Your wedding day, possibly next to the birth of your children, is likely to be one of the happiest days of your life.
However, there are no guarantees that this special day will go according to plan.
In fact, unless you properly prepare and allow for contingencies then something will almost certainly go wrong! That's why it's important to start planning your wedding as early as possible.
The more time you spend in organising and preparing your big day the less likely unforeseen problems will occur.
On average a typical wedding will cost around $30,000.
00, this figure seems to be rising year on year as people are prepared to spend ever more on their wedding day.
However, throwing money at a project is not they way forward, and does not guarantee everything will run smoothly.
.
The good news is you can spend far less than this whilst still having your dream wedding day.
The secret to cutting costs when planning a cheap wedding is to know where to look and what to buy.
It's possible, with careful planning to shave thousands of dollars off the cost of your wedding without sacrificing the quality your rightly deserve.
Let's start at the beginning.
Get a pen and some paper at the ready, or better still use a spreadsheet and write down key headings relating to your wedding.
For example your list is likely to include the following: Wedding rings, Honeymoon, Church, Reception, Transport etc etc At this stage only right down the key points until you're happy you've covered the most important.
Don't worry about being to exact, you can always add more later.
Next, take each key heading and expand into sub-categories.
For example under Reception you will likely have something like: Reception Food Wedding Cake Reception Invitations Wedding Favours Music Band DJ Decorations You get the idea, right? Continue filling in the sub-categories until you're happy with your wedding blueprint.
You will want to organise each category into order of priority.
A good tip here is to start by working backwards from the big day, this will help focus your mind and help you visualise everything you need to remember.
Hopefully by now you will have a concise list of everything relating to your wedding? Now it's time to work to your budget and allocate the approximate costs of each category.
Be realistic and you should end up with a total estimate of what your wedding will cost.
If you have gone way over budget, it's time for a rethink.
Do you really need to two hundred wedding guests? Take the hard line approach and trim any excess where you can.