Queue
Getting a wedding dress is all the girls'
dream. In their life, they will wear it only
one time. So it is very important and they
are very picky. Everybody has a different
shape and face. What I'm worried about is
that a girl's dream dress sometimes does not
fit her figure and face. When it comes to
getting a dress, what they want to wear and
whether their body and face can wear it are
different stories.
So I try to make them, not feel bad, but just
try to discuss with them that their body shape
should wear a dress like this or that will
look better. I always discuss and give them
tips of fashion and tips of knowledge of fashion.
That is most important. And then I know all
the body shapes and how to make the patterns
so I always choose the better dress for them
and they are happy.
Beautiful, wide shoulders always wearing strapless
dresses are beautiful, but some girls, because
of face shape have to have cap sleeve. All
are different so people have to come and discuss
with me and find the fine dress.
Many girls ask for the strapless dress, but
this year it is the little sleeve, cap sleeve,
and something there on one shoulder that is
more popular. And then, still mermaid style
is popular and then after mermaid is the puffs-out
like ruffles and all kinds of things. When
it comes to material, lace is stronger than
ever.
I have lots of sample inventory for Maggie
Sottero (Allure), Alfred Angelo, Mori Lee,
and from the Pronovias School (W1), and besides
that I have several more.
Queue
you
Every bride has a dream that she
marries Prince Charming
in a wedding that is long remembered.
And both soon be newlyweds and parents
fear the Bridezilla syndrome and
so we thought it might be time to
revisit what we spend on weddings.
With us today is Jessica Bishop
the founder and editor of the BudgetSavvyBride.com.
Jessica, thanks for
joining us today.
Hi Gary. Thanks so much for having me on your show.
Now, is there such a thing as
an average wedding cost per per
guest these days or maybe a range that
you could
talk to us about,
I'm not sure in particular per guest, but the
national average for
United States is about twenty-eight
thousand dollars for the entire wedding.
Obviously, you know, depending on how
many guests you invite
that's going to equal a different amount per
guest
but the national average is about $28,000.
Wow, that strikes me as a lot of money. Yeah.
Now, is there any one area
that tends to boost the cost
of a wedding
a little bit all over. I mean, you
definitely
kinda can add up expenses anywhere
in terms of the different things
that you need your wedding but one thing
that see that
drives up the cost a lot is the
catering and the bar.
A lot of people you know serve alcohol
and some
like to have like an open bar and
that can be really really costly so
that's the way to
really jack up the price very quickly if
you're not careful.
Yeah I suppose an open bar you could you
could easily
ring up a couple thousand
dollars in just a couple hours.
Yeah, absolutely it is definitely easy to do.
You know, one of the things that I
tell
brides is to find a venue that will
allow you to bring in your own alcohol
or then you can be more choosey about the price range of
the wine or whatever it is that you wanna
serve or
just stick to beer and wine and not
do the full open bar
because that's kinda weird, it gets out of control.
Is there a trend
away from alcohol at weddings these days?
Um, I don't know. I think it probably
depends on the area of the country that you live
in. Obviously, like some
areas might be a little more
conservative, but you know
I think most couples want to really
celebrate their day and
entertain their guests as much as
they can and thenso
most weddings that I see do have
at least some
form of alcohol at the weddings. Now from
your experience,
and you obviously see a lot about
weddings
and have quite a bit of
anecdotal evidence
to go by, is there an area the wedding that is
your favorite for
making a wedding seem expensive but
actually keeping the costs down?
Um, I would say that
I mean one trick that I used
for our wedding was like I said the
alcohol can be so expensive so what we
did was we found a venue that allowed us
to bring our own
alcohol in and we went to Trader Joe's
and we bought cases of Two Buck Chuck which
is very very inexpensive wine and
we peeled all the labels off the bottles and put
our own personalized labels on those wine
bottles that had our monogram on them and our
wedding date.
It's like a cute little detail and so
nobody really knew that we had kinda skimped
on
our wine and they just thought "oh that's so
cute because they have personal wine bottles" you know.
That was a fun trick of mine.
Another thing that I always recommend if
you're really looking to cut down
on your budget is to maybe find
other things
to use as decorations rather than
fresh flowers because they can be very
very expensive and at the end of the day
they only last for the day and then they're
gone.
Flowers is one area I tend to
recommend like cutting back in. Tthere's
just so many different things you can do.
I see a lot of books as
centerpiece or candles and
and things like that that just don't
have to cost as much as
fresh flowers so. Now on your
website
the BudgetSavvyBride.com, and
we'll link to that
at the end, I notice you have a
do-it-yourself section
which has over 20 pages on which I loved.
What kind of things do you
find that brides do themselves,
brides and grooms do
themselves that reduces the costs of a wedding.
