New here! Picking a date and cutting costs...

[Aloros]

So...how did y''all pick your date? I just got engaged on Friday, and of course the first thing everyone asks is "When''s the date?" We''re thinking sometime in September, and I''m not too worried about finding a venue - we plan to do something fairly casual, and I''m just not very picky.

FH''s former coworker informed me last night that her and her bf were going to get married on the 20th of September, so don''t take that date! I''m not sure how serious she was, but I know her and her bf have been talking marriage for a while. Ok, fine, no problem. We have mutual friends, and I wouldn''t want it to come down to people choosing where to go. I did want to do something earlier September, so it would still be warm outside and we could do everything outdoors. The 6th and the 13th are both in close proximity to my sister''s birthday, the 10th. My sister and I are very close, so I''m wondering if it would be weird for our anniversary to be so close to her birthday. Is this something I should worry about at all?

And since FH and I are looking at house-buying sometime this year, we want to keep costs low. I think, inevitably, our guest list is going to run around 100-150 people. I have a close-knit family, and I wouldn''t want to leave anyone out. I''m not really counting on funds from either sets of our parents. My parents have been so kind and so generous to me over the years, I''d feel ungrateful asking for them to contribute. I''d love for them to just relax at the wedding and to have a good time. Both FH and I will probably do some work on the side to make up costs.

Here are my cost-cutting ideas:
-rent a big house with a big yard for the ceremony and reception - this would provide lodging for a lot of the out-of-towners as well (this would run around $1200 for 3 days)
-DIY invitations and centerpieces, buy flowers from costco or the nugget
-BBQ reception, found a place that caters from $11-$18.50/person depending on menu options
-purchase our own alcohol, maybe hire a bartender?
-buy a dress second-hand, from a discounted online store, or from ebay
-ipod dj!
-hire our friend to take photographs - he works part-time as a wedding photographer, and his photos are wonderful!

Any other ideas? I want the tone of the wedding to be fun and casual, and I know you ladies have more experience than I do!

Thanks so much in advance!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

When I read your post, it was like de ja vu for myself! We got engaged in early 2007 and knew September was the month for us and we quickly knew we wanted to rent a huge house on the ocean so my family (who all live out of state) could stay with us.

First, as for the date, what I found was that I had to work with other people''s schedules and when our house was rented. There were only two weeks in September when the house wasn''t being rented and two of my family members had other weddings to go to the other weekend, so our date was pretty easy to choose. Is the house you''re renting available all weekends in September?

You mention that you want early September so that it still feels very summery, but that''s close to your sister''s birthday. I actually think that could be a lot of fun! The date we chose was 2 days after my husband''s birthday and I was worried at first, but then I realized it would be great. Since we were renting a house and our families were around, I ended up throwing a big birthday party for him at one of our favorite restaurants and I loved having our families there to celebrate. The next day we had food catered in at the house for the rehearsal dinner (we had a big family wiffle ball tournament) and the following day was the wedding! Having all of those fun, family-oriented events around the wedding made it really special, so I think you should go for it.

As far as the cost-cutting, it sounds like you''ve really got it covered!! I think renting a big house in a beautiful setting is a great way to cut costs! We rented a huge estate with 3 separate houses on it (the main house, a boat house and a cabin) for an entire week and it was still cheaper than most of the venues we looked at and the setting was 100x better. I couldn''t believe it! Also, renting a private house allows you to negotiate so much more. With tradtional venues you can often only work with certain vendors, which takes away your ability to negotiate. Our caterers came down about 25 - 30% from the original price because they knew we were looking at several caterers, so I''d definitely negotiate there.

an iPod DJ is a fantastic idea, we did the same thing and it was a huge hit. We had so much fun with it. DIY invitations and centerpieces are a great idea, too. I did my own STDs, but found our invitations at weddingpaperdivas.com--they were cheaper than I could do them myself. I did our centerpieces, too, but chose candles because it was so much cheaper than flowers. I found that the candles made the whole reception really warm and intimate--especially because it was in a private house.

The alcohol also saved us a ton of money since we could buy it ourselves--I told DH that if he wanted to hire a bartender, I was perfectly fine with it, but it was his job (because I didn''t care one way or another). A bartender wasn''t that much (I think $300 for 4 hours?) but we ended up not doing it and I''m glad. Our guests had a blast mixing their own drinks.

I think that going the route you''re going, you''re going to save a ton. We did almost the exact same things you''re doing and are SO glad we did because we came in about $8,000 under our original budget. The one thing that did surprise me was how much the chair, table, linen and dish rental was, but I think if you just choose the most basic linens and dishes, that will help.

