Wedding Tips

It's wedding season. When you have one wedding(or more) each week for the month, you know it's definitely wedding season. So here are some of the most useful cost-saving tips, not for the guests (too bad) but for the wedding couple.

Charge the Banquet to a Good Credit Card
If your hotel/restaurant allows, it is always better to charge to a card than pay in cash. This allows you to get the points, and it means you don't have to rush to count the gifts to pay the bills. Obviously this will exceed your credit limit, so you can either ask the bank for a temporary increase, or pre-pay the cost of dinner so you don't exceed the limit, or you can do a combination of both.
But if you are going to all this effort, you should definitely use a good card to maximise the points on tens of thousands of dollars. The obvious choice would seem to be a rebate card like Citibank's Dividend Card, which gives you 2% cash back on spending on F&B. Unfortunately a check with the bank revealed that they do not consider hotel weddings to be F&B, so they would only give the 0.5% general rebate. Since it was just a week before my wedding, I was limited to the cards I have on hand, and eventually chose the DBS Amex Black card which gives double points. For those with the luxury of time, it is worthwhile to explore the whole gamut of options, I suspect that the real American Express charge card (which charges an annual fee of $200+) may actually give the best deal on rewards.

Minimising Losses on No-Shows
Every couple's nightmare is to see a room of half-empty tables, with each seat costing more than $100 per head. Some people have the nasty habit of telling you the day before, the day of, or not at all, that they cannot make it. It is ridiculous to rearrange tables at this point, so what can you do about it?
Firstly, check if your venue allows you to seat more than 10 per table. Planning an extra person or two per table is useful, since last-minute withdrawals are inevitable. (As a courtesy to guests, it is preferable that they actual serve extra portions too, rather than just serving smaller portions.) Even better, some hotels like Shangri-La allow you to take portions from a table of 9 and give it to a table of 11. All this helps create substantial savings.
The second way is a little more brawny than brainy. You just have to shamelessly remind your guests that you are getting married about a week beforehand (find some polite excuse, maybe by re-sending the details since many people misplace the cards too), so that they will also be prompted to inform you if they cannot make it. It is amazing how many people forget about weddings, especially wedding lunches.

Well after getting marries and helping and several weddings over the past year, these are the best tips that I hope will be useful for other wedding planners.