You have set the date for the big day. The next thing to do is to draw up a budget for your wedding expenses. If this is not done carefully, you might find yourself saddle with tons of expenses and invoices to pay off. The first thing to do is to decide on who pays for what. The responsibility of paying for the wedding is no longer the father of the bride but also on the groom’s family. As more couples settling down later, they are more financially sound and can help to chip in on the wedding expenses.

There are many ways to try to keep to your wedding budget. Identify the areas where the expenses might be high. These areas can be the reception, wedding dress or the wedding ring. For example, if you decide to cut down on some areas on the reception, you can choose a brunch instead of a lunch or dinner and choose to hold it during the ‘off peak’ season. You could actually save quite a huge sum of money if you time your wedding during an off peak. Not only can you save on the rental of the venue, you can also save on the hotel or resort room charges. You might even have some freebies thrown in from the hotel or resorts.

Try to keep the guests list short. Invite only close friends and family to your wedding reception.

Try to make some of the wedding accessories such as the wedding ring pillow. Or engage some artistic pals to help to decorate the reception areas. You can try to use decorations such as flowers, seashells or balloons to decorate the area. You an also try to personalize your wedding favors by making them yourselves.

For the bridal bouquet, see whether you can engage any help from your friends. It’s cheaper to make a bouquet yourself. Try to see if the bouquet can then be re-use to be one of the flower arrangements in the reception area.

Design your own wedding invitation using the computer software program and print on good quality paper. If not, have a wedding website and then post out the save the date card with details of the wedding on the website.

Try to see if you can get any referrals for disc jockeys to play the music on the day. If not, you can try to record the songs you want on an ipod and rent the sound systems. This is not preferred as it does seem a bit impersonal. With these tips, you should be able to have a grand wedding on your budget.