Thanksgiving Message

We are so blessed.

Whatever our postition in life, if we are in a position to be thinking about a wedding that includes all the people who have been special in our lives, we have a lot to be thankful for.

I remember a bride several years ago who didn't seem to get this. No doubt she was wrapped up in the stress of the planning process and saw only all the demands that it put on her. It was understandable, but sad. I remember bringing up the question of the kinds of wedding favors she wanted to use to develop her decor and express her gratitude to those who had stood by her and her future husband over the years. But to her favors were nothing more than trinkets. Little more than stocking stuffers...

Sad.

The point of wedding favors is the same as the point of Thanksgiving. It is an opportunity to acknowledge all that has been done on our behalf - all that we have to be thankful for.

And we do have a lot to be thankful for.



Happy Thanksgiving!

Backyard Wedding Plans Save Green and Are Green

Hollywood has long extolled the virtues of backyard weddings. Don't believe me? Go rent copies of the movie Father of the Bride or Thirteen Going on Thirty, to name just a couple that come to mind. But did you know that a backyard wedding can save you money (or at least make certain that you get the most out of your money) and help the environment?

Let's tackle the second one first. The backyard wedding can help the environment because:

• When family and friends already live close-by a backyard wedding minimizes the need for people to drive, saving gas and congestion on the roads.
• Since backyard weddings are easier to mount during daylight hours of the long spring and summer days, less electricity is used.
• Most backyard weddings hold both the reception and the ceremony in the same area saving the need for extra driving.
• Garden weddings make use of the beauty of nature the owner has cultivated for their enjoyment anyway - or they bring in plants to landscape the area, creating a natural landscape that can be enjoyed and will create new oxygen for years to come.

A backyard nuptial celebration can save money for the new couple because:

• No venue rental.
• Usually less need for flowers to dress up the grounds.
• No need to hire wedding car - except, perhaps, for the 'get-away'.
• Decoration (landscaping) can be done by family and friends months before the event (depending on location).

Is your backyard not "nice enough" for a wedding? Dress it up. Spend some of the money that would otherwise be spent on venue rental to landscape the yard. If the yard is Mom or Dad's they might even be willing to spend a little more on landscaping or a gazebo for the event since they will have it to enjoy for a long time afterwards - a place you can always come back to to relive that glorious garden wedding day!

Cinderella Wedding Arrival Style

Cinderella wedding themes have been popular for a long time and I suspect they will continue to be popular for a long time to come - precisely because the theme resonates so deeply with how we feel about the beauty of our love. Toward that end brides often try to build a Cinderella themed wedding by giving out Cinderella themed wedding favors and using castle cake toppers. They commission castle shaped ice sculptures (as pictured to the left) and rent a sword for the groom and groomsmen to wear on their hip during the ceremony.

But... What if there was a way to take the Cinderella wedding theme to the next level? And what if by doing so you were also helping to cut back on the carbon footprint of your wedding?

Imagine arriving and later pulling away in a gorgeously restored enclosed carriage with yourself and your new spouse waving to your loved ones from behind the privacy of heavy velvet curtains and the driver sitting high atop the carriage. Or perhaps an open carriage is more appealing? Would that not make you feel truly like you had your fairytale ending?

Personally, I would choose a petite carriage pulled by a pair of adorable miniature horses. True, it is not as regal as a carriage drawn by Clydesdale's but the cute factor is way over the top and it would make the event one of the most memorable in a long time.

What better way to build a Cinderella themed wedding and reduce your carbon footprint than to use a horse drawn carriage for your arrival and get-away as horses burn zero fossil fuels!

The Most Basic Wedding Budgeting Tip

Before I go on, I feel the need to say something about how to save money with a wedding budget that I have said a hundred times in as many ways. Still, it is so important that it cannot be missed:

The first, and most important thing any couple can do to keep their wedding budget in line is to take the time to prioritize. They must stop and consider what elements they want in their wedding - especially if the budget is tight. It might be wiser to get married in a rose garden at the peak of the season if one is available than to spend any money hiring a florist so they can have that dream wedding cake. Or skip the cake, have Aunt Elie make her killer fudge torte served with drizzled chocolate and caramel sauce to serve the guests so the couple can spend more on flowers, or photography, or...

