Loans for Wedding Receptions and Venues

The two most important and memorable factors contributing to the success of a wedding are the food and the entertainment (who doesn’t have a story to tell about an Uncle Bob tearing up the Dance floor?) The quality of the food is easily determined by the reception hall that you choose and the menu that you select. But the entertainment is a bit more subjective… the music that you choose is very important based on the demographics of your guests, and the choice between a Disc Jockey (DJ) and a Wedding Singer / Band can make all the difference. Here are some pluses and minuses to having a Disc Jockey vs a Wedding Band to help you make the best decision:

Wedding Band Pros

• Often excellent sound quality
• Live performances are always very energetic
• Songs can be custom tailored to your needs. If you wish to modify some lyrics or sound (maybe you prefer an acoustic version of a song, it can be accomplished).

Wedding Band Cons

• Expensive, Expensive, Expensive. Expect to pay at a minimum $3,000 for a small piece wedding band and up to $10,000 for a good wedding band.
• Often times you have to buy a meal for each member of the band. You may possibly have to pay for a meal for all 10 band members, plus their sound and or lighting guy. If your reception hall doesn’t give you a discount for entertainment meals, then these numbers can add up quickly.
• Tone.. Some wedding bands are not very eclectic, they can play one music genre and that’s it. Would you like say some 70’s disco and some 90’s rock music? The band may not be able to play both sounds..

Disc Jockey Pros

• Tone.. You know what you’re getting. With the exception of disc skipping, you know the sound that you’re going to hear.. the song won’t have any surprises.
• DJ’s have access to thousands of songs that can be played… If disco doesn’t seem to be cutting it, they can easily transition into a different music genre.
• Costs are low in comparison to a band.

Disc Jockey Cons

• Cheesey DJ’s. How many of us have been to a wedding with a cheesey DJ who thinks that he’s a rock star or better yet, the center of the party? Be careful with the DJ you select, do you really want him or her running around with the microphone handing out funny glasses and top hats at your wedding?

We found a great article talking about wedding colors written by Dennis Estrada.  Here are some things to think about when picking flowers and decorating for the wedding.

• Black depicts formal, modern, sexy, and sophisticated.
• Blue calls for calmness, tranquility, truthfulness, nobleness, and faithfulness.
• Brown makes you feel comfortable, warm, and cozy.
• Green represents wealth, money, nature, environment, fertility, growth, re-birth, victory, healing, abundant, and renewable.
• Orange stands for energy, sun, warmth and comfortable.
• Pink symbolizes the femininity, admiration, love, pretty, spring, gentleness, harmony, fidelity, and sensuality.
• Purple shows nobility, royalty, luxury, authority, creativity, inspiration, and spirituality. It is a mysterious and intriguing color. The darker shades of purple represent sensuality, while the lighter shades of purple represent romance and delicate.
• Red creates excitement as red raises blood pressure. Red also symbolizes love, passion, sex, and power. Hence, we like to give red roses to show a strong affection of love. Red means good luck in China, while red means purity in India. Life, vitality, celebrations, and gifts are associated with red. The negative images about red are blood, war, danger, fire, and anger.
• White is one of the neutral colors which are common in wedding dress, flowers, and attire. White is also associated with purity, innocence, cleanliness, and virtue. Think of snow, winter, and peace as wedding themes.
• Yellow is a happy, joyful, cheerful, and hopeful color. Because it is close to the color gold, it is sometimes a symbol of wealth.

Dennis Estrada owns wedding advice, fall wedding ideas, and green weddings website.

Alcohol can add a big expense to the total price of a catering hall.  At many places, an open bar will set you back an extra $25.00 or more per person.  If you plan to have 150 guests or more, they will add an extra $3,750 to the cost of your wedding.  Some alternatives which will allow you to reduce the alcohol expenses at your wedding are:

• Bring your own Alcohol.  Many reception halls will allow you to provide your own alcohol and they will provide the bar tenders.  For these catering halls, it is often best to find a local liquor store that will not only provide the alcohol at a below retail price, but will take back unused bottles of liquor.  Often these same places will make several “runs” – they will check up on your alcohol and replenish anything if needed.

• Cash Bar – Not my favorite alternative, but if you’re in a bind for cash, it’s better than no bar at all.  If someone wants to boose it up, they’ll have to pay… Something to keep in mind, you are going to spend an incredible amount of money on your wedding and this one simply thing unfortunately can leave a bad impression in the minds of your guest.  The last thing people think about before going to a wedding is bringing cash for tips and the bar… so, it could be a potential inconvenience for your guest.

