Do: wait out online vendors
This one I found by accident and it's borderline sneaky, but online vendors SOMETIMES will give you deals if you create something and don't order it right away. Now for the love of God, please do not hold me to this because I'm not saying it's always going to happen.
When I made the save the date's I wasn't sure if we were going to order them or not so I just saved them and forgot. Low and behold a few days later, the company offered me free shipping on my saved order. It saved me about $15 dollars in shipping.
I'm not saying that it'll always work or that they'll give you some stupendous deal, but you may cut out a few bucks here and there. Just make sure whatever you're ordering isn't going out of stock soon!
Don't: go dress shopping alone!
Mike and I were checking out our now booked reception site (:D) and I decided to go into town and go dress shopping. Alone. Big mistake.
Now, I'm not saying that you can't find a great dress on your own, because I totally did, but I am saying you'll be avoided like the plague by the sales lady. Especially if they have another client that has her mom, sister, grandma, and ten bridesmaids with her.
I was at the salon about an hour, picked out the dresses I tried on, and was left in the dressing room for 10 mins each time, and alone on the podium for 15 mins while she attended to the other bride... not fun. Sales people want to make sales (duh) and you might be the low man on the totem poll if you go in alone.
Do: check out Michael's for wedding supplies like invitations.
I have a friend that works at a very lovely little shop downtown that sells wedding invitations. Mike and I wanted to check it out so we set up an appointment and went in. The invitations they had were amazing and they could do just about anything we could ever want. Then we asked about price.
The invites themselves were $5-$7 each for about 100 invites. That's, well, you can do the math. What really got us was that the reply cards were as much as the invitations themselves!
It was getting a little pricey to say the least, so we thanked them and left. That weekend, my mom and I checked out Michael's and found that they have a wonderful selection of invitations, among other wedding related items. We found a set that included invites, ribbon, envelopes, reply cards and matching envelopes, as well as great instructions and templates for what to put on your invite. Grand total $50.00 for a set of 100. That's $0.50 an invite, way more economical than the $5-$7 we were talking about.
We're going to add a colored backing and peacock feather on our own, but that only brings the cost to $1.50 per invitation! For something that people are going to inevitably throw out, Michael's, with a little Do-It-Yourself, is a great deal!
What wedding Dos and Don'ts have you experienced or heard of? Share them for everyone in the comments!
i TOTALLY agree as far as dress shopping goes.
ReplyDeletei went with kasey, and it was just the two of us as she tried on dresses. it seemed like the consultant came, and then ditched us regularly for the couple to our right, and so i was confused. i thought that i was there, as i had always seen on "say yes to the dress" for the big ah-hah! moment when kasey came out in her dresses. nope, i was totally wrong. i was in the dressing room with her, instead of the consultant, getting her in and out of dresses, and the woman never came back until she was out, in the dress, only to ask "so what do you think?" sure makes me rethink things when i go in for my dress trying on!
Some people really like seating charts for weddings but, in my family, they've only caused problems. The last wedding I went to was particularly disastrous in this respect. Instead of letting people seat themselves or distributing family in equal clumps at different tables, they sat as much family as they could at 2 tables, and then had left over family members sit at the random "I don't know what to do with you so I'll stick you with all the leftover people" table. The "leftover" family members of the bride who couldn't fit at the family tables ended up scattered around the room sitting with friends of the groom. While a case can be made for making the 2 sides of the family mingle, weddings are also a place where families who've traveled from all around the country to catch up with each other during the reception. The result of the seating chart was a room full of grumbles like, "I'm 50, you'd think they'd trust me to seat myself." One 80 year old woman actually got up and moved her chair from one table to another and then was forced to move back by one of the caterers. It could be just my family though...
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