One of the biggest arguements in the wedding world right now is cake or cupcakes. But here’s the thing, neither are bad. So pick your poison and go with it. But what about the debate of making your own wedding (cup)cake??

You better be ready to either spend a few days in the kitchen prior to your wedding to prepare these little beauties, courtesy of Bakerella, or pay extra for the design. My suggestion would be to make them yourself. Honestly, homemade cake always tastes better and you will save literally $500! With Bakerellas simple recipe, you can totally do it.

Wedding Favors, OH MY! One of my favorite things of all time is this one things right now, favors. Here are a few awesome and totally amazingly unique ideas for favors. And guess what, if you do them yourself (which I highly suggest) they can be uber cheap!

Handmade wedding favors are the sweetest of all gifts for your guests. You know how moms always request handmade cards from their kids as opposed to something store bought, well, this is kind of the same principle. Handmade gifts show the love and care behind the favor. The major pluspoint for the bride is that if you do it right, it can potentially be a huge money saver!

This is how-when you buy things like sugar, flour, butter, (to name just a few) in bulk, you can get some pretty big discounts. Costco sells a 15 pound bag of flour for about $4 for instance. Purchasing ribbon, small muslin bags, mason jars or any other cute containers in bulk is also a money saver. Then the only thing you have left are a few cute tags to add and you are set with the cutest favor ever!

I made cookie favor for an event which consisted of the dry ingredients of a cookie recipe, a recipe, ribbon, and a mason jar for 100 people. It only took me a few hours to make them all and I probably spent about $1.50 per person. Compare this to other less personal gifts and it comes out to about the same price, but for a far better favor!

Source: honey, cupcake, jam, cookies

These are a few of my favorite ideas! Totally something I will be doing for my wedding. What about you guys?? Anyone making personalized favors??

Now more than ever, I am experiencing what it really takes to pull off a wedding. Likewise, now more than ever, I am realizing how important it really is to become a Smart Bride! It really is the difference between a happier, in budget wedding, and a stressful out of budget one. Of course everyone has their own ways of cutting down, cutting out, and saving as much as they can! Here are a few things I have done and plan to do.

Buy a pre-worn dress or sell my dress:

The dress one thing that I won’t settle on. I want to have something that I feel 100% comfortable and amazing in. Otherwise, I just know it won’t be the same. To do this, I definitely plan on scouring the sites for a pre-worn dress or I will purchase one and sell it after. It is definitely more of a gamble to purchase a dress and not know whether it will sell or not, but adding it on Smart Bride, or other sites, for pre-sale might be a good way to ease your mind! Just state that it will be available on “x” date. If you get it sold before the wedding, all the less stress for you to endure!

Shop Around:

Finding the greatest deals can be incredibly challenging sometimes seeing as there is so much information to search through. How do you know what the best deal is?? And when no one posts prices on their websites, how do you know who is the most affordable? It may take some time, but it is important to compare services and prices with each other to ensure you are getting the best deal for the best price!

Become incredibly resourceful:

This is something I work on more and more each day! I want the perfect wedding for about half of what it should cost these days. But, I am going to do it and you can to! Just get really smart about things. For instance, my fiance is designing our invitations, place cards, etc. I plan to start an Etsy shop to sell these designs as well as the outtakes he produces. People love new and creative things, and it will definitely help me if I can show off photos of how they actually look. Find containers, mason jars, etc. at garage sales, antique sales, or get them from a friend. Consider posting them on classified lists to “presale” saying they are available after your wedding date. That way, you can count on getting your money back for purchases you have made.

Think outside of the box and enlist the help of friends and family. Really, anything they can do (sew, design, create) will be a big help in eliminating items on your to-do list!

Find inspiration in unexpected places:

Anything with the tag “wedding” on it will be double the price. When looking for inspiration go one step further and look for inspiration in home decor, fashion magazines and other unexpected sources. You can save a lot of money buying home decor and making it work for your wedding, not to mention the fact that you will have something totally unique on your hands!

