Veils and Floral ArrangementsBudget Bride We love this site! Budget Bride has gorgeous artificial flower arrangements/bouquets that can be customized in just about any color and style you can imagine! Some of the pitfalls of buying live flowers (besides the cost,) is dealing with seasonal availability, possibility of wilting, and allergies. Not to mention that you have to pick up the flowers on the day of your wedding, leaving you with little or no time to correct any problems or errors before you walk down the aisle. However, with Budget Bride, you can sidestep all of these issues, buy flowers for the entire wedding party for as little as $100, and --if you're so inclined-- pick up a large decorating package for the church/reception venue for $685. In addition, you can also get a truly lovely pre-made or customized veil from Budget Bride as well for as little as $10. Again, this site's a big favorite here! Rings Hey, you don't need the Wedding Elves to tell you that all sorts of lovely, durable, and different rings beyond the traditional gold-and-diamond variety can be found in any price range at all kinds of different stores. That said, if you have your heart set on a traditional diamond, but your heart stops at the traditional price tag, (Seriously, DeBeers? Two months' salary? Are you high?) try a man-made diamond instead. (No, we're not referring to cubic zirconias.) These lab-created diamonds are indistinguishable from the mined variety, and they're a tiny fraction of the cost. Here are a few companies that specialize in particularly lovely-yet-inexpensive man-made diamond rings: VenuesAn absolute goldmine of beautiful ceremony/reception venues at rock-bottom prices from coast to coast are Masonic Lodges. They tend to hold 100-200 people, generally cost about $300-$500 for an entire night, and they often have tables, chairs, and a full kitchen included in that price as well. There are tons of them that are in beautiful, historic buildings, minimizing the need for decorations, and we'll be adding a list of them to our vendorstab shortly. If you have any other tips (or specific info. on a beautiful and cheap venue for a ceremony/reception in your area,) e-mail us , and we'll do our best to include it! InvitationsInvitations are, in our opinion, an unnecessarily pricey way to let people know about your impending nuptials. There's a much better way to let people know the details, directions, etc. of your event without spending a fortune on postage, engraving, paper, design, etc. for an item that most people simply throw away when the day's over. We recommend trimming these expenses as follows: For any parents/grandparents who would like an invitation as a keepsake of your wedding, (or to send to your guests who might not have a computer,) we recommend going to a craft store like Michael's or A.C. Moore and getting an inexpensive-yet-lovely blank wedding invitation kit. You can print only the invitations you need on your computer and mail them off from there. Next, we recommend using a free online service like Evite to send lovely, free, and convenient wedding invitations to everyone else on your guest list that has a working e-mail address. You can quickly and easily get a refusal/acceptance via e-mail with these online services, there's no worry that your invitation/response card got lost in the mail, and your guests don't have to worry about losing your invitation (including directions and other important information,) before the big day, since they can simply open your e-mailed invitation and print everything out at their convenience. Pretty cool, huh? However, we do recommend sending thank-you notes to all guests who attended your event via snail mail; it shows them that you appreciated their presence so much, you spent some quality time sending them a physical thank-you note. (We're a little old-fashioned that way.) Thank-you cards and envelopes can be purchased inexpensively from the craft stores mentioned above, or from just about any major department store (Wal-Mart, Target, etc.) that has a stationery section. (We've found that the stationery at these stores is actually very lovely, as well as being very kind to your wallet.) So save your money on the invitations, and spend it instead on thanking your friends and loved ones after they've taken the time to attend your big day! Total cost for the handful of keepsake invitations and thank you notes for a 150 guest wedding using these methods, including postage? Assuming you send 15 physical invitations out and 150 thank-you notes, about $200. Average cost? $1000. (And that average cost doesn't include thank-you notes.) **Invitation wording for a number of different situations can be found here. PhotographyPhotography is (for many people) one of the more important aspects of planning a wedding. After everything's said and done, you're left with the marriage, (Yay!) the bills, (Eeep!) and the photos to commemorate the event. (We recommend against videography, unless it's something you seriously have your heart set on. Few people watch their wedding video very often after the big day, and still photographs are easier to display and reminisce over. In other words, videography's generally not worth the expense.) That said, if you've looked around your area and found that most of the photographers are way out of your price range, (we've noticed that wedding photographers in major metropolitan areas tend to charge $2000-$4000, while photographers in small-to-mid-sized cities and smaller towns tend to charge around $1000,) we recommend one of two things: MusicIf you're including dancing at your wedding reception, you've (obviously) got to have music. You may or may not want to have music playing while you walk down the aisle at the ceremony as well. But a good musician doesn't play cheaply, and DJ rates can range from $1000-$3000. We recommend buying (or borrowing,) an iPod and a docking system, downloading about 100 songs you want played at various times, and asking a friend nicely to turn it on/off at the right times during the ceremony and reception. Total cost for all of the above? About $350. And DJ iPod won't play the Chicken Dance, Electric Slide, or the Macarena... unless you ask him to. If you're heart's set on having a DJ though, we've got a small (but growing!) list of DJ's that play at rates significantly below what the average is in their area under our vendors tab. If you know of (or are) a good DJ that meets our criteria of "priced significantly below your area's average," (and plays only what the paying customer would like to hear,) please e-mail us, and we'll put you on the list! |