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How To Save Money While Planning Your Wedding

wedding dresses

Most brides and grooms-to-be must consider their wedding budgets when they plan their nuptials. Weddings can get very expensive, and it’s a rare couple that doesn’t have to worry about the cost of catering, alcohol, music, renting a venue, etc. For many brides, one of the most important parts of wedding planning is choosing the right bridal gown. In most cases, this white wedding dress is incredibly meaningful for the bride-to-be – therefore, it should probably not be a budget item.

In fact, brides-to-be tend to regret buying cheap wedding dresses after the ceremony and reception are finished. Of course, there are exceptions, but quality does show in wedding photos and videos. So, in general, it’s smart to save on other aspects of the wedding, so that you can enjoy getting the dress you really want. It still doesn’t have to cost a fortune, but it should fulfill your fairytale dreams for your special day – you deserve to feel like a queen when you walk down the aisle.

Luckily, there are lots of ways to economize if you’re smart and organized. Planning well in advance can be key – give yourself time to comparison shop on everything from catering to wedding flowers to wedding favors – if you’re rushed and under pressure, you’ll end up buying overpriced items out of desperation. Instead, use the months before your wedding to research deals and plan your strategy.

You’ll be glad you didn’t move too fast when you consider the overall cost of your ceremony and reception. By putting some energy into finding lower-priced items and services, you’ll be able to enjoy your wedding more – after all, no one wants to return from the honeymoon to be confronted with a mountain of debt. Debt creates stress, and it take a lot of romance out of the blissful newlywed state.

Here are some practical tips on saving money at your wedding:

 

Rent His Tux – Unless you have a lot to spend, you should consider tuxedo rental for your groom-to-be. Most men don’t really care too much about whether or not they actually own their tuxedo. If he’s not particularly obsessed with fashion, he’ll probably be glad to rent something nice and return it afterwards. You can outfit him in style when you choose to rent instead of buying. Good tuxedos are actually incredibly expensive.

Make Your Own Invitations And Wedding Favours – Many women enjoy making crafts – they watch Martha Stewart and other skilled crafters and feel inspired. Today, there are ways to get a completely charming and polished result when you make wedding invites, place cards, menus, and wedding favours yourself.

Scrap booking stores will usually have everything you need to do the job yourself. You can use stencils, pretty colored card paper, and stick-on embellishments, such as tiny “crystals”, to make your work look really special. If you’re seriously into crafting, consider investing in a die cast personal cutting machine, such as a Cricut. This type of computerized device can be loaded with cartridges that include pretty borders, letters, hearts, flowers, or whatever you can dream up! Then, you just feed in the paper and the machine creates perfect cutouts.

Choosing a cartridge with a wedding theme can be a great way to make your own decorations, wedding invitations and wedding favours, If you really like making crafts, a machine like this will pay for itself in terms of the pleasure it brings you through the years. It can definitely save you money as you prepare for your wedding.

Keep Things A Little Less Formal –

in general, the more formal and elaborate a wedding is, the more it will cost to plan it and to carry out that plan. By loosening up your wedding ceremony (or perhaps your reception) and keeping it more casual, you can be more creative with cost-saving techniques.

Food will be a huge expense at your wedding, so consider sharing some of the work with your caterer – perhaps the caterer could provide entrees, and you could prepare side dishes, salads, and other foodstuffs yourself. If you’re planning something fun like a beach wedding, consider outdoor grilling and buy great cuts of meat wholesale. Then, hire a cook or chef to take care of things while you celebrate. Look for recipes that are glamorous and high-impact, but don’t contain pricey ingredients. Be a frugal gourmet to save money as you feed your guests.

 

Brides-to-be who follow these smart tips and use their ingenuity to plan a cheaper wedding can reward themselves by choosing the wedding dresses they’ve always dreamed of wearing.

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If You Can’t Be that Creative with Wedding Favors

If you can be very creative with your wedding dress and wedding motif, you can also get creative wedding favors.

