Wedding Receptions: Stay Organized To Save Money
The wedding planning reception takes lots of time and great care because it requires a complexity of services. Before shopping around for locations, you need to choose a date and book the hall or the restaurant at least a year in advance. The budget also needs to be planned starting from the date, because the costs for the reception party depend on the season, the month and the time of the week.
In wedding planning, reception pricing will be higher for Saturday parties than for Sunday events. Moreover, late spring, summer and early fall months take more money out of your pocket. Halls, restaurants and caterers are willing to grant discounts to people getting married in winter, with two exceptions: the end of December and Valentine’s Day. You can make considerable savings by organizing the wedding at the end of January.
Wedding Reception Budgeting Tips
The budget plays the most important part for wedding planning. Reception parties add up costs for videography, flowers, favors, cake too, in addition to the expenses for the hall and the catering service. This means that in the light of more detailed analyses we can easily conclude that the reception party is your greatest expense, although not the only one. Do not order too much drink or food; good estimates are essential in order to stick to the budget. This is why you should know the exact number of guests you are expecting.
Many restaurants and halls charge by person. Get a round figure before you start negotiating for the hall, since you won’t be able to estimate the rest of the expenses. Send a confirmation card with all the invitations so that you know how many guests there will be. Then focus on the seatings, because wedding planning needs to cover this issue too.
Stay Organized
Reception details should be put down in checklists so that you do not overlook important aspects. Go through each of them step by step, preferably with help from family and friends. Before actually deciding on a certain location, it is a good idea to read some wedding testimonials and try to learn from other people’s experience. Moreover, there is lots of information to use from wedding magazines and directories available not only on the Internet but at newsstands too.
A major task that needs to be added to the list is preparing the wedding speeches and toasts. This key point is lost on many grooms and there is a last minute push to just throw something together. The grooms wedding speeches, bride wedding speech, mother of bride speech, and various other wedding speeches should be planned long before the reception.
Don’t Forget The Music
Don’t forget about how important music is. The reception hall owner or manager may help you with some suggestions and contact details. But you can also shop around, talk to friends and relatives and see whether they can give you some useful hints.