More than that, however, is to consider priorities within each discipline. Not everything is a matter of all or nothing. Sometimes it is a matter of considering the options. The more a couple can approach a professional knowing exactly what they want the smaller the chance they will be susceptible to "upsale" (a technique all sales people use to increase the sale) and they more they will be able to keep their wedding budget in line.

Save Money on the Wedding Cake

What is a wedding reception without a wedding cake? It is to the reception what the bouquet is to the ceremony - and more. More because it not only adds beauty to the room but it provides dessert as well! Indeed, to keep cost down many brides choose to skip the catered dinner completely in favor of cake and finger food because the wedding cake brings so much versatility to the wedding reception.

That does not mean, however, that no bride should ever consider how to save money on her wedding cake. Indeed, just a couple choices could make the difference of hundreds of dollars. That said, here are five suggestions for how to save money when ordering a wedding cake.

1. Choose Buttercream Icing: Many people look down their noses at buttercream icing, and too a large degree I don't blame them, often it is made with shortening and therefore tastes greasy. However, if you can find someone that makes their buttercream icing with real butter or white margarine (some less skilled bakeries will only use shortening because it is easier to work with because it holds up better, but only by a little bit) it will taste divine and, in the hands of an artisan, can look nearly as smooth as fondant - without the cost. Often the savings over fondant are in the ballpark of one dollar per slice.



2. Limit Icing Color: The natural color for icing is either white or ivory (depending on ingredients). If a bride wants the icing to be another color, the pastry chef will have to color the icing by hand and that will raise the price substantially.



3. Use the Top Tier to Serve Guests: Even wrapped expertly, cake stored in the freezer until the first anniversary will taste old and freezer burnt. Save money by using the top tier to feed the guests. The couple can always always return to the original bakery and order a small six or eight inch replica cake in time for their anniversary when the budget has recovered - and it will taste much better.



4. Limit Design: Every icing flower, animal, or swag has to be made by hand. That means higher labor costs and if you figure even at a minimal rate of twenty dollars and hour - and most charge much more for their time and acquired skill - the cost of a wedding cake could easily jump by two hundred dollars or more. Instead, provide fresh flowers (don't pay the pastry chef to go shopping for you), fresh fruit, or even silk flowers etc. Or, spend the money on vines, medallions, or monograms of crystal wedding cake jewelery that you will be able to use both on your wedding cake and interspersed with greenery and other decorative touches for years to come in your new home.



5. Flavor Options: This varies from one bakery to the next. Some bakeries charge extra for orders that want more than one flavor in the cake. Some will allow a different flavor for each tier (the tradition wedding cake has three tiers, large, medium, and small - each tier is made up of two or more layers depending on the bakery). I have never run into a bakery which will allow different flavors per layer without significantly increasing the cost as this would mean much more labor and waste. Check with your local bakeries for options.

A final note: If you are planning an outdoor wedding, think seriously about paying the extra money for fondant icing unless you know that it will be cold. Buttercream will hold up in many cases, but... Fondant is much more reliable in the heat and sun.

Save Money on the Food at Your Wedding

Food and celebration go hand in hand. I suppose it has always been that way. And there are few bigger reasons to celebrate than with food. But does that mean that a couple is required to host a formal dinner with the most expensive dishes even if they have to go into debt to finance it? Of course not. There are a number of options available to the couple who wants to incorporate food into their wedding celebration without breaking the bank:

1. Venue: Often weddings held in houses of worship for members of that community of faith are covered as people from the church often help out by preparing and serving the food. Under this scenario the couple would usually be responsible for the cost of the groceries and any tables, etc. they want that go beyond what the church or synagogue owns.
2. Grazing Stations: It is cheaper to serve lamb in grape leaves, or shrimp, or a crepe bar, or salmon in stations scattered around the reception than it is to pay for a sit down dinner - and it will not be the same-o, same-o reception that everyone else has mounted either!
3. Edible Wedding Favors: Incorporating edible wedding favors into wedding plans for the food is an easy way to trim the food budget
4. Scheduling: Avoid the dinner hour and a couple can cut back to light refreshments. What 'light refreshments' means varies depending on the context of the local customs.
5. Themed Weddings: Certain themed weddings, like a turn of the century ice cream social theme, enable a bride to limit the food naturally - to say, ice cream and Italian sodas. Know any barber shop quartets?

