Wedding planners can make your life a whole lot easier, but they can also cost you an arm and a leg. Since weddings are so expensive to plan these days, most brides are looking to save money at every turn; and that means skipping the professional wedding planner and doing the preparations and planning on their own. This can be a really difficult task if you’ve never helped a girlfriend or family member plan their wedding before, so getting help can be of paramount value. Here are some tips for certain areas of your wedding to help you keep things within your budget and still plan the day of your dreams.
Wedding Venue
Your wedding venue will eat up a huge part of your budget, so whenever you’re self-planning you should tackle this off your checklist first. Luckily, there are plenty of websites that showcase local wedding venues that will make your life a lot easier compared to having to visit each one in person, but you still need to know what to look for if you want to save money. The easiest way to save money on your wedding venue is to book a location that will serve as both your ceremony site and reception hall to combine those expenses. You can cut your venue expenses in half this way since you’re only booking a single location to host all of your wedding activities.
Decorations
Decorations are another part of the wedding planning process that may seem fairly inexpensive at first, but once you start adding things up it can quickly become a huge expense. Things like flowers, centerpieces, table coverings and more will stack up to be potentially thousands of dollars, so keeping these expenses in check is vital when self-planning your wedding. Consider hosting a series of parties with your friends and bridal party to make some of the decorations yourself to save money. It will take some effort, but with the help of your friends you can shave off a lot of the expenses associated with buying wedding decorations at full retail prices.
Wedding Favors
Wedding favors, similar to your decorations, can be quite costly if you plan on inviting a lot of guests to your wedding. Consider choosing an inexpensive item to use as your wedding favors such as sparklers to keep costs low and make a huge impact at your reception. You can get wedding sparklers for only a few pennies per guest, and they can be used in a variety of ways including in your centerpieces, during your first kiss, or for your send-off at the end of the reception. Wedding sparklers can even be used indoors in a pinch since they don’t produce any smoke, so they should work at any type of wedding venue regardless if it is indoors or outdoors.
Enlist Help
Lastly, even though you’re self-planning your wedding doesn’t mean you can’t get help from friends and family. Chances are you know someone that planned their own wedding recently, and they can be a lot of help while you are planning yours. Even just having someone come along with you as you do your shopping can be helpful since it’s always beneficial to get an extra set of eyes in the stores. Remember, just because you’re self-planning your wedding doesn’t mean you can’t enlist help form others, and that is usually enough to replace the need for a professional wedding planner.