Blonde Productions Group

The big white wedding you’ve dreamed of since you were a little girl is finally here (sigh!). But what you didn’t factor in when you were wearing your mother’s castoff slip around as a gown, was that we would be in a recession when the happiest day of your life hit. You have the box of ideas you’ve torn out from magazines, but know that you thumb through them, you see they don’t exactly fit into your budget. It’s time for your fairytale to get real and that means you need to get innovative. But don’t get your garter in a wad yet. There are things you can do that guests will never notice or remember.

Above all, don’t eliminate the memories, insists Danielle Yuthas of Blonde Productions Group (www.blondeproductionsgroup.com) , a wedding videographer in Colorado.

After the guests have departed, the only thing you’ll have is the photos and video, so while brides and grooms might consider leaving out photos and videos entirely, it’s a decision they will regret later. Talk with your photographer and videographer about your vision for your photos and video prior to the wedding. That discussion will allow you to determine if you need a photographer on hand throughout the reception or if you’d rather have photos taken prior to the ceremony and of the ceremony itself, and then a video of the reception.

There are ways to cut costs sensibly when planning your wedding. Here are some that Blonde Productions Group and Unleaded Productions, members of the Unleaded Group along with www.unleadedsoftware.com, suggest you can save on your big day:

1. Paper is expensive. Try cutting down on paper and postage costs by sending an electronic save-the-date instead of a snail mail reminder. Sending an email or an evite still lets people know to mark the calendar and maybe even more effectively because they will have their Outlook email calendar right there. Even creating a brief video (about $250) asking people to join you on your wedding day, will cost less than mailing custom magnets or invitations. When you are ready to send out the official invitation, a good trick is to buy fancy stationery wholesale from Xpdex or Ebay and print it your self instead of paying extra for the paper itself when you buy it through a professional printer.

2. Cake. The newest way to save money on the cake is to have a fake cake-a professionally decorated frosting-covered foam block on display and then when it is time to serve it, the “chef” wheels the cake into the kitchen where no one can see it and then distributes pieces of less-expensive sheet cake. Guests never realize the pieces weren’t from the display cake. Renting a fake cake is a a switcharoo that no one suspects. You can even have pieces of real cake inserted into the fake cake just for the bride and groom so they can still participate in the cut-the-cake photo op. Or go with cupcakes to avoid the additional cost of cake-cutting (by the slice and sometimes upwards of $1.50 per slice) that is added to the tab at many wedding venues.

3. Timing. Even though it may be cheaper, it’s understandable if you don’t want to have your wedding on a weeknight or a Sunday. The best thing to do is to have the wedding early in the day on a weekend. Your food and alcohol (and maybe even venue rental) bill will be significantly less for a reception following an 11 a.m. ceremony than it would be following a 7 p.m. wedding. If your heart is set on the 7 p.m. wedding, designate an end time. Hold your reception at a local mansion or in a boat house at a park that allow guests to stay until 10 p.m. When the lights come on, the guests will go instead of dancing and drinking into the night at a five-star hotel…on your tab. You will be long-gone on your honey moon anyway.

Contact Blonde Productions Group (www.blondeproductionsgroup.com) and Unleaded Productions (www.denvervideo.com) for our seriously cost-effective wedding video rates.