Now that your man has finally proposed, you can’t wait to plan the perfect wedding you’ve always dreamt of – a big wedding with all your family and friends gathered on a private beach in the Maldives as you walk down the aisle in that dream designer gown you’ve had your eyes on for the longest time. Then the world comes crashing down when you realise your wedding budget is not quite as big as your vision is. We say, chin up! Just because you can’t get married at the most expensive beach or wear a designer wedding gown doesn’t mean your wedding is any less perfect. Let us show you 5 tips on how to achieve a perfect wedding with or without a big wedding budget.
1. Create a Wedding Style Book
First and foremost, begin a wedding stylebook before you commit to any form of wedding planning. Every bride should be armed with one, even if she already knows what she wants for her big day. Your wedding stylebook could be a scrapbook, folder, an Instagram or Pinterest account, or anything that is convenient for you to collect images and inspirations for your big day. Trawl wedding websites, magazines, and other channels of social media for wedding inspirations and ideas. But don’t limit your research to just wedding-related elements; broaden your search to anything and everything that appeals to you, be it a shade or colour or a particular type of lace trim.
Your collection of images and inspirations you’ve saved will act as a representation of your personal style and help you narrow down the elements you’d like to include in your wedding. Having a ready collection of elements that you like at hand also makes things easier when you want to look for cheaper style alternatives that still reflects your personality.
2. Stay Faithful to Your Wedding Budget
Ideally, you’d like to get married the way you’ve always dreamt of. But reality sinks in and you realise you’ll need to break the piggybank just to fulfill your dream wedding. While there’s nothing wrong in wanting a luxurious destination wedding, if you need to go into debt just to pay for one night of extravagance, would it still be the perfect wedding?
The perfect wedding shouldn’t be one that puts you in debt after the day is over. It doesn’t even need to be a grand one or on foreign soil. Your perfect wedding should be one that reflects your personality and fits within your wedding budget. That is not to say if you really want a destination wedding, you can’t have one; you just need to make sacrifices in other areas of your wedding to accommodate this luxury. Instead of a beach wedding in the Maldives, consider somewhere nearer and equally beautiful like Bali or Krabi. Then, rework your guest list to only close family members and friends. Ask your guests to pay for their own way and stay there to lessen the burden on your wedding budget.
3. Hire a Wedding Planner
Wedding planners are well experienced in planning any type of wedding, big or small, costly or otherwise. Their experience and contacts make them the best individuals to go to for help in planning a wedding. Bounce your ideas off them and let them advise you on what would work best for your big day. Since most wedding planners work closely with florists and other wedding related vendors, they may have access to industry discounts, which can be passed down to you, freeing up more of your budget for other areas of your wedding. A wedding planner also helps keep you organised by keeping track of the costs of, appointments with and payments to various wedding vendors, so you’ll be able to enjoy the planning process and remain aware of where your dollars and cents are going instead of feeling overwhelmed and stressed out.
If hiring a wedding planner for the whole duration of your wedding planning is really beyond your cost, then you should consider hiring a day planner just for your actual day to take the stress off you, so you can enjoy your day as a bride without having to worry about any wedding detail.
4. An Out-of-the-box Wedding
The perfect wedding wouldn’t be perfect if it resembled the 10 other weddings that have taken place in the same ballroom before yours, would it? Break out of the all-too-familiar mold of wedding celebrations by taking yours out of the confines of a hotel ballroom. Make full use of our sunny weather and plan a romantic beach or garden wedding, or have it at a refurbished café or building for a different vintage vibe. If you’re having your wedding outdoors, do remember to come up with a wet weather plan beforehand.
Forget about the cookie-cutter wedding favours such as playing cards or bottle openers. Instead, customise your own wedding favours and wedding decorations to infuse your big day with some personality and uniqueness. The additional effort your put into personalising your wedding and gifts also shows your guests how much you appreciate their presence and enjoyment on your big day by gifting them with one-of-a-kind wedding favours to take home. If customising wedding favours for all your guests is too tall an order for a busy bride like you, then opt for a smaller project such as creating your own table centerpieces or a wedding guestbook for your reception table. Use your wedding stylebook to look for wedding DIY ideas and inspiration, and ask your family and bridesmaids to help you with the project so it’ll get completed on time.
5. Learn to Take It Easy
After months spent planning the perfect wedding, you expect everything to unfold according to plan, only to find out that your place cards are not printed with the font you’ve asked for and your flowers are spotting the wrong shade of pink. Before you morph into Bridezilla, ask yourself if these blunders are serious enough to ruin your entire wedding? If, despite clashing colours and fonts, the answer is no, then you don’t need to lose your cool over it. If it is a blunder that can potentially ruin your big day, keep your cool and deal with it calmly to seek a swift resolution for the problem at hand so your day can go ahead as planned.
There is no point in getting yourself worked up and stressed out when it comes to a detail as inconsequential as mismatched fonts on your place cards. That is not the detail that makes your wedding perfect – what makes the day perfect is having all your loved ones share in the love and joy of your big day. Learn to take things easy when the day doesn’t go according to plan so you’ll be able to fully enjoy your wedding day unobstructed.
Where you say your “I do’s”, what you wear and how much you spend on that one day of celebration is not what makes your wedding perfect. So don’t get bogged down by the minor details if you don’t get to wed at your dream venue or in the wedding gown of your dreams; instead, focus on the bigger picture – you’re surrounded by all your loved ones and you’re marrying the love of your life! Now, that’s what perfect weddings are all about.