Sample #2

How To Plan A Wedding And Save Money

This is where we start cutting off a big piece of the pie.

In order to lower your expenses to the maximum, consider your budget tool. Infront of each  item, write at least one way to reduce its amount. You can use the tips provided all along this book and add others possibilities specific to your wedding.

There are five main ways to cut your costs :

Networking

By having a friend of friend who sings in a band, is a photographer or bakes cakes, you may be able to save yourself a lot of money.

There are many ways you can network. Essentially:

- Think of all your friends, then think what are the topics of your life they could help you with

- Think of all the contacts your friends can have. These form your indirect network. They are really easy to reach by just asking your friends, and this is already a huge network (consider ten of your friends amongst with each of them having ten different friends, this makes you 100 people you can ask things to! And I bet you have more than ten friends... See the point?

- Make new contacts. Every time you meet someone, think and discuss to find what he can bring to you, and what you can bring to him.

- When you get somebody’s contact, get in touch with the person the same evening (send a quick email for instance). This way, he will remember you more and so will you.

- Make a list of your networking contacts, mentioning topics where you can be helpful to each other.

DIY

For several things, you will not need to buy items because you will be able to make them yourself.

Be it the invitations, table decorations, even baking your cake or stylishing your gown. There are plenty of things you can do yourself.

This is actually one of the greatest possibilities for you to have you dream wedding while saving a lot of money.

Negociation

For a start, let's just focus on a few basics here:

Vendors are not your friends. You are not here to please them.
Although they can be of precious help and you want to have good relationships with them eventually. This comes AFTER the contract is signed. Which means that before that, you need to come strong, be clear on what you expect, and ask every discount possible.

Have a larger horizon.
Take some time in advance so you can see several vendors. This will give you a margin of choice for your negociation. Also, having these meetings will give you points of comparison and a realistic idea of services and prices.

(Continued in the book...)