Posts Tagged ‘gift’

Some Tips For A Cheap But Memorable Wedding

September 5th, 2010

While we all wish we could throw the most lavish and extravagant wedding of our dreams, the fact of the matter is we are all held back by a budget. Planning your special day would be hard enough if everything was free, but once you factor in the constraints of working within a certain dollar amount, the task can seem completely overwhelming. Here are some tips to help you reign in your budget so you can spend on what really matters to you.

The first thing you need to do is decide where your priorities are. What’s most important for you to have at the event? This is going to be a very different answer for everyone. It doesn’t matter specifically what is important to you, as long as you know what it is and stick to your guns. Obviously if the things that are important to you are completely out of your price range you’ll need to compromise, but otherwise you should put your top priorities first. Explain what they are to your planner, explain what they are to your partner, and find out what his or her top priorities are. These will be your guide post through the rest of the process.

From there on out, you’ll know where you can save money. Some people decide that they are going to save money by having a smaller event. Deciding to have fewer people at the special day makes just about every aspect of it cheaper. You can select a smaller venue, you don’t have to spend as much on the reception as there are fewer mouths to feed. Most of the costs of a wedding are per capita costs, and reducing the heads there will make a big difference, especially if you have expensive tastes. It’s a lot cheaper to give 30 people wedding guest favors than to shell out for enough wedding party favors for 200.

While it’s nice to have everyone and anyone who was ever important to you there to watch you get married, it just isn’t so essential these days. With the internet and its ability to spread photos and videos of anything across any distance, you can feel a little better about only inviting your closest kin. Everyone else will at least be able to see the event and have some small part in it.

There are plenty of other areas of the day where you can cut corners. Go ahead and hire a nice caterer, but resist the urge to only order the most expensive dishes they have. Get a smaller cake instead of a multi-tiered monster. Don’t hire limousines to escort you around- your wedding takes place in one spot, and no one really cares what car you were in for the 15 minutes it took to arrive at your destination. Hire a DJ or have a friend DJ instead of hiring a large live band.

There are tons of places where you can spend less on your special day, provided you know from the beginning what’s most important for you to splurge on. When it comes down to it, your wedding is just about the union of you and your partner, it isn’t about the decorations. Anyone who is special enough to invite to your wedding should understand that and not look down on you for scrimping when you need to.

Aaron Hu has authored on an extensive range of topics related to the wedding industry. If you are looking for wedding guest favors, E-WeddingFavors.com has the biggest selection available. You will also find Wedding Shower Favors and much more, all at very affordable prices.

categories: wedding favors,favors,wedding,weddings,gift,gifts,marriage,marriages,shopping,relationship,relationships,society,retail

6 Things To Take Care Of First With Your Wedding Planning

September 4th, 2010

While everybody is excited to be married when they first get engaged, not everyone is excited to have to plan a wedding. After all, weddings have always been pretty big and grand affairs, and these days nothing seems to have changed. While your wedding might not be as lavish and extravagant as the celebrity weddings you see on TV, it’s still guaranteed to be a giant headache to plan- unless you follow a few simple tips.

First thing’s first; you need to approach planning the event with as positive and relaxed of an attitude as you possibly can. Think about it, if you weren’t planning it and didn’t have it all on shoulders, it should be a fun year! It’s like having a bunch of mini parties. You get to go to a fancy dress shop and try everything on until you find the perfect piece for you. You get to reconnect with all the members of your friends and family you’ve lost touch with. You get to try all sorts of delicious catered foods and cakes. People are always congratulating you, and people will throw you a couple parties like your bridal shower. When you think about it that way, it sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?

To ensure that you can just enjoy the process, you have to do a few preliminary steps. First, you need to start planning as early as humanly possible. While I’m not suggesting you jump up as soon as you say yes and break out a three ring binder filled with wedding magazines and potential venues, but starting the next day isn’t a bad idea. It’s a good idea to start planning with your fianc. At this time you should figure out what each of you are going to do as far as planning goes. If your fianc wants to be there every step of the way, that’s great. But if not, you need to know as soon as possible so that there aren’t any hurt feelings or broken expectations. This is also a good time to figure out a budget, and how you’re going to pay for it all. Some things will be more important to you. For instance, you might want to splurge to get venue you really want- but do you need to give fancy ring bearer gifts and flower girl gifts?

