Preparing to Hire a Caterer for Your Wedding

Hiring a caterer is a huge decision. Indeed, most young couples find that the catering is the single biggest cost in the entire wedding planning process. It does not have to be, of course, but often it is. The trick for each couple is to make the catered part of their wedding celebration exactly what they need it to be both in quality and budget. To do this, however, a couple needs to spend a little time in preparation before they ever begin preparing to hire a caterer for their wedding celebration.

Create a Guest List
Since the most common fee structure among caterers is based on the number of guests, the only way to ensure that a couple can control their wedding budget is to know exactly how many people at most they want to entertain. Since most guest lists only expand as the couple realizes they over looked Uncle George etc. the only way to make sure this does not happen is to prepare an exhaustive guest list before they begin looking for venues and wedding professionals.

Accomplishing the assembling of a guest list, however, is easier said than done. One of the most efficient ways to make certain that everyone is covered after both sides have finished scouring the family photo albums for family and friends they might have forgotten about, is to use the discipline of putting together a couple different seating charts. This forces the couple to think about who is sitting with who and will often remind a couple of individual they might have forgotten as they think of who to seat Aunt Sarah next to. Putting together some sample seating charts can also help to inform the decision a couple has to make regarding the kind of reception venue they want as some offer round tables, others long tables, and still others offer no table options.

Establish a Budget for the Wedding
A good next step in preparing to hire a caterer is to figure out how much money does the couple have to spend on the wedding total and establish a budget? It is not enough, however, to simply divide that total based on the recommended percentages. That is the surest way to ...

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Six Helpful Beach Wedding Reception Centerpiece Tips

We all want that perfect dream wedding day. And a beach wedding with gorgeous reception centerpieces is a great start for many, but the sun and the gentle ocean breezes that makes the beach so magical also poses challenges for your wedding plans – and really impact beach wedding reception centerpieces.

Most any bride who has been married on a beach will tell you that the wind and the sun are the biggest challenges to overcome when designing the centerpieces for the beach wedding reception. The question is what to do about them? What works under those...

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Five Steps Toward Establishing a Wedding Budget

Establishing a wedding budget is not fun, but it must be done. Looking at wedding dresses, dreaming of wedding venues, going to cake tastings, and shopping for bridesmaids gifts are all more fun than establishing a wedding budget. But what a couple is able to do with any of these elements of their wedding are all impacted by the wedding budget. All too often brides blow their wad on one or two items on the top of their list and then find they have to do without, or cut back dramatically on other elements of the wedding.

Consider Your Financial Situation: Start establishing a wedding budget with an honest assessment of where you are financially. What resources are available to enable you to mount your wedding celebration? How much money is available from savings? How much has been offered in the form of gifts from relatives? Depending on your financial situation, how much can you responsibly expect to borrow and later repay without causing an unnecessary stress on your new marriage relationship?

Consider Your Guest List: The act of creating your guest list during the budgeting phase of your wedding planning is extremely important and largely overlooked. However, if a relatively accurate guest list is not put together at this point there will be no way for the new couple to determine how much needs to be budgeted for a number of areas. For example... continue reading Five Steps Toward Establishing a Wedding Budget

Free Wedding Planning Checklist

I have resisted posting a free wedding planning checklist up until now because far too often brides allow the checklist to become a substitute for taking the time to plan.

That's understandable.

The engagement period is an extremely busy time of one's life and during busy times it is easy to look for shortcuts. The problem is that using a wedding planning checklist as a substitute for real planning is the surest way I know to spend way more than necessary on the wedding celebration.

That said, there is one really good reason to print out an use a free wedding planning checklist. That reason is simply that modern weddings are so complex and have so many details that without a checklist to consult it is easy to overlook some detail which could pose a real problem.

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Wedding Planning E-book. Free!

At long last...

I am proud to announce the release of the long awaited Stepping Stones to Your Dream Wedding!

In it I:

• Reveal how each of the primary disciplines in the wedding industry works.
• Reveal the issues each wedding professional have to wrestle with to keep their business afloat.
• How you can make use of that knowledge to work with your wedding professionals to come up with the best possible result for your money.
• Practical suggestions for ways to find nearly every commonly used element in weddings for a fraction of the original cost!
• Plus, a free Wedding Planning Checklist.

This book is designed to help any bride decide what is important to them - and come up with their dream wedding not a copy of every other wedding you've seen.

Get your copy now. For a limited time, I have decided to make Stepping Stones to Your Dream Wedding free to my readers, but I don't know how long the free offer will last so pick up your copy now.

Finding the Personal in Personalized Groomsmen's Gifts

You want the right personalized groomsman's gift. It's only natural. After all, they are among your closest friends. Moreover, they are playing a generous role in making certain that your wedding day goes off just as you want it to. The normal response is a gesture of gratitude as reflected in a personalized groomsman's gift.

The tradition of giving gifts to our wedding attendants is an once in a lifetime opportunity to show your love and appreciation for all they mean to you. Moreover, considering that...

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Random Thoughts about Wedding Invitation Wording

Stay Basic: People tend to skim invitations. Limit your wording primarily to the five ‘W’s. Let the theme of the wedding be set either by the type and design of the invitations or by a handful of carefully chosen words.

Avoid Wordiness at all Costs: Simple invitations are clear, wordy invitations invite confusion.

Consider Personal Culture: Only you and your closest friends know the culture of your community. Is the inclusion or the exclusion of some element in the traditional wedding invitation going to cause a stir? Is the possible fight worth the potential damage to your celebration? In these matters ignore the talking heads - these matters have to be decided on a personal level.

Acknowledge where Acknowledgement is Due: If someone other than you is paying for the wedding, they are putting it on – so the invitation should reflect that. This means that unless they tell you otherwise, the wording should reflect that they are inviting the guest to the celebration – not you. If you want the invitation to say "Come join us in the celebration of our wedding," then you need to pay for the wedding yourself. Sound harsh? It's not. It is just the way life works.

Make Use of Internet: Include a web address for a website where guests can RSVP, get details including maps, registry, hotel information, pictures, videos, polls, whatever...