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Planning Your wedding in Canada.
May 26th, 2009 by Randolph Quan, under Travel and Leisure. No Comments
For those planning their big day in Canada, there are plenty of web sites devoted to aiding brides in accomplishing her dream. After searching endlessly through Google for the best web sites for planning a wedding in Canada, this is what we turned up with. Read further to discover why we think these are the top 4 Canadian wedding sites:
1. www.teamwedding.ca. Although this Web site does have United State and United Kingdom branches, it has a special section devoted just to Canada. This colorful pink and green site has listings of local wedding vendors broken up into 34 categories, plus a few articles on a revolving carousel at the top of the page. This site scores major points for aesthetics and its user-friendly navigation.
2. www.weddings.ca is definitely the ultimate in wedding vendor listings. In fact, with more than 9,000 listings in every category you could imagine, you’d be hard-pressed NOT to find exactly what you’re looking for. Making it even easier, it breaks the listings down into territory, so you don’t have to search through Alberta listings if you’re in Ontario. What this site could do, though, is take a page from team wedding on aesthetics – since it’s JUST listings, it doesn’t make you want to sit and browse as much.
3. www.frugalbride.com looks to be very ad-driven, as the advertisements line either side of the page. What it does boast, though, is a forum that couples can use to bounce ideas and tips off other brides and grooms. And who couldn’t use some frugal tips in this billion-dollar industry? The website also has a bride’s day planner and, much more rare, a groom’s day planner. Send your fiance to this site, and he won’t be able to claim he doesn’t know what to do next anymore.
4. www.weddingbells.ca might take the top prize for Canadian wedding planning websites. Not only is it beautiful to look and user-friendly, it goes above and beyond in wedding tools. With just a few clicks, weddingbells.ca helps you create a budget, a planner, a guest list, a wedding website or an idea notebook. It also showcases real weddings in Canada, so you can browse what other brides did and how it looked in reality.
Affordable destination weddings
April 25th, 2009 by Randolph Quan, under Travel and Leisure. No Comments
Even if you’ve dreamed about getting married in a place far, far away your entire life, that doesn’t mean that you have the funds to actually pull it off the way you want it.
The truth is, a destination wedding can be much more affordable for the bride and groom – it’s their guests that have to shell out the extra cost. But even then, an affordable destination wedding can be done for everyone if you make the right choices.
First, plan well in advance. This gives both you and your guests time to shop around for the best rates on airfare. If you’re set on a certain destination – Jamaica, let’s say, or any other destination that only has one major airport – then let everyone know the place and the dates so airfare can be booked right away. Some airlines will offer discounted rates on big groups of people, so you might be able to cash in on that for your immediate family members – or the entire group, depending on how many people are going.
Second, shop around. Don’t be afraid to negotiate with hotels for any extras, such as upgrades. These are troubled times, and the hotel industry is feeling it just as much as anyone else. That means they’re willing to give you a little extra incentive to book your gala there.
In conjunction with the second tip, make sure you are getting a discount of some sort. Automatically, a hotel or resort should offer a discount for booking a large group.
Fourth, make your affordable destination wedding also affordable for your guests by keeping them in mind when choosing the location. If you couldn’t afford to go there on vacation, then your guests probably can’t either – after all, while you’ve been saving up for and dreaming about this day for years, most of them probably haven’t.
If you do go for a little bit more expensive destination, make clear to your guests that their presence is the only gift necessary. This isn’t the time to be greedy.
Fifth, as with any other wedding, an affordable destination wedding will be cheaper when it’s smaller. Cut the guest list, if you have to. The good thing about destination weddings is that they typically only include people who would do anything to see you get married, so it makes the reception less expensive.
Destination weddings (and all weddings in general) are only as expensive as you want them to be. By limiting things a little, you can have the affordable destination wedding of your dreams.