Cost Saving Ideas

Wedding Photos

After your wedding, you’ll want to share both the gorgeous collection of photos taken by your wedding photographer during your Big Day, and the photos you took at your pre-wedding parties, your after-party, the morning-after breakfast and all of the moments in between. Your guests will be eager to see your wedding portraits, and guests too will want to share the photos they took.

With so many photos to share, you’ll find there are two different sharing plans to establish. The first is the traditional photo-sharing method enacted by your professional wedding photographer. He or she will create an online gallery of all of your photos, categorized into pre-wedding, ceremony, reception and portraits, and post it with an access code so that only you and your guests can view the photos from your event.
Read more…

Wedding Logo Design

Put your personalized stamp on your wedding, in so many ways, with your own wedding logo. It’s a top wedding trend to create your own logo or monogram, featuring your first initials and last initial – or just your married last initial — in an artistic insignia. Artists have taken the traditional monogram logo and given it a beautiful, decorative twist for more visual effect, such as with delicate flourishes above and below the logo, rather than the monogram being in a circle. Or, the logo might be a square, a rectangle with ornate borders, or an oval. Read more…

Honeymoon Timing

When do you plan to depart for your honeymoon? The day after your wedding? Several days later? According to the latest wedding trend reports, more wedding couples are delaying their honeymoon departure by at least 24 hours after their wedding day.

They don’t want to wake up at 5amto catch a plane to their honeymoon destination, especially after being out until the wee hours at their wedding after-party. And they certainly don’t want to miss out on the morning-after breakfast, and additional time spent with family and friends. Read more…

Wedding etiquettemay have relaxed in some areas, but the long-held ‘rules’ still hold true with invitations. On this blog, we talked about giving guests a +1, and now we’re focusing on the art, and etiquette, of addressing your invitations.

Wedding Invitations

• The number one rule of wedding invitation etiquette is that it’s a Don’t to print out guests’ names and addresses on labels. Guests are not impressed when they see labels on the formal invitation envelopes, so be sure to hand-write yours out. Read more…

Wedding menu

When creating your wedding reception menu, you’ll often begin by choosing your cocktail party stations, selecting from a wide range of delectable, gourmet spreads that guests often look forward to the most. Your wedding cocktail party sets the stage for each of the upcoming reception menu features, and a top 2012 wedding trend is surprising wedding guests with unexpected cocktail party menu items.

Some of the top cocktail party menu trends include international foods, organic wedding menu items, gluten-free menu items, and unique twists on traditional wedding cocktail party foods.

 Here are some of the biggest trends in cocktail party stations, focusing just on the Cold Stations. We’ll focus on hot buffet stations in an upcoming post:

Antipasto: Grilled marinated harvest vegetables, bocchini mozzarella, artichokes, and fire roasted peppers.

Olives: An array of colorful marinated and stuffed olives, with herb dressings. Read more…

More brides and grooms are incorporating green wedding decisions into their big day, so that their big day is kind to the environment, and reflects the couple’s values. Many of our green wedding couples have planned garden wedding ceremonies and celebrations, choosing to marry outdoors in garden splendor, which is a top wedding trend for 2012.

Green Wedding Trends

 In addition to eco-responsibility, some green wedding trends actually save on your wedding budget, which you’ll see in our list of the Top 10 Green Wedding Trends:

1. Ordering locally-grown flowers. A recent survey by TheWeddingReport.com showed that flowers were the #1 area of interest of green-minded brides and grooms, at 62%, since locally-grown flowers most often cost less than imported wedding flowers. A lower carbon footprint is another benefit of choosing local flowers.
2. Choosing a local wedding venue. When guests and vendors don’t have to fly or drive long distances to your wedding location, a tremendous amount of energy is saved, not to mention money saved by a shorter trip to attend your day. Included in this is the trend of one-location weddings, marrying at the same venue where your wedding reception will take place. You’ll only have one locale to decorate, and you may not need to spend a lot on additional décor when the site’s natural garden wedding décor or ballroom setting are so beautiful. Green wedding couples love to choose already-gorgeous wedding locations to create the setting for their dream wedding. Read more…

Wedding Rings

Your wedding ring will stay with you for the rest of your life, so it’s important to give plenty of thought to matching

your ring style to your personality. With so many gorgeous wedding ring designs out there, you’ll need to explore a wide range of rings to find the one that suits your wish for a romantic ring, or a classic ring, a modern ring, or an artsy ring.

Here are the top trends in wedding rings to help you make your decision:

• Choose a ring made of metals that have been ethically-sourced, not the metal equivalent of ‘blood diamonds.’ Many of the top jewelry companies, such as Tiffany and other luxury jewelers have signed onto a ‘No Dirty Gold’ campaign that advocates avoiding any jewelry mined in unsafe, inhumane locations and conditions. Ask your New Jersey jeweler about rings’ classification, to help you avoid ‘dirty gold’ rings.
• Look into lightweight metals, such as tungsten, which is a top wedding trend for couples on a budget. Read more…

By Mitchell Altholz, Executive Chef, The Manor and Highlawn Pavilion

Floral arrangements are one of the most important decorative elements in any wedding ceremony. And they can also be one of the most expensive. But you don’t have to spend a fortune – or even much of anything – for unforgettable floral arrangements. In fact, you can create them yourself. Unprotected wildflowers, herbs from your parents’ garden, or even store bought fruits and vegetables can be cheaper and “greener” than extravagant floral arrangements – and just as beautiful. Centerpieces created with wildflowers or home garden vegetables like pumpkins or squash (especially in the Fall) are a great green option you might consider. And how about that boutonniere for the groom? It doesn’t have to be store bought. A boutonniere made from home grown herbs works perfectly.

Cheers!

Mitchell

By Roman Bienkiewicz, Banquet Manager, The Manor
Looking for a way to keep the cost of your wedding in check? Rethinking the plans for your reception dinner can provide some significant opportunities for savings, without skimping on the hospitality you offer guests. Consider a buffet instead of a formal sit-down meal. A multi-course sit down meal is more expensive than a buffet for two major reasons:

First, the server-to-guest ratio is much higher for a sit down meal: the wait staff has to be large enough to make sure everyone is served their courses almost simultaneously. Secondly, the food selections can be pricey for a sit down meal, if guests are offered choices like steak and lobster, seafood appetizers and other premium items. With a buffet, the size of the wait staff can be considerably smaller. That alone can save significantly on costs. If you want to save even more, you can choose a menu that provides lots of variety and ample quantities of food at a lower cost per person than a surf and turf meal, for example.

But buffet doesn’t have to mean “budget” in the menu department. For example, here at The Manor, we’re well known among regular customers for our Lobster Buffet evenings. And now the Lobster Buffet is becoming a popular choice at the wedding receptions we host. There are additional reasons beyond cost that can make a buffet a good choice. Your guests can serve themselves as much or as little as they want, unlike a sit down meal where all portions are the same size. It can also create a more informal ambiance. And by encouraging guests to move about the dining room and serve themselves, it can get guests to interact with each other more. And a buffet is also a festive display in its own right. Even though it costs less than a comparable sit down meal, a buffet looks impressive – and mouthwatering! So when it comes time to plan the menu for your reception, talk to your caterer about your buffet options, and you’ll have some tasteful, money saving ideas to consider.

Thanks!

Roman