If You Can’t Be that Creative

It takes some spunk to be creative; you take on new ideas and make them into tangible objects. According to Rollo May, American existential psychologist, “creativity is the process of bringing something new into being…” This can be well applied on wedding favors. Admittedly some people have this gift for creativity. Well if you share the same boat, you can borrow these ideas to bail you out of a creativity plateau.

wedding favor

Capitalize on Your Locality’s Specialties

Look around you. What are tourists buying left and right from your shops? Are they buying delicacies or special sweets only available in your region? If your California region has the best peaches order the fruits and have them preserved. Package these in personalized bottles and you’re ready with your creative wedding favors. This is a special treat for out-of-town guests but local guests will equally love the preserved bottled peaches.

If sweets are not your region’s top tourist drawers, how about having a great carver do miniature caricature carving of you and your groom? This won’t be cheap, but this is fun, and something different in the wedding scene. If you are having 25 guests for your wedding, this idea won’t cost you a fortune. Hire an experienced caricature carver or look for this service online and don’t forget to ask for his portfolio.

How about flowering plants? If you are living in Oregon or Seattle, Washington you must have known about the stunning roses, which are the best in the US for their beauty and scent. Scout around for some potted tiny rose bushes. If this is a great idea for you, start making arrangements with the local nursery and have your potted roses readied months before the wedding. Pots of roses in the bud are romantic and irresistible wedding favors. You can plant this yourself if you love gardening.

wedding favors

Keeping the Budget Down

If budget is an issue, water down your plans for your wedding favors. Instead of expensive items, go for something practical that won’t ‘bankrupt’ you. If your guests know that you bake a superb chocolate cake and that the groom dishes up great steak, it’s time to share them your secret recipes. Add more family recipes and have these laminated; tied with a satin ribbon, you give the wedding favors flair.

Chocolates, jelly beans, and mint candies are great edibles to give away to your guests. Personalize these with your initials with custom-made molders. Edibles are inexpensive and if you have a hundred or more guests, you can keep the budget down with edibles.

For their wedding favors, some bridal couples ask the caterer to bake a small wedding cake for the sharing-the-cake ceremony and small cupcakes in special boxes for the guests. This is a concession to an age-old tradition of sharing the wedding bread. The tradition was to share the couple’s happiness and good fortune with the guests as a way of thanking them graciously for witnessing the big day and sharing the fun.

Shopping for wedding favors, bridesmaid dress, and the best of the wedding dresses? Visit BestforBride.com today.

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Celebrity Wedding Favors on a Budget

Sticking to a tight budget can be sticky. The first casualty is the wedding favors. But should you give this up? If you knew there were great but inexpensive items that could be a big hit with your guests, would you still give up? Perhaps not.

Simple yet Fantastic

The rich and the famous can afford to spend $400 on a single wedding favor for 300 guests; that’s a lot of money. But you don’t have to ditch wedding favors because you can only spend a dollar per item. There are great ideas waiting to be found and an example is the vintage handkerchiefs given by Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan to their wedding guests.

wedding favours

The fabrics were purchased cheap on eBay and a touch of flower heads to top the handkerchiefs in a basket made a perfect accent for the vintage wedding theme. For less, the couple was able to give their guests more. The guests were amazed that the handkerchiefs fashioned from fabrics with vintage prints had such a romantic impact. The hankies were meant for “wiping tears of joy” and indeed Tatum’s and Jenna’s wedding was a smash hit.

You can copy this idea for your own wedding; but if you want something different here are some items you might want for your wedding favors. A handmade velvet pouch with your initials stamped on it; decorative boxes you make yourself; tiny potted plants you can prepare well in advance; and perhaps you can invite a local celebrity and ask him to pose with guests. If he or she is that famous you better plan for tighter security or the fans would go wild. That indeed would be the talk of the town for ages.

If you are planning a beach wedding, go ahead to seashore and scout for seashells and scoop up some white sand. Make sure though that the beach is the venue for the wedding. Place these in quaint little boxes you made yourself. Include a personal thank you note and you have unique yet inexpensive wedding favors for your beach loving friends.

wedding favors

Giving frames is a great idea too but instead of opting for silver plated chrome frames, get wooden frames and paint it with your wedding color. A decorative touch can give your DIY frames more character. If your partner is handing with a hammer and a saw, that would be great or if he has zero experience with a hammer, you can ask around. Some friends might recommend a friend who can do the frames without charging a fortune. You can do the painting job later.

