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WONDERING how to fund your big fat wedding? The answer partly lies in the question itself. Marriage is not about just throwing a fancy party for your friends and relatives. Although you want the wedding ceremony to be a memorable experience, it makes sense to draw up a budget and stick to it! Given the overall global uncertainty clouding over investments and your job, the last thing you want to do is overshoot the budget and take a loan to fund your own wedding. Here are some areas to cut corners and be a prudent spender.

Invitation cards are the first step to your wedding. “Which is why many don’t want to make it very ordinary. The cost of cards fall in a wide range of Rs 50 to Rs 50,000 and upwards. The traditional ones, however, shouldn’t cost much,” said Deepa Seth, cofounder for OccasionzUnlimited. If you aren’t finicky about the ‘perfect’ wedding invitation card, this could be a major area for cutting costs. You need to take a call on whether spending a fortune on a card that would ultimately end up in the invitees’ dustbins is justified. Besides, in today’s e-age it makes sense to email your cards than going for the conventional post. It saves on all the stamps and post related costs. You can add your personal touch by writing a few lines.

Every bride wants to look her best on her special day, which means that the scope for compromises is minimal. “The content of the trousseau cannot be compromised, but probably its packing can which is a huge additional cost,” suggested Lalita Raghav, general manager, events & weddings, FNP Events & Weddings. Again, if you are not particular about designer wear, you can pay a visit to wholesale dealers. Kavya Nandan, who got married in February last year, watched every penny she spent during the run-up to her wedding day. She hired a local beautician for her basic beauty services. “The branded salons are typically expensive. So, I hired a reputed beautician in my neighbourhood and negotiated on the overall package, which reduced my costs substantially,” she said.

Your friends and relatives can help you save on the costs of hiring a wedding hall. For instance, you could ask your friend to allow the use of his/her farmhouse for a couple of days. Similarly, if your relative is a member of any club or a gymkhana, the banquet hall could be made available to you at a concessional rate. “One can compromise by settling for a lesser expensive venue, culling out a more intelligent guest lists and cutting out the frills in terms of entertainment, performing artists,” advised Ms Raghav. “When it came to the guest list, we didn’t duplicate the invitations. Apart from family, friends were invited only for one ceremony – either the wedding or reception. That helped to trim our costs as well,” said T Vijayaraman.

Food and decor typically account for more than 50% of your wedding budget, which means that they can be targeted for carrying out some major cost-cutting. “You can make subtle changes which can lower your expenses substantially. For example, you can use only white linens on chairs, which will look elegant and weigh lighter on your pocket. If you use colour linens, the decorator would have to colour co-ordinate to keep up the overall visual appeal, ” explained Sneha Tejwani, co-founder, Occasionz Unlimited. In case of food, it’s better to stick to two or three cuisines rather than getting the whole world on your plate. That will reduce wastage of food as well as your hard-earned money.

You never know when crisis comes calling. Be it a big crisis or a small one, it’s better to earmark a sum for meeting unexpected expenses. For instance, Mr Vijayaraman had set aside Rs 50,000 for dealing with such expenses. This came in handy as the suburb where his daughter’s wedding took place experiences occasional power cuts. Although the wedding venue was equipped with a generator facility, it came at an additional cost. “Therefore, I made sure that I had kept aside a sum in the savings account of a bank with an ATM in the venue’s neighbourhood. Also, although cheques and credit cards are accepted almost everywhere, some vendors like decorators and florists expect cash for last minute demands. The hard cash at my disposal helped in such cases as well,” he explained.

The key is to avoid problems like the one Anita Vaidya faced. “We had been to Bangalore just two weeks before the wedding to shop for sarees — for ourselves as well as the expected guests. We thought that we were carrying adequate cash, but my daughter liked some of the expensive sarees and we ended up overshooting our budget. Since we weren’t carrying any debt/credit card, we had to resort to borrowing from our relatives,” recounted Ms Vaidya.

Finally, it makes sense to avoid taking loans to finance a lavish wedding. It’s best to stick to a budget chalked out on the basis of funds in your kitty – encumbrance-free simplicity is any day better than leveraged extravagance. After all, you wouldn’t like to start the special phase of your life on an inauspicious note. Why spend time worrying about the repayment when you could invest the same in planning the future instead.