Have a great time planning the wedding! I think you''ll love going this route!

 

[brazen_irish_hussy]

We picked out date becase it was the anaversery of when we met.

A few ways you save a little more money:
Get flowers that are in season or get premade bouquets from the store
Have the reception on a sunday which is usually cheaper
Have the wedding and the reception in the same place
Consider getting your cake from a grocery store. Safeway makes amazing cakes and I know they do affordable wedding cakes as well
Limit the types of alcohol to a few so you aren''t trying to buy a full bar
For the dress, either try pearl''s place or on ebay there are chinese places that do cheap knockoffs of famous gowns to your specifications
Borrow jewelry from your close relatives so you not only don''t have to buy it but you have something of them with you at all times
Beware of a dress that isn''t very close to your size because alterations can be very expensive

 

[bee*]

We picked our date based on when our venue had a free day as it''s a very popular venue. We weren''t too pushed on any date only that it had to be june,july,august as I''m in college for another 3 years.

In terms of budgeting, I''m doing diy invites and flowers also. Our venue is quite good value so we''re saving money there and we''re also doing corkage as my parents have a house in France so we can get cheap and champagne over there. We''ve set our budget which is quite good compared to the average price of a wedding in Ireland. We''re doing our own centerpieces also.

 

[zoebartlett]

Hi Aloros! Congratulations on your engagement!

As far as choosing the date, I personally wouldn't worry about getting married close to your sister's birthday. I would think that any date one chooses is bound to be near SOMETHING else. I wouldn't let that alone get in the way of choosing a date that works for you.

We're getting married on July 12th and that's not the original date we had booked at our venue. My parents' best friends couldn't make it for the date we had chosen at first (July 5th) and they kindly and jokingly asked if we could choose another date. Since these are like my second parents in a lot of ways and we hadn't booked anything else, we changed the date to the following Saturday. That particular date held no significance for us. The only reason we chose a July wedding in the first place was because I'm a teacher, so I'm bound to following my school's schedule. In a perfect world, we would get married in October, actually. But since I wanted to be able to leave for our honeymoon right away and not have to delay it until a school vacation week, we chose July.

We also were originally thinking of having a tented wedding in my parents' backyard. My sister had a tented wedding and it went into the evening. My parents hadn't really considered the thought that they'd need to worry about lighting, and that got kind of expensive. I mentioned this because you wrote about maybe renting a house. If you do a tent, lighting may be something you'll need to deal with. Also, there are a LOT of things that you'll have to think about if you rent a house instead of having it at a venue that's already set up for such events. Will you have a back up plan in case of rain? Will there be plenty of parking at the house you're considering? I know there are other things that my parents and my sister dealt with, but I can't think of them at the moment. In the end, my FI and I decided to have our wedding at a restuarant that does weddings often. For us, this was the best of both worlds: our ceremony will be outside on the grounds of the restaurant and the recpeption will be inside. If it rains, we'll just move the ceremony indoors. Everything is taken care of by the wedding corrdinators at the venue, and this is a big help.

If I come up with other things worth mentioning, I'll let you know.

BTW, I think a BBQ reception sounds like a blast. Littlelysser had one -- maybe she'll chime in if she sees this.

ETA: I see that NEL has written about her experience renting a house. I DO think it sounds like a great idea, and I realized too late that it might have sounded as if I was cautioning you against this. That's not what I meant to do. I do think there's more planning involved if you rent a house, since you'll have to bring in caterers and maybe other vendors. If this doesn't bother you, then go for it.

 

[Dutchgirlll]

First of all: congrats on your engagement!!!

Seems like you have wonderful ideas for keeping the costs low! Just some of my ideas as well:

- If you or your mother (or anybody) is handy, just buy some fabulous fabrics and do all the linens etc yourself. Don''t know if you live near an IKEA, but here in the Netherlands, they sell very nice fabrics for just a few bucks! And linens aren''t so hard to make, you could probably DIY on a sewing machine if you have that

- If you''rs going to do a Ipod dj, ask everybody to give them their favourite (3) partysongs and include these on ur playlist. A friend of mine did that, he says that everybody thought it was wonderful, because they at least heard a few songs that they really enjoyed. Plus they felt so involved in the wedding!

Nothing more I can think of now, but I''ll be reading these posts here: very interesting!!

 

[zoebartlett]

Date: 1/1/2008 6:00:33 PM
Author: Dutchgirlll
First of all: congrats on your engagement!!!