Once you have some duties assigned and have an idea about the scope of the wedding, you’re going to be in a good position to start bringing other people on board. It’s important that you start looking for a wedding planner as soon as possible, provided you are going to work with one. This will give you plenty of time to make sure you find the right person, and it will give the two or three of you plenty of time to bond so that they can learn what you want from the event.

After that, you can take things at a little more leisurely pace. It’s a good idea to try and find a venue next, as you’ll be more likely to find the place you want on the date you want for the price you want if you book it way ahead of time. Beyond that, you can relax and enjoy the process. Overall you want to first take care of those things that will produce the most good the longer they are in the picture. It doesn’t really matter how far in advance you book the band, but it does matter how long you have to develop a relationship with your planner.

Aaron Hu has authored on an extensive range of topics related to the wedding industry. If you are looking for ring bearer gifts, E-WeddingFavors.com has the biggest selection available. You will also find Wedding Favors and much more, all at very affordable prices.

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Wedding

Picking Bridesmaid Dresses That Everyone Looks Good In

September 2nd, 2010

One of the hardest and most perilous tasks that any bride has to do is pick out the bridesmaids dresses for her closest friends and families. These dresses have a terrible reputation, and while everyone is excited to be a bridesmaid, most people immediately start to feel creeping dread about what they’re going to have to wear to the event. Even just the idea invokes negative feelings in many people, and it’s your job to make sure that you pick the perfect dress for everyone. There’s a lot of pressure to make sure that dress not only is pretty and representative of your taste and wedding themes, but also that it will look great on every girl who wears it. Chances are that all of your maids don’t look exactly the same, so you’ll have to follow a few tips to ensure everyone ends up feeling good at the end of the day.

The first step to picking these dresses is actually pretty easy- you just need to figure out what you’re going to wear when you get married. Your wedding dress sets the tone for the other dresses, as they need to match yours without overpowering it. If you wear an extremely formal dress, but then you pick out casual dresses for everyone else, then it’s going to create a really clashing image for your wedding party. Once you find your dress, or at least figure out the main aspects of what it will be like (how formal, what color, what style, what fabric), you’ll be able to start thinking about the others.

Your going to want to decide on the color first. It’s relatively easy to flip through a book of swatches and find a color that matches the over all color scheme of the wedding dcor. It’s not particularly easy to find a color that will look good with everyone’s skin tone. This is not an issue if everyone is basically the skin tone, but it can be real problem if you have a diverse line up. The same holds true for the size and type of figure of all your maids. If all of your girls are about the same size and build, then picking out a dress will be easy. In the real world, you’re going to need to find a cut that is flattering to women of all shapes and sizes.

One way these problems have been solved is the emerging trend of bridesmaids wearing a series of matching separates. The overall look and cut of the pieces will be similar and will all be designed to look good together, but each girl can individualize her outfit according to what best matches her particular look.

And of course, there is always the easiest way to solve this problem- don’t make anyone wear bridesmaid dresses! At the end of the day, it’s your wedding and you can make sure everyone is happy which ever way you want. If that means bribing each of them with a special bridesmaid gift (and the lead girl with an extra special maid of honor gift) then so be it. If that means letting everyone co-ordinate amongst themselves to figure out what they would like to wear, than that is a small price to pay to avoid the seemingly never-ending headache of finding one bridesmaid dress that is perfect for everyone.

Aaron Hu has authored on an extensive range of topics related to the wedding industry. If you are looking for bridesmaid gift, E-WeddingFavors.com has the biggest selection available. You will also find Wedding Favors and much more, all at very affordable prices.

Related Blogs

5 Ways For A Wedding That Is Highly Personal

August 30th, 2010

Weddings are special events, and just as your union will be unique from all others, your special day should be just as personalized and unique. While it’s not necessary, you can make your day that much more special for everyone involved by including a ton of personalized touches throughout the event. Not only will this make the day that much more special for them, but it will remind you of what you appreciate and love about each and every one of them. Here are some ideas for making each guest feel specially welcome and cared for.

First you should insure that the most important members of your party are recognized. While it’s nice to think about singling out everyone, if you might only have time to reach out to a few people, it’s a good idea to get them done first. One way to do this is to make a slightly more extensive program for your wedding. While all weddings have programs, most don’t include too much information about everyone involved. Make yours like a theater program, and include little bios about all of the bridesmaids and groomsmen, as well as the parents of the bride and groom. This will give everyone more of a context for the most important people in your life, and will make them feel specially recognized. Not everyone will know everyone else, but with this tip they will feel like they do.

