Inexpensive Winter Wedding Ideas - Page 2

[lawgrrl]

The Castle in Mount Savage, Maryland

http://www.castlebandb.com/

I was so tickled to see The Castle mentioned on MDC! I grew up in Mount Savage, Maryland and my folks and many relatives still live there. The Castle really is a beautiful place and is decorated exquisitely for the holidays.

My husband and I married at a B&B in Vermont five years ago with about 40 guests because we wanted a very small, destination wedding with mostly just our closest friends.

However, a few months later (in December, actually) we had a reception/holiday party for all of my extended family in the western Maryland area. DH and I, as well as DH's family, stayed at The Castle. Talk about perfect photo opps! Unfortunately, we weren't able to have our reception at The Castle because we had too many guests (over 100) for their inside accommodations, so we had our actual reception/party at Failingers Hotel Gunter in Frostburg, MD, which is a few miles away. Here's the like for it as well:

http://www.failingershotelgunter.com/

I second the PP's statement about the good fortune of a December wedding -- hardly any need to spend $ on decorations at all and you can easily find winter/holiday themed print-yourself invitations for a small wedding.

Best of luck!

[SleeplessMommy]

The rental rates should be lower if you do a weeknight wedding (or even Friday) This is "off peak". You can also try to negotiate, if it is with a church especially.

Dresses are available at the local thrift shops or even eBAY (use the "search by distance" function) Remember, you only wear it once!

Make sure you take lots of pics for the INS! (now called something else) My DH was born overseas, and all they did for the interview was look at the pictures.

There are some nice UU churches in the DC area. And the cost w/minister should be low.

[ShariMama]

I'm, among other things, a wedding photographer and see a lot of weddings and get a bit of inside scoop now and then. The only thing I can really add to all the above is this: the wedding industry is HUGE-- alot of people make great income from it. While you might not be considering hiring any of them, it means that there are always going to be a lot of people looking to get into the market. This means portfolio work (not just for photographers, but also for new venues, caterers, officiants, musicians, DJs, etc) If you can find a way to connect with someone reputable, who is just under-experienced, and are willing to let them use your wedding for their own promotion, you can get a lot of service for very little cost. You can use this in negotiating. If you're willing to do extra posing, or allow extra setup time or whatever, it can knock $ off your costs.Photographically, you can check into local colleges, finding other services is trickier (to me) but if you start asking around at dress shops, etc you can usually find someone.

Good luck! We we got married, we did everything ourselves to cut the cost, including the catering. My friends still tease me about tyrannically ordering them around while we were putting together the hors d'ourves the day of the wedding.

[mightymoo]

For my parents 25th wedding anniversary, we baked a wedding cake, it really wasn't that bad! Someone had the correct sized pans, we just frosted it white and put a silver ribbon around the base of each tier - everyone there thought it was fake it looked so good, they couldn't believe we made it ourselves. It doesn't have to have fancy rosettes to be elegant and tasty.