Save on Your Wedding Dress

A bride can easily spend 10% of the wedding budget on her dress. The easiest way to cut the price of the dress is to buy on sale! David's Bridal has an outlet store with some dresses priced under $100.

Another way to save money is to purchase a second-hand wedding dress. Thrift stores are a great place to shop but have limited sizes and styles. Using the internet will give you a wider selection to choose from. Ebay, Poshmark, and Preownedweddingdresses.com are excellent websites to start your wedding dress hunt!

Save on Your Honeymoon

Using websites like Groupon Getaways or LivingSocial Escape, you can book your honeymoon at a discounted rate. I recommend shopping for an "All-Inclusive" Resort. This may help save you money on transportation, meals, and entertainment. 


Image from LivingSocial. Deal may be discontinued.

Your wedding day is the biggest party you'll ever plan. The budget can be the most stressful part of the wedding, but using the internet as a wedding planning tool can help alleviate some of that stress. Google everything before you purchase, or you'll never know how much you can save!

Pinterest is very helpful when planning a wedding. It helps you keep track of ideas and inspiration.

When my husband and I got engaged, I turned to Pinterest for ideas to make our wedding unique. One of the items I pinned was navy blue luggage tags to be used as escort cards. Genius! It was a necessary item and it could double as a personalized favor.

I spent 6 months trying to find these luggage tags. I kept checking Amazon, Etsy, PartyCity, etc and could not find them. That's when I turned to my then-fiancé for help. He suggested "Why not make them?" I was baffled. I thought he wanted me to find navy blue leather and some how fashion 150 luggage tags out of it. He explained how he used to customize shoes and he'd use leather paint. 

Now our hunt was on for 150 plain tags that were affordable. Michael's Craft Store had silver luggage tags that came 10 per box. We utilized their weekly coupons, buying boxes 2 at a time (I would buy one, he would buy one), sometimes going to multiple locations. We purchased the gold leather paint on Amazon. For weeks, I would paint these tags. At the end, it was exactly what I wanted.

If you can't find exactly what you pinned, don't stress out. Just make it yourself. You'll have a one of a kind piece that your guests will enjoy.

A note to my engaged friends/friends who are thinking about getting married,

As Jurem and I were getting ready for bed last night, we were talking about how many ideas change during the “engagement period”.

Ideas before marriage:
He reminded me that I wanted a beach wedding and he always wanted a church wedding.
I didn’t want a strapless dress and it had to be smooth fabric.
We wanted the reception at a vineyard in Napa.
We wanted silver accents.
I wanted to get married the week of Thanksgiving and have a “Thanksgiving buffet”

What we actually ended up doing:
We got married at the church I grew up attending.
I had a strapless, lace, 7 layer, princess dress.
We had the reception at an Estate.
We had gold accents to match our Disney cake topper.
We got married on October 4th (the day we first said “I love you” to each other)


Yesterday, none of the things that we originally wanted mattered. The wedding that we had was the wedding of our dreams. I could not picture it any other way. Don’t worry about having the biggest flower arrangements, the perfect dress, or an orchestra.
The only things you’ll really look back on are the person you meet at the alter, saying “I do” and getting to spend the rest of your life waking up next to that person. Your dream wedding is only one day in your lifetime. Your “dream husband or wife” is the rest of your lifetime. 

I saw a popular post on Facebook that said something about this and I agree with it.

My husband and I dated for 5 years before we got married. We’ve been married for almost 4 months now and it still feels like we’re dating (In a good way, of course).

He’ll call me from work and ask me if I’d like to join him for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. I get excited. I still take at least an hour to get ready. I shower, pick out a dress that I think he’ll like, do my makeup, do my hair and wear the perfume that he likes. He’ll come home, get ready in our walk-in closet so I don’t see him until he’s ready. When he opens the door, he always looks incredibly handsome. I can’t tell you how adorable he looks in a button up with suspenders and a bow tie. I’m a lucky girl.

It’s not always wine’ing and dining. Even taking our dogs to the dog park or going grocery feels like a date with him. I truly enjoy his company. He makes me laugh. We catch ourselves arguing about what soup to buy but at the end we giggle and join hands.

The point I’m trying to get across is this: you don’t just suddenly fall in love and stay in love. You continuously fall in love everyday. Never stop enjoying time together. Like my husband said on our first champagne toast on our honeymoon, “Cheers, to the best company I’ll ever have.”