Sticking To Your Wedding Budget!!
Sticking To Your Wedding Budget
All couples planning their wedding have a budget. This is completely normal. You usually get what you pay for… but obviously, you can’t stick to a budget and also have the very best of every category or vendor you need to hire. How do you stick to your budget, yet still have an awesome wedding?
Rather than approaching all vendors with “how much do you charge?” try this first. Set your maximum budget. This is the total amount of money you can spend on all the vendors, services and related wedding expenses for your special day. Next, sit down and discuss what is most important to you both on your wedding day. Maybe the most important thing is keeping all of your guests dancing and having fun with great music or having journalistic photos that capture all the beautiful moments of your day. Maybe it’s great food and drink and an outdoor location that top your priority list. Perhaps you have your heart set on a photo booth and romantic “candlelight” amber uplighting. Make a vendor/services list in numbered order of your highest to lowest priorities.
Now it is time to plan your budget so that the highest priorities are allotted a higher percentage of the total budget. Be realistic and don’t let amateurs who quote low-ball prices cloud the reality of what a top-rated service or vendor will actually cost. You’ll still be able to afford the best vendors for those services that are the most important to you. The key to staying “on budget” is very simple… don’t increase your total budget to get a better caliber vendor, get the better vendors for stuff at the top of your list and decrease your budget for those things that are a lesser of a priority for you both. Best of luck!
Email Pricing Inquiries… Let the Buyer Beware!
Visiting wedding vendor websites is an effective way to learn the basics and compare each company’s general information and professionalism. You can usually tell right away if a company impresses you, offers what you’re looking for and seems like a good fit at first glance. That’s when you’ll send an initial email or place a call to get more information and find out the cost. If 2 vendors give exactly the same price… the one with more years of experience and a verifiable reputation for higher quality is usually the better choice. The biggest mistake most consumers make is assuming that a lower price from one is a better deal, without meeting with both those vendors. A lower price may mean an inferior product or service. Unless you live out of state, it is not in your best interest to shop wedding vendors by price alone for the most important day of your life. Without a face-to-face meeting with the actual vendors who will be a part of your special day, the price quoted is only a blind amount… with no guarantee of a vendor who matches your actual needs or who will work with you to help create your wedding vision. This means scheduling a consultation appointment with all promising vendors who pass the first contact “test”. What is that, you ask?
Did they respond promptly and in a professional manner or did they wait a few days and offer a lame excuse? Chances are, that’s an indication of what you can expect from each one… once you hire them. Did they ask questions as to exactly what you were looking for or did they simply rattle off a quote and ask for the sale?
Remember, you want your wedding day to be a personal one that reflects both you and your fiance’s preferences and style. Any vendor that simply quotes you their usual price without seeking any details or offering ways to personalize their service or product to better match your vision is clearly “cookie cutter” (the same thing for everybody), and will probably not be flexible when you decide to change something to reflect your preferences.
You can’t learn this when you send out emails and simply gather prices. There’s usually a reason why one service costs a bit more or a lot less than the competition. Email, when used as the only means of contact, hides these finer distinctions.
Introductions: It All Starts Here
Planning your wedding formalities provides an excellent opportunity to personalize your reception. Incorporating your ideas, unique style and personality into your reception’s special moments will make them more memorable for you and your guests. What better place to start than with your wedding party introductions?
Your introductions are a very effective way to set the tone of the reception and instantly let your guests know exactly what you have in store for them!
What is your wedding vision? A high-energy introduction with hot, upbeat music and lively crowd participation suggests that dancing and celebrating are important to you both. This wedding will burn up the dance floor!
A more low-key introduction, without a lot of hoopla may be your preference if you don’t like a lot of attention placed on you. Weddings are not “cookie cutter”. What feels right for one couple may not be a good fit for another, so don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable in front of all your guests on the biggest day of your life.
Personalized wedding party introductions, where the DJ/MC shares a supplied tidbit of information about each person as they are introduced, clearly focuses on how much the bride and groom value their relationships with their wedding party. They hope that sharing a brief personal memory about each member of their wedding party will initiate a new connection with all the guests and help unify both families and friends.
A great wedding venue and vendors will work diligently to help you set the tone for exactly the type of wedding party introductions you envision. They’ll work together as a team for you to make it happen, even if it’s different from their usual practice.
Your wedding is your special day. Explore all the possibilities and discuss them with your vendors. They will help you to create the perfect introductions and reception to match your vision.
Expecting the Unexpected
Talent, experience, organizational skills and flexibility are four major traits seen in almost every successful wedding vendor. Such traits make for a good team player.
There is nothing more evident to guests than an inexperienced vendor at a wedding. A lack of experience may not be obvious at the time you reserve the vendor, but once the day arrives it often shows instantly. A talented vendor who is lacking organizational skills or the flexibility to deal with last-minute changes will also upset the flow and harmony necessary for all your vendors to work together.
