1. It’s a classic, but using the wedding cake (or in our case, cupcakes) in place of dessert will save menu-planning time and money.
2. Don’t dismiss buying a second-hand or ex-sample dress. It might not work for everyone but there are some real gems out there at great prices and you can still enjoy shopping at the full price stores to get ideas and that special bridal treatment.
3. Similarly, our bridesmaids’ dresses were shop-bought from M&S rather than going through expensive bridal retailers.
4. We asked friends who are skilled photographers to handle the photography of different parts of the day so that we didn’t have to spend masses on a professional, but still had lovely photos and people we trusted to take them.
5. Making your own decorations is easy if you have the time. We made metres and metres of bunting and also made table runners of blue gingham to brighten up our plain white table cloths.
6. Asking guests to bring flowers to decorate the church helped us to save money on decorating both the church and reception venue – although this might not work if you have a very specific colour theme.
7. We were lucky enough to have friends who could provide all of our musical entertainment throughout the day. If you know people then start pulling in the favours – when it’s your big day they’ll almost certainly want to help out and be a part of it.
8. Having a buffet instead of a sit down meal is an obvious way to save money. We also bought all our drinks on a sale-or-return basis through separate companies so that we could be refunded if there was anything left over.
9. We designed our own invitations and had them printed through a web-based printing company, then bought our own envelopes separately, avoiding the usual hefty price tag of anything with the word ‘wedding’ attached to it.
10. Finally, we added a “Sponsor the Wedding” feature to our gift list (via our wedding website) that enabled guests to donate towards parts of the day, such as the dress, the drinks, or the honeymoon.
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