Spring Wedding Ideas

While June is traditionally the wedding season of the year, you may want to skip a summer wedding in favor of a fresh spring wedding. Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal – a perfect time for the new adventure that a marriage brings. Yet in the race for most popular time of year to get married, spring is a distant third place behind summer and autumn. This is good news if you're planning a spring wedding, as more top-notch vendors will be available, and you may be able to get discounted rates, especially on sites and travel.

If you're considering a spring wedding, start off by thinking about your favorite parts of the season. Is it crocuses poking up through snow? Perhaps you'll want to have a wedding early in the season and offer the respite of floral abundance and warmth when guests come in from the cold. If it's the emerging sunshine, choose bright colors and May weather. Whatever you choose, remember to plan early to get the best deals – on vendors, wedding dresses and other wedding attire, caterers, and everything related to a wedding reception.

Here is a wedding theme idea to get you started on planning your spring wedding:

A Green Wedding Theme

It started as a trend in 2007, continued in 2008 and will be huge in 2009! Many couples are realizing that if we don't take care of our planet, who will? Your wedding reception is full of opportunities to make ethical, informed decisions as well as many opportunities for waste. If you're an environmentalist, consider using organic flowers in your bouquet, recycled paper in your invitations, local and organic foods at your reception, and even biodegradable plates and forks. Each step can make a difference in this world!

Wedding Invitations

A wedding invitation is the first clue guests will get about your wedding style and theme. It helps get them excited for the big event, and even gives guests clues about what to wear! Letterpress wedding invitations are an especially big wedding trend, with couples designing custom invitation packages to reflect their personality.

But if your wedding budget doesn't stretch for top-of-the-line letter pressed invitations there are many other options. Consider making your own printable wedding invitations and other wedding stationery, using handmade papers to carry out your recycling green wedding idea. (Here is a good site that can show you how to make your own handmade paper to use in your wedding invitations. This is the ultimate recycling in a green wedding theme!)

Small Plates or Tapas

Give your guests a taste of a wide variety of appetizers by offering them tapas. Particularly if you are looking to have a sophisticated food station evening wedding, an afternoon affair or you don't quite have room to have a sit-down dinner, this is a useful trend. Alternatively, serve tapas at your cocktail hour, creating an urban lounge atmosphere for a sophisticated touch.

These small plates are filled with a wide range of appetizers and foods that will fill up your guests and not break your wedding budget. Then you can splurge on the wedding cake and desserts!

You can host a lovely spring wedding and experience the joy that what you are doing will help save the planet for other spring weddings to come.

Tips for an Informal Wedding

Extravagant ceremonies, huge numbers of people, food you don't recognize - these things are not for your wedding. You want it to be simple, informal and yet welcoming to all your guests. Don't skimp - it's your wedding after all, but there are many ways you can save and still have an informal, simple and stunning wedding when all is said and done.

1. Keep the guest list small.

If you can pull this one step off, the cost for just about everything else will go down and everything will be fairly simple in comparison. Invite only those relatives and friends who mean the most to you.

I realize that it’s customary to invite everyone your parents ever met and with whom you had a passing acquaintance, but when my cousin got married she limited her guest list to close relatives (the furthest out was first cousins of both parents) and close friends. She could have invited dozens and dozens more and ended up with a list of 150 when it could easily have emulated another cousin's list of 600. She was able to eat, spend time with all her guests and enjoy her day.

2. Use printable wedding invitations.

Traditional wedding invitations have a couple different envelopes, tissue paper, some other paper, and that’s all before you even get to the invitation itself. So printable invitations, from your printer, on stock stationary from an office supply store will save you lots of money and will enable you to personalize each invitation. Just because you are informal doesn't mean you can't be elegant.

3. Keep the wedding reception menu simple - and catered.

The biggest cost is usually food. Keep it to a reasonable level by not having an extravagant, fancy dinner. Remember the rule of three - three courses, three choices, three colors, etc. Keep your desserts simple as well. You are spending a fortune on the wedding cake, so serve it! Ask friends and family members to make some other desserts for the dessert buffet.

Except for dessert, however, make sure you have your wedding catered. Don't expect your family to cook food for 150 or so people and still want any part of you. And face it - you aren't going to have the time either. Hire folks to cook the food, serve it and clean up afterwards. If you are at a hall or another venue - restaurant, bed and breakfast or other locale that caters to weddings - it will be part of your expense.

4. Beat the wedding bell blues - delegate.

Just because your family is off the hook for cooking, recruit them to help you. This will save a fortune on wedding planners. There are many little details that need to be taken care of, and if you try to do everything yourself, you’ll be running around like crazy. Instead, allow others to help out, delegate certain tasks, and when they do them, check them off your list. It makes life a lot easier and less stressful.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about more ways to have an informal wedding that won't break the bank.

Cost-Cutting On Wedding Invitations & Programs

For brides who have their eye on the bottom line, there are some really good cost-cutting ideas when it comes to invitations and wedding programs.

Purchasing offset printed invitations and ceremony programs are an expensive proposition. And you don't want to spend your entire wedding budget on these things - much better to spend it on the guests!

Sites like AmericanGreetings.com have printable wedding invitations, pre-designed, that you can modify to include your own information. Or as long as you have access to a good laser printer or a high-quality ink-jet printer, you can download your invitations and RSVP cards and print them onto wedding invitation blanks.

You can buy these blank kits online or at a paper supply store. The sets come with blank invitation forms, inner and outer envelopes, and tissue inserts. All you have to do is print that invitation you designed, address and mail them! You will save a bundle.

Creating and printing your own wedding programs is another excellent way to save money and put your own creativity into the planning.

I don't always see a program at a wedding and you are certainly within your right to not have one; however, there are several good reasons why a program is a good idea.

The program gives the order of the service:

• Each attendant and participant is listed as well as his or her relationship to the bride and groom.

• If there are any extra inclusions in the ceremony - a wreath for a deceased family member that is placed on a chair, an ethnic custom, or even the fact that the bride is wearing her mother's gown or veil are all interesting facts to give more depth to share with the guests.

• The program publicly thanks those who helped with the wedding

• It becomes a nice memento of the event for all who attend the ceremony.

• On a hot day, with no air conditioning, it's a great fan!

You can design your program on a word processor or use a wedding program template that has a layout.

Print it onto parchment or linen paper. A nice touch is to either roll the program into a scroll and secure it with an ornamental gold ring or ribbon. Or you can fold it and tie it at the fold with a narrow satin ribbon in the same color as the flowers or bridesmaid's dresses

With a little effort, you can create your wedding invitations and program in style and no one will ever know that you saved a lot of money!