A Royal Wedding: Saving on Your Reception

In honor of today's Royal Wedding, I figured I would post some tips for the thrifty brides that might read this.

Every bride wants a fabulous wedding. After all, this will be the biggest event you likely ever host. So how can you do it without fitting a bill of $55 million? You become resourceful.

I'm going to divide my wedding tips up because or else you'll get bored sitting here reading. Today's topic?

The Reception:

Some tips I can share are that weddings in the off season (November-March) are cheaper generally speaking. Many reception halls, for example, have off season pricing. Another way to shave off a few dollars is to have your big day any time other than Saturday night. Fridays, Saturday afternoons, and Sundays will save you money. When I got married, we had our reception on a Saturday afternoon in November. We were out by 4 and managed to save about $5 a plate. This is a great way to have a meal, without breaking the bank.

Us signing the Marriage License!

I'd also suggest staying away from reception halls, and instead using restaurants or country clubs. Picking an atypical location will not only save you money, it will also help your shindig stand out as unique. Our reception was at a country club on a golf course. We had a fire in the fireplace. This country club also had windows allllll around, so it made it that much more special. (Side note, the manager of the club let us use a few golf carts to go take pictures in the golf course. SO MUCH FUN!)

For your centerpieces, get creative. Also understand the timing of your wedding. We got married a week and a half after Halloween. You know what we were doing after Halloween? We went out and bought as many bags of bite size candy we could... and it was all 75% off! We bought $5 vases from Hobby Lobby, filled them with bite size candy, and they were far better than anything else we came across. Picture people pouring these vases into their purses. It was priceless.

I also made everything I could think of. Maybe you're not equipped with a graphic design degree like I am, but I'm willing to bet that you can easily make stuff or find a friend that can offer their services.

Additional advice: This place was going to charge $300 for the dance floor. Do you need a dance floor? Not really. It's not like your guests will be worrying about the floor cracking apart Indiana Jones style. If you want dancing, the floor is just fine.

We also didn't have a DJ. That saved us about $1000 or more. We enlisted my brother to man the iPod. I had previously asked the manager if we could use the speaker system and he was more than willing to show us how to use it. We saved money AND I got to use our personal favorites.

Stay tuned tomorrow for saving on your dress.