Your best friend told you the good news. She is finally getting married. And guess what? She is asking you to plan her wedding. It sounded like a lot of fun. You visualize yourself sitting on a couch and shaking or nodding your head while she tries on different bridal gowns. You see yourself choosing the prettiest blooms of the season, and you anticipate every food tasting opportunity while deciding which menu to serve during the wedding reception.

Then your best friend told you something you did not expect. The average cost of today’s weddings is more than $20,000. Your best friend’s budget is less than half of that. You are not just planning a wedding; you will be planning one with a tight budget. Luckily, you are not the first person to do this. Beautiful and memorable weddings have been done for less than $5,000. The success of an affordable wedding is due to the genius of the mind planning behind it. That would be you. And here are some tips that will help you.

Prioritize
With a tight budget, your first step is to list down or itemize everything that that would be needed for the wedding. Then, each of the items must be categorized according to priority. There is a “must have” category, a “wanted but not needed” category, and a “would be nice if we could have” category. When prioritizing the items, you, as wedding planner, need not play the role of a devil’s advocate but you should always do your best in presenting the reality to the engaged couple. For example, the fee for the wedding officiant is definitely more important than the a dozen bouquets of flowers. In fact, there are more important things than flowers and decorations, such as the wedding rings, the honeymoon, the wedding clothes, and the reception food. So, you need to seriously ask the bride questions such as: do you really need an orchestra? Is a chocolate fountain really necessary?

When cutting costs, although it may be tempting, whatever you do, don’t suggest elopement or a trip to City Hall.

Shop Around
A wedding with a tight budget is not a new phenomenon. In fact, there are businesses that cater to the needs of such a wedding. To find them, the wedding planner should shop around and negotiate. The budget for the “must have” items in the priority list should have a 10% buffer but it does not mean that there is no way to bring the expenses down by another 10%. There will always be bargain prices, discount prices, and freebies. For example, when shopping for that one bouquet of flowers that the bride will carry one florist may throw in several more flowers in small baskets that could be used for decorations. That would add considerable savings.

Break Conventions
There are wedding conventions that should always be obeyed, such as sending thank you cards. But there are also conventions that can be broken, such as providing a seemingly endless supply of alcoholic drinks. In determining which conventions to break, in order to stay within the budget, you have to ask yourself this: what is this wedding really all about? It is all about having a memorable day to celebrate the beginning of the couple’s married life. Now that memorable day will not be about the five-course meal that was served by a French chef. That memorable day will be about the funny thing that the groom’s father said or the sweet way that the new husband held his new wife as they danced. This means that the wedding planner needed only to be creative to make the wedding unique and affordable.

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