The wedding day you envision won’t go flawlessly on it’s own. It all comes down to hiring vendors who are not only well prepared and aware of your preferences and vision, but who are also ready to confront any unexpected glitches that may occur.
It’s all about being proactive. Expecting the unexpected and being prepared for it in advance. Potentially problematic moments are turned into positive ones for you and your guests when your vendors are real pros with enough experience to turn the situation around quickly and sometimes without even bothering their clients.
You may pay a bit more for this caliber vendor, but the benefits are immeasurable.
Wedding Preparation
Congratulations if you have an AllStar DJ booked for your upcoming wedding! You now have the comfort of knowing that you have a full time, professional MC/DJ/entertainer reserved for the most important day of your life. But, what’s next?
We look for your completed reception info forms (and ceremony forms if applicable) roughly 6 weeks prior to your wedding date. It’s never an issue if you need a little more time to finalize your songs and formalities on the forms. We are always here to help if you need advice or suggestions.
Going over all the final details several weeks out is actually not to your advantage, since things often change, even after the forms have been returned to us. Specific details from a meeting several weeks before your wedding may be hard to remember at the wedding for a busy, popular DJ who will be performing at many other detailed weddings in-between.
For this reason, we typically suggest the Monday before the wedding as the ideal time for the final DJ consultation. This may be done by phone or in person, at your preference. We can also switch the day if necessary, for your convenience.
This seems to work well for the majority of our wedding clients.
Micro-Managing the Music
It has become very easy to get access to just about all the music in the world. This is not only true for professional entertainers, but amateur Djs, and any common person. Although an $800 DJ or Ipod wedding is initially alluring, they are sure ways to ruin your wedding entirely.
It isn’t the amount of songs the DJ has that makes the party, it’s the songs they choose to play. If you give someone with no carpentry experience all the tools in the world, they still won’t be able to build you a mansion. They will even lack the foundation to build you a proper shed. The same is true with your DJ, so be careful with who you choose. A professional DJ is trained to read the audience. This involves diligently selecting and adapting the set to what your guests are reacting too.
An experienced DJ has their hands tied when a bride provides a list of 30 must play songs. This will always alter a fantastic entertainers performance, and lower the success rate of your function. Yes, your musical preference matters. However, an equal balance is important. Don’t forget that your guests will differ greatly in age, and musical taste. Trust in your professional DJ’s music ability and you won’t be disappointed.
The Right Wedding Team
The old saying that you are only as good as your weakest link rings true for your wedding day. Choosing the right vendors will entirely determine the success of your wedding. They will be working as a team on your very special day.
When hiring each service make sure that they are not only talented, but have a team-oriented approach. Any experienced wedding vendor knows that nothing hinders a wedding day more than ego.
All it takes is one lousy vendor in the bunch to alter the overall outcome of your wedding day. Each service should have one goal; working together to make sure the bride and groom’s wedding visions are met.
Future Wedding Trends
Planning and providing the entertainment and uplighting for several hundred weddings every year, we at AllStar Entertainment & UpLighting are often privy to the latest wedding trends well before they gain mass popularity. Our brides and grooms are constantly searching for clever and unique ways to personalize their special day and often seek our input.
This Bride and Groom personalized every detail of their wedding with a custom monogram design. We were able to take that design and create an image we could project onto their dance floor!
We’ve seen custom-made labels on wine bottles, a full-out candy “bar” with all the sweets set exclusively in the wedding colors and then dramatically accented with matching uplighting, and even little jars of fruit preserves labeled as favors with the couple’s names on a tag that reads “spread the love!” What will the next trend be?
A sweet spin on guest favors: color-coordinated candy, complete with personalized bags with the Bride and Groom's name and date on them!
Let’s get new ideas flowing! What’s the most unique personalization you’ve ever seen at a wedding?? We’d like to start a blog discussion of new ideas and opinions on unique ways to personalize your wedding day.
Let the Blogs begin!
Here at AllStar Entertainment & UpLighting, we’re really excited to finally launch our very own AllStarWedding blog! This will be our official platform to share with everyone the fun, challenges, beauty, special moments and amazing situations that we encounter every time our team of professionals are called upon to provide the entertainment and design the décor uplighting that will have such a major impact on someone’s special day.
- An AllStar DJ & UpLighting package is a stunning combination!
Being an agency that specializes in weddings, we consider it an honor and privilege to contribute our skills to hundreds of “once-in-a-lifetime” events every year. Adapting to the uniquely special ways that each of our clients choose to celebrate their wedding day is sure to provide us with a wealth of interesting stories that we will be sharing as they touch our hearts, stir our emotions and inspire our creativity. We hope they do the same for you, our blog readers! Please feel free to contribute too!
- An AllStar Package means Beautiful Decor & a Packed Dance Floor!
So get ready to take a journey that will be sure to “light up” your imagination! AllStarWedding blog posts will feature the weddings that we are a part of through story and photograph, and focus on the gorgeous details that make each one unique and a true representation of the couple celebrating their love. We can hardly wait! Thanks for reading and stay tuned!