You can also write special letters for the members of your party as well. You can place these on their seats for the ceremony or the reception, or you can send them to their hotel rooms the day before or the night of. These letters could be about anything really, but one idea is to talk about your relationship with each other and how much you appreciate them in your life and how happy you are that they can be there for your special day.

You can also individualize the wedding favors to each guests’ tastes. While it’s nice to receive a basket of favors regardless of what is actually in it, it’s that much more memorable if each person receives a favor that reflects something about your relationship with them. If your golf buddy is there, then give him some individualized golf wedding favors. If one of your friends is a surfer who has been giving you lessons, then give her some beach wedding favors. Whatever your special connection to each guest, highlight it with a personalized favor.

If you’re short on time and funds, but want everyone to feel included and special, then you can have them write or make something memorable for you. This sounds counter-intuitive, but think about it. If you have everyone write down a list of advice or specific well wishes that they want for you, then they will feel like you truly care about them and what they have to say to you. Weddings can be whirlwind affairs, and you might not be able to individually sit down or talk to everyone who attends, and this gives them a great opportunity to feel welcome and appreciated. When it comes down to it, that’s all anyone wants at a special event like this- that you care about them and truly want to celebrate your life with them.

Aaron Hu has authored on an extensive range of topics related to the wedding industry. If you are looking for golf wedding favors, E-WeddingFavors.com has the biggest selection available. You will also find Unique Wedding Favors and much more, all at very affordable prices.

Related Blogs

Surprise Weddings The Summer Trend For Celebrity Summer Weddings

August 10th, 2010

One of the biggest trends of the summer wedding season has been the secret wedding. Many celebrities know the difficulties that come with having a public wedding. The press gets into every detail and there is the stigma that the most publicized Hollywood weddings end up being the harbingers of a short marriage. The stigma of divorce can make any celebrity wary of getting married as it is so many celebrities feel better having a simpler ceremony that speaks to genuine quality of their feelings for their spouses.

There are many examples of the quick wedding to pick from in the past month. One surprise wedding was that of Martin Lawrence to his long time girlfriend… The couple kept it simple marrying in the backyard of their LA residence. Their ceremony was attended by Lawrence’s daughters and some of his close friends such as Will Smith and John Travolta.

Another wedding even stopped a major advertising campaign. Orlando Bloom in a surprise move got married to Victoria Secret model Miranda Kerr. Ms. Kerr was supposed to be in Australia as part of a major advertising campaign for a major department store there. Instead she canceled her appearance that week and ended up getting married in a secret ceremony. The wedding was done so swiftly that the couple was already returning from their honeymoon when news of the marriage got out.

If that was not enough there was the surprise wedding Jenna Fischer. If her name doesn’t sound familiar, she is better known as Pam on the famous sitcom The Office. Even though the media has known about her upcoming nuptials for a year the exact date this summer was still a mystery. An interesting fact is that she got married on the same date as John Krasinski the actor who plays her onscreen husband Jim.

Speaking of John Krasinki, he also had a surprise celebrity summer wedding. He married his fiancee actress Emily Blunt in a private ceremony at a lake resort in Italy. The wedding ceremony was attended only by the couple’s close family and some of their celebrity friends such as George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Mat Damon just to name a few.

As you can see the trend for many Hollywood couples looking to enter into matrimony is to keep the media out and enjoy this most special of moments with the people they really care about. While this may not let the rest of the country immediately know what the latest trends are for summer weddings favors or bridesmaid gifts it shows a good example of placing importance on the things that really matter.

It also shows in this economy that less of the trappings and the glitz can still result in a beautiful and unforgettable ceremony. In that case it makes sense to plan a wedding that is within your means and focus resources on the most meaningful parts of your wedding. Make your friends and family a part of the planning and make your wedding one that is truly special and memorable.

Aaron Hu has authored on an extensive range of topics related to the wedding industry. If you are looking for summer wedding favors, E-WeddingFavors.com has the biggest selection available. You will also find Wedding Guest Favors and much more, all at very affordable prices

Related Blogs

Powered by Yahoo! Answers