1)Designing and making your own wedding stationery can often reduce the total cost by more than 50%. There are many companies that will sell you the products you need as well as offer a wealth of free information to help you create the Invitations of your dreams without the cost of your nightmares!
2)Forgo the RSVP cards that many people include in with their wedding invitations. You can always ask people to reply by email or telephone or alternatively they will just end up buying their own RSVP cards.
3)Consider getting married on a Friday rather then the weekend. You will normally find that venue's charge less during the week then on a Saturday or Sunday. As long as you give you guests plenty of notice then they should be able to organise time off work. In this scenario you should consider using ?Save the Date? cards.
4)Buy your wedding rings direct from the manufacturer rather then from the high street jewellers. This gives you 2 massive benefits ?
?You will end up paying half the price that you would on the high street.
?You will be able to design your own wedding ring which won't be available anywhere else.
5)With wedding dresses starting from ?500 and rising rapidly into thousands, you could have the wedding dress of your dreams if you are willing to hire it. After all you will only ever wear it once and then it will spend the rest of it's life boxed up at the back of a cupboard.
6)Instead of buying real flowers, silk flowers offer a fantastically realistic alternative. There are many internet companies that specialise in silk wedding flowers with the designs often being far superior to your local florists. If you would still prefer to have real flowers in your wedding bouquet, you could consider using them for table decorations, church decorations or bouquets for your younger bridesmaids.
7)Hire your photographer for a shorter period of time for the formal wedding photos and then add disposable camera's to each table for the evening photos. You can also include a little note with each wedding favour asking your guests to add their photos to an online directory.
8)Make your own wedding cake for a fraction of the price. You can buy an iced three tier cake (including a silver board) from Tesco or M&S for around ?35 and purchase the icing flowers over the internet for less then ?10.
9)If you ask your guests for money rather then presents, you can always use this to pay off the honeymoon or wedding bills that you have run up.
10)And the best tip of all ? Shop around! You will often find that the best venue, photographer, dress is not usually the first one you see or the most expensive.