Definitely a lot of decor items.
I feel like not only does DIY kind of
give you a way to save money but also
adds like a personal touch your day,
makes it more personal and unique and
so
I think, you know, decor is
definitely a big one
but even a lot of our brides, you know,
will have
friends and family kinda pitch in and help
and
I see, you know, brides having their aunt or
their cousin arranging their
flowers for them or
baking the cake to save
money
because you know we all have talented
friends and family and so why not kinda
bring them in and have them help
keep the cost down and then they
also kinda get to contribute to your day
which makes it special as well.
Now one thing I've always liked about
The Dollar Stretcher over the years
we've always had a section called My Story
where we have readers share their best
ideas and I noticed you have
a real wedding section that's very
similar.
Can you share maybe a favorite idea or two
that you picked up
from other people on the
website? Oh yeah, you know, we
feature at least one, sometimes two
real weddings a week where the bride
actually give
in a thorough budget breakdown of like
how they spent their money.
It's one of the things that makes our
site unique because a lot of their
wedding website out there show these
beautiful weddings but
in the back your mind you're thinking "who
can actually afford this? It is obviously
very expensive."
So it really makes it, you know, easy,
easier to
tell like how much someone spent and how you can
save money
There's always like really really
creative aspects
to the weddings, a lot of girls will
make, you know, their own
bouquets instead of using fresh flowers,
they'll make paper flowers or fabric flowers
things like that and then at the end of the day
those are things that become like a keepsake
you can actually put on display
in your home or
you know kinda something, you know,
that you can incorporate into your lives as
newlyweds
and you can look back and remember the
day rather than a fresh flower bouquet.
that just gets tossed in the garbage at the end of the day.
So things like that I think I really
special
and but I mean there's there's than 100
of wedding that
we've featured that's hard to really
pinpoint just a few.
Now another section that you have on the website
that
I enjoyed looking at was the the
printable section, I know years ago
for our wedding I'll up because
we had a very tight budget
my wife actually hand wrote the
invitations for the wedding and
actually I thought it was at the time was
better than the
printed. Anything special to look
for in the printable section that you'd
like to talk to people about?
Oh yeah,definitely, and that's an area that
we're working on expanding upon.
My background professionally it was
or is in graphic design.
That's what I got my degree in so I like to create
items that, you know, our readers can
download and print out for themselves.
A few of the things that I have
featured on the site have included, you
know, table numbers or place cards
thins that, you know, you could
go to a professional stationary and get them
but they would probably be very
expensive.
These are things that you can download
and print yourself and
you know, cut them out and put them on
display at your wedding and its not going to cost
you anything other than
the paper and the ink so it's a really
great
way to save money and its a resource
that I wanna definitely flesh out more
over time for our readers. Are
there any warning signs that
people involved in wedding planning should look
at where they can say you know this is
starting to get outta control?
Well I think definitely the number one tip
for anybody planning a wedding is to really
sit down at the very beginning before
you
taste a piece of cake, before you go and
look at a venue or think about looking
at a photographer, you need to sit down with
your fiance and, you know, your families
if they're contributing and just kinda
figure out
what is that magic number you got or are
going to be able to come up with for the
wedding?
Because if you go out you start, you
know, booking vendors and putting down
deposits and then you realize "oh no
like we've gone over budget" you know, you
really have to get that hammered
out first thing to set yourself up
for success
when it comes to your budget.
That strikes me as very good
advice, knowing how much you have to spend
before you start spending.
Yeah. Now, do you find that there are
families who often
put pressure on young couples to
spend more than they might on their own?
Possibly. For me it was different because
we paidfor our wedding ourselves but I
know
a lot of couples do get help from their
families
and the one, the one thing that I
hear most from brides is
the guestlist. Obviously
you know, when your families are
contributing they have a little bit more
say of who might get invited
versus who doesn't.
It might end up that a few of your friends get
cut from the list because your parents want
you know, someone from work or something like
that. That's something that I
feel like
can be a struggle and definitely
could you know, contribute to going
over budget because then you feel the
need to add in all these people
that maybe you don't personally know but are
friends
of your parents and things like that so
it's an interesting dynamic. There's many
stressful components to planning
a wedding for sure and I would say the
guest list is probably the biggest one.
Jessica, we thank you for taking
time to join us today.
We want to encourage people to go
visit the
the BudgetSavvyBride.com and get your
newsletter. You also have a free ebook
on the site
and naturally we want to encourage
people to subscribe to the
Dollar Stretcher YouTube channel
and find us on various social media and
visit our website
so till next time this is a Gary Foreman
invited you to stretch those wedding
dollars.
Thanks for being with us. Thank you.
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