How to have a great wedding in a recession

Vintage wedding dress and headpiece from Tango. Soon to be worn at a wedding on Waiheke Island. Photograph by Salene

You can still have a great wedding even if it's all doom and gloom out there. The recession just means you have to take more care not to blow the budget.

what a bride wants checked out the best way to do this with the Citizens Advice Bureau's budgeting service. The people there know all about debt – and planning to ensure you don't end up deep in it.

Plan, plan, plan's the only way to go with a wedding, says Maureen Little, CAB budget advisor at Henderson, West Auckland.

"People start off with very high ideals and then, of necessity, find they need to be chopped down a bit." Start by checking the prices of everything – from the celebrant's price to that of the all-important dress to the cost of the reception. Especially food and alcohol, says Maureen.

Maureen's daughter organised her spontaneous wedding in just nine days. She decided to get married while on holiday, bought a dress off the peg for $95 after she came back and organised a reception for 100 at the family home, after checking with the deck's builder how many people it could support – a hundred. A marquee was erected in the garden in case it rained, and a celebrant friend flew up from Wellington to marry the young couple. This was just three years ago, so it shows what can be done.

Celebrants are probably the cheapest item on the wedding list, charging around $150-$200. It is the reception that can break the bank, which is why you need to plan ahead. Look at different places and decide what you can afford, says Maureen.

"Beware special deals. They can turn out to be very expensive."

A lot of money goes on the reception. "You're looking at, say, $85 a head for food, then there's alcohol, table favours. You can easily end up spending $45,000 on a wedding and that would not be the biggest wedding in the world," says Maureen, who blames peer pressure and glamorous overseas television shows for upping the pressure on couples to spend up big. She suggests gifting the couple – a ladder and $1,000 – so they can elope. " That way, they would have a $44,000 house deposit".

Cheap wedding loans not loan sharks

But seriously; for many brides the ladder is not an option, so Maureen suggests getting both sets of parents involved and deciding who pays for what. Usually, the bride's family pays for the wedding, while the groom's family takes care of the alcohol and refreshments. A big question here is: how do you keep the booze under control? One suggestion is to provide champagne for the toast and wine and beer to go with the meal but have no bar tab. If this seems too harsh, how about restricting the open bar to wine and beer, and asking those who want expensive spirits to pay for them themselves? After all, this is a wedding not just a big booze-up.

Maureen says she has just been invited to a wedding where the couple have said they don't want presents but would rather have a contribution to the wedding breakfast instead. Not a bad way of having a great day without breaking the bank.

Although there can still be a debt problem with an expensive wedding, some families, for traditional reasons, need to have a Big Day because it is expected. Debt doesn't have to be crippling though. Maureen says she sees too many people turning to 'instant finance' companies to fund a family wedding.

Such companies charge 25 to 30 percent interest and often ask that the family home be put up as collateral, she says. They are also pretty hard when it comes to collecting, and some will verbally threaten clients.

Not a pretty picture – especially when banks offer such a good deal these days. It is much cheaper to add the cost of a wedding to the mortgage and pay just nine percent instead of 25 percent interest, says Maureen.

Actually, mortgage rates are now even cheaper than this – one good effect of the recession. what a bride wants checked out what's happening with our own Kiwibank. It turns out its lowest current mortgage interest rate is just 5.69 percent (at the time of writing, this may have changed, please check with your own bank).

You or your parents can take out a separate variable, or revolving, mortgage, which can be used to fund a big one-off like a wedding. Kiwibank currently charges 6.49 percent for this. The only risk says bank spokesman Bruce Thompson is that you need to be disciplined about paying the loan off and resist dipping into it again. All the banks offer these revolving, or floating, mortgages. Surely a much better way to go than an instant loan at up to 30 percent interest?

Vintage style is one way to save dollars and still look great. Wedding gowns and the rest (pictured) from Tango, 55 Little High Street, Auckland. Tel: 09 300 7165

How to find a perfect vintage wedding dress