a packet if you are not careful. So before finalizing the contract for the venue, know what you are in for. Other venues charge lower corkage fees so continue looking around.

The best rule to follow to avoid wedding budget bombers is to stick to your budget, no matter how much you hanker for that luxurious wedding gown, romantic venue, glittering rings and beautiful wedding invitations.

Brides, shop wisely for your wedding invitations, wedding dresses, and wedding favor. Find quality but affordable items at BestForBrides.com.

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Be a Gracious Host, Add a Personal Touch to Your Wedding Favors

The Wedding Favors

Weddings, being happy events are supposed to bring luck. To share this good fortune, wedding couples give away tokens to the guests. Traditionally wedding favors were sugared treats packed in beautiful boxes and given to each guest. The early tokens were pieces of five almonds or candies. Way back, the wedding tokens were part of the bread or cake, which guests grabbed for good luck.

This changed with the times and modern bridal couples are giving away practical or decorative items for wedding favours, one for each family or couple and if budget permits one for each guest. These are usually placed on the table as part of the decorative table setting. These are artfully wrapped with tinsel and ribbons echoing the wedding theme and colors.

The choice of wedding tokens for the guests reflects the couple’s personal taste, no matter if they have the budget or a limited one. Whatever your budget, choose items that will please your guests – it may be handmade items to a packet of colorful scented candles. Happily, choosing tokens for your guests is fun making the task an enjoyable one. The internet has also made the shopping convenient and faster and online bridal shops offer discounts for bulk purchases. You can pick up the items to save on shipping costs.

What to Give Your Guests

Your wedding guests have done their part to attend your wedding. They have filed a leave of absence, paid for their plane tickets if they are out of the country or live in another state, bought your wedding gift, and traded their old party clothes for new. This may sound easy but fact is they spend a lot of time preparing for your wedding too.

Thanking them with practical items is part of your role as a gracious host. Since most wedding favors are almost identical, make it special to stand out even if it is another packet of scented soap or bottle opener.

These tips can help you make a good impression:

* Discuss this matter with your fiance, both of you can pick your brains for something unique, interesting and affordable.

* Choose items that can be proudly displayed in curio cabinets instead of landing in a heap of cookie cutter wedding favors easily forgotten.

* Not all guests have the same tastes. You have the task of choosing wedding tokens that will appeal to both young and old and male and female.

* If you want to give your guests something they enjoy for years, or something they can enjoy immediately, it is all up to you.

* Add a personal thank you note in your wedding favors to show them how much you appreciate their coming over to your wedding. This personal touch connects you to your guests and this gesture makes the wedding favours special to the recipient.

Instead of having someone distribute the wedding favors to the guests personally go around and hand the tokens to your guests. This could be done when you go the rounds of having your pictures taken with the guests.

The personal touch that goes with your wedding favors, says much about the kind of host you are.

Delight your wedding guests with your wedding favors. Shop for these in your bridal boutique where you can also go over stylish wedding dresses. At BestForBrides.com you can find your heart’s desires.

 

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Bridal Boutique – The First Important Stop For Your Wedding Shopping

When to Shop for a Wedding Dress After your man pops the question, the first lap for your wedding preparation begins – budgeting. Everybody contributing to the wedding kitty should sit down work on the budget to prevent nasty surprises later on. At this point choosing a bridal boutique is not yet a priority; first, agree on the budget, and wedding date. The rest can be sorted out later, following a system to keep sane all throughout the wedding preparations.When the budget is all laid out, start looking for a bridal dress. This is the second lap of your preparations and the first item to look for because a wedding dress has to be ordered six months before the wedding. Most brides choose a small bridal boutique because of the personalized service. This is understandable because during the preparations, brides are highly strung what with the whirl of activities and things to do to stage a perfect wedding.

A bridal boutique should have everything you might need – wedding invitations, crinolines, tiaras, jewelry, shoes, and the shop should offer alterations and gown cleaning if you have decided to rent a gown for yourself and your bridesmaids. The shop attendant in a small boutique also understands you don’t want to be a cookie cutter bride, so you should be in good hands.

