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Considerations To Make When Planning A Wedding Reception

Planning a wedding reception can be frustrating, confusing and stressful.  From my experience with planning this event, I've written some guidelines and considerations for you to follow that may save you lots of time, frustration, and confusion.  Read on for some tips you may not have thought about, cheap alternative ideas, and steps to take to get the job done with minimal stress. 

Along the way in my planning for my wedding reception, I have used the internet extensively, and found that even then, I still had a lot of considerations to make that I would have to apply to my own situation.  My now-husband and I actually got married a few months before our reception, in Las Vegas, and we decided that we were going to have a reception later on so that we could celebrate our marriage with family and friends.  The Vegas wedding was pretty easy, I mean that's what Vegas is known for, easy weddings, but the reception was a whole 'nother ball game as I would soon find out.

The first concern is where you are going to hold the reception. Some of the considerations for the venue are as follows.  First, do you want to have it in a hotel?  Do you have a lot of out of towners coming that will be staying in a hotel anyways?  This was a big reason why I eventually went with a hotel. This and the fact that many hotels offer complete reception packages where the food, cleanup, bar, and dessert service are included.  I ended up choosing what I thought was the most reasonable package price per person, and the best location for us.

If you are thinking that you want to save money and don't want to go with a hotel or another professional all in one type of service like that, then make sure you consider the following additional expenses when figuring out the final costs involved in making the right decision for your budget. First of all, most party centers will offer catering, and some of them bar service too, but they may not offer cleanup. Many of them now also require that you hire security for the event, and this can definitely add to your price too.  

Also consider the out of towners, are there any reasonable hotels within a safe travel distance for them to stay?  We ended up looking at a very basic community center that was really pretty much just a venue, no frills, and decided against it because it would have been us paying for the catering, the liquor, a bar tender, security, a DJ, a cake, and decorating, not to mention cleanup at the end of the night. If you are willing to do all this work on your own to save the money then all the more power to you, but just know that this can end up being a huge expenditure in time and money.

Of course, you could really cut costs by having people make food for you and eliminating the bar, that's up to you.  It all depends on your tastes and personal preferences, but you can save a boatload of money this way. There are of course other small considerations to make whether you are booking through a hotel or not.  You will want to think about if you want to provide party favors or not.  Do you want to make centerpieces or does the center or hotel provide those for you?  What about table linens?

Also, you will probably want to get a guest book for your guests to sign. This is a minor expense. You will also want to have a box for people who brought a card to put their gift in.  For this, I ended up buying one instead of having one made or attempting to make one myself since I have little patience for crafts. I had a half off coupon at a local craft store, and voila, I had a satin embroidered box for fifteen bucks - not bad!

How do you want to decorate? Are centerpieces ok, or are you one to really spruce things up?  I chose to ultimately just let the hotel decorate my table since they provided neutral colored linens and hurricane lamps, and ended up buying some silver and gold wedding themed "confetti" to spread on each table, making it look festive. Another fun and easy way to decorate is to spread real or silk rose petals on each table, it's very simple and very elegant.   I decided against the party favors, I personally did not feel they were important, but you may feel differently.

Another thing to think about is how are you going to play music? Do you want to hire a DJ? Most DJ's run about five to six hundred dollars per night, but they offer a hassle free way to provide your guests with all night entertainment and good music.  A cost saving way to cut the DJ out is to bring your own MP3 player and speakers, but then you do have to make sure you program the right songs and have a continuity.  We ended up going with a DJ because, again, it was less hassle, and I'm all about making it easy!

After the planning for the venue and the food package you want, you need to send invitations. We chose to print our own invitations on pre-printed decorative stock.  It saved us over a hundred dollars to do it this way rather than have someone pre-print them for us.  It was, however, more time consuming than I figured on, but in the end, we had lovely invitations that were less than half the cost of the pre-printed ones.

About the Author

Danna Norek is the author of several blogs and websites on health, beauty, finances,  and self improvement.  You can read about how to find the best interest rates on loans and credit cards here at comparing credit card offers and if you want to find out how to get white, bright teeth in time for your wedding reception, see our reviews of teeth whitening products that get the job done quickly and comfortably at teeth whitening product reviews.

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