Even though you aren’t expected to spend tons of money on wedding favors, it’s still important to make sure that each person has a small favor to remember your special day. In addition, it’s also customary to express your gratitude to the clergy, best man, bridesmaids, and other key participants in the wedding with a small gift. However, finding suitable items may be every bit as difficult as holiday shopping!

Make Your Own Wedding Favors

You can save a tremendous amount of money on wedding favors by simply making your own! Making your own favors can be as simple as putting a mix of candies in cellophane or foil wrapping and finishing it off with streamers or a small card. You can find all the items you’ll need to make your favors in craft stores and dollar stores in your area. Just be careful – the more elaborate you make your favors, the more time it’ll take to make them all. Be careful to budget your time as well as your money.

Finding Other Items in Dollar Stores

If you want each person attending your wedding to have something memorable, there are a number of other things you can choose from beyond candy favors. Take a trip around your local dollar store and see if anything catches your eye. You may find small figurines that you like or votive candles that you can personalize with stickers or printed ribbons. Wrap these items in cellophane as you would with candies and you’re guests will never guess that you only spent a few dollars on your favors.

Gift Cards

Typically, you’ll want to give members of your wedding party, parents and officiants a more expensive gift as thanks for participating in your special day. However, you may not know specific individuals well enough to know what gifts they might enjoy receiving. Therefore, it may make sense to give these people gift cards to popular department stores or book stores. Aside from being easy to wrap, you’ll also find that you can easily set a budget amount and stick to it.

Searching Online

In some cases, you may know exactly what you want to buy for specific members of your wedding party. For example, if you want to give your bridesmaids matching jewelry sets, your biggest challenge will be finding something that fits in your budget. If you look online for these items, you’ll find many more closeout or discounted items, and you’ll also have a wider selection to choose from. Depending on the type of item you plan to purchase, you may also want to check classified ads and flea markets for second-hand or vintage gifts.

Surprisingly enough, wedding favors and gifts are a relatively easy part of your budget to control, since you don’t need to be concerned about purchasing unique or expensive items for your wedding. Depending on your budget, you may be able to mix and match more expensive items, or use gift cards as a way to manage your budget, while giving recipients a chance to spend the money as they please. That said, you’ll want to start shopping for these items fairly early on in order to take advantages of sales or other discounts as they become available.

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Your wedding invitations and announcements set the tone for your wedding – they’re typically the first things that people see when they learn of your impending nuptials, so it’s important to choose carefully. Do you want to convey a very formal feel or a more carefree, summery vibe? This is one area of your wedding where you have a lot of flexibility in terms of expressing yourself – just be careful to keep an eye on your budget. Extra layers of vellum, ribbons, double envelopes and other add-ons can quickly blow your invitation and announcement budget.

Print Your Own Wedding Stationery

If you have a computer, you should be able to purchase software that will help you design and print your own wedding invitations and announcements. Typically, you’ll find that blank card stock is perfect for invitations and is fairly inexpensive. If you’re certain that you want each invited guest to have the same type of card, you can print as many as you need. On the other hand, if you want to create special sets of cards for different groups of people, you can create as many as you like using the software.

If you’re artistically inclined, you may find the options available in the software too limiting for your tastes. In this case, you may want to try your hand at designing your own invitations by hand. While you probably won’t be able to copy these using a regular printer, check with Kinkos to find more high quality printing options. You’ll need to purchase stencils, special pens, and other materials to go this route, and – as you might expect – you’ll want to practice a bit before coming up with a final draft.

Print on Demand Services

If you don’t have a high quality printer, it may be helpful to see if you can have your wedding stationery custom printed. Stationery stores or copy shops in your neighborhood may be willing to print them for a fee. There are also a large number of print-on-demand services available on the internet. In many cases, you will find that they will also offer a wide array of designs available for customization and will allow you to submit custom artwork for printing.

Pre-made Stationery Closeouts

You might be surprised at the quality of goods you can find in dollar stores and other shops that specialize in close-out and clearance items. In some cases, you may be able to find enough invitations and announcements for your needs, or you may need to purchase several types in order to have enough. Even if you can’t find wedding specific stationery, you may be able to find items that have blank interiors, or images that are adaptable to your needs.

Even though wedding stationery tends to be expensive, this is one area of your budget where you can save big money by doing it yourself. If you decide to print your own wedding announcements and invitations, you’ll be able to choose from your own designs or pre-made templates online and in local shops. For the most part, you’ll find that the cost savings of using these methods more than makes up for their limitations.

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As you begin your wedding planning, you’ll notice that there are some wedding items that are harder to find on a budget than others. Typically, these are the items that will only be used by one member of the wedding party, or ones that you can’t find easily in traditional wedding shops. As you might expect, waiting until the last minute makes it much harder to find a good value for your money – so don’t put off shopping for these items!

Wedding Rings

You’ll probably want to wait to purchase wedding rings until you’ve looked at a wide selection of them – so keep the following things in mind. Look in both online and offline jewelry stores and try on as many sizes and colors as possible to get a feel for what you like. You’ll also need to decide whether you want the rings engraved or not. If you find rings you like online, it may be to your advantage to purchase them and have them engraved locally. If other wedding costs wind up exceeding your budget, you can choose not to have the rings engraved but will still have them available for your ceremony.

Bridal Veils

For the most part, you’ll need to go to a regular bridal shop in order to find bridal veils. That said, if you can’t find a suitable veil in your neighborhood, you may want to see what’s available online, although you won’t be able to see how it looks on you before you buy. You can also check to see if any friends or family members have a veil you can borrow, or ask the clergy associated with your church if they can be of help. They may know of recently married couples that may be willing to lend you a bridal veil.

Prayer Missles

If you’re having a religious ceremony, you’ll want to remember the wedding service, special prayers, and Bible passages read at your ceremony with a prayer missle. That said, specially designed wedding missles can be expensive, so check to see what’s available through your church. Even if you choose to purchase a simple paperback version of your ceremony, you’ll at least have the information you want to preserve. In addition, there are a number of print-on-demand book publishers online that may be able to design a hard cover book with full color illustrations for a fraction of the cost of your church.

Clothing for Flower Children

Just like clothing for bridesmaids, it’s likely you’ll want to cover the expense of clothing for any flower children in your ceremony. In many cases, you’ll find that it’s both feasible and enjoyable to make these outfits yourself. But if you’re on a tight schedule or have limited sewing skills, it may be best to try and rent these gowns or look for second hand items for sale.

Although you probably have a list of all of the things you need for your wedding, there are some things that tend to get set aside until the last minute. In some cases, you may find yourself with a list of fairly expensive items to find – even though your budget’s already been spent. Take the time to put together a thorough list from the outset and review it on a regular basis. Managing your accessories and extra items with care will help reduce your stress and save you money.

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