Recession-Chic: Throwing a Fabulous, Yet Frugal Wedding for Next to Nothing

Sometimes, less is truly more. In these hard times, saving a few bucks is a necessity. What’s a bride-to-be to do when money is already stretched thin? Recession-chic weddings, the trend of 2010, can be just as classic – but for a whole lot less! Elegance comes in many forms with or without money in hand. Here are a few tips to help you throw a fabulous, yet frugal wedding — on a budget that’s next to nil!

The Trend of 2010: Learning How to Plan a Wedding on a Budget

Frugal wedding tip #1: Repurpose a used or vintage gown. Sure, some dresses are outdated design and cut-wise. If you’re a modern girl, you want the clean look without fuss; if you’re more on the traditional side, you want that classic look to fit a little better. Solution? Re-purpose a used or vintage dress, which can often be found for $200 or less at secondhand/consignment shops or vintage clothing stores in your area. If you’d rather search in a larger pool, eBay is an excellent option, with new dresses being listed every day. Once you find a dress that will work, take it to your local seamstress or tailor and tell him or her exactly what you have in mind. Since this is your dress, taking it to a professional is a must!

• Wedding budget impact: ~ $800 on average

Frugal wedding tip #2: Sew a custom garter. Granted, a garter won’t be a major dent in terms of your wedding budget, but it’s a great way to save a few dollars. And it’s easy!

You’ll need a thin piece of elastic banding, about ¼-inch, a piece of 7/8-inch lace, and a piece of matching 3 ¼-inch ribbon. Measure the circumference of your thigh, noting the measurement. Cut an appropriate piece of each material, leaving leeway on the ends. Simply center the ribbon on top of the lace and carefully sew the ribbon to the lace, staying as close to the edges as possible. Leave the ends unsown. Now insert the elastic under the ribbon using the open edges and pull through. Stitch the ends of the garter together, leaving a ½ inch seam. Trim. Now, press the seam open, and on the outside of the garter, top stitch the pressed seam close to the edge. And you’re done! Decorate to match wedding colors or personal preferences.

• Wedding budget impact: ~ $50 on average

Frugal wedding tip #3: Find an intimate venue. All the components that make up a wedding reception can be incredibly expensive. With the average price to rent a wedding venue now at $1,200, the bride on a strict budget could be in a financial bind. Usually, the cheapest places to have your guests mingle are at small restaurants or gathering places outside the city limits as well as at Foreign Legion halls and city, county, and state park sites. The perks? You have more leeway in terms of decorations and food offerings, the settings are often much more intimate, and you get more bang for your buck so to speak.

• Wedding budget impact: ~ $1,200 and up

Frugal wedding tip #4: Make affordable centerpieces. Your best friend will soon become the local craft store. Centerpieces often tie your wedding design scheme together, and you can incorporate your colors and/or theme. Candles and/or tea lights are a dramatic statement that can be placed in pretty glass containers (left open of course). You can also find low-cost mini-mirrors or brightly colored baubles to scatter about the reception tables. Inexpensive glass cloches provide the perfect housing for little knick-knacks. Flowers are also a central part of the design scheme – your local florist may be able to accommodate your request for flowers that are a few days old – AND offer them at only half the price.

• Wedding budget impact: 10 tables at $30 per centerpiece = $300

Frugal wedding tip #5: Feed an army on a dime. This is the fun part, though planning for X amount of guests can get hairy and expensive. A buffet is a notorious waste of food, so if you’d like to serve dinner, plan a sit-down meal that allots each guest a certain amount of each course. An after-ceremony reception that serves hors d’oeuvres only is also an option. Little plates of fruit, cheeses, crackers, dips, veggies, and sweets are a great way to cut down costs significantly. If you do have to plan a sit-down dinner, consult your venue. Oftentimes, you’re required to use their caterers and nothing else.

