That wasn't too hard, was it? Now let's continue...



3 Build yourself a team.

What makes the whole wedding process so expensive is that you're paying for man-power even more than the products they supply. Labour is usually more expensive than products. So if you can build yourself a team, you would have saved yourself at least 25% of the total cost of the whole wedding planning from start to glorious finish.

I remember my husband's cousin who took up the burden of her wedding from start to finish. She even did the catering herself. What a mistake. After the wedding, she was too ill to enjoy the honeymoon. That's an extreme example. But some of us do too much by ourselves when planning our wedding till we're too stressed out to actually enjoy it.

So build a team of people who will help you achieve the wedding of your dreams.

Here is how:

- List out what needs to be done

Download a wedding planner checklist to find out what needs to be done.

- Name your team members

Now think about this carefully. Do you have any friends or family who will be willing to help you? Who are your bridesmaids and groomsmen/ushers going to be? By the very definition of their names, they're meant to serve you during the wedding. Most people don't utilise them to their full potential. In most cases, they're only used on the wedding day. That's a poor utilisation of the human resources available to you.

- Write down the names of the women and the names of the men in separate columns.

This is because women and men usually have different kinds of skills and contacts and you want to utilise people according to their strengths. Assign to each their responsibilities according to their strengths and availability.

The key is dependability. Don't rely on someone to do something that you can't depend on or, who isn't available. But don't assign responsibilities yet. That happens in Step 3.

- You could save yourself the service costs of waiters, waitresses, and coat-takers if you could recruit some of the more responsible of your relatives to perform these roles on your wedding. This could save you up to ?10 per worker per hour. 6 of your young cousins could save you about ?300 for 5 hours.

SAVINGS ? circa ?300 ($550)

4 Assign responsibilities

Call a bridesmaid and groomsmen/ushers meeting before you do this. Be gracious and grateful. Remember that they're doing you a favour. Most people only use their bridesmaids and groomsmen on the wedding day. That's a waste of labour. Let them know that you want them to help you with various aspects of the wedding apart from the actual day.

You need to have this meeting before assigning responsibilities. This is because you shouldn't assign a task to anyone whom you haven't first spoken to and found out if they're willing or able to do what you would want them to do. Also when you assign responsibilities, make sure that you give each person a date by which it should be completed.

- Tell each person what they need to do

Discuss with each person what that responsibility entails and what they should look out for. Make sure they shop around and discuss your budget with them.

- Set yourself reminders in your calendar for when you or your spouse-to-be should get updates from your team

5 Reduce the MOST expensive cost ? Food and drinks!

The most expensive cost for weddings is the food and drinks. A typical estimate for a big wedding comes up to about ?5000 ($9000). Most caterers charge by head and most venues will not allow you to bring an outside caterer or your own drinks. If you could reduce the cost of food and drinks, you can potentially save yourself 100s or even 1000s of ????s.

So how do you achieve this?

- Pick the right venue.

Do you want your food and drinks supplied by the venue, or do you want to provide your own catering? Most venues would want to supply at least the drinks. But getting a venue that will let supply your own catering could save you a lot. Think about it. This is because they may typically charge you ?40 per guest not including alcoholic beverage. But you can get a good deal from the caterer at ?20 per head reducing your catering cost by ?2000 for a 100-strong guest list.

- The next thing to do is list all your guests including children. Since a typical wedding lunch may cost from ?20, you need to know how many people you're expecting. Will they have a separate menu for kids in order to reduce costs, or will you ask guests not to come with children?

If you can have the menu reduced by half for the kids, you would save about ?10.00 for each child. If you have 20 kids present, that's a saving of ?200. But, if you're venue insists on providing the catering, then you need to do some negotiating.

- Buy your own drinks

For a guest list of 100 people, each drink may cost ?2.50. They would each have at least 3 drinks. That's if you have nice and considerate guests. Welcome to the real world. Most of them would have as many drinks as they can contain because people somehow go crazy when it comes to free food and drink.

If they each had one glass of champagne at ?8 per head, that would add another ?800 to your bill. This could bring your bar tab up to ?2050. How much would it cost you to buy your own drinks from your local supermarket or an online drinks supplier? At your local supplier, 60 cartons of juice will probably cost a measly ?50, while a case of Bollinger champagne would cost less than ?300.

Even if you get 2 cases for ?100 guests, that's still about ?200 less than what the bar tab will cost you for venue's typical low-range house champagne. This could save you up to ?1400 if you choose to serve only juice and champagne.

However, if they do allow you to bring in your own drinks, they may charge you a corkage for every alcoholic bottle opened. In that case, find out what it is and negotiate the price with them.

TOTAL SAVINGS (if you can supply your own food and drinks) - over ?3150 ($5670)