As I have just recently gotten married - yay! - I thought I’d write a bit about planning a wedding - a nice, decent, enjoyable wedding - on a budget. Photograph by Alexander Wallace For a little background, my husband Kurt is Dutch. Now the Dutch are said to be like the Scots - just with all the generosity squeezed out of them. And I myself am very cautious when it comes to money - but at the same time I’m a designer and I love beautiful things. I came across this fantastic blog The Broke-Ass Bride which is full of great ideas on how to save money without compromising too much on the overall look and quality of your wedding day. But as the creator says, the site “isn’t just about having little to no dough… it’s about being smart, sassy and confident enough to make the most of what you’ve got.” I like that idea - and what I found when planning my wedding was that it was as much about your attitude as anything. You have to be flexible and while your wedding is important - it’s not worth stressing about. There were some things - like my purple wedding shoes - that I just paid the money for because I didn’t have the time to scour every shop in town (and online) for the right shade of purple. But other items like the centrepieces, I arranged myself from bottles that my mum had at home and ferns we collected on the morning of the wedding - it was free, and it was fun! An absolute must for your wedding budget is a spreadsheet so you can keep a track of what you're spending. Kurt is passionate about spreadsheets, and the one he created for our wedding plans became so much a part of our lives that I thought if you’d like a copy - just flick me an email and I’ll send it to you. Trust me - it's way better than the ones you find in wedding mags. (Kurt would probably charge you 50c but I’ll give it to you for free if you ask nicely.) Love, Anna