Wedding Secrets

Bobbie Hamilton asked:


When planning a wedding reception, there is nothing that says a couple MUST just have a sit-down dinner at a reception hall.  This is a good time for the creativity of the couple to come shining through, especially if your friends and relations share some kind of special interest.

One fun idea for your budget wedding reception is to plan to have a family-style picnic, either in your back yard or at a local park like a town or state park where you can rent a picnic shelter.  This allows you to take advantage of anything special available at the site like a swimming pool or barbecue pits that may be available.  You can also allow the people attending to provide their own foods for the day, and be responsible only for providing the wedding cake as dessert, and beverages like lemonade for the group.

By selecting this type of event, you provide fun activities as well as allowing the guests to change out of any formalized dress they might have worn for the actual ceremony.  This will allow your guests to more fully relax and can help to take some of the burden off you in the form of reduced costs for the reception.  Often the cost of the rental of a picnic pavilion will be far below that of a reception hall with catering.

Other activities available at this kind of site can include volleyball games, football games, baseball games and the space necessary to conduct races or activities for the kids in who might be in attendance to keep them less bored and more engaged to keep them out of mischief. Depending on the rules of the site chosen, cleanup can be as simple as policing the area you are utilizing (easier with the participation of other guests) and seeing that the garbage is contained appropriately for pick up.

Another fun idea for your budget wedding reception is to schedule it in conjunction with some sort of event put on by a group that caters to a shared interest like a medieval faire or sci-fi or comic convention.  If the bride and groom are members of the group sponsoring the event, they can usually work with the sponsoring group to make appropriate accommodations for the reception.  By sharing in some of the costs of the event, the bridal couple can find exceptional savings over what it would cost to rent a hall.

Members of the bridal party and any interested guests could put on appropriate costumes to attend the event, and chances are they couple could enlist other members of the group to help find costumes or other appropriate clothing for anyone who didn’t have any but were interested in having some to better participate.

One final fun idea for your budget wedding reception is to have the option of hiring live music for the reception that more accurately reflects your personal tastes in music and that of the majority of your guests.  If you prefer country or Celtic music, for example, how much more preferable would that be over a DJ who offers only canned music via CDs?  If chosen carefully, the cost of live music could be equal to or even less than the cost of a DJ, and often a live group can go farther in engaging the guests who attend your reception.

Participation from the audience in singing with the band would be encouraged, whereas this might not be possible with a DJ.  Dancing as a participatory exercise for more ages might be possible for guests at a reception where there is an abundance of songs familiar to a greater population of your guests.

To your beautiful wedding reception!



WEEKS