5 Quick Wedding Budget Tips

For the budget-conscious bride, planning a wedding can get overwhelming. Little costs add up, and it's easy to find yourself paying for a more expensive wedding than you'd originally thought. However, it's possible to have a wedding that fits your vision of the perfect day without demolishing your savings account. Here are five tips for cutting costs:

1) Keep Stationery Costs Low
A lot of mailing costs goes into planning a wedding. These expenses may seem unavoidable: You do, after all, have to invite people to your wedding. However, you can bring the price of your correspondence down without resorting to hoping everyone checks their email. One way to cut down on postage is to have light, single-page wedding invitations. Skipping envelopes by using save-the-date postcards is another way to make your stationery budget-friendly.

2) Skip Saturday
Since Saturday night is the most popular time to hold a wedding, it's also the most expensive. Holding your wedding on a Friday night or Sunday morning can cut your venue and meal costs between 10 and 30 percent. Of course, each of these times has their drawbacks: Friday might make it hard for out-of-town guests to attend, and people may be shyer about dancing at a Sunday morning brunch. Still, using one of these times can give you the chance to make your wedding a unique experience. 

3) Prioritize
Sit down with your future spouse and figure out what you really care about and what you can do without. If neither of you particularly cares for cake, but you both love brownies, that's an opportunity to save some costs by going with a less expensive dessert. This also lets you figure out what you should be focusing on putting money toward: If you both care about having great music, you can use the money you saved by skipping the cake to invest in a great DJ or band.

4) Double Duty
Any time you can use one item to serve two purposes, you've saved yourself some cash. When you're planning your wedding, try to look for these kinds of opportunities. For example, instead of having a tall, multitiered cake, you might consider using small cakes to decorate tables in place of centerpieces. If your wedding favors lend themselves to personalization, they can also function as place cards. 

5) Limit Your Bar
If you're serving alcohol at your wedding, one way to keep costs low is to skip the full bar. It's easy to think you need to have every mixed drink imaginable, but narrowing the choices to one or two drinks actually gives you a new chance to personalize. Instead of buying many different kinds of hard liquor and risking using only a few of them, design one or two signature cocktails and serve those along with wine and beer. This way you can make sure you're actually using all the liquor you buy, ensuring that your money is put to good use. Limiting choices at the bar also helps prevent long, slow drink lines