Baked goodies are easy to make and how about giving away sugar-crusted cookies? There’s no second guessing these cookies won’t last long. Other edible giveaways are chocolates and fortune cookies that you can prepare well in advance. You can make your own fortune chocolate candies too using special molds to match your wedding theme.

The Easy Way Out

Browse the internet for more ideas. The websites of bridal shops have a showcase of items under a dollar. Choose an item that goes well with your wedding theme and instead of having it boxed, which is another expense, spruce it up with ribbons or a silky cord. So who says you can’t have celebrity style wedding favors?

Personalized wedding straws

Who doesn’t love wedding favors that are good for the environment and you can use over and over again? The Other Straw offers bulk bamboo straws for wedding favors and wedding receptions which can be personalized with your initials, wedding hashtag or unique message. A gift your guests and Mother Earth are bound to appreciate.

A one-stop-bridal-shop carries everything for weddings; wedding favors, wedding dresses, and wedding decorating Toronto wedding specialists can help in every way. Visit BestforBride.com today for your wedding needs.

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Wedding Favors: Amazing Little Surprises

wedding favors

Wedding favors, whether whimsical, fancy or romantic do not fail to impress guests. Whatever your personal style or tastes, these will also reflect the persona that you are, so do choose wedding tokens or favors after going through the little details that make a big stylish yet practical difference.

Little Things Mean a Lot

The best surprises come in little packages and this speaks for wedding favors. With this kind of viewpoint bridal couples should work together to come up with spectacular personalized items that reflect both their styles and tastes. Choosing the bridal favors together also gives the couple more time to be together in spite of the fact that preparations for the wedding are tough on schedules.

Shopping for wedding giveaways should not be a drain on one’s nerves. There are one-stop bridal shops that provide everything couples need for wedding package. These shops have a huge selection of the latest classy items bridal couples would be proud to give their wedding guests and likewise, guests would be tickled pink to receive these fantastic novelty items. No matter how little the package, the message sent by these wedding favors will go a long way.

wedding favors

This gesture reinforces the saying that little things mean a lot. Here are some of the items you can find in bridal shops – ceramic lovebirds salt and pepper shakers, eco-friendly bamboo pen, Mr. and Mrs. shoe-shaped shoe polish containers, miniature wooden boxes with tree design, and miniature good luck elephants.

With a wide range of selections available for theme weddings and seasons of the year, it would be great fun choosing wedding favors; just going through the assortment of wedding favors is a delightful eye-popping experience.

Little Details that Matter

Couples shopping together easily spot items that have significance for them as a couple. If they prefer romantic candles that reflect their upcoming union, they might go for lovebirds-shaped votive candles or infuse fun into their message with a two peas in a pod candle. The two different candle designs send two different messages – one is 100 percent romantic whilst the latter reflects the couple’s sense of humor. The point here is to choose something that reflects the couple’s style without going overboard.

Wedding favors generally come in three types – edible favors, practical favors, and whimsical favors. All of these can reflect the wedding theme and these are packaged elegantly or with a tad of whimsy should the couple decide to go for out-of-the-ordinary packaging.

The items should be scrutinized first-hand before you make an order because this might not be what you expected. If you are ordering online, do so several weeks before the wedding; should there be any breakage due to shipping and handling, or product defects that went unnoticed, there is still time to have them replaced.

wedding favors

Check out the available decorations for the packaging, whether you are opting for “retro” tin boxes or carton packages. There are heart-shaped boxes, tall boxes and little boxes, heart-shaped tins, square and round tins. If you opt for unboxed wedding favors, there are ribbons in various colors and sizes to decorate the bottle openers, glassware, or wooden birdhouses, if these do not have their own packaging.

Every detail from the choice of wedding favors to packaging should be selected with care. Without telling them so, your guests know you have made a good job of choosing the amazing little surprises.

Go over the wedding favors with the exacting eye for details when going over wedding dresses. When shopping for wedding dresses in Toronto, do ask for the latest in all wedding paraphernalia. For more information, visit BestForBride.com today.