wеrе having a casual wedding аѕ far аѕ dresses аחԁ stuff goes im more looking fοr tһουɡһtѕ fοr tһе reception mу husband works fοr Chrysler аחԁ іѕ layed οff aptly now аחԁ іѕ аƖѕο іח tһе national guard i work раrt time аѕ a grooming assistant ѕο money іѕ pretty tight aptly now аחу tips уου саח give аrе very much appreciated 
Tags: casual wedding, chrysler, dresses, husband works, money, national guard, part time
Depending on how far away your wedding date is, here are some tips.
Simple and cheap things to do for your RECEPTION:
- Make your own centerpieces - you can do this cheaply by going to Goodwill, an antique store, Garden Ridge, Leisure activity Lobby (on 50 - 75% off days), Ross, dollar stores, garage sales (many people have left overs from their weddings and want to sell it; you’d be surprised what you can find at garage sales for dirt cheap prices), or shopping online at amazon.com, ebay, or craigslist. Some elegant or casual thoughts: tea light or votive candles (Garden Ridge usually sells the holders for about 50 cents each) with bundles of beads (some with sparkles) in your colors prearranged around the candles. You can buy these online for nearly nothing a bundle. Go to Sam’s or Costco to order some flowers; they have most kings of flowers from expensive to cheap and they all look excellent. Use a mirror and place 3 or 4 of your favorite flowers on it along with some rose petals and some sequence/sparkly accents. You can also place together a small flip book (all you need is a ring or a ribbon with some paper to place this together with nice simple font) that you top with favorite quotes, amusing things that happened to you or maybe even places that you want to go in the future. This will help those who come to your wedding know more about you and will also give them a touch to od in the meantime. You can also give your tables "names" of your favore places to travel, your favorite music artists, favorite movies, etc. It’s always fun to have someone say, "I am sitting at Brad Pitt’s table." You can use a fun or scriptic font and print it on decorative paper at your house (be sure the weight of the paper is somewhat high, so that it will stand up when folded.). Fold the paper in half so that it stands up. Place a small emblem, ribbon, monogram, or other trinket that ties in with your wedding in the corner.
- If you want to cover your tables (if you have any), or even the cake or serving tables, use end fabric (you can find this at most fabric stores for about $1 - $3 a yard). It is much cheaper to do it this way than spending money on renting table clothes or buying them.
- Friends and family members can take photos for you. You can either provide them a cheap camera or they can bring their own. Question everyone who wants to participate to bring their camera and take photos of the two of you as well as the event. They can send them to you and for the winner of the "best" photo of your wedding gets a prize. This can be anything from going out to dinner or a $20 gift card their favorite place, etc. It’s addes more excitement to the event and you will be surprised how many photos you will get.
- If you are worried about feeding everyone at the reception, having the wedding in the mid-afternoon (around 2:30 or so) will help you get out of most of the food mess. You can get by with just the cake, punch, and some snacks like cheese, nuts, M&Ms, etc. If you do a daylight wedding at say noon-ish, you can do brunch-like food. For instance, french toast, fruit, hashbrowns, eggs, muffins, etc. This too will be reasonably cheap. Most people are there for the cake anyway, so you don’t have to be too extravagant. Evening weddings are generally the most expensive because most people see these weddings as more eleborate or expensive, therefore, they are expecting more money spent. In this case, I would suggest BBQ or Italian. You can order this from your favorite restaurant for a reasonable price and have it delivered to you. You can’t really go incorrect with these types of foods. Be sure to have serving plates on hand for when the food arrives, otherwise, it will be in "take home" like serving trays. You can have your friends help supply people so you don’t have to pay for the serving costs from the restaurant; they can also clean up for you when they are done. If you really want to be fun and different, question your friends to make their favorite dishes and bring it to the reception; write on a decorative card who made te dish and who they are to you. If you want to be a small more specific, question them to make/bring a touch that reminds them of you/your fiance and why they brought it. Or you can just question them to bring a touch that in a specific food type, like finger foods, Italian dishes, desserts, etc. This is the cheapest option since this is a touch that people will delight in as your guests and you will not have to pay for it. Try having the wedding on another day other than Saturday. You would be surprised how much cheaper it can be.
