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Planning a wedding on a tight budget? You do not want to miss this article. The best way to keep the costs down, is to handle things yourself. Become your own wedding planner. This article will give you the basics of how to plan your own wedding.
The moment my husband proposed, I began calculating the wedding I had dreamed about since I was old enough to dress Barbie. In my head we had infinite funds. In my husband's head we had a Justice of the Peace and beers at the local bar. Needless to say, we met a little in the middle (but more towards my end). When you're stuck with a certain budget, and you have certain dreams, you realize fairly quickly that you either adapt or remove. I wanted what I wanted, so I learned to adapt. The first thing in planning a borrowed wedding, is to put every penny down on paper.
Begin to write down every bit of money you will spend for your wedding. Make a decision that, no matter what, you will keep to that amount, even if it means sacrificing something less important. For example; I had a picture of my exact wedding dress in my head. I had planned it down to the material choices of each separate piece (bodice, underskirt, overskirt etc). When I went to the seamstress, to have the dress made, with the embellishments included, the dress cost approximately $ 2,000, or 20% of our budget. I decided the exact dress maybe was not that important, and ended up finding a much prettier dress anyway. If I had wanted that dress, no matter what, I would have had to cut costs in some other way. No open bar, for instance. So that brings me to the next step.
Decide whats important on your list and what is not important. Is it more important to get married in the outdoors where you have to rent a tent and extras, or can you find a cheaper indoor wedding venue? Do you need to have flowers at the ceremony or can that money be sent on better food at the reception? These are just some examples of how to reduce costs. If you make your list from most to least important, then you will have a good idea of what you can trim.
Once you have a budget amount, its vital to begin working on the checklist. The earlier you begin to search for venues, caterers, dresses etc, the longer period of time you have to change necessary dates, search for cheaper offers or any number of other little things that affect a wedding budget. For the best results, give yourself 12-15 months of wedding planning, but do not confirm a concrete date. Remember how much things can change, dependent on family and friend availability. At one point I had my wedding date switch 7 times before I could get my family, friends and event center available. Be as flexible as possible for as long as possible, but keep a target couple of weeks. (last week in June – first week in august on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, for example).
The checklist begins twelve months before the wedding date, and gets more and more complex and comprehensive as the date becomes closer. Planning begins by just shopping around for a wedding dress, and tentatively choosing colors. Caterers, and any decorators or planners you're going to hire, should be interviewed. Begin by calling around and getting estimates for certain dates. Make sure you request a faxed copy of contracts. You want to be able to compare over the next few months.
The next two – three months, depending on how much you are doing on your own, should be finding decorations, band info, dj info. You can begin registering for gifts at this point, if you've confirmed a date (11 months before the wedding, you should have your guest list completed and an official wedding date).
These are the basics of the wedding planning time line and checklist. During the early months, when developing theme ideas and color schemes, its a good idea to think about what kind of homemade decorations you can make for the reception. If your budget is $ 20,000 you can expect professional decorator costs to be about 10% of your budget, if not too elaborate. On your own, wedding table decorations can cost about 1% of your budget. For a little more money you can make very elaborate centerpieces and pew decorations, if you're willing to shop around for the best prices.
You can find more detailed checklists online. Go step by step through each one and you will never need a wedding planner.
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Source by Alex McCormick