Where to Shop

There are a number of shops catering to wedding gowns. They offer hundreds of designs from traditional to the unusual and top designer labels. There are big shops, small shops, online shops, and basement shops. You can even find some thrift shops that have wedding dresses in mint condition, which you can alter to make it truly yours.

If you have a bridal boutique in mind, check out if it has an online shop so you can leisurely view what they have for sale. Perhaps you can also catch discount offers and extra service without exorbitant fees. Check out other online bridal shops so you can compare products and rates for custom-made or rental gowns.

Whether you are shopping in a big store or a small bridal boutique, you have to make an appointment. This prepares the sales staff for your request to look at dresses within a price range; this also eliminates wasted hours in showing you dresses you are not going to get anyway.

Make Your Shopping Fast and Fun

If there are something nice you like in an online bridal boutique, visit the shop to see more of their wedding dresses. Bring a bridal magazine and the shoes with the heel height you are going to wear with the bridal dress.

Don’t be surprised that if you are a size 10 the clerk will give you a size 12 gown. This is the usual route because the wedding is 6 months away. There will be numerous fittings and alterations during the period until you get the exact fit before your wedding day.

Now you know why a bridal boutique should be your first stop for your wedding shopping.

A bridal boutique should be your one-stop shop for your wedding gown, wedding favours, wedding invitations and other essentials for you wedding. At BestForBrides.com, you’ll find everything you need, including wedding cakes.

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The Bridal Boutique of Horrors – How to Avoid It

You’ve heard of predator lenders, how about a little shop of horrors of a bridal boutique? Not that it has vampires for sales clerks and black capes and sinister gowns, but it has caused unfortunate brides headaches and regrets, not to mention the money they plunked on lousy bridal gowns. Here’s how to avoid this shop of horrors.Don’t Rush When You ShopExcited brides fall into the trap of going to a bridal boutique because they have not done their homework. They also fail to scour the area for more choices or compare prices and bam! They get the dirty end of the stick. Once stuck, there is no way out because they fear the terrible repercussions this may have on the wedding schedule.

The common cause for the error is their blind focus on the budget, not knowing that there are choices out there and they forget that not all bridal shops are equal. So they are stuck with a bridal boutique peopled with snooty or clueless sales clerks.

The ideal bridal boutique would be one that cares about how you want to look on your wedding day and gives personalized and friendly service all the time and a wedding dress specialist will guide you through the process to help you avoid costly mistakes.

How to Choose Your Bridal Shop

A wedding dress has to be bought six months before the wedding. This is to give time for time for fittings and alterations. Six months before your wedding, you never know how much weight you can gain or lose. During this time, you have to keep in touch with the bridal boutique so go for one that gives personalized service and one that is within the locality.

What to watch out for:

* Salesclerks who hurry you to make a choice
* Limited samples
* No discounts for a number of purchases
* Outdated styles

If you are shopping online, do not trust what you see on the website. Visit the store. Some bridal shops are not so honest about their merchandise so you have to see the dress to believe it is for real and available or you’re prime target for rip-off.

Hey, it’s your money so you have all the right to go to another shop. You have to deposit 50% of the total cost of the bridal dress before you can get a hold of the real thing. So do your bridal boutique hunting on weekends to avoid crowds and to have more time to do the rounds.

Shop Smart

Brides have choices of shops where to get their wedding gowns. If they have the money for a high-end designer wedding dress or one within a budget, there are appropriate shops uptown in malls, bridal boutiques, department stores, and charity shops.

It is recommended to visit the familiar or big shops as these have been in the business for years; narrow down the field until you find one that carries all brands of designer dresses and accessories and other wedding needs for convenient wedding shopping.

A one-stop shop bridal boutique saves you the trouble of dealing with numerous merchants for your bridesmaid dresses, wedding cake and invitations, and honeymoon arrangements. When everything goes smoothly, you won’t have a bag of horror stories to tell about your wedding dress to your family and friends.

A bridal boutique should also have wedding invitations and wedding favours to make your wedding shopping convenient. At BestForBrides.com you can have wonderful choices anytime.