C. Check, Cheque, what the Heck?

The ABC for a wedding in the time of Recession

C like Check List

The wedding checklist puts you on the road to your wedding day. Complete a detailed plan and be sure not to leave behind anything. And more, a detailed checklist will keep you safe from hidden expenses, a plague that strikes on many wedding couples, and your foot glued to the ground and careful to avoid any oddity.

Now, you don't want to buy books like Priceless Weddings for Under $5,000, never mind. I hope you won't bother to run a research on the Web, there are many sites that offers costs-free accounts and provide full check-lists very helpful in organizing a wedding and helping you not to go beyond your budget. I did both reading books and researching the Web but what is still taking me wide-awaken at night is how much the voice “occurrence”, will affect my budget. Are you smiling?. Don't. Don't underevaluate the extra expenses; they could be some more of a surprise and you'd better taking apart some of the money for any occurrence, a lot, be sure: from the extras for overtime to caterers and photographers, to tips and other a thousand costs that you wouldn't have ever thought about. Any oddity could be a "nice" surprise chunk of cash. And, listening to the just married women crowding forums around the web, that experience is quite common . Now if you let professionals to help and advice you on evaluating how much an item could affect the entire budget, since the average cost of a 150-person wedding is 25,000 $, more in an urban area, a basic breakdown of what you can expect to pay is:

• Reception: 48%-50%

• Ceremony: 2%-3%

• Attire: 8%-10%

• Flowers: 8%-10%

• Entertainment/Music: 8%-10%

• Photography/Videography: 10%-12%

• Stationery: 2%-3%

• Wedding Rings: 2%-3%

• Parking/Transportation: 2%-3%

• Gifts: 2%-3%

• Miscellaneous: 8%

• "just-in-case" fund 5%.

(data from The Knot.com)

If you can't afford it, Pippo, my loved FI, a true professional expedients maker, has his recipe for our Wedding in the Time of recession.

Pippo's low-cost wedding budget:

• Reception: refectory of the local Church, the same where we'll have the ceremony, flowers, using what the preceding couple left, catering from parents at the chant: “we eat what we can deliver”; rings offered by mum and dad, tips to volunteer cleaners and music from the church's PC: 2%;

• Gifts, if we are referring to the favours, Pippo and I have a 10 years old collection almost in mint condition: 0%;

• Stationery, we don't need it, with the account online and blog he subscribed from the work's computer: 0%;

• Photography/Videography, that's smart of him, he thinks to distribute some disposable cameras and everybody will shoot us all the day long: 2%;

• Attire, second hand market or Chinese ebayers: 3%.(note I am to get into an extra small to increase the choice on the second hand market)
  

That stands for 1,750$!.

In two years I'm still in time either to convince him, to leave him or to love him more.

The ABC for a wedding in the time of Recession:

• A... Art: Wedding Light 1.0
• B... Body: The Body of the Bride