OLBlog: Wedding

5:15 AM

How to Save Money on a Beautiful Wedding in the Social Media Age

How to save money on a beautiful wedding: The key to saving money on your wedding is creative thinking and a lot of research. Talking about how much your wedding cost is like being a mother – everyone has an opinion and everything you do is wrong.

One said a wedding should cost no more than $1000 on a nice dinner for family and friends, with a snide aside to "use the rest for the house deposit you're always whingeing about".

Finding the perfect venue for your wedding, and the perfect spot for your wedding photos, can be a challenging task. Tweet

Another said I was unrealistic and $50,000 was normal for a Sydney wedding at 2016 prices.
Meanwhile, a colleague told me that his brother's wedding reception cost a sheep; slaughtered on his farm, roasted on a spit, and served on paper plates.

Ultimately you should have the wedding that will make you and your partner happy. Including no wedding at all, if that's your preference.
Many engaged couples will be looking for a few tips to keep costs down.

1. Be creative about venues

My fiancé was happy for me to make the wedding plans as long as I didn't go overboard. His one request was to be married in church.

It's not for everyone, but I was surprised to find it was a cost-effective choice. A fee of about $700 covered the venue – a beautiful sandstone church near the harbour – as well as the service.

Civil celebrants typically charge the same amount but the cost of the venue is extra, with many councils charging $1000 or more to use a public park or scenic spot.

One of my cousins used a pop-up wedding service, a business that travels all over Australia and sets up somewhere for a day, with decorations and a photographer. Couples can book in for hourly slots, and then hold a reception elsewhere.

It's the reception venue where costs can spiral.

You will usually pay more if the venue also provides the catering. Don't forget there are many venues with kitchens where you can bring in your own caterers.

I found a Sydney sailing club – a ferry ride or short drive from the church – where we could have our own food and entertainment. It cost $800 and we had to organize decorations and cleaning.

Elizabeth Hollingsworth, of My Wedding Décor, says popular wedding venues can be half the price if you have a mid-week wedding.

2. Research online

I had no choice in the matter because we were living in London and getting married in Sydney. I organized the whole event remotely, with some back-up on the ground, and then flew in two weeks beforehand. The advantage was that I was able to do a lot of research online.

The biggest expense at a wedding is usually the food and alcohol.

I spent a lot of time on Google finding caterers and then emailing them. They often asked me to come in for a tasting. I felt that would be time-consuming and leave me open to a hard sell but being almost 17,000 kilometres away, I had a good excuse why I couldn't.

Instead, I got about 10 different quotes, which ranged in price from under $30 to upwards of $75 per guest. I filtered according to price, the menu, online reviews of the business, and how responsive they were to my emails. I found you can save quite a bit by opting for a buffet rather than plated meals.

We also got an alcohol package, which cost almost as much as the food, though we made sure teetotallers and children were not included in that tally.

I also used the internet to find my dress. Through an eBay listing, I found a dress shop near London holding a sale of shop samples. I found the dress of my dreams for £600 ($1200 at 2009 exchange rates) – expensive but good value as it was the French label, Cymbeline, marked down from £2500.

There are other ways to save on the dress – one of my relatives got her wedding dress made in China for only a few hundred dollars, and I heard recently about an online marketplace for brides to sell their dresses.

3. Embrace the homemade

Apparently getting married in the social media age can mean some serious self-imposed peer pressure. Many brides are inspired by the weddings they see on Instagram and Pinterest.

But there's another millennial trend that's just as Instagrammable but healthier on the bank balance – the "maker movement" or the embrace of homemade and artisanal craft.

One of the best things we did was to look around our circle of family and friends and think about the talent we could tap into. We did this mainly because it felt meaningful to get people involved – it's the personalised touch – but it also helped save costs.

My cousin, a professional florist, arranged our flowers at cost price. My mother made the wedding cake, though we paid a cake maker to ice it for us, and then decorated it with flowers.

One of my friends from high school designed our invitations, and another friend sang for our first dance as bride and groom. We called in a favour from a family friend to drive me to the service in his vintage Rolls-Royce.

Our biggest saving was photography. I was shocked to be quoted $3000-$5000 for a package that didn't include digital copies of the prints, or any reproduction rights. Instead we enticed a photographer friend to do the honors in exchange for an airline ticket from Vienna to Sydney.

4. Keep things simple

Big wedding parties add to costs, especially if the bridesmaids wear matching dresses, carry bouquets and have their hair and make-up done alongside the bride. I simplified my life – and lowered the expense – by having just one bridesmaid and one flower girl – and my husband had his brother as best man.