I’m still working on all of this, but now that the venue is secure I am having to confront the “money” aspect of it all a bit more. That means that it is important for me to start thinking and to get really smart about how I do everything. Otherwise I will end up over-budget and that wouldn’t make me very happy!

Allison also writes for her blog Engaged & Inspired and is currently planning her April 2011 wedding in Carmel Valley, CA

Doing a wedding with a $10K budget is not impossible, but you need to know that resourcefulness and creativity are absolute key.

I want to highlight some great $10K wedding stories because, from them, I have gained such an understanding of how to be even more resourceful and even more creative! Hopefully, even if you aren’t doing a $10K wedding, you will gain something that you can take to your wedding planning!

“I have gotten really lucky! I live in Orlando, FL (which I am sure helps a ton) I rented the Winter Park Farmers Market.

The space is a historic train station with an amazing brick building with concrete floors and a brick paved parking lot. It was super cheap, $900 for the entire day, including chairs and tables.

Luckily, you get to use whatever vendors you want, so I sent out the menu I wanted to 15 vendors, made them revise their prices a couple times, did some tastings, and found a guy who would do it for half the cost of everyone else. He is providing all the linens, plates, silver, and non-alcoholic bar goods. He is doing all of this including providing the staff, at $33 a head! I only have to buy the booze to complete the food and beverage ticket.

Because I did a huge amount of foot work on the caterer, and saved a ton of money, we were able to up our numbers a lot.

Then I got a friends brother, who does digital art, to recreate an invitation I found online. He only charged me $50. I found a printer who will do offset printing for 150 invites and RSVP postcards for $80. It’s not the highest quality printing, but my borther who had a $100,000 dollar wedding, did the same thing, and NO. ONE. NOTICED! I am printing all the envelopes myself to save money too.

I am using a lot of hay, wheat, barley, rye etc as my “flowers” and luckily my soon-to-be-cousin’s family has bails of all those on their property. Getting that for free is going to be huge!

I have a friend that works in the construction industry, and he is getting me burlap for ridiculously cheap. I am doing a burlap aisle and then some burlap on the tables.

I have a girlfriend that just got married and she is lending me all her mason jars so that’s free.

My fiances family is pitching in to create some stuff and I am planning on buying and then reselling a lot of bottles and mini chalk boards.

My photographer, including engagment shoot, was $2800, and the videographeris $1000 and includes a 3 minute web video like above, and then a longer one of the whole day. By whole day, i mean 10 hours, none of that 4 hours for the reception, and an hour for the ceremony. I get them all day : )

My DJ ended up being from around the block in Long Island New York where I grew up, and knows my brother. He is doing the entire wedding including lighting package and video with live picture feed for $1000. He usually charges $1800.00 and has a time limit.

I found a lady, who is a friend of mines mother, that will make my veil for, ready for this, for $100 dollars. www.lubasews.com It’s a custom veil that will be just longer than my train.

My brother is the officiant, so that saves us. My hair stylist is only charging me $45, and my airbrush makeup is $60.

I bought my dess as a sample, and my shoes off Ninashoes.com DIY for $125.

I am really cutting it super close on the 10k mark, but I think i’m going to make it!

The biggest thing was not giving up on the caterer. I needed to find someone that could do what i needed for a reasonable price and I found a guy in a small town willing to and excited to be a custom caterer and not an over budget big name.

Cutting the cocktail hour was the newest decision for price cuts. I went over my menu a million times and decided that we had sooooo much food that no one would miss the cocktail hour, as long as they could stand up from the ceremony, walk into the reception (since everything is on site) and start eating immediately.

We are doing soup in bread bowls with a custom salad station plus some appetizers on the tables once they enter the reception space. The bridal party wont miss that first hour, and this gives us more time to boogy : )

Anyway, it’s been a ton of work, and I have a million projects to start, and bottles to buy but I think that it’s going to all work out in the budget.