- Find a excellent baker that you know or learn to make your own cakes. Many bookstores have books on how to make your own cakes (counting wedding cakes); if you don’t want to buy a book, you can quest recipes and thoughts online. You would be surprised how simple it is to make your own cake. You can buy much of your utensils/decor at Walmart, if needbe. Buy a dozen roses and some ribbon to spruce it up as decoration. If you do not want to make your own cake, most grocery stores will offer deals on wedding cakes as well as wholesale places like Costco and Sam’s. It will generally be about 25% of the cost as a bakery. If cake is not your things, you can always supply your favorite dessert, cupcake, pie, chocolate, etc. in place of a cake.
- Be sure to have music playing. It will help the mood, no matter when the wedding is. Since receptions are genreally liberal, you can play most anything. It should reflect your style or at least the mood you want to described. You can bring your own iPod or other music player and plus it in to most any sound system.
I would deposit a small percentage of your paycheck into a savings account for the wedding. This will help you save. Then I would make sure you watch sales at all the stores you want to buy stuff at!
pick a nice, but cheap place like a nice park.
My daughter had a very elegant, but inexpensive wedding. They were married in the chapel, had the reception in the church shared hall, no charge. The decorations were all made by family and friends, and turned out much better than I expected. Drinks were pan cake and punch and home made cookies provided by the Ladies Aid society. She wore a very simple, but gorgeous wedding dress (most expensive thing) he wore a new, dark suit that he could use later. I paid for the flowers. Brides maids bought their own dress, color coordinated. Guys wore dark suits. Paper table cloths on the tables. I thought the focal top pieces were cute, small gold fish bowls with a gold fish and marbles. (kids got to take them home if they wanted them, much to some parents dismay). It was much nicer than I thought it would be.
don’t get sucked into the hype! Stay away from marriage extravaganzas and be reasonable. Look for a dress at a resale shop…get it steamed and it is just as excellent as new. You’re only going to wear it once. Also, who really pays that much attention to the invitations and centerpieces…I write doen the date of the event on my planner and toss the invitation (that people usually spend hundreds on). I had simple tealights in decorative tea light holders. It gave the room a romantic feel…that was the top. Cheap and simple, but nice. Do you really need M&M’s with your names on it. They are going to be eaten anyway! Be smart I guess is what I am saying.
question friends to help decorate. try to find decorations at dollar stores.
Cheap and Elegant don’t run on the same group.. You should say on a budget but nice..
1.how long do you have to plot the wedding?
2.whats your current budget?
3.how many guest?
you can always visit Theknot.com and they will give you a checklist of all the things you need, and you can even have a budget calculater..
Many Church’s are already very pretty and need small to dress them up. I have seen people place magnolia foliage in the windows and used white ribbons on the first few pews, etc to decorate then add in some white candles. You can find a nice dress in the prom or padget section of a store (I did) for much cheaper than a marriage shop. You can also find deals in consignment shops or your local news paper.
You can have a small reception with cake, punch, fruit and mints. Have a few friends take photos and talk to them about what you want. Even if, I do reckon a excellent photographer is excellent to have since when all is said and done all you have left is the pictures.
Keep it simple and shop around for discounts and bargains.
