When you prioritize, plan, and adopt some of the money-saving steps below, it will be the beauty and joy of your wedding day you hold onto forever, not the bills.

Food and Drinks
1. Serve a signature drink, such as a punch or favorite cocktail, instead of providing a full bar and limit other alcoholic beverages to wine and beer, choices that will satisfy most of your guests.

2. Have your caterer use local fruits and vegetables that are in season. Not only will these items be more economical, they’ll taste fresher.

3. Order a moderately priced, plainly decorated cake, and make the focal point the cake topper. Vintage bride-and-groom figurines, wedding bells, horseshoes, a basket filled with fruit, or a pair of doves (from an antiques shop or handmade) are classic symbols that can make a cake memorable.

Flowers and Decorations
4. While most popular bridal flowers are available year-round, some traditional ones — peonies and lily-of-the-valley, for example — can be difficult to find and expensive out of season. Seek your florist’s advice before deciding on your flowers.

5. Use favors as seating or place cards to save a bit on stationery costs. For seating cards, write guests’ names and table numbers on strips of paper, affix them to the favors, and set in order on a table near the entrance. For place cards, put favors with names attached at guests’ places.

General Budgeting Tips
6. When it comes to invitations – save money and the environment by choosing digital options like http://www.pingg.com for save the dates.  For the wedding, you can use a more formal, printed invitation. We offer a number of gorgeous designs at pingg – http://www.pingg.com/info/designer_series?artist=martha_stewart.

7. Fridays and Sundays are generally less expensive than Saturdays for renting a venue.

8. To minimize the guest list, include your friends’ significant others but not casual dates.

9. For your reception, remember that a deejay can be less costly than a live band.

10. The most important thing about a wedding is making sure it is personal and reflects you. Prioritize aspects of the wedding that are most important to you. By compromising in some areas, you can afford to splurge on others.

Visit www.marthastewartweddings.com for even more tips and inspiration.

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With the economy on shaky ground companies big and small are looking for ways to reduce their potential losses for their next quarter or fiscal year. Translation: look for a reduction in services & perks and a rise in fees.

Here’s what to watch out for:

Credit Cards

• Pay attention to every single word on your monthly credit card statement and all of the little extras they send with your bill each month. The terms of your credit card agreement may very well change in the new year. Special attention needs to be given to the annual fee, interest rate, and late fee terms. Check every month for any changes in those rates!
• The U.S. credit card industry is expected to lower credit limits to new and existing customers in the next year as a risk aversion strategy. This means that your once $5000 credit limit, for example, may be cut by hundreds or even thousands of dollars leaving you with less credit to use.
• Citigroup recently announced a 3% hike in their rates for many of its credit card holders. Expect other banks to follow with higher interest rates.
• Qualifying for new credit cards will be tougher – especially if your credit isn’t perfect. Don’t count on getting another card to help fund your wedding if you’ve maxed out another one.

Air Travel

If you’re planning on using frequent flyer miles or points to pay for your honeymoon or wedding flights, there’s good news and bad news here.

First, the bad news: United Airlines is raising prices on their FF rewards. This means you’ll need more points to pay for a ticket in 2009. Delta rumored to be changing their SkyMiles card loyalty program to reduce the amount of points gained when using the AmEx SkyMiles card.

The good news is that there are other ways to rack up miles and lots of FF deals to be found. Airlines are struggling to get those seats filled and are offering, often in conjunction with credit card companies and/or their own loyalty programs, deals to entice you to fly. I love Tim Winship’s blog over at SmarterTravel.com for alerts and resources for finding FF mile deals and info.

Check your mail (and the airlines’ websites) for changes in your Frequent Flyer rewards or airline loyalty programs!

Worthy of note: Airlines are also positioning to reduce the number of available seats per flight to help raise prices (and increase their profits). Some airlines are still imposing extra baggage fees plus surcharges for fuel and gawd-knows-what-else. Don’t forget to include those costs into your travel budget.

Jewelry/Diamonds

As the holidays are upon us, and the economic gloom looms over, start checking out small indies and chain jewelry retailers for deals on engagement/wedding rings. The price of gold is dropping a little and retailers are desperate for sales. Christmas and New Years are big engagement events so there are good sales going on right now. Do beware of going of out business sales. There are some larger chains that are closing for good. If you buy from one of these retailers, all sales are final and you’ll have zero recourse if there’s a problem with your ring.

Slightly cringe-worthy but a good resource if you’re not superstitious:  pawn shops are doing well right now and many have an increased inventory of wedding and engagement rings at low, low prices.

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What you should you stock up on:

• Double-sided adhesives. If you’re doing stationery projects, you’ll likely need plenty of double stick tape. I go through several rolls a year.
• Printer ink cartridges
• Printer papers & cardstock
• Extra blades for your paper cutter
• Embellishments like ribbon, rhinestones, glitter, eyelets, brads
• Ink for rubber stamps
• Floral supplies
• Fabric and notions

Bigger-ticket items to watch out for:

• Inkjet printers
• Good paper cutter
• Heat embossing tool (if you’re going to stamp & emboss)
• Jewelry tool kits
• Die cutting machines
• Sewing machines

Where to look for deals:

• Newspapers. This is THE week for print coupons in the paper.
• Craft store websites. Some have downloadable printable coupons and some have online coupon codes.
• Sign up for craft and office supply store newsletters. The big guys are starting to send out 30% – 50% coupons on a regular or semi-regular basis to their email subscribers.
• Local store newsletters. If your favorite scrapbook or fabric store has a mailing list, get on it ASAP. Many send out notices of in-store events and sales on a short notice.

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