Sharon Naylor Toris - How to Have a Fabulous Wedding for $10,000 or Less: Creating Your Dream Day with Romance, Grace, and Style

C ONGRATULATIONS ON your upcoming wedding! By now, youve been hugged and kissed by everyone you know with their best wishes, youve flipped through more than one bridal magazine, and at least one person has ogled your engagement ring with pure envy. Your mind may be filled with visions of your dream weddingthe beautiful princess gown, the seven-tiered cake, the champagne toast, a sea of white roses gracing every inch of your reception hall, all of your guests dancing until the wee hours at your reception, the honeymoon in Maui. The gorgeous images keep coming until reality screeches its tires and brings up the big issue: Wait a minute Whats all this going to cost?

Facing the money issue is a sobering thought for most brides and grooms. Every one of those white roses, cake layers, and beads on your gown costs something, and the grand tally can knock your socks off. Weddings are expensive. While the Association of Bridal Consultants pins the national average wedding budget at $20,000, Ive spoken to many brides who spent $20,000 on the reception alone! Its not unusual to find brides in certain areas of the country, where prices are naturally inflated, spending an average of $40,000 on their weddings, and celebrities might easily spend as much as a million. These are the Checkbooks-of-Gold brides, and this book isnt for them. This book is for you, the person who wants to plan a gorgeous, elegant wedding within a modest, realistic, responsible budget. I assure you, you can have a beautiful wedding for half the national average cost, without the savings being obvious to your guests and without being disappointed with the outcome.

Youre about to find out that $10,000 can stretch further than you think, even in the high-priced wedding world, where a $32-billion bridal sales industry encourages big spending for the most important day of your life. Youre about to plan your own wedding on a budget, so that after its over, youll have the financial freedom to create a wonderful married life. You just have to have a plan and a good understanding of the rules that determine the prices of each of your weddings elements.

Lets get started.

A 100-guest formal wedding taking place in New York City is going to cost a lot more than a 100-guest formal wedding in Mississippi. Like it or not, price tags vary tremendously depending upon the region of the country in which youll be married, just as the styles of weddings vary from state to state. While glitzy formal weddings can be held in any state, there are fundamental price differences between the average wedding in the pricey Northeast and West Coast, the laid-back Midwest, and the deep South. Later in the book, you will see some comparison charts that show vast price ranges depending upon the state in which the wedding item or service is offered, and the style of wedding itself. Its a fact of life that location does play a role in planning your expenses, so take your regions price levels into consideration when planning your wedding. If you wish to marry in a higher-priced, higher-income area, you will run into more expensive wedding packages. If youll marry in a more moderately priced area, your $10,000 will generally stretch a bit further. Its difficult to generalize, but your location