If you save money on the wrong thing, you could ruin your special day. For example, photography is one place where you should never save a buck. When your wedding is over your memories, your rings, a dress you will never wear again, and your dried flowers are all that is left. If you don't have good photos of your day, it will slowly fade from memory until it is like a dream you once had.



You could save money on the photography by not getting an album. I get a lot of clients asking for that, but many of them live to regret it. See, they think that they are going to do the album themselves. And maybe some of them do, but most peole, well, they never seem to get around to it. I understand that. That is the nice thing about having an album as part of your package. You know it is going to come, you don't need to carve out a few weekends to put it together on your kitchen table. Also, newlyweds often have other things to do.

And don't think that friends or relatives can do the trick with their cameras. They just can't. They are not professionals, and their photos will never be the same as the photos taken by a pro. A great photographer will make your photos look more beautiful than your memories, and they will use the photos to tell the unique story of your wedding day.

One place where you can save some money is videography. Now, some will disagree with me, but I think the best video still looks like video. I think the best editing doesn't do much. The most important part of the video is the audio track. This is the only way you will hear your ceremony and the toasts from the wedding again. (Unless you have a radio producer in the family, I actually saw one couple who did!)

But you don't need to spend $2,000 to hear your ceremony and toasts again. A decent camera pointed in the right direction should do the trick. You won't get the multiple camera fade out cross cut and editing, but how may times will you watch that? What you will get, is the ability to hear one more time all the wonderful things that were said, and you will get $2,000 more to spend on your honeymoon.

I speak from experience here. When I got married, we could not afford a videographer. We had a professional photographer, so we have these great photos. My uncle recorded the ceremony and toasts without even telling us. Next thing I knew he sent us a disk, and I got to hear the ceremony again, which was a real treat. Never did I question the less than professional quality of the images.