Wedding On A Budget

Traditionally, the bride's family paid for the costs of a wedding while the groom would incur the expense of the honeymoon. These days it is not uncommon to find many couples paying for their own wedding from their own funds. However, you don't have to spend a fortune or go into debt to have a beautiful wedding. Determine the amount of your budget and stick to it. Keep track of all your expenses and receipts in a folder or binder so that you can stay organized and accurately keep track of where your money is going. Here are some helpful tips to help you stay within your wedding budget.

Wedding Dress
• Avoid overly elaborate dresses because they will be more expensive.
• Choose a floor sample dress and just have it dry cleaned if necessary.
• Look for your dress during prom and homecoming or consider wearing a bridesmaid dress. You can find a beautiful white or cream colored dress during that would be perfect for a wedding at a fraction of the cost of a traditional wedding dress.
• Look at consignment shops and the classified ads. Wedding dresses are generally only worn once so you can get a gently used dress at a huge cost savings.

Reception
• Keep the number of guests down. You and the groom should look at the first draft of the guest list and carefully consider who can be taken off the list.
• Have a cash bar instead of an open bar. Or you can also just provide wine and beer to keep the costs down.
• Hold the ceremony and reception in the same location. You will be able to cut the cost of the location for the ceremony, decorations and transportation to the reception site.

Flowers
• Purchase your flowers wholesale and just pay for the labor of a professional florist to arrange them.
• Arrange the flowers yourself. A bouquet made of all roses with a little eucalyptus filler and tied with ribbon makes a stunning bouquet and you do not need to be a professional to put this together.

Photography
• Find a photographer with reasonable hourly rates and pay only for the time to do your formal poses. You can then designate friends or family to take the candid shots throughout the rest of the reception.
• Put disposable cameras at each table with a note asking guests to take pictures to help you capture memories.

Invitations
• Print your own invitations using your home computer. Visit your local arts and crafts store or search online and purchase a do-it-yourself invitation kit.

Miscellaneous
• Make your own wedding favors. Wrap up jordan almonds or other candies in lace and tie with ribbon pre-printed with your names and wedding date.
• Keep the number of chosen bridesmaids and groomsmen to a minimum or choose not to have them at all. This will keep the rehearsal dinner cost down as well as eliminate the need to buy groomsmen and bridesmaid gifts.

By: Gina Brown

Have A Simple, Small, Green Wedding

A wedding is one of life's major rites of passage. It is certainly something to celebrate! Today, wedding books and magazines promote large weddings so that more and more wedding products can be sold. Wedding expenditures run into many thousands of dollars. And after this major outlay of money, most of what is purchased is never used again.

On the Spring Equinox 2004, my ex-husband (yes, that's right! my ex-husband!) Larry and I remarried. We had been together for almost seventeen years, and had divorced several years ago when our relationship problems seemed impossible to resolve. But we still loved each other, so we figured out what to do to make things better, and are now happier than ever.

In planning our wedding, we wanted to keep it simple, small, and full of meaning. We wanted a ceremony and celebration that would be easy to prepare for and manage. We wanted an intimate occasion, surrounded by our closest friends who would participate with us in the intention of our union. And as we planned our wedding, we used the same guidelines for health and the environment that we practice in our daily home life.

Since most books and articles are about planning big weddings, I want to offer some tips on planning another sort of wedding that can be beautiful and meaningful in it's own way.

* Make it your day. Each wedding can and should be a unique expression of the couple getting married. So create the day just the way you want it, to please the two of you.

* Choose the wedding traditions that are important to you. When it comes right down to it, the essentials of a wedding are the two people to be married, the minister or justice of the peace who performs the ceremony, the ceremony itself, and the guests who witness it. Everything else is decoration and tradition. Learn about wedding traditions and choose to do those that will make your day special.

* Write your own ceremony. The entire reason for having a wedding, really, is the ceremony. The most important aspect of a wedding is not the decorations, but the vows and intentions that are stated in the ceremony and that you give to each other. Research the time-honored patterns to wedding ceremonies and follow this pattern in your own personal way.

* Invite meaningful guests. When you have a small number of guests, you can spend more time with them and really experience their presence. Minimum is just the two of you, the minister, and a witness. Invite family and friends with whom you have real relationships. Eliminate those that might be invited out of social obligation.

* Have your wedding at home, either indoors or in your garden, or in a park. Rather than spending a lot of money on floral arrangements, we put that money into tidying up our back yard and planting perennial flowers that we are still enjoying today.

Looking back on our wedding day, we are very pleased with our simple, small wedding. We were able to relax and enjoy the day and experience the love and support of our best friends. Best of all, we still had energy left for the honeymoon...

