How to cut wedding costs

Here is are a few examples of things that I did at my wedding that saved us thousand of dollars!

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Have your wedding on an off day. We scheduled our wedding the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, which still made it easy for out of town guests to travel. We saved hundreds on the venue and DJ!
2. Eliminate flower girl and/or ring bearer. Unless you have a family member that just has to be in your wedding party, consider not having these. You will save money on the flower girl basket, flower petals, and ring bearer pillow. This will also lower costs for the parents (or yourself), who will no longer need to rent a tux for the ring bearer or a dress for the flower girl.
3. Scale down the rest of your wedding party. If you don't have a ton of guests, do you need ushers? Most people sit where they want to anyway, so why waste the money on a tux when you don't have to? By having a smaller wedding party, you will save money on the wedding party gifts. (I know this sounds selfish, but those gifts can add up!)
4. Consider using silk flowers. We purchased fresh flowers for our bouquets and bouttoniers, and used silk for all of our arrangements. You can use the arrangements later as a nice keepsake, or sell them on Ebay.
5. Don't go all out for rehearsal dinner. If you have a rehearsal dinner, only invite those that are actually in the wedding party. If you keep it small, the bill won't be so big. Or, you can actually cook dinner at home or order take out somewhere and serve it at home.
6. Negotiate with your vendors. Their prices are not written in stone, so try to negotiate with them. Offer to allow them to display their business cards at the reception in exchange for a small discount.
   
   Tell them up front where you want to be if their prices are too steep for you. Chances are, they will come down a little closer to what you want. They may not agree to your price, but at least meet you half way.
7. Consider not serving alcohol at your reception. I know it can be considered a "no-no," but it saved us a ton of money. Neither my husband or I drink, so we chose this option. We also don't like to see people getting completely sloshed when someone else is footing the bill, and we didn't want anyone's outrageous behavior to distract our beautiful day.
   
   But remember that this is just a suggestion. Our guests didn't mind one bit!