Making the wedding of your dreams a reality often involves a lot of financial planning and looking for ways to save money on a wedding. Creating and sticking to a wedding budget is all about setting your priorities and using your money wisely.
The memories that you make on your wedding day with your significant other, family, and friends are priceless. There is a reason that couples say that their wedding day is one of the best days of their entire lives!
The Treasury on the Plaza is here to help! We’re sharing a few of our favorite ways to save money on your wedding from our wedding venue experts.
READ ON FOR ADVICE FROM THE TREASURY TEAM TO HELP YOU SAVE MONEY ON YOUR WEDDING DAY!
Repurposing wedding ceremony and reception decorations at The Treasury | Photos by Lisa Silva Photography
1. HOST YOUR WEDDING CEREMONY AND RECEPTION IN THE SAME LOCATION
Instead of just thinking about how to save money on a wedding venue, consider everything your venue has to offer. A wedding venue might offer more value than cheaper alternatives, ultimately saving you money in the end. One way this works is by finding a wedding venue where you can hold both the ceremony and reception.
Hosting your ceremony and reception in the same location can lower your wedding cost in several ways. First, moving 100+ guests and vendors from one location to another in a short amount of time often requires that you rent additional transportation, which can rack up a few hundred extra dollars.
Some vendors charge an extra fee when the ceremony and reception are in two separate locations. This depends on travel time between the venues, additional staff needed to be prepared in both locations, and additional products or services needed.
When you host your ceremony and reception in the same venue, you can save money by repurposing ceremony décor like floral arrangements, candles, and arches as a part of your reception décor. When hosting your ceremony and reception in two different locations, additional décor and rentals may be needed. Items like chairs often can’t be moved from the ceremony venue to the reception venue, which means that you need twice as many.
2. HIRE A WEDDING COORDINATOR
You might want to handle all of the wedding planning on your own, but there is a reason that many wedding venues (including The Treasury Venue Collection) request that you hire an outside wedding coordinator. Not only does your wedding coordinator make sure that every detail of your wedding day goes off without a hitch, they can also end up saving you money in your wedding budget!
Wedding planners spend years building relationships with other vendors and often receive special pricing breaks on certain services. Sometimes planners also have décor items in their inventory that they can use for multiple events. You can rent or borrow these items from them, rather than having to purchase these items on your own.
During a recent interview with St. Augustine Wedding Coordinators Coastal Celebrations, we learned some of the ways that they help save their clients money:
“We have a vendor discount sheet with over 30 vendors. That includes DJs, photo booths, photographers, ceremony musicians, etc. For our clients, we do linens at cost, so depending on the floor plan, we can usually save you a few hundred dollars. We also have what we call ‘Coastal’s Closet,’ which consists of 10-12 pages of items like votives, signage, card boxes, and budget-friendly centerpieces that you can use for your wedding day. That can save you hundreds of dollars! You don’t have to buy a card box or make your own signage. Those types of little things help you save on décor. It’s stuff that we use every weekend as wedding planners. If you were to purchase it on your own, what are you going to do after your wedding day?”
Wedding Catering Photo by Ashley Steeby Photography
3. CHOOSE A VENUE WITH FLEXIBLE CATERING OPTIONS
With certain venues, you can be locked into using a single in-house caterer. This sounds great until you realize that the in-house caterer has a much higher price per guest than if you were to use an outside caterer. At The Treasury Venue Collection, we work exclusively with outside caterers. We love that this allows our couples who want to customize their vendors to choose the caterer that best suits their taste and budget!
Make sure to ask your caterer about the benefits and drawbacks of different types of food service. Buffets and stations can have a higher cost of food, but a lower cost for staffing and servers. Plated meals can sometimes cost less per guest, but require more service staff, depending on your number of tables and guests.
4. BE FLEXIBLE WITH YOUR WEDDING DATE AND WEDDING PACKAGE
Did you know that the wedding date that you choose can have an impact on your overall wedding cost? The fall, winter, and spring months are often peak wedding season in Florida. Wedding vendors and venues often book these months far in advance. By being flexible with your wedding date, you could find times when your vendors would be willing to work at a lower rate.
Here at The Treasury on the Plaza, and at our sister properties in The Treasury Venue Collection, we offer a variety of wedding packages to suit many different price points!
The Treasury Venue Collection also offers all-inclusive packages on select days of the week. These packages offer the same award-winning, 5-star service at an incredible rate. We’ve also received special pricing from some of our best vendors for these packages, making it possible to have your cake and eat it too!
Wedding cake photo by TRMV Photo
5. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SWEET SAVINGS ON YOUR WEDDING CAKE
If you have a large guest list, you can take advantage of some tricks that will help keep your credit card bill happy. For instance, you could consider doing a smaller display cake with a large sheet cake in the back. The display cake is perfect for your decorations and cake cutting, and the sheet cake is a more affordable option that is large enough to feed all of your guests.
You can also talk to your cake baker about options for displaying a “dummy cake”—a beautiful cake on the outside with foam or other non-organic filler on the inside. Dummy cakes can often be 10%-20% off of the cost of a real cake.
Another way to save on cake costs is to use organic flowers in place of sugar flowers, which can be labor-intensive. You can also think outside of the box and look into other sweet options as an alternative to a wedding cake. To reduce their wedding cost, we have had couples serve yummy treats like doughnuts, cookies, cake pops, or cupcakes instead of the traditional wedding cake.
6. CHOOSE A VENUE THAT NEEDS MINIMAL DECOR
During your venue search, you may find yourself deciding between two options: a venue that is beautiful on its own and uses a larger amount of your budget, or a low-budget venue that needs more décor to make it fit your vision. It can be easy to underestimate the cost of items like draping, lighting, furniture, and elaborate floral displays featuring fresh flowers. These costs can add up quickly!
We don’t mean to brag (okay, maybe we do!) but The Treasury on the Plaza is just so beautiful that you don’t need to break the bank to make it look incredible on your wedding day. Many of your rental items are also included with the venue rental fee.
One of our big “bang-for-the-buck” secrets at The Treasury is the amazing high-tech lighting system that is pre-installed in the Grande Ballroom. Rental and setup of a similar lighting system in another venue could range anywhere from $5,000-$10,000, but at The Treasury, you only pay a fraction of that cost!
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We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading a few of our favorite ways to save money on your wedding from our wedding venue experts at The Treasury Venue Collection. Contact our team today to learn more about our wedding package options!