Seems like you have wonderful ideas for keeping the costs low! Just some of my ideas as well:

- If you or your mother (or anybody) is handy, just buy some fabulous fabrics and do all the linens etc yourself. Don''t know if you live near an IKEA, but here in the Netherlands, they sell very nice fabrics for just a few bucks! And linens aren''t so hard to make, you could probably DIY on a sewing machine if you have that

- If you''rs going to do a Ipod dj, ask everybody to give them their favourite (3) partysongs and include these on ur playlist. A friend of mine did that, he says that everybody thought it was wonderful, because they at least heard a few songs that they really enjoyed. Plus they felt so involved in the wedding!

Nothing more I can think of now, but I''ll be reading these posts here: very interesting!!

Hi Dutchgirlll! Welcome to PS! I think asking guests for their favorite songs to include in the playlist sounds like a great idea!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Zoe brings up some very good points that I completely forgot about because our wedding was so small (36 people). Parking can be a serious issue in private neighborhoods--the house we rented did not allow weddings larger than 75 because of parking. Also, as Zoe pointed out, if you want a tent the lighting can be an issue and is very expensive to rent. Also, noise can be an issue--we couldn''t have a DJ or any amplifcation, we just had a stereo system indoors with an iPod. Also, having the wedding in a private residence is more work. My whole family pitched in the day of with setting everything up and more importantly, cleaning up! I was definitely cleaning up dishes in the wee hours of the morning in my wedding dress, which was kind of fun for my family, but I don''t know if I could have done it if we had more than say...50 guests. Sorry, I probably should have pointed out some of the disadvantages as well as the advantages, because there are definitely disadvantages to a private residence.

 

[gtn]

Congratulations!

I think you have a great start to planning a wedding. We picked our wedding dates around our birthdays so it was pretty easy to choose.

If you want to plan your wedding for the 6th or 13th, don''t worry about your sister''s birthday unless you wedding plans will cause you to miss wishing her a happy birthday.

Other ideas to help reduce cost, make center pieces that you could make in advanced and will not go bad. I had a friend who bought fake plants on clearance at target after Easter and made here center pieces for 25% of the actual cost since she re-purposed holiday clearance items. Or consider going to th dollar store to find vases and use floating candles with rocks or flower petals as center pieces. To remedy the parking situation, You could rent a shuttle that will pick up all of your guest who will not be staying at the house at one central location. Or alternately, if the hotel is close enough to the house, you could rent a van that will serve as your wedding shuttle and make more frequent trips. The clean up might be a pain to deal with, but you could also look into a cleaning service to help. It will add to the cost, but ultimately it might be worth your money so that you don''t have to stress over it.

 

[hazel_eyes]

Hi Aloros....I know how you feel....it's all a bit overwhelming at first!

Here's what we're doing....
We picked the time of year because my sister lives in Sydney and has 2 small children so she needed a good bit of notice in order to arrange travel/time off etc (she's coming home to Ireland for 6 weeks.....yippee!)
Date is 3 January....12 months from now.
We picked our venue based on 1. It being beautiful and 2. It being good value, both of which are important to us. It's a country house hotel in Limerick, Ireland.
We will have 180 guests sitting for dinner.

Got a great deal on our hotel....if we were to have the wedding 3 days earlier, i.e in December, not January, they wouldn't have thrown in the freebies which are:
Chair covers
Centrepieces
Mulled wine drinks reception
Canapés
Bar extension
Evening 'afters' food
Harpist playing on arrival
Half price corkage

So we're saving a bundle by choosing 3 January instead of 27 December when we were originally thinking of having it...doesn't bother me one little bit!

I got my dress on Ebay. It's a sample Watters dress and fits like a dream. It was $199.
I got my BM dresses on sale in a popular shop here in Ireland for €100 each
My friend is doing my bouquets and button holes for me and church flowers as a wedding present
My brother in laws brother has just started doing wedding photography so he is taking the pics and sis is giving this to me as a present
I'm a trained beauty therapist so I will be doing my own make-up
Will buy H2B and best man/groomsman suits in the sales later in the year.
H2B friend has a nice car and is driving us to the church
H2B's dad owns a printing business so we will get the invitations and mass booklets for nothing
Not having any favours........

All of this is saving us a bundle so we can go on a nice honeymoon!
My advice is to decide what's important to you and forget what's not....nobody remembers the small stuff...