I was married in a chapel in Tenn. it was very pretty , etc. I found them on line, made payments and when we got there it was paid for. Our family came up for a night or so. It worked for us. I did order invitations online and shopped around for the best price. excellent luck
If you book the venue on a Friday night the rates are usually much better than for the typical Saturday wedding. I suggest that you collect thoughts online and from magazines. If you are crafty at all, or have friends that are, you can often duplicate those thoughts yourself. You’ll be surprised how many times you’ll see a touch you like and say- ‘I could do that myself’! My friend made her invitations and extra a ribbon to each one- they were gorgeous and looked expensive, even even if they weren’t! Choose what’s most vital to you on that day and and budget accordingly. Figure out about how many people you want to invite, and when you really sit down to make the guest list, try to keep it around that number. plants and photography are usually huge expenses for that day, so do your research and question around. You can use a lot of your flowers for multiple purposes- after the ceremony, place the bridesmaid’s boquets into vases at the receptions so they can be used as decor. You can have one huge flower arrangement outside the ceremony where the guest book is- then have someone take it to the reception and place it in a prominent place there. You can buy a very simple cake and add ribbon or silk flowers to it.
There are lots of resources out there for brides on a budget. Excellent luck!
Some things we did for our wedding to keep it simple:
We had it at a church where a reception hall was attached - this was fantastic for our guests as once they arrived at the church, they didn’t have to drive anywhere else. This also made there be no need for a limo.
We kept the flowers really simple, we did not even decorate the church with them - just used small amounts for centerpieces and the marriage party.
We kept our guest list even - allowing 75 people per side. My husband’s family is Greek so he could have easily invited 400 or more and that would have been crazy. We wound up with 135 guests total.
We did splurge on the food and drinks - we wanted our guests to be pleased. We figured if they ate well, that would do the trick and we were aptly.
We printed our own invitations - very simple and simple to do, saved a ton of money.
Since we got engaged very early into the relationship, we plotted everything out in fantastic detail so we gave ourselves time to save money and to research everything to find the best deals.
It really helped that my husband is a pastry chef and he made our wedding cake.
Here are some of the things I’m doing keep my wedding cheap:
1) Sunday Afternoon - a different day of the weekend then saturday night (the most expensive time to have a wedding), choosing Friday night, Saturday afternoon, or any time Sunday will save you a bunch
2) Not having a full sit down meal - take a look at caterers menus, if you were to do just Hors D’ouves or dessert you can save a bunch.
3) In season flowers - I’m telling the florist my colors and the date, and letting her/him take it from there
4) Student musicians - there is a well respected music college near by, the students need money and experience but aren’t professionals yet so they don’t/can’t charge as much
5) smaller guest list - sure I want to invite 300 of my "closest" family and friends, but I’m limiting the guest list to keep costs down
6) not mentioning its a Wedding until later - some people may not agree with this, but a lot of places inflate their prices when you say "Wedding," by not telling them that until you have a quote (in writing) you won’t get over charged or charged for silly wedding only services that you doubtless don’t need.
My husband and I also paid for our wedding before he went to Iraq. We rented out a fire hall for the reception and did our own decorating and My family helped out with the food but if you don’t have the family to help i would suggest buying a ham and a turkey that can really stretch and be affordable. Also you can spruce up some green beans by just getting a huge bulk can from Sam’s club and putting some bacon in it, scalloped potatoes are cheap yet fancy too. for decorating i would just get white and whatever color your wedding colors are im going to use red as an example so use a white table cloth place red and white balloons on the table instead of flowers. question around see if any of your friends or family has any white christmas illumination and drape them around the hall that way if you wanted to dim the illumination while you dance it would look fancy…and for music just make up some cds on the computer and bring a stereo….excellent luck and congratulations…i hope this helped.
You can find some really nice wedding favors that cost less than $1 each to give your guests at
http://www.e-weddingfavors.com.....-26-1.html
My husband and me started a separate savings account specifically for our renewal of vows. We’ve allotted $100.00 to go into that account every 2 weeks. That way when we get ready to start paying, we know we have the money in the bank.
excellent luck.
I’m doing the same thing.
I have a few years to plot because I want to close College first, but I get on ebay a few times a week. You can get some fantastic deals on there. Also, try stores like Leisure activity Lobby and Tuesday Daylight or other craft stores.
What I"m doing is finding out what I like at the "expensive" stores, and then going to a craft store to make it myself. It will save us a bunch of money. Also, Party America (if there’s one around where you live) is a GREAT store for weddings.
Congrats and I wish you luck!