Good Luck!
Bethany Reitzel

How can you really create a splash when it comes to your reception? Change up the tradition by serving up some homemade dinner favorites. I know it sounds like a lot to take on, and let’s be honest-it is, but the result is a totally budget savvy (DIY dinner will save you thousands) and completely unique approach to your reception dinner!

When you get married you are combining two families together and introducing a whole new world to each. Why not introduce the guests of your wedding into your family as well with those favorite foods you grew up on. It makes for a far more intimate wedding reception dinner, and I bet your guests will love the chance to indulge in foods that are special to the two of you.

If you and your family are not the best of cooks, check out some recipes and find some brand new favorite dinners! Sites like epicurious.com can inspire you with some amazing new recipes that your guests will surely enjoy.

Caterers can cost $6,000, $10,000 or far more just for a wedding reception dinner. Doing the food yourself is something that may seem scary and stressful, but in the end is so worth it! You could probably do a dinner for around $3,000. The price can’t be beat, and neither can the gesture!

If you make sure to prep ahead of time, it will make the whole thing less stressful. Decide on the menu early, get the marinade’s going, then hire a few wait staff for the day of the wedding to cook and serve the food. This salmon recipe was found under “quick and easy” so you don’t have to slave away in the kitchen for days to create the perfect meal. Recipe at epicurious.com

Amazing free template from Wedding Chicks! This will majorly cute costs on invitations because you print and do them all yourself! I love the simple design and the perfect spring colors!

Top Left: $68 Nordstrom Top Right: $42 Nordstrom

Bottom Left: $27.90 Nordstrom Bottom Right: $38 Nordstrom

Who said you can’t get all your bridal jewelry for under $100?? With great sales, and a few fabulous finds, it is totally doable! Each of these pieces most definitely has the “wow” factor going on, so now it is just a matter of picking which piece you like best!

Paper products have quickly become my single favorite part of the wedding. They really have the ability to add so much “wow” even if it is just a few tags, place settings, menus, etc. But for that to happen, the design is incredibly important! Really good design can be quite costly, so when planning a budget wedding consider the new trend of printing your own!

The logistics are simple, you work with a designer to create the perfect invites, tags, etc. which will give your wedding a cohesive look. They send you the final product and you print them off yourself! In the end, it is far cheaper to take this route, and you still end up with the paper products you love!

Save the Dates: Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right

These save the date cards are all just $15 for the template and most designers will customize them for you! Simply print them out and you can get some gorgeous save the date cards for roughly $30!

Invites: Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right

Doing your invitations through a print service will enable you to get more! Add in response cards, programs, etc! You could set a $100 budget for your wedding invitations and stick to it! That’s practically unheard of!

Accessories: All accessories by Print Your Party

Of course those cohesive paper products make or break the personalization of your wedding, and each of these will only cost roughly $20 including paper! Add them to invites, cupcakes, etc. In the end, these are a cheaper alternative and honestly just as cute!

Show it Off:

Posting an ample amount of photos of your dress is better. The more you post, the better idea a person can get of the dress and all the different views. After your wedding you are bound to have tons of photos of you in your dress, in ALL different angles, so give people a real idea of your gown.

Models are no Substitute for the Real Thing:

Posting pics from the designer’s collection photo shoot will give people some what of an idea of the dress design, but it is no substitute for the real thing! So it is time for you to be the model to show your dress in your size, on you (while also giving people a little glimpse of your gorgeous wedding!). The more the buyer can see the real dress, the better chance you will have of getting some interest.

Fill In the Blanks:

Give people as much information as possible about your dress. Fill in all the blanks so you end up in more searches and so that potential buyers can get the true look and feel of your dress!

Promote It!

Tell everyone you know about it. If someone is interested in purchasing your dress, send over the Smart Bride link so they can get all the details. That will save you time and effort and makes it easier for the buyer as well! Tell your Twitter followers, post it on Craigslist, Wedding Bee, etc etc.  Smart Bride is completely free for you as a seller, so use it as a place to store all the info you want about the dress, then send people to the link to check it out!

List your dress now!