Decorations don't have to cost a fortune

Now that Annie and I have free photos to use for our invitation, wedding website and to show off we are ready to plan our wedding. We've found that as many things as we know about wedding planning there are as many things that we've not even considered.
We are having a wedding on Virginia Beach in May and since we're doing an untraditional wedding there's lots of things to think about. How to decorate the beach? What to do about seating? What is our backup plan if the weather is bad?
Annie and I wanted to get an arch to be married under on the beach so we looked around for a rental arch and found a couple options. One was $545. Another was over $200. That seemed like a lot for a simple arch. We went to Michaels and found an arch for about $40 retail. However, the sales girl handed us a coupon for 60% off so we walked out with a beautiful pre-lit arch for $16.
We are going to take the arch and wrap it in colored fabrics to match the flowers and overall colors of the wedding. All this for $16 plus the price of fabrics. This sure beats the $200+ we could have spent on an arch. This is just one simple piece of the puzzle but a main piece and we got it for next to nothing.
We're going to have a beautifully decorated arch sitting on the beach with a backdrop of crashing waves and blue skies. We are going to add to this a path of pinwheels and possibly colored sand as a path to the ceremony on the beach. We're going to save a fortune on decorations for our ceremony and you can too.
Don't rent expensive pieces when you can buy something for a fraction of the price. Don't pay for a professional decorator when you can whip something together cheaply and easily. Remember, our arch could have cost us $545. Instead we found one for $16. Check out amazon's selection of wedding arches, as one example.

Free engagement session

See that photo? And the one in the last post?

We got those taken for free. By a professional photographer. In fact, we got a mini engagement session for free from a company who staffs highly trained photographers.

How can you do the same?

The way I figure, any company who has money to advertise has money to provide special services like this.

Carl and I found this company through a facebook ad for a contest to win free wedding photography. By signing up for this contest, we were put onto the mailing list of this company. Yuck, I know. No one wants spam. However, with weddings, big money is involved. By being on the mailing list, we were able to be alerted to their free engagement photo session for any couple on the list.

So what do I recommend?

Set up a wedding email. A separate email address from your usual address, but one that you will check regularly. This way you can sign up for all kinds of special wedding offers without cluttering your own inbox with unwanted junk. In the emails you get, you will find some gems that can end up saving you thousands of dollars.

Carl and Annie are a young Washington, D.C. couple who are planning a wedding.

The only problem is - we don't have any money!

In trying to plan a wedding on the cheap, we have learned a few tricks that we can share with you to help in your wedding or event planning to save you some major cash.

Use our tricks or find your own, but don't fall into the trap of spending more than you can afford. You can have a beautiful wedding for cents on the dollar of the average wedding cost!