by Vicky Smee

Created on: November 11, 2008   Last Updated: February 24, 2009

A wedding can be an extremely expensive affair. There's the location, catering, photographers and more importantly the dress. So how do you have your perfect day, without mounting up a lifetime's supply of debt?

Location

For location, you don't need to be married in a castle to have a fairy tale wedding. Find a reasonably priced location, adding decorations to suit your taste. Using your search engine, you can find all the venues local to you that already have a license to conduct wedding ceremonies. Even if the location for the ceremony is small, you can invite only close family and friends to the ceremony, and invite everyone else to the reception.

Reception location doesn't have to cost a fortune. Find a low key reasonably priced place. Look around at hotels, party halls, and community halls checking prices for reception venues. Do you or a close relative have a large garden? How about a summer wedding! Cut the costs even further by not paying for the reception location. You could even have the ceremony there. You can home make your wedding decorations for this venue, to make it striking and beautiful for you, and your guests. Go to your local craft store, or even look online for inspiration.

Catering

Most people like to have a lavish sit down meal for their guests at a wedding; this can be a huge expense. It's just not necessary. You can have a glorious wedding without the sit down meal. Cut it out to cut your costs. Having an afternoon and then an evening finger buffet is much more cost effective. You don't have to go to an outside caterer. Get your family involved, even the in-laws to be. Buying and preparing the food together could even be a bonding exercise to begin bringing the two families together.

Wedding cakes are unnecessarily expensive. Think about it for what it is, cake, icing and decoration. Making it yourself is going to cost a whole lot less. Again it helps if you have a family member or friend who is excellent at cake baking and decorating. Alternatively you could buy a plain undecorated cake (They come in all different sizes), then have fun decorating them yourselves. Design your own cake and let your personality shine through.

The Dress

A good way to cut wedding costs is to look into buying a used dress. Now remember this dress has only been worn once before. Once dry cleaned it can be good as new, and you'll already have shaved hundreds from your wedding costs. You can start your search on an internet auction site such as EBay. Also look in the ads of your local paper. Browse the dresses every day. There are also lots of designers who advertise in these places, they will make you your dream dress for very reasonable amount.

Photographer

There are alternatives to hiring a professional photographer. Have all of your guests bring their cameras. Make sure your guests know to snap away. Have someone on hand with a camcorder. You could even pass it around, having your guests take turns in filming. This will bring a much more personal feel to your wedding day memories. Remember you can always neatly pack your wedding clothes away, and get them on again for some professional photos when you have more money.

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