Weddingbee Blog

*Chaaa-ching! The sound of coins dropping into your purse*

There is a Chinese proverb that says, “putting money in your pocket,” which translates to “injecting some wisdom into you.” And today, I’m going to do that, quite literally.

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In order to save a pretty penny and stretch those dollars even further, I realized there are many ways to cut back on the spending without jeopardizing the quality or style that I aim to achieve for the wedding.

For starters, I narrowed down a list of items that I can borrow, rent, purchase pre-owned, or accept as hand-me-downs…

• Wedding gown
• Rehearsal dress
• Shoes
• Tea-ceremony set
• Ring orbs
• Hair accessories
• Jewelry
• Wedding magazines

Wearing a pre-owned dress or borrowing a hair accessory may not be everyone’s cup of tea because some of these items are sentimental and could be a keepsake to hand down to future generations. However, I feel that it’s more important that Mr. French Toast and I continue our family’s cultural traditions and ceremonies to pass down to the next generation, so I have no problem purchasing pre-owned or borrowing.

Aside from Fatwallet, I also scour:

• Slickdeals (similar to Fatwallet)
• Craigslist
• Weddingbee Classifieds, Project Wedding, The Knot classifieds section
• Google Google Google. I cannot emphasize this enough. I found my wedding dress via Google (more to come on that later…)
• Ross, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Nordstrom Rack, and other similar retail stores that carry overstocked items or items from past seasons. They may be slightly damaged or discontinued, but overall the damage is so teensy weensy that you can’t tell.

Remember that scene in Titanic when Jack asked Rose if she trusted him?

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Well, hive, now I ask you—do you trust me? If you do, then follow all of the above. Trust me, your wallet and fiance will thank you!

And from a true traveler’s perspective—give yourself bonus points if your purchase is from a city where sales taxes are lower than your home city. (In San Francisco, it’s nine-and-a-half percent. Honolulu? Four percent.) Also, purchases from online retailers like Amazon are sometimes tax free.

How have you cut back on splurging for your wedding? Any tips to add?