Cheap Wedding Reception Ideas

I think there are two major parts to planning a wedding, the actual planning/organizational part and the money saving part. 

So just being me, I created two hub pages, one dedicated to the money saving part (this one!) and the planning/organizational part (the other one!)

Enjoy!

Just a little about me: I'm quite the obsessive compulsive organizer planner. I'm a diva of google docs. I absolutely LOVE bargain hunting. And from all that I am an easy target for friends and family to ask for help when it comes to wedding planning. (luckily I LOVE weddings!)

Keep coming backto visit my website and my hubs! If you're looking to save thousands of dollars, if you're looking to have a dream wedding, and if you're to stay sane, happy, organized, and in love with your fiance (you'd be surprised), keep coming around!

And if you visit my site I'll give you some free helpful gifts on honeymoon planning and some great checklists I've found extremely helpful! Click to visit my Wedding Planning Book Blog

See you around!

~Kennly

Part of planning a wedding on a budget is of course money saving ideas! There are a ton of ideas out there. If you feel overwhelmed, well... don't!

If you can use an idea, great! You will save some money. If you can't, you can tuck it away for future use and maybe it will help you brainstorm another idea. As my mentor says

"A mind expanded can not be contracted."

And if you can use all the ideas (all ten here, or heck all the thousands you fine), more power to you! You will potentially save thousands on your wedding. Heck they may even have to pay you :)

So here is my quick and easy list of cheap wedding reception ideas, brainstorming style! I can't wait to see how it turns out!

1. Buy last season's dress (April-May or October-November) which should be a cheap wedding dress compared to this year's models
2. Booking off-time (not evening). Some of my friends hold Saturday brunch weddings. With the right elegant setting it can be quite fabulous!
3. Booking off-season
   
4. Booking off-day (not Saturday)
   
5. For your photographer, get the negatives or cd of original images, no need to purchase prints or photo books. If you're going to cut costs on your photographer, better to pay for high quality originals with no photos then lower quality originals and lots of prints.
   
6. Buy a non-wedding cake that is three layers instead of a "wedding" cake
7. Donate and write off (flowers, dresses, musicians who are non-profit, churches that are non-profit, venues that are non-profit)
8. Shop for flowers in season. Avoid costly flowers not in season
   
9. Keep it simple. cakes, wedding dresses, wedding favors.
10. Simplify your menu. Eliminating a course or a choice can trim a bit. People will remember more how good the food tastes then what was actually served. Quality over quantity. So you may not want the steak or shrimp over chicken. (GO TO FOOD TASTINGS!)

More to come later! I hope you can take away at least one money saving idea from this list!

Happy Wedding Planning!

I would say music/DJ can come in right behind photo and video for wedding costs. Some DJ's are about $750 all the way up to $1500 to $2000.

I would say many wedding DJs are worth it. DJ'ing a party and DJ'ing a wedding are two different things. DJ'ing a wedding takes some organizational and public speaking skills.

That being said, if you have a well-spoken friend that can emcee your wedding, that could help you be more flexible in choosing music for your wedding. A well-spoken emcee that also knows the wedding couple has some great advantages (including the stories and in-jokes!)

Then for music you could hire a party DJ who can simply put on a standards playlist during the dinner hours (Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, etc).

If you want live music, check out local colleges and local music teachers and school orchestras. Some high school orchestras sound amazing and would probably be much less expensive than a "wedding" quartet.

If you're looking for some standards, I found this site that has a fifteen song wedding sampler for $5. It looks like it is targeted more towards "first dance" type songs but this is about 40 minutes of music or so for $5 . Not too shabby.

Wedding Sampler For $5

This is not going to be filled with a list of ideas to help you save money on everything. That will come as my “Wedding Planning Book” Blog develops. What this article is about is planning a wedding on a small budget.

It’s more of a how to guide: think of it like a wedding planning course or wedding planning help. If you googled right now for trying to keep your wedding on a budget you would probably get a list of ideas of how to cut back on things, basically a lot of cheap wedding ideas. There is plenty of resources for that and I will write about it at a later date.

This article is about something MUCH MORE important. Budget does not mean low, budget means budget. It is how much you want to spend on your wedding.

Here’s what you need:

1. a three ring binder
2. a three ring hole punch (because surprisingly not all materials have three hole punches in it .. who knew?)
3. dividers for your binder, preferably with color tabs, preferably already punched.

I would even start labeling them with categories for planning your wedding like:

* wedding budget
* wedding checklist
* wedding timeline
* wedding venue
* reception venue
* wedding catering
* bridal gown

and so forth.

Now here’s the key:

When it comes to wedding planning, you have to be organized. Moreso, when trying to stick to inexpensive wedding planning, think of it more like a business and not something to get emotionally involved in.

This is why If you bought or were already given some very fancy binder, feel free to use it, but the above generic binder works best for me and is what I recommend.

Of course you want to be emotionally involved. It’s your wedding!

Realize it is this emotion, however, that causes not only wedding vendors to boost their prices up so high but also for you all to pay those inflated prices! Wedding markups can be as much as 200%!!

You need to think of it as a business you need to keep on a budget. That is why I prefer the normal binder (emotionless) versus the fancy wedding binder (fancy and FILLED with emotion).

You'd be surprised how much this keeps you in a business mindset and on budget!

More later!