Get Married on a Budget
Feb 24, 2009 Wedding Planning InstituteÂ
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Get Married with Colin Cowie
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Lifetime Channel’s Get Married host Colin Cowie, in his new book Wedding Chic, offers these seven tips for the budget-savvy bride:
1.      Dream big: Small ideas get small results, so put budget aside while envisioning your dream wedding, then figure out what you can afford.
2.      Cut your coat according to the cloth: It’s better to do five things correctly than ten things on the skinny.
3.      Consider a destination wedding: Weddings can take place anywhere, so think beyond the exotic beach and think about a bed-and-breakfast or country inn.
4.      Opt for a fantastic DJ: Instead of a big orchestra band, find a great DJ who can create great background music and just as easily keep the guests moving on the dance floor.
5.      Invest in a trusted wedding planner: A professional is there to ease some of the pressure while bringing your vision to a reality.
6.      Design a signature drink: Rather than serving an open bar, offer guests a specialty beverage that is as delicious as it is memorable.
7.      Create monochromatic flower arrangements using one type of flower: When bundled en masse in short ceramic vases, whether roses or carnations, tulips or spider mums; these flowers are beautiful and impactful.
For anyone studying how to become a wedding planner, Cowie’s tip to invest in a trusted wedding planner combined with a strong economic outlook for the wedding industry is great career news.
For brides and grooms hoping to get the most wedding bang for their wedding budget buck, hiring a Certified Wedding Planner is the best advice they can take.
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Tags: Become a wedding planner, Celebrity Wedding Planning, Certified Wedding Planner, Wedding Industry News, Wedding Industry Trends, Wedding Planning News, Wedding Planning Trends
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February 25th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Hiring a qualified wedding planner who is a Certified Wedding Planner is the best way to stay within your budget and get the wedding of your dreams. It gives the bride the peace of mind she needs on the day she’s been looking forward to since she was a little girl.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Great advice! Who can be more trusted than a Certified Wedding Planner!
March 25th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
This wedding planning course has been a wonderful asset to my education on weddings. As a certified wedding planner, I hope to bring money saving tips to my clients who are on a budget. Thank you for all the knowledge!
March 26th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Every Bride needs the knowledge and guidance of a Certified Wedding
Planning.
The Wedding planning course prepare professionals that can work diligently to keep the Brides within their wedding budget.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
These saving tips will be useful for my future endeavors once I complete the Wedding Planner course. In addtion to the knowleged gain from the Wedding Planning Institute.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
This man has a lot of savy. I have watched his show and have taken some of his ideas and ran with them for previous parties. He gave me some great ideas for a guest picnic. His ideas are quite inovative. Wouldn’t mind working with him for awhile, could learn alot.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I have learnt from the WPI courses and such articles as Cowie’s that it is possible to be an “equal oppurtunity certified wedding planner” delivering bliss and class to the princess and peasant alike. The WPI drilling has been worth it!!! Thanks WPI.
April 3rd, 2009 at 6:00 am
WOW - Colin Cowie - I love watching him in action with his wedding planning skills - he is always full of great ideas and his brides are sure to have the wedding of their dreams. He would be a wonderful teacher to all of us! I would love to have the opportunity to work with him - That would be an awesome experience!
April 9th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Lehigh Carbon Community College, Schnecksville, Pennsylvania
Linda Nabb, Owner of DREAM EVENTS, Instructor
No only does Colin Cowie deliver a fairytale wedding for his bride & groom, but he also helps his clients work toward having a fairytale married life long after the ‘big day’ has come and gone. In his book ‘Colin Cowie Weddings’ he emphasizes that a couple should spend as much time planning and preparing for the ‘ups and downs’ of their life as husband and wife as they do planning the big day as bride and groom. I respect and admire the man for that.
In the LWPI textbook “How to Start a Wedding Planning Business” Cho Phillips also emphasizes the importance of a couple preparing for their first months together, sharing living space and becoming adjusted to one another’s habits and living style, and “accepting personal behaviors you have never seen before” (Phillips 346).
We as wedding planners must use the time we have working closely with our clients to help them work through issues that may arise, and teach them “the importance of compromise, communication, collaboration, and consideration”(Emily Post Wedding Etiquette). A valuable lesson we all should learn.
Thank you LWPI for teaching your students that our job is to learn how to help our clients not only plan their dream wedding, but help them to plan and live their dream life.
April 9th, 2009 at 9:39 am
I love Colin Cowie! He has the best ideas! I love that he is so famous in the industry yet will still focus on doing beautiful events on a budget!
April 9th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Colin Cowie is so creative and skillful when it comes to designing every element of a client’s dream wedding. I really enjoyed creating the design boards for the LWPI course. I believe it’s important to give your clients a visual of what their dream wedding can be like.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I know from planning my own wedding and sticky to a budget can be hard to do, especially when you watch platinum weddings. I feel I had my platinum wedding but I did bargin shopping and a lot of searching. If brides do not have time for the searching they should invest in a certified wedding planner to do the searching for them. It will say you money in the long run and you as a bride gets more time doing the fun stuff. The courses have helped focus on budget and think of creative budget ideas.
June 28th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I like colin cowie’s idea on creating the signature drink for the wedding. While knowing most ot the guests would like to have a drink on their hand, open bar can be a big burden on the couple’s budget. Creating a signature drink not onlyreduces the cost of the alcohol, but also to control the amount of the alcohol guests’ intake, so we can reduce the risk of drunk moments happen in the wedding.
I like WPI saying that hiring a certified wedding planner can actually reduce the cost of the couple. We have connection of vendors who have reasonable prices on their products than the bride’s family/friends randomly choosing a vendor. I just attended a wedding yesterday with my florist, and I can tell the bride was very stress out without hiring a wedding planner. Most of other vendors just left without notifying the bride that their set up work is done. I think its very unreliable. However, if she has a wedding planner, then the wedding planner will make sure everything’s setting correctly and appropriately before the vendors take off.
Thanks to WPI for so many creative ideas and tip giving throughout the course, I’ve learned a lot.
July 31st, 2009 at 9:53 am
I love Colin Cowie too! I also know from planning my own wedding on a strict budget, that it can be hard to do. So if a bride is not necessarily a bargain shopper it would be advised that she hire a wedding planner. I think all of the articles and site information have been very helpful in my development as a wedding planner. Thanks to my instructor and WPI!