Set your priorities and save some money

• The Wedding Planner's Web log

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

If we were in a cartoon, there would have been a bubble above my head filled with dollar signs.

My fiancé and I had just written a check in the amount of about three times our monthly rent to confirm the catering. There's still the final bill along with about 15 other budget items to tackle.

We wanted to have a small, intimate wedding. Unexpected costs crept up quickly.

What's a couple to do? Start prioritizing.

"I think money is a big, big issue for people, and a lot of couples don't talk about it," said Susan O'Donnell, owner of Aloha Wedding Planners.

She has some cost-cutting suggestions:

• Do lunch: The easiest way to cut costs, O'Donnell said, is to have the wedding earlier in the day. It cuts down the reception time and the liquor bill.
• Don't have a full bar: "I usually tell my clients to go beer, wine and soft drinks," she said. Many hotels also offer signature drinks, such as a mai tai punch, that costs much less than stocking everything.
• Make your own invitations: It's a matter of tradeoffs. If you cut back on this, you can spend more somewhere else.
• Invite fewer people: "The more people you invite," O'Donnell says, "the less time you spend with each person."

Bob Belcher, who runs Island Disco entertainment company and has done about 4,300 weddings in 28 years, is more blunt:

• "Don't invite children," he said. "Sometimes this goes against family politics, but children can be disruptive, they don't like the food, they take up a seat and they take up a plate. At 20, 30, 40, 50 dollars a plate, it doesn't take very long for that to add up."
• "Don't buy anything that says 'wedding' on it," added Belcher's wife, Valerie. They married in December, and Valerie found that even something like buying bubbles cost a fourth of the price when she found a box labeled "heart bubbles" instead of "wedding" ones.
• Save on a photographer or videographer by hiring them for only part of the day. Or better yet, "the best thing to do Hawai'i style is hire a friend," said Cheryl Cruz, a wedding hair-and-makeup stylist. (Unless you worry that a less-than-professional job could backfire and jeopardize the friendship.)
• The bottom line is you can't avoid sitting down and crunching the numbers.

"You just have to figure out what's important to you," O'Donnell said. "Not everyone has a sky's-the-limit budget."

Tanya Bricking writes about relationships for the Advertiser.

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