Friends of mine went one better, exchanging vows and then drawing names out of a hat to see which guests would witness the signatures on the legal paperwork. However, if you're wearing a big wedding dress, a bridesmaid is a good idea, as you may need help in the bathroom. Ahem.

Embrace simplicity with the guest list, too. We had about 110 adult guests – our catering and alcohol bill of about $7000 would have been double if we had 220 and half if we'd had 55.

Remember that intimacy is romantic as well as frugal.

11:28 AM

How to Become A Wedding Planner

Do you want to be a Wedding Planner? A wedding planner can be expected to contribute to all aspects of preparation. From the general theme, to creative and practical thinking about all parts of the day, to the essentials of transport, venue, ceremony, flowers, catering, music, decorations, photographs and the cake, to peripherals such as accommodation for guests and safe-keeping of presents until after the honeymoon - and even the clearing up afterwards!

Having a background in industries such as hospitality & catering or design can certainly be beneficial, but they are not the only skills to consider if you’re proposing to be a wedding planner.

Essential skills
Carrying out core wedding preparation tasks effectively means utilizing essential skills in negotiation, organization and communication. It’s also worth considering the challenges you will face as a wedding planner.

Long and anti-social hours of work (particularly as the calendar flips closer to the event).
Working with individuals who may not be ‘your type’ of people! High maintenance, demanding or indecisive individuals could all become clients and may not even present themselves as any of these things initially. It’s once those choices start appearing, stresses creep in and decisions need to be made that problems may arise.
Speaking of problems, both problems and the pressure can cause a crisis of confidence – and competence. With the amount of work involved in organizing even a small and exclusive wedding, problems are bound to arise and as these surface, pressure can build leading to an emotionally charged, highly stressful working situation. Managing such issues is largely what a couple is paying a wedding planner to deal with – so that they don’t have to.

Can you handle it all and the client?

The planner – the professional and the personality

Still not sure if you are suited? Spending time exploring your character strengths as well as your skills and knowledge base can help you to identify whether becoming a wedding planner is likely to be a positive career move. As well as offering those essential communication and negotiation skills, now’s the time to ask yourself if your personality fits.

Calm - but assertive when needed. A calm, measured approach to all aspects of wedding planning is essential. And this does not just extend to working with the couples who may be demanding of attention at all hours, it’s also about the families and service providers who may be involved. Being able to manage family aspects can make a real difference to the success of the wedding day, whilst being able to work productively with the service providers and vendors involved can make a real difference to the success of a wedding planning business, as these other professionals will be integral to your network of contacts.
Positive and passionate – in equal measures. Part of being an effective wedding planner includes the ability to be passionate and positive even about those aspects of a wedding which hold no interest or relevance to you but are what the clients want! Being positive about new ideas is essential; even if your own opinion is that some things are best avoided. It’s not your dream wedding, but it’s your responsibility to deliver someone else’s.
Diplomatic – highly emotive, stressful situations mean tempers can easily flare and It’s almost a given that the bride will have ‘a moment’. However, it’s completely unacceptable for the planner to be anything less than patient and diplomatic in the face of any kind of wedding crisis – both in the planning or on the day. A wedding planner needs to be professional despite any extenuating circumstances, facilitating goodwill between all involved.
Committed - just as marriage works best when individuals are committed, so too does a wedding planner. Being reliable and available are essential, as couples often begin planning a long way ahead and being able to assure them of commitment and availability can be key to gaining a contract. On the business side, a wedding planner also need to be committed to running the business schedule as well as juggling the many individual wedding schedules.
Flexible – including being happy to put your personal life on the back-burner when your professional schedule demands it -after all, being a wedding planner isn’t a 9 to 5 role! With many weddings being held on the weekend, evenings and weekends will easily become working hours so that you can be available to the individuals involved - the couple, the venue, the service providers, for example. Their availability will impact on yours, so being flexible with your time is essential.
Capable – in terms of professional competence and personal fitness. Being physically and mentally fit is essential to the wedding planner role, which can mean long hours, physical demands and an exhausting schedule in the run up to each big day. Having a can-do approach also inspires clients’ confidence, so demonstrating capability (as well as calm) can be key to clinching clients.
Organized – approximately 80% of the wedding planner role is administrative. This includes liaising with contractors and suppliers and keeping full accounts – across more than one wedding at a time! Adding to this the demand of managing a wedding event planning business makes organization an essential skill all round.

Becoming a wedding planner means being able to demonstrate experience. Building a portfolio or studying an event management qualification which allows this to be achieved can significantly support your venture. After a few weddings if the idea of running your own wedding planning business and being the ‘on call’ person required proves to be too much, the experience and qualifications gained could make you the ideal in-house wedding planner at a specific venue, to deliver the dream but within a more regular context and with a more shared responsibility and adding to your wedding planner options!