It’s becoming more and more common for brides and grooms to pay for their own weddings, or at least big portions of it. While it is smart to save up, it can be hard to save up enough to pay for an entire wedding. We at Bridal Hot List are always here to help! We’re sharp on trends and sharp on savings, so take notes and stack up.

Re-Think Your Bills

Stack up all the bills you got last month and see where you can trim. If you’re paying for cable, do you really need to? If all you need cable tv for is ‘Game of Thrones’, maybe have GoT parties with your girlfriends and cancel your cable. Most shows are easy to watch on subscription services like Hulu which are a tiny fraction of the cost of cable subscriptions. If you have internet, you really don’t need to pay for cable. If you’re paying for a gym membership to run on treadmills, consider canceling and running in a park. If you’re going to work out classes, check out youtube to see if there are tutorials or videos that you could do instead of paying for classes. It’s free, and you can take breaks when you need to!

Negotiate Your Percentages

Do you know how high your interest rates are? Whatever they are, high or low, they are never set in stone. Call up whatever customer service lines you need to and don’t get off the phone until your interest rates are lower! It’s good to go in calm, be friendly, and ask for lower interest rates due to being a loyal customer, paying on time, etc.

Social Networking

Send out the beacon and see who can help! Be specific and ask for your friends and family for any suggestions for vendors or specialists. They may have a cousin or girlfriend you didn’t know about with great talents! Be sure to not straight out ask for a discount, but say that you are on a budget, and would love to work with a friend. The key to getting discounts is always to be pleasant and friendly.

Shopping Your Stash

Before you buy that ‘back-up’ mascara, go through your makeup kit to see if you really need it. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it! See what you have already before buying, or even worse- impulse buying anything. You can also go through all your clothes and create donate, toss, and keep piles. It’s a great way to clean out your closet and find old favorites! Just assess what you have and decide if it’s truly a need or a want. Needs are unavoidable, wants can be put off until everything else is paid off.

Let it Go

Have you been hanging on to something for a ‘rainy day’ forever? Maybe it’s the vintage white gold watch that you never wear or a signed poster, but if you’re not getting anything out of it maybe it’s time to. Even little things like old dvd’s could be worth a little bit here and there. Dvd’s are going on their way out to make room for blu-rays anyway, so now could be the perfect time to sell. If you don’t have any stores nearby that buy off old dvd’s, amazon has a great program where you mail in your old dvd’s, books, and cd’s in exchange for amazon credit. It may not always be a lot (that old one-disc copy of ‘The Notebook’ may not pay for the flowers by themselves…), but every bit counts! Stay in that mentality- every bit counts. You’ll see the savings stack up as long as you count every bit as you save it.