 

[sap483]

You''ve gotten some really good advice already. You''ll never be able to please everyone with your date- and it will always be right near something else. There''s not much you can do about that. As for renting a house, it''s a great idea for smaller weddings, however as you''ve mentioned that your wedding will be upwards of 150 people, I would caution you to really think that idea through. We had considered that idea and the following things (many of which others have mentioned) made us go the route of a more traditional venue:
- Lack of parking. With about 150 guests, parking would be a nightmare. We decided that we would have to hire a valet company to park the cars on the streets. Plus, we might have had to get a permit from the town to avoid neighbors complaining.
- Lack of bathrooms. We would have had to use porta-potties- unless we found a massive house that had many bathrooms- in which case I''m not sure if I''d be ok with everyone roaming around in that house. The idea of using those grosses me out. I went to a wedding where they had them, and to be honest that is all the ladies at the wedding could talk about. Petty, I know, but that''s how it went.
-No back-up plan. The reception would be tented. Once again a massive house would be needed to accomodate everyone inside.
-Not many places were ok with us holding a wedding there. For insurance concerns, many homeowners said no. We were not ok with going ahead with it without being honest with the owners.

I know it seems as if I''m discouraging this idea. I think it''s a lovely one, but I do hope you''ll consider some of these issues before you proceed. Good luck!

 

[Aloros]

You ladies are awesome! I can tell I''m going to learn a lot from this board!

The house I am looking at is available all through September. I haven''t driven by it yet, but it looks lovely from photos. It''s right on the water, so I''m sure that would provide some nice photo opportunities as well. I live in a fairly large, but fairly un-busy city, and it looks like that will help with costs.

NEL, I LOVE the idea of candle centerpieces - you''re right, they just lend such a warm and intimate feel. I''m just not the sort of lady that gets enthused about flowers either, but I adore candles. $8,000 off the budget! That''s certainly encouraging!

Thanks for the tips, brazen_irish_hussy! I''ve been browsing ebay and have run across a lovely dress a 2-dress bride is trying to get off her hands. I''m going to call around and see if any of the local shops carry it so I can try it on.

bee*, your wedding is in Ireland? You lucky ducky! I''ll bet your photos turn out spectacular.

zoebartlett, you bring up some good points. I live in a dry area, and it rarely, if ever, rains in September. Some friends of ours had a mid-September wedding in a backyard just this past year and didn''t need tents. It was very warm. Parking is definitely a concern. I''ll probably drive by the house I was looking at and check it out before I consider this option with more seriousness.

Dutchgirll, I LOVE your ipod suggestion! What a fun way to involve everyone! Thank you!

gtn, thanks for the centerpiece suggestions. I''ll have to check out the holiday clearance sales and see if I can find anything!

Thank you for the tips, hazel_eyes! Spending so much money on one day boggles my mind enough, but it''s nice to know that other people have been able to do it on a reasonable budget.

 

[bee*]

Date: 1/2/2008 3:31:48 PM
Author: Aloros

bee*, your wedding is in Ireland? You lucky ducky! I''ll bet your photos turn out spectacular.

I hope they do turn out well. Here''s a link to our castle so there seem to be plenty of photo ops


cabra castle

I agree with NEL about the candles-we are going to have them everywhere. I think they set a great atmosphere and they are good value. I''m thinking the same way as you in that I just can''t justify spending a huge amount of money on one day. I''d rather have a killer honeymoon

 

[Gemini85]

We wanted a not so hot/not so cold month with a Monday as a holiday when most people are off from work, so they can have fun without having to worry about going to work the following day. Our guests prefer Sundays anyways. This leaves us with only 2- Memorial Day and Labor Day 2008. May is too soon so we went with August 31 (Labor Day is 9/1).

Cost-saving ideas:
This is what I am going to do- go to a country where the currency exchange rate makes the USD worth ~$16,000.
We are going to be taking wedding pictures, invitations, wedding gown, bridemaid dresses, favors, etc.
We''ll be looking at jewelry too, because the price of labor for jewelry is ridiculously cheap.
We''ll have fun and live like kings and queens for a couple weeks AND get wedding stuff cheap.
What a deal huh?

 

[DMBsGirl]

I picked our date for several reasons. I work in two schools so the wedding had to be planned during school vacations as its not really kosher to take time off during the rest of the year. I didn''t want a summer wedding because I didn''t want to be sweaty.....sooo, that left december, february and april. I picked december because it was SUPER affordable at the venue I wanted and since I was engaged during Christmas time, it will be nice to get married during the same time. An added bonus is that my venue looks beautiful during the holidays with all the decorations.

 

[GolfGirl2008]

Congrats on your engagement. I am a Sept 6th bride myself. I don''t think there is any problem having your wedding close to your sister''s birthday, in fact you can give her a special shout-out at the wedding. My brother got married the day before my birthday and it always helps me remember their anniversary. Good luck with your planning, sounds like you have a good head on your shoulders. Congrats again!!