Our daughter is getting married in June of '05 and we need to be careful about the amount we spend on the wedding.
The Guest List
One of the most effective ways to save is to trim the guest list. That's because one of the biggest expenses - food - is figured on a per person basis and will obviously increase as the number of people you're inviting rises.
Hold Your Reception and Wedding at the Same Place
Hold your wedding ceremony and reception at the same place. One less site fee and no need for transportation to take you from one place to the other. Our daughter's wedding will be held in our church with the reception in the basement. No charge.
Keeping Down the Paper
Have your wedding reception time and place printed at the bottom of your invitation instead of on a separate reception card. You'll save the cost of the paper and the additional postage.
Order All Your Printing
Order your wedding "thank you" cards when you order your wedding invitations as some companies will give discounts for bulk orders. If they don't volunteer a price break, just ask.
Choose Black Ink
Choose basic black ink for your wedding invitations and other stationery. The price will go up if you opt for colored ink or a deluxe foil stamp process.
Wedding Cake
This is an old recipe, just for fun.
No baking instructions given. Just supposed to be cooked in a wood stove. Makes 43 1/2 lbs. and keeps for 20 years. (This recipe is from an early settler)
By Robin
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I am getting married in June as well, we are having the ceremony and reception at the same venue, a village hall. The ceremony will be outside (fingers crossed!) We are keeping the costs down by printing our own invitations and buying our flowers from the local Safeway. The people in the flower department suggested buying flowers that are seasonal or some such as Gerber daisies which are easily available all year round (even in Canada).
In 2003 we kept our wedding to under $2000 with the exception of rings. We planned for 6 months. I put together my own flower arangements. He made my veil. I got all the food catered as a gift from friends. Professional photos were a gift. We made our own invitations. I bought a used wedding dress.
He rented his tux. We bought gifts in bulk. We got all of our candles for dirt cheap at the dollar store.
When we got married, my husband and I were both just out of high school. His father was on disability and his mom was working less than full time. My mom was a single mom with two teenagers, so we had to do the wedding on the cheap. We made our own invitations with the help of our high school's computer design class. Because we did it ourselves, we were even able to add foil. We had the ceremony and reception in our church (it helped that my mom was the pastor, though she didn't do the ceremony).
P.S. to my last message, A friend got married and for their thank you cards they had a picture taken on their wedding day of the Bride holding a big card saying Thank and the groom holding You! Then they printed off a bunch and just glued them on folded cardboard. They were really neat to recieve!
My Uncle (age in his 70s) is getting married this weekend. He wanted me to make his wedding invitations because the cost of ordering them was $3.50-5.00 a piece and he needed 200 invitations. He wanted something with a Hawaiian theme. I ordered some cards and postcards for reply cards from http://www.paperdirect.com that were Hawaiian in design.
I looked at wedding invitation sites for examples of wording, etc. and made them up with reply cards and printed them up at Office Depot. They looked good, printed on the high quality laser printer. The total cost for $200 invitations, address labels and printing was about .75 per invitation. We didn't have the double envelope that is common for wedding invitations but they were very nice. My son says the double envelope is just another way to cut down more trees so it seemed a formality we could do without and my uncle and aunt-to-be agreed.
If you know someone (friend or family) who can help you put the information in the proper format for printing, it's a much less expensive way to go. Paper Direct also has MS Word templates for all of their products.
Susan from ThriftyFun
PS I love the Thank You card idea with the wedding picture!
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