Wedding Struggles

I am planning a wedding on a tight budget myself - I can tell you what I am doing, maybe that will help.

We are getting married in our church, but they don`t allow a wedding reception to be held there so we called around and decided on a park near the church with a heated in closed pavillon that holds up to 150 people. The pavillon cost is much less that of a hall and no one tells you you have to use their caterer. We want to do our own food, we are going to cook a couple of big items - a full size ham, a large pan of roasted chicken pieces, and a large roast beef. We are then asking our wedding party to each bring a side dish. We will furnish the drinks - coffee, ice water, and pop (no alcohol), and we will purchase a professionally done wedding cake. We are going to have a couple other home made dessert choices out there so we are looking at a simple wedding cake.
Floral arrangements will be a mix of real with silk and the people decorating everything are friends and relatives.
We are renting linens, china, glassware, etc to keep it from looking too picnicy but renting those items is just a fraction of using a caterer. The party rental places usually rent each item is a few cents a piece for the china. And the one we are using will let us make payments on our order over the next year since the wedding isn`t til next Spring - April.
The party rental places also rent dance floors and platforms - in case you were wanting music and dancing, and they can set up anywhere - even if its just your back yard.

Okay thats some of what I`m doing for my wedding, please feel free to email me if you want to discuss other finance issues, I`ll try to help when I can.
Neona807@yahoo.com

The good news is that you can have a wedding on a small budget....no one will argue with that. My first piece of advice is to pick things up little by little....it is a whole lot easier to spend 20 bucks a week than to put 200 bucks down at once. Secondly...do it yourself!!! it really isn`t that hard. I have also heard of people having an ice cream social as a wedding reception. They have a saturday wedding usually early afternoon and then have cake and ice cream (with all the different toppings). That is something that is cheaper than a sit down dinner and everybody likes cake and ice cream. Or you can make it a dessert bar.....easy to do yourself too!!! most things can be made the day before or put together as they are put on the table. I myself only spent maybe $1500.00 on my reception which is cheap these days. We had a pig roast with a couple different sides. I would recommend it to anyone. If you would like some more ideas please let me know......lep0201@aol.com