• Drink Tickets – Don’t want to pay for an open bar, but don’t want to make your guests pay for all of their drinks – go half way.  Many reception halls will allow you to prepay for the alcohol you can afford and assign drink tickets.  Your guests can use their tickets to “buy” drinks or give it to a friend… When they’re all out of tickets, it’s a cash bar for them.

We recently posted an article discussing a great way to save on your weddding dress.  Here’s another great idea, sample sales.  What happens to those wedding dresses that people try on during the season?  At the end of the season, they are sold at a discount.  Last season at the Vera Wang Sample Sale, gowns were sold for 50% to 75% off the original price! Don’t be fooled… there’s nothing wrong with sample dresses, they are in excellent condition and, but simply can not be sold at a retail prices because they’ve been tried on.  Sample sales are a great way to get designer dresses for only a fraction of the cost.  And you’d be surprised about how many of them go on!  Here are some popular Wedding Gown Sample Sales in the New York City Area alone:

• Amsale Bridesmaids Sample Sale
• Saks Fifth Avenue Bridal Gown Sample Sale
• Vera Wang Wedding Dress Sample Sale

We’ve received some questions regarding the best ways to save on a wedding dresses.  From our experiences these are the steps that you should take to save on a bridal gown.

1. Search the internet and magazines to find the wedding dress that you really love.
2. Know who the designed the wedding gown and what the style number is, you’ll need this.
3. Go to a local store to try on all of wedding dresses that you think you may like to wear.  For the gowns that you like, be sure to note the size that fits you best.
4. Get a quote for the gown, but don’t buy the wedding dress from them until you’ve completely shopped around and feel comfortable with your decision.
5. Next get quotes from companies that sell wedding dresses online.  Get a written quote from as many of these places as possible.  You can get the quote via email or fax.
6. Finally, after finding the best price around, order from a company that will beat their competitors prices by 5%.  Several places that will do this are:

• RK Bridal No Frills Package
• Pearl’s Place

We recently found an excellent article about Wedding Loans written by Peter Taylor, a senior financial analyst at easyfinance4u in the UK.  Pete brings many good points to the table that we would like to share with our readers.

What is a Wedding Loan? 

A wedding loan is a specialized loan service that aims to cater to the borrowers who need finance for organizing weddings or meeting payments of a wedding already held.

• Wouldn’t it be easier had the entire cost of wedding been broken into a number of parts and repayable in small installments? A wedding loan intends to do this with the expenses incurred during weddings, and thus ease the burden on the borrower.

Things to consider when getting a Wedding Loan

• Failing to plan is planning to fail - You wouldn’t want your wedding to go awry because of a shortage of funds. Planning ensures that there is enough to expend on weddings. Adequate consideration must be given to planning the budget of the wedding. The planning process may be fun, but the results obviously are unprecedented. The various concerned people sit together and decide the various costs that are incurred. In addition, a priority table is prepared so that a less important expenditure can be postponed or omitted altogether. With the changing times, the couple themselves finance the wedding. Nevertheless, it will be prudent to consult the elderly for a proper understanding of the expenses that are commonly incurred on such occasions. A proper planning for wedding budget must have in built flexibilities to provide for contingencies as and when they crop up.

• Working the details of the wedding loan

  After screening lenders through a number of stages, you single out a lender offering wedding loans. Lenders often work as a network, thus increasing the purview of wedding loan deals. Since the requirements of borrowers differ, customized rather than standardized wedding loan deals are offered. The case of each borrower is studied minutely at this stage to find out the amount that can be lent as wedding loans. Interest options and repayment options are explained to the borrower and he is allowed to make his decisions. Borrowers must not take decisions without knowing in full about its present and future repercussions. As needs be, borrowers can consult the experts or independent financial advisor for a more detailed explanation of the term or any feature of wedding loans.

  For a plush wedding, a large wedding loan will required to be drawn. Qualifying for a large amount of Wedding loans requires a collateral in the form of home or any other asset to serve as the backing for the loan. This is known as gaining on the equity in home. Nevertheless, people can get approved for large wedding loans without collateral, if they are able to instill sufficient faith in the loan provider regarding their credibility. Borrowers with a good credit history do not face difficulties in getting unsecured wedding loans because of the faith that they generate in the loan providers. A person with a bad credit history does not fail entirely in getting a wedding loan. Many loan providers accept to offer them financial assistance during weddings at higher interest rates.

