Money Saving Wedding Ideas

So I've been planning Nice Guy's and my wedding for about 5 months now, and I got some really good deals that I thought I'd share, just in case anyone out there is planning a wedding as well.

1. Bridemaid Dresses = $26.99 CAD each

I saw this dress in Ricki's, loved it then bought and wore it to a friends wedding. It is my favourite colour. I saw it a couple months later and it had dropped to clearance price ($26.99) and I decided to call up all my bridesmaids and tell them to go to their local Ricki's store and see if they liked it. All three of them went that weekend and even though they have very different body types, all of them said they loved how it looked on them. So I said done! That's the dress. We had them before we had my wedding dress picked out.

2. Bridesmaid Gift = $29.99 CAD each

After we had gotten my ring resized I kept getting emails from People's Jewellers. Which ended up being a good thing because they had a huge sale and these blue diamond necklaces were regular $79.99, so now I can get them a really nice piece of jewellery, plus a little something extra.


3. Favours = ~$1.50 CAD each



We decided to make jam and jelly for our wedding favours, which is great if you have A LOT of time before the wedding. I kinda knew Nice Guy and I would probably be getting married in 2013, so in the summer of 2012 we had a talk and decided to go berry picking. We got Saskatoon Berries and Chokecherries from a local public woodlot, and Evans Cherries from a neighbour who had a few OVERLOADED trees that she couldn't possibly use all by herself. Then we washed and froze everything (which apparently makes better jelly!) and then waited till the end of the season and got all the mason jars and Certo on sale. I also got a 10 kg bag of sugar on sale, which made 140 jars (125 ml) perfectly! We've already made the Saskatoon Berry Jam and the Chokecherry Jelly using recipes we found online and both turned out perfectly. Adding a teaspoon of lemon juice to the jelly worked great and it was setting almost before we could get it all in the jars. I'll have to let you know how the Evans Cherry Jelly goes. I found blank business cards on sale at Staples and then used scrap booking scissors to cut off two corners and a hole punch to make the label. On the back the flavour is printed. On the front I found a stamp from Michael's and ink in my colour and will lovingly be stamping every one of those. Then I found twine at the dollar store and voila! Since our flavours aren't very common (none of my family have even heard of them before), I think this little present will go over very well.

4. Invites = ~$0.50 CAD each

I don't have a picture of my invites but I got them from Michaels for $9.99 and they came in a box of 30. There were envelopes, reply cards, guest information cards and the invitation itself which had a ribbon and little circle you stuck on that had your initials. I changed the ribbon to better match my colour scheme (which I also got on sale at Michaels) and I found a stamp that had our initials while we were on a trip a few months earlier that I liked a lot better, so we used that instead. And then you just use the program they give you to print your invites. My good friend actually made them all for me because she was so far away but really wanted to help me out, so all I had to do was write out the addresses and stick on the stamps. We also made a wedding website with The Knot (www.theknot.com) so we had them reply by either going online or calling my friend who would keep track for us. That way we saved on postage for the reply cards.

I'll leave it there for now and I'll let you know if I find any more good stuff!