photo from delineated

Wedding is a day of blessing but if you do not manage your finance properly, it can be the darkest days of your life.

There are many reasons why brides overspend and overblow their budget, not saving enough penny for their after-wedding life. I shall explore more on such reasons for other posts.

As for how brides and grooms can save money during their wedding-planning, there are plenty of ways out there. And here are 10 cool tips on how you can now save money.

1. Debt consolidation – You can’t escape debts. So one of the ways to pay lower interest rates is to consolidate them. This way is advisable especially after you have paid most of your wedding expenses using your credit cards. Look for a reliable company which may even be able to give you credit counseling.

2. Do-it-yourself – There are many ways you can cut cost from making your own veils to your own flower bouquet. Learn some basic sewing and you can do wonders to your comb or straw hat just by adding a bit of some jewelry or pearls.

3. Get Immediate Resources – You can get most of your needed items from your home from tables to chairs to cutleries and so on. There are many items which you can get from home rather than spending money to buy or rent them.

4. Look for friends – Do you have some friends who just had their weddings? If so, they would have excess or left-over materials which they no longer need them. Pay a visit to their house and ask if you could have them for free or at a lower cost.

5. Bake Your Own Cake – If you have a relative who bake, ask her to help in baking your wedding cake. If no one can help, bake your own cake. You will need to practice a few times before you can create that beautiful cake of your dream.

6. Have a Budget List – One of the main reasons why brides overspend is because they don’t have a budget list. They do not know how much they have in their piggy banks and they say “Yes!” to every price they first see. There is no negotiation done or sourcing for a cheaper alternative. And that is why they overspend!

7. Buy second hand – Go ebay.com or auction sites which sell second hand items at a lower cost. I think many brides have the misconception that second hand items are old and worn off. In fact, many are as good as new and you can consider this option.

8. Stick to a credit card – How many credit cards do you have? 3, 5 or at least 6? Now, people are always spending future money and they are very addicted to it. And that is how they end up with the debt consolidators. So stick to one card so that you can track your expenditure.

9. Cook Your Catered Food – One of the high cost items is the food. Deploy your relatives of aunties and ladies who can cook and ask them for help. You may be surprised how well some of your uncles can cook too. In this way, you can save alot of money by not catering from food catering companies.

10. Save The Trees – It’s quick its cheap its easy to send wedding invites via email, You use powerpoint program to do a nice digital wedding invite and email them to your guests. Ask them to reply you via email too and this saves you from buying response cards.

Wedding expenses can add up rapidly but doing a lot of the preparation yourself can really help in holding down the expenses. So start planning now to avoid having clear up the money mess in the future.