• Wedding budget impact: 100 guests at $30 a dinner = $3,000

Making a Frugal Wedding Elegant

There are a few things, however, that should not be taken lightly. You’ll not want to skimp on crucial elements such as a photographer/videographer or comfortable shoes. And if any of these five frugal wedding tips are absolutely non-negotiable, there are always other ways to cut back and plan a wedding on a budget. The trick to saving money is keeping a detailed budget and not exceeding it. No matter what. With the average wedding today costing about $20,000, it’s enough to make anyone go into debt.

Using these five simple, yet frugal wedding tips, you could save over $5,350!

About the Author

Cherie Johnson is the founder and owner of Creative Wedding Favors, the premier site for unique anniversary, baby and bridal shower, graduation, quinceañera, and wedding favors. Her wedding ideas have also benefited readers of many websites, including Women Of, Wedding Lenox, and The Wedding Guide. Before establishing Creative Wedding Favors in 2006, she worked as a professional wedding photographer, capturing all the special moments of the nuptials and ceremony. Search for fun, festive favors by visiting www.CreativeWeddingFavors.com.

Sorry, we have not posted to our blog lately.  We do most of our posts now on Twitter and Facebook.  For our Twitter account visit: http://twitter.com/weddingmuseum and for our facebook account visit: http://www.facebook.com/pages/WeddingMuseumcom/119159762865/

We have been conducting many updates to our wedding websites the past month.  We now offer a much more modern design.  We are gratefully letting everyone know soon that we also updated all past web pages to the new design.  We now offer 3 unlimited color choices for text, text background and side panel colors.  In the coming weeks we will be adding themes to our wedding websites.  We will start with two new themes with more to come in the near future.

In the past month we also added clickable USA maps to our wedding website museum and wedding vendor listings.  We will be updating our home page in the next few days too to make it more user friendly.

In addition, we will be releasing a new Wedding Music eBook with a very special viewer.  More info to come.

Anyway, this is what we have been working on in the month of February and some very exciting updates for March!

Wedding Day Tips: Top Ten Details to Remember

As a professional wedding photographer, I’ve seen my share of problem weddings that only add to the ever-present wedding stress. Planned improperly from the get-go, no one person is to blame, but the outcome is upsetting for everyone involved. Often, the bride’s face looks utterly uncomfortable in all the pictures thanks to mile-high heels, guests are kept waiting for an inordinate amount of time, and the bathrooms are a logistical disaster!

Planning a wedding is serious business, especially if you have out-of-town guests to worry about and little children to keep an eye on. Here are ten wedding day tips to keep you upbeat – and stress-free – on your special day!

Avoid Wedding Stress with These Ten Wedding Day Tips

#1 – Have an emergency kit on hand: A bride without her trusty emergency kit is a meltdown waiting to happen. Before the wedding day, put together a little kit of must-haves in case something should go wrong. Ideally, you should have extra make-up, safety pins, breath spray, nail polish for snags, hairspray, a comb, and anything else you deem appropriate to combat wedding stress. If a situation does arise, you’ll be thankful you had these things with you.

#2 – Bring comfortable shoes to change in to: Please don’t maintain the illusion that you can wear those fabulous designer heels all night long. They will begin to hurt your feet and impede your ability to hob-knob with your friends. Pack some cute flats (that you’ve previously broken in) or some simple white sandals so you can keep dancing all night long!

#3 – Put someone in charge of the vendors: Entrust a friend or family member to keep track of vendors, such as the DJ/band, caterers, florists, facility manager, wait staff, and photography team. Let him or her be the point person if the vendor has a question, if something has changed, or there is an issue. Trust me – this will reduce much of the wedding stress that will occur throughout the day.

#4 – Don’t forget to eat before and during the wedding: Number four on this list of wedding day tips is incredibly important. Sounds impossible, but brides do forget to eat with all that’s going on. One of the best wedding day tips I can offer is to start the day out with a healthy breakfast that will keep you going until your afternoon or evening meal is served. The last thing that you want to do is add to your wedding stress and pass out in front of your guests or experience hunger pangs all day. Rely on one of your bridesmaids to fix a plate for you or do it yourself while you converse with guests waiting in line and then actually sit down and eat it. You picked the menu. Don’t you deserve to enjoy it?

