Any married man should forget his mistakes - no use two people remembering the same thing. Duane Dewel
Planning a Wedding on a Small Budget
You don't want to wait until you can afford it. You want to get married now but you want a real wedding with guests yet all you can afford is five minutes in front of the justice of the peace. You want a lot. You can have a lot. When you're planning a wedding on a small budget, you have to be creative, clever, smart and organized.
If you haven't purchased the ring or rings yet, one of the most economical ways to do so without going into debt is through a pawn shop. Pawn shops always have a big selection of wedding rings. That seems to be the first thing to go when people fall on hard times. Reputable pawn shops are picky about the jewelry they accept. It must be real gold and the diamonds have to be real also. They won't accept cubic zirconia. Since they only loan about a tenth of the value on jewelry, they don't have to mark up the price much when people fail to pick them up.
If you're planning a wedding on a small budget, you have to look at all the expenses and see where you can compromise. Think about the flowers. Who said the bride and the bridesmaids have to carry an entire bouquet? Think of the savings if they only carry one flower. Simply elegant.
One woman who was planning a wedding on a small budget hit the jackpot. She had been toying with the idea of having a garden wedding but didn't have the garden in which to hold the wedding. What she needed was a friend or relative with beautiful landscaping. She had noticed a particular house with lush landscaping full of flowers and bushes had been on the market for some time. She figured it hadn't sold because it was so expensive.
Planning a wedding on a small budget gave her a courage she didn't know she had because she approached the realtor for the property she was admiring and proposed a deal. She explained about her upcoming wedding and said how she had long admired the property and asked the realtor to ask the owner if she might hold her wedding there. She offered a small deposit, promised to clean up and also promised that her friend at the newspaper would do a write-up about the whole thing.
To her surprise, the owner agreed! She was ecstatic. She received the rental of the chairs and the folding tables as a gift and borrowed and crafted and drafted everyone she knew to help her. Sure enough, the following weekend her "wedding story" appeared on the front page of the Sunday paper's "Living" section, complete with photographs of the lush gardens and beautiful house. To her delight, the house sold two weeks later.
Where there's a will, there's a way. This woman's story proves that. Not only did she get a free place in which to hold her wedding, but the paper's photographers took a truckload of pictures. When she was planning a wedding on a small budget, she was creative, clever, smart and organized. You can be too!
Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the common-sensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage. Gloria Steinem |