The wedding planning continues! Most people book a ‘wedding venue’ and with that, they get all the little details taken care of for them, including all the dishware and glasses that the guests use over the course of the night. But when you’re trying to be frugal in planning a wedding, you have to do all the little things yourself – including buying or renting dishes. Based on the experience we’ve had with this, you can save a lot of money here depending on the decisions you make – paper, plastic or china; rent or buy; one of everything for everyone or get lots of extras. All these decisions can represent vastly different price points, and each decision has an underlying environmental impact to keep in mind.

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So let’s see…so far I have written about invitations, food and picking the venue. Who knew there was so much effort to put into a wedding? If there is one thing I have learned so far, it’s that trying to plan a wedding while also trying to complete a graduate degree is not for the faint of heart. I understand just a little bit more now how a wedding planner can be well worth the cost.

If there’s one avenue where you can really cut down your costs, it’s the guest list. That seems pretty intuitive actually, so much so that I debated whether it was even worth writing about. At most weddings, there is a fixed cost associated with every guest that attends – food, dishes, venue, all these things are related to the number of guests that you have. So that begs the question – do you really want to invite your dad’s cousin’s nephew’s boyfriend who winds up getting drunk at the open bar?

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