#5 – Provide your guests with an accurate map and directions: Everyone will tell you this is one of the best wedding tips you could get! The last thing you want to deal with is guests calling you or your friends asking for directions because yours aren’t quite clear. Talk about wedding stress! Make sure you provide turn-by-turn navigation (especially helpful for those out-of-towners) as well as a detailed map of your venues with each surrounding street clearly listed and identifiable.

#6 – Make sure your bridal party knows to come early: Every photographer’s nightmare – and a major wedding stress inducer – is a scattered, mismanaged bridal party. Make sure to coordinate with your bridesmaids and fiancé’s groomsmen beforehand. If pictures are to be taken before the ceremony, everyone needs to show up with ample time to allow for this. If you are dressing at the church or venue and require the assistance of your bridesmaids, set the time back appropriately.

#7 – Set up something special for your guests in the facilities’ bathrooms: A basket of toiletries is a clever way to show your creativity at your wedding. Usually, the bathrooms get overwhelmed and guests may need something to get them through the rest of the night. One of the most helpful wedding day tips is to stock a basket for your guests – perhaps decorated with ribbons in your wedding colors – with floss, tampons (for the ladies), gum, lotion, sanitizer, mouthwash, and safety pins for each of the men’s and women’s restrooms.

#8 – Keep the kids in mind: Everyone is having a good time, but what are the kids up to? If you choose to have children at your wedding, so be it. They’ll need a little entertainment though if you want to keep wedding stress at bay.  One of my favorite wedding day tips is to serve fun finger foods like chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, French fries, and carrot sticks to get them to eat and keep them happy. A great idea is to have all the children at a centrally located children’s table – adorn the table with activity and coloring books, crayons, puzzles, and lots of drawing paper to keep them occupied. If you and your fiancé decide not to have children at your wedding, however, make sure that all parents know this well in advance so that they can find a babysitter.

#9 – Hand the rings off to someone responsible: Have one of the attendants in your bridal party hang on to the rings before the ceremony. Instruct her to wait until right before the party is sent down the aisle to give the ring bearer and flower girl the rings so that they don’t get lost in the day’s hustle and bustle.

#10 – Create a menu for guests to peruse: Number 10 on this list of wedding day tips isn’t hard to do, but gives your guests an idea of what kind of food will be served. For a sit-down dinner, this is imperative, of course, as there will be multiple options to choose from. Even if you’re having a large buffet meal where guests help themselves, place a menu on each table so that anticipation can build. Sometimes, without a menu, your guests might have even overlooked a food station with their favorite dish!

Preparation Fights Wedding Stress

It’s easy to overlook the little things. Planning ahead of time is the only way to keep wedding stress at bay. Don’t let months of planning come undone by not being prepared. Combat potential disasters – and that annoying wedding stress – with these ten essential wedding day tips, and have the time of your life!

About the Author

Cherie Johnson is the founder and owner of Creative Wedding Favors, the premier site for unique anniversary, baby and bridal shower, graduation, quinceañera, and wedding favors. Her wedding ideas have also benefited readers of many websites, including Women Of, Wedding Lenox, and The Wedding Guide. Before establishing Creative Wedding Favors in 2006, she worked as a professional wedding photographer, capturing all the special moments of the nuptials and ceremony. Search for fun, festive favors by visiting www.CreativeWeddingFavors.com.

It’s hard to believe we get pulled in so many directions as business owners on a daily basis. This project to that project. Or key project we are currently working on are as follows: making our facebook pages more graphically enhanced, updating our song lyrics pages, creating new song lists and finally designing new wedding websites with multiple themes. These will probably take us about 6 months to complete all.

This is what we’re working on. If you have any suggestions or comments on other updates, please let us know.

Newly Engaged after the Holidays: Start Planning Your Wedding Now

Congratulations on your recent engagement! With the holidays over, you can now focus exclusively on planning your wedding day. You have a long road ahead of you, and a lot of decisions waiting in the ‘nuptial pipeline.’ Don’t let that stress get the best of you though – use these tips specifically geared to newly engaged couples!

Five Simple Steps for Newly Engaged Couples!

