A Royal Wedding: Saving on Your Dress

(continued from the previous post)


Your Dress:

First, have a game plan. Finding and buying your dress is an emotional and exciting event. Decide before you go if you need a blusher, a tiara, and other stuff that a sales person working on commission will surely try to sell you. Do you need the earrings at some specialty store or can you get them somewhere else with a coupon? Having a plan will help you stay on budget and not get carried away with the magic of the moment.


Find sales! I bought mine from David's Bridal. I did not pay full price. My goal was to spend less than $500. I walked into specialty shops, shared my goal with the sales ladies, and I got shocked reactions in return. Do listen to them. You can do it.


I tried on several dresses just to fine tune what style I wanted. The first dress I tried on was not ivory like I wanted, and it was a size too big, but it was PERFECT. I look at the price tag: $700. ::pouts:: I tried on a few other dresses, but kept thinking about that first dress. A few minutes later, the lady helping screams from across the store, "I FOUND IT!" She ran up with that perfect dress, in my size, AND ivory. Okay, I have to at least try it on. It was perfect. The women told me that DB was having a sale. All dresses were 25% off. Okay, I can try that. I double-check the tag; it reads $199. What?! With 25% off, my dress was $150. Yes.

Don't settle, trust your gut, but stay within budget. I would also encourage you to check out department stores for white dresses. Weddings today allow the bride to do whatever she wants. There are so many great dresses out there that can pass as a really elegant wedding dress. You can often find dresses in your color scheme if you want to save your bridesmaids money.

Also, don't buy new shoes for the occasion if you have an existing pair that could work. They are unnecessary. I wore a cute pair of flats that I already had. They weren't even ivory. They were silver with black lace. People thought they were a great unique touch. Little did they know that I was just trying to save a buck. Ha. Basically, don't believe the lie that tells you that you need something new for your big day. No, you don't.

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.