  Thus, many people who would have accepted a bland wedding as their fate and the result of the scarcity of resources can now heave a sigh of relief. Through a wedding loan, they can now have lush weddings minus the fear of destabilising financial health through overspending.

Dependent upon your catering hall / venue, you may have to pay for your wedding cake, or it may already be already included in your price per person.  If the former is true and you have to pay for your wedding cake, there are a number of options to consider in order to lower the cost of your cake.  Here are some ideas to consider to lower the cost of your wedding cake.

• A simple, plain cake is very cost effective to create, and by simply decorating the cake with fresh flowers, makes for a very elegant wedding cake.

• The more time consuming and expensive part of a wedding cake is it’s decoration.  Obviously the larger the cake, the more time spent decorating it.  Consider designing a smaller wedding cake, while cutting and serving a large plain cake?

• Avoid a circular cake, a square cake can cut more equal portions and thus less waste in cutting serving sizes.
• Purchase a cake from an independent off location (not at the reception hall) baker.

• Don’t save the top tier of the wedding cake.  Often times couples save the top tier of their wedding cake to eat on their anniversary.  Do you plan on eating that year old frozen cake?  Why not server the top tier to your guest?

Have any other wedding cake savings ideas?  Leave a comment.

In addition to the other must have wedding items, wedding flowers can be a costly expense. If you’re planning on having fresh flowers for the wedding ceremony (whether it’s a church, temple, venue), each member of the bridal party (boutiques for the bridesmaids and flower girl and boutonnieres for the Groomsmen / Ushers / Ring Bearer / Pageboy), floral arrangements / centerpieces for each table at the reception hall, flowers for the parents – it all adds up. Here are some ideas to save on Wedding Flowers.

• Choose Flowers that are in Season

• Choose Less Expensive Flowers, or use less expensive flowers as color fillers with expensive flowers.

Top 10 Most Expensive Flowers:

1. Casablanca Lily
2. Gardenia
3. Hydrangea
4. Lily of the Valley
5. Lisianthus
6. Orchid
7. Peony
8. Rose
9. Stephanotis
10. Tulip

Top 10 Inexpensive Flowers:

1. Alstroemeria Lily
2. Baby’s Breath
3. Carnation
4. Chrysanthemum
5. Daisy
6. Freesia
7. Gladiolus
8. Queen Anne’s Lace
9. Sunflower
10. Sweet William

• It’s tacky, but consider decreasing the size of your Bridal party to reduce the number of bouquets that must be purchased. Boquets are typically $80 – $120 each!

• Instead of using flower arrangements for center pieces, consider using candles (possibly on top of mirrored tiles) and scatter rose petals or fall leaves to bring color to the table.

• Choose in season flowers – this will reduce much of the overhead that the florist will incur.

After your wedding is over, the only thing that is left are your memories, photos and videos. Hiring the perfect Wedding Photographer is a must, I would highly suggest taking short cuts in this area. However, I would suggest choosing some cost savings options that most photographers provide. Here are some things to consider:

• If you’re getting digital pictures taken, find a photographer who will provide you with a digital copy of your photographs. If you’re getting classic film photos taken, find a photographer who will provide you with the negatives.
  • Your wedding photographer is going to provide you with many album package options. These packages can range in price from $500 – $5,000. Most photographers simply pick out a variety of photos that they think you would like, have you make the final decision and then send them out to a lab for touch up and print. If you’re looking to save money, there are a number of labs that you can contact directly to avoid the photographer’s price mark up.
  • Additionally, by getting access (in contract) to all of the digital photos or negatives, you can avoid having your wedding pictures being taken hostage. Often times an unethical photographer will hold on to the photo negatives and charge outrageous prices for any prints that you may want. A year after your wedding, you decide you want one more 8 x 10, are you prepared to pay $40, $50, $60 for each 8 x 10?

Photo Source: JVP Weddings

Another great wedding saving tip to consider – Plan your wedding date on the off season.

Tip: Plan Your Wedding in 6 Months!

Another option to consider is planning a wedding in six months! It can be hard to do for a lot of people, but if you create a plan and stick to it, it can be done. The great benefit of planning a wedding in six months, is that a lot of people won’t do it… and venues know this. They also know if the date is not already booked, then it probably won’t get booked. As a result, venues are often willing to offer a very tempting price on a date that is not already booked. Sometimes these prices can be up to 1/2 the amount of the original cost per person.

Consider this – Save Money on your wedding photographer by getting digital photos on disc.