Step #1 – The Engagement Party: First off, you should celebrate the fact that you’re newly engaged — enlist the help of some friends to throw an engagement party with your loved ones to announce the good news. This fete doesn’t have to be extravagant and expensive. A small house party can create the same intimate scene. You’ll also receive the good wishes of your loved ones, and perhaps acquire a few willing volunteers to help you through the challenges of planning a wedding.

Step #2 – Setting a Date for the Wedding Day: Next on your agenda should be setting a date for the wedding. Here we are, a brand new year ahead of us. Depending on how elaborate you want the wedding to be determines which date you select. Of course, there are highlights of each season. A spring wedding, though lovely, would likely have to occur the following year if chosen. The downside is that both spring and summer weddings are more expensive than those that occur in the autumn or winter. Weddings that fall on holidays are a good option as well since much of the church or venue you settle on will already be decorated for said holiday. Many couples send out a Save the Date card to inform loved ones of their newly engaged status and remind their friends and family of the impending wedding day. Many online companies now offer easy-to-customize templates that can be printed and shipped to you in just a few days time. You can even make your own Save the Date cards with a little ingenuity and basic computer skills.

Step #3 – The Details: Your next perhaps most important action when newly engaged should be a frank chat with your intended about planning the wedding. Lay out what each person wants in the day, either verbally or on paper. Discuss themes, colors, foods, venues, music, and all the various details that make up a wedding and ceremony. You’ll also need to set a realistic budget if you are paying for part or all of it. Today’s weddings are incredibly expensive if all the bells and whistles are pulled out, so you’ll want to identify well in advance what can realistically be afforded.

Step #4 – Research: Being newly engaged, you may want to do some research of your own. Make a point to attend bridal shows in your area to get an idea of possible vendors while planning your wedding. Oftentimes, the vendors are present to hand out vouchers or special deals for attendants. Just make sure to register ahead of time as bridal events usually fill up quickly. You’ll also want to start choosing your bridesmaids and maid or matron of honor to help alleviate the stress of planning your own wedding. The last thing you want to deal with is flaky bridesmaids, so choose wisely.

Step #5 – The Location & Vendors: Wedding venues — for both the ceremony and reception — get booked fast, so you’ll need to fly into action. If you attended a bridal show, you may have learned about venues in your area, or you’ve done a little research about planning a wedding on your own. Bring along your fiancé to look at each of your favorite venues in person, making sure to ask questions such as:
(1) How many people can the venue accommodate?
(2) Is there a catering service on site?
(3) Are there enough restrooms for all of your guests?
(4) What is the payment schedule and, subsequently, the cancellation policy?
(5) Are the facilities wheelchair accessible?
(6) What is the policy on alcohol?
(7) Is there enough parking for X amount of guests?
(8) Are there any limitations on decorations?

Take a tour with the wedding’s coordinator and think it over. Look at all your options before selecting the right one. You’ll also need to consider other vendors when planning a wedding. Do you want a DJ or a live band? If so, you’ll want to book as soon as possible. Caterers get slammed during the high season (spring and summer months) as well, so make contacting them high on your to-do list.

Planning a Wedding While Savoring the Simple Moments

Just remember, planning your wedding day is what you make of it! Getting everything in order can be stressful, but don’t lose your head. Rely on your bridesmaids, mother, friends, and loved ones to help you tackle one thing at a time. If things do begin to be too much, consider what a professional wedding planner can do for you. Oftentimes, they can negotiate better rates since they know reliable vendors around town.

Above all, have fun being newly engaged, planning your wedding, and getting closer to your special loved one!

About the Author: Cherie Johnson is the founder and owner of Creative Wedding Favors, the premier site for unique anniversary, baby and bridal shower, graduation, quinceañera, and wedding favors. Her wedding ideas have also benefited readers of many websites, including Women Of, Wedding Lenox, and The Wedding Guide. Before establishing Creative Wedding Favors in 2006, she worked as a professional wedding photographer, capturing all the special moments of the nuptials and ceremony. Search for fun, festive favors by visiting www.CreativeWeddingFavors.com.