Weddingbee Blog

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One big wedding rule-of-thumb is, if you need to cut costs… trim your guest list, trim your guest list, trim your guest list.

Another well-known budget guideline is to have your wedding on a Friday, a Sunday, a Monday, a Tuesday… any day but Saturday!!!

My question to the hive is… is that really true?

The Snapdragons are getting married on an off-day. This was NOT the plan. I was dead freakin’ set on getting married on a Saturday night. I didn’t want people having to leave work early if we chose a Friday, and I just felt that a Saturday would provide for maximum relaxation for all concerned.

However, once we started our venue search, we ran into roadblock after roadblock where costs were concerned. The places we could afford for a Saturday night were just WAY off of what we wanted. Mr. Dragon and I wanted a grassy knoll and nature, but the places we could afford just did not hold that leafy beauty in the cards. We also love to cook, and though I am no Julia Child, I am a pretty decent cook, and I appreciate high-end food. Almost uniformly, we are friends with a bunch of Foodies and a couple Gourmets.

“No,” “no,” “no,” was basically how each venue visit went. Finally, a venue we had dismissed as “too ’spensive” came back into the picture… all because we were willing to go with a Friday night. For our venue, they were willing to reduce their food/beverage minimum for off nights, thus making them within reach.

This is fairly common practice among venues—reduced minimums for off-nights. I would say that this was our biggest benefit in being flexible and moving to an off night. In making our decision, we polled our family and friends first. “So, um, I have a weird question… if we were to have our wedding on a Friday night, would it be a huge pain for you? Do you think you would still come?”

Amazingly, the answer was YES on all fronts. Our family could come; our friends could come. Actually, we had several friends say, “What’s the big deal? Of course I am coming to your wedding, Sillypants.” Wow, this off-night thing didn’t seem so bad after all! SO, we did it. The die-hard Saturday night couple became Friday night aficionados.

Now, when it came to coordinating the other elements of our wedding, the off night thing was not so obvious. We received little discounts here and there, but I suspect (because our vendors are universally AWESOME) that our vendors were not giving us discounts due to choosing an off night, but instead, just because they were nice people. My suspicion is that if we chose vendors who were at the mid-point in their careers, then perhaps an off night would be a great negotiation point. Our vendors are almost entirely friend-recommended, so we have a prior relationship to which we can attribute their kind cost cuts. I am not sure that an off night would have made a difference if we were total strangers to our vendors. The SUPER high-end guys cost the same virtually every night of the week—they don’t have an “off-night”.

In conclusion, my diagnosis is that the biggest budget savers for us were in keeping our guest list under tight control (only people we KNOW, the entire Junior League is not invited!) AND signing ourselves to a lower food/beverage minimum, which will give us a much more comfy place to fall, budget-wise.

For you off-Saturday night brides, do you have any words of wisdom to share with the ladies and gents who might be in “Wedding Date Limbo”? Would you recommend the route you have chosen to others?