Of course a wise couple will mix and match these suggestions to create their own personal plan that is so uniquely theirs that no one will suspect the motivation was to save money. For example, create a Renaissance themed outdoor wedding with grazing stations under individual tents decked in bright colors in the mid afternoon. Serve gelato and Italian sodas along with a choice finger food for those lacking a sweet tooth and you have managed to put together a fun plan that is much less expensive than the traditional formal dinner - not to mention more memorable.

Military Brides Save on Wedding Dresses

I only just learned about this myself or I would have written about it sooner... Brides Across America http://www.bridesacrossamerica.com/ has arranged an opportunity for Military Brides to recieve free wedding dresses in honor of Veteran's Day. In most cases the event is held tomorrow, November 11th, but in few cases it is already past and at least one is not until the 16th according to their website.

Of course the wedding gown give-away has requirements and limitations. Be prepared to show your military ID including deployment papers. I have heard that they require that either the bride herself be in the military OR that the groom be deployed to Iraq or Afganistan, but I have not been able to verify that. Of course, you can be certain that they will want some assurance that the bride actually be a bride - in other words, that she is engaged.

As this is a give away, remember that stock might be limited so if you are interested do not delay as you can be certain everything is first come, first served. Still, this sounds like a great way to reinforce to our military personel how much they are valued by helping at least a few miltary brides to stretch their budget with a free wedding dress.

Tomorrow I will continue with the current series on ways to prepare for your wedding and protect your budget at the same time.

Wedding Budget: Music

The normal approach to providing the music at a wedding these days is to hire a disc jockey to do everything. This makes a lot of sense. After all, not only does a good DJ have far more music at their disposal than the rest of us but, in theory anyway, they are skilled at drawing crowds out of their chairs and into the celebration.

But what are the alternatives? What if a brides wedding budget just does not allow for the cost of a disc jockey. Does that mean that you have to skip music all together?

Of course, that is an option. I have been to more than a couple weddings that ignored music completely outside of the ceremony and they managed to be great celebrations. BUT most of us do not want to go that far. So what are the options?

• Electronic: Most everyone has an MP3 player of some sort. One possibility is to provide your wedding reception's wedding music by loading an MP3 player with the music you want to celebrate with, hook it too the sound system, hit shuffle, and then play. This will make certain the music played is the music you want to hear. Of course you won't have anyone to "read the audience" like a DJ would and it is difficult for people to make requests.
• Jam Session Wedding: In most cases the most meaningful wedding is not the one with the most polish on it. The most meaningful wedding is the one that celebrates with their community. Toward that end, have friends and family participate in providing the music - create a 'jam session' atmosphere for the celebration where musician friends can pitch in and everyone else can dance and sing.
• Book Early: A bride that wants to make use of a Disc Jockey or even a live band will have most success controlling their budget if they book months in advance. As with any professional, a bride will have to pay a premium to get what they want at the last minute.

No wedding has to have music and the lack of it will not ruin your wedding, but music sure adds a lot to a celebration. The trick is to find a way to have the wedding music without breaking the budget at the same time.

Wedding Budget Cuts: Flowers

The floral work in any wedding is used to create a warm, inviting setting for the ceremony and resulting celebration. It strategically covers harsh angles and industrial looking elements of the design of the venue.

Therefore, how or how much a bride wants to trim her wedding budget in the area of floral design all depends on how important the beauty of the moment is AND how beautiful the venue is already.

Which brings us to our tips on how to trim the budget on wedding flowers:

1. Choose a venue that needs little or no assistance in beauty. Get married on the beach. Use a friend or family member's beautifully manicured yard / grounds / elegant estate (indoor or out). Get married by a lake. Choose a beautiful church.
2. Use only flowers that are in season in the local area.
3. Mount the wedding during the Christmas season when everything is already decorated for the season.
4. Avoid Valentines Day or Mother's Day. The cost of flowers skyrockets due to higher demand on those days.
   
5. Coordinate with other brides holding their wedding the same day in the same location to share floral expenses.
   
6. If a close friend or relative has a flair for floral arrangement, tastes similar to the bride, and the willingness to pitch in purchase the flowers etc. they need at

• a floral supply store,
  
• an online flower vendor,
  
• or even somewhere like Costco (I would have never thought of it but a friend of mine did this for her daughter's wedding and everything was beautiful)!

No one should dictate how any wedding / bride uses flowers except the couple themselves based on the money they have to spend