For many more details on planning your simple, small, green wedding (including choosing flowers, rings, clothing and reciption, and photos of Debra's wedding), visit http://www.debraslist.com/wedding and click on "You are invited to... My Simple, Small, Green Wedding". Debra is also available as a consultant to help you plan your wedding.

Hailed as "The Queen of Green" by the New York Times, Debra Lynn Dadd has been a leading consumer advocate for products and lifestyle choices that are better for health and the environment since 1982. Visit her website to learn more about her new book Home Safe Home, to sign up for her free email newsletters, and to browse 100s of links to 1000s of nontoxic, natural and earthwise products.http://www.dld123.com

by Debra Lynn Dadd

How to Plan a Unique Wedding

How to Plan a Unique Wedding
By Traci Bramlette

To begin the discussion about how to plan a unique wedding it's well worth stating that it is the purpose and the people that are most important, not the budget. Although this topic is extremely popular; you can easily find hundreds of books and articles, there are always new ideas that can make the process simpler.

Focus on the core issues: why are you getting married? How would you describe your personality and that of your future partner? What are your ideals, principles and interests? What type of memory do you want to create from your wedding?
The type of wedding you have will depend on these factors as well as the number of people you invite to be your guests. Planning a wedding ceremony with 50 guests is entirely a different project when the guest list is extended to 200 people. Not only will this require a larger facility for the wedding ceremony itself but also the amount of time you will need to greet your guest are during a wedding reception will increase.

When you are planning an informal wedding the rules of etiquette are a bit more relaxed than in a formal wedding. But that does not mean that any less attention must be given to the details of the planning process. In terms of courtesy and respect when you issue your wedding invitations you must give people an appropriate amount of time to organize their schedules so they can attend.

Once you consider all of these questions you will have a good idea of how to manage your budget to accommodate the type of wedding that you desire. The next important point to keep in mind is that you must give yourself at least six months to one year to organize the wedding properly.

The reason for a long period of planning time is because you are dependent on many other people to provide services and products for your wedding and coordinating these various elements does not always go according to schedule. By providing more than enough time to make the arrangements that you need you give yourself and all of the people involved enough room to accommodate for the inevitable delays that occur when planning a special event.

There are many different types of items available to enhance the wedding ceremony and reception. Focus on the most important and functional items to begin and then once all of the most necessary components have been arranged you can then add amenities that makes the occasion extraordinary.

The business of wedding planning has become a booming industry in the past decade. Many people who have busy schedules hire a wedding planner to take care of all of the details for their special day. For others the day that they marry is such a personal affair that they feel they must handle the details themselves. Would you begin the process of learning what is most important to you and your partner it will be much easier to answer the question of how to plan a unique wedding.

Options For Your Wedding Items

You have to make tons of decisions when you are planning for your wedding. You also have to make sure that you make the right decisions such that your wedding will be a perfect one. In fact, there will be a lot of different options for your wedding items and you should try to choose them carefully.

First of all, if you are the one who are invited, you will probably need to choose a wedding gift for the couple. Of course you will want to make your wedding gift special. However, it is not that easy to do so. You will need to spend some time to think about it otherwise it will be better for you to just follow the registry.

When you are choosing the wedding gift, the best is that you can get something which is meaningful to both the bride and the groom. For example, a specially designed wedding album can be a good option.

Now, let us go back to the idea of wedding planning. You are the one who are planning the wedding. The first thing you will probably need to consider is the wedding favor. The wedding favor on one hand is a way for you to say thank you to your guest. And on the other hand it is also something that can make your guests to remember your wedding for years. As a result, you have to try your best to search for a unique wedding favor.

There are a lot of options when you are considering your wedding invitation. However, one idea here is that you can also make your wedding favor decorations of your reception hall. If you are going to host a beach wedding, you may order some cookies which are in the shape of starfishes. These cookies can already be a very good decoration element for your wedding.

The wedding invitation is another essential item in your wedding. Again, the options are just unlimited. You will need to choose your wedding invitation such that it can reflect both of you and the wedding itself. You can consider creating the wedding cards yourself and create a special and unique handmade wedding invitation. You guests will be impressed when they see your invitation. On the other hand, you can also hire a invitation designer to work with you and create an invitation which is unique to your wedding.

Another thing you need to think about is your wedding dress. It is important in a sense that you will be wearing it and walking down the aisle. You need to find a perfect wedding dress for yourself. You need to consider your own body shape and skin color when you are choosing your wedding gown. You may have seen a lot of beautiful gowns in some bridal magazines but you have to remember that a gown may only look good when it is put on the fitting models. You have to try to put the dress on yourself so that you can make the best and most suitable decision.