As you all know, Haylee and Adien decided to have a casual beach wedding right outside her parents’ beach house. We—their fabulous wedding-planning team—are in the final prep stages. One thing that couples often don’t realize: Because the wedding is outside on the beach and on family property, it’s important to look into insurance for the big day. If someone trips and breaks a leg, insurance will help Haylee and Adien avoid going from honeymoon to lawsuit.

One theory why wedding invites have both outer and inner envelopes: Back when when mail was delivered by horse and buggy, the outer envelope would get too grimy to present to the master and mistress of the house.

This past week, Adien and Haylee (haven’t been reading? They’re the fictitious bride and groom my team has to plan a wedding for) had to tackle stationary. It was definitely overwhelming. There are so many printing styles—engraving, letterpress, thermography, flat—and invitation designs, plus response cards and so much more. Luckily, we were there to help them with some basic, and some not-so-basic, invitation rules and money-saving tips.

Because Adien and Haylee have a smaller budget, we suggested they use vellum overlays—translucent sheets that serve as a decorative top layer to the invitation—to save money. Vellum overlays can be printed on and customized, and they’re a pretty way to dress up invitations without spending hundreds of dollars extra. We also told the couple that to save money they should order more invitations than they think they need. The first 25 invitations are often the most expensive because it costs to set up your customized layout, so going back to the printer to reorder will put you back in that pricey 1-to-25 range.

Skip expensive steak appetizers in favor of fruit and cheese.

Haylee and Adien, my team’s fictional bride and groom, have been busy working on the details of their wedding. They’ve selected Dana Point, California, as the spot for their beach wedding and picked fuchsia and orange as the colors. Because they’re on a tight budget, instead of flowery centerpieces for the beachside reception we’ve suggested creating a centerpiece of floating candles with daisies mixed in.

We’re also helping Haylee and Adien cut costs on drinks. Instead of having an open bar, they’ll have just two signature drinks available (plus the typical Champagne toast). The drinks will be created to represent the couple’s heritage: an Irish-based one for Adien, and a Hawaiian-based one for Haylee.

If you really want an open bar, don’t fret—I can give you some money-saving tips there, too. If you’re inviting children, have a sandwich tray available. You can feed the sandwiches to your vendors as well. No need to pay $39 per person for lobster—the kids will be just as happy with mac and cheese. Having a no-kids wedding? Serve passed hors d’oeuvres, and don’t go crazy. Instead of filet-mignon bites, try cheaper—but still delicious—choices such as fruit, cheese, veggies, and bread. Having someone pass them around instead of serve-yourself stations will cut down on the number of hors d’oeuvres served, keeping your budget on track.

Small cakes can be pretty, too.

Today I thought I’d share an easy way to save some money—especially for a large wedding, when cutting back on the number of guests just isn’t an option. You know it as well as I do: When you walk into a reception, your eyes go straight to the cake. Everyone wants to see what the bride and groom have chosen. The problem is, that cake of your dreams can get kind of pricey—whether it’s a “fancy cake by Leslie” or one from your local baker.

If you’re planning a wedding on a budget, we should talk. I am, too. When we got into teams for our final class project in Wedding Planning and Management—planning an entire wedding—Professor Daniels made each group draw a budget out of a hat. My group drew $15,000, the lowest one. For us, that means a challenging project. For you, that means lots of tips on how to cut costs but still have the wedding of your dreams.

Wedding, weddings, everywhere! George Mason University, I recently found, offers a semester-long course on the topic we on this blog spend 90 percent of our lives thinking about. Except this class isn’t for engaged couples—it’s for students who want to be wedding planners. Wedding Planning and Management began in spring 2005, after assistant professor Maggie Daniels fought the administration to get the okay; it’s now one of the most popular classes at GMU, with two sections that consistently max out at 50 students each.

Last Monday I popped into Maggie’s section—49 girls and one boy (“This is the only elective that fit into my schedule, but it just so happens I’m getting married in July,” he told me)—and sat through three speedy hours of talking about the day-of timeline, marriage license rules, and trends in wedding food, like starter olive boats instead of bread and butter. This class may be designed for planners-in-training, but it is a serious boatload of useful I-never-knew! info for anyone getting married. So much so, that I asked Maggie to hook me up with a student to blog about her experience in the class. Meet George Mason freshman Maria Abrams, who will join Bridal Party every Thursday to fill you in on what she’s learning as she plans a wedding—using real vendors—for her final class project. 

I’d heard through the grapevine that Maggie Daniels’s Tourism 190 class, Wedding Planning and Management, was an intense semester-long class with the goal to teach us how to start and run a successful wedding consulting business—not to help the young fiancés at George Mason plan their special day. I remember walking into class and hearing some of the first words out of Professor Daniels’s mouth: “This is not an easy course. If you’re looking for an easy ‘A,’ perhaps this is not the class for you.” Polite, firm, and political. With that statement I could tell—we were going to learn how to be fantastic wedding consultants.