Stretching Your Matri-Money

Being Inventive in Tight Times

By Eric Wallace

If you’re like most of us, a really worrisome word for you these days is Recession, with a capital R. This year, of course, the R word you’d rather focus on is Romance.

What to do when the two Rs collide in terms of the budget for your wedding?

Can you swing it on a shoestring? Can you even afford the shoestring?

You could head to Las Vegas, nuptial piggybank in hand, and gamble on hitting a financial home run. Hold a few dollars back in case you strike out, and a quick stop at the Little Elvis-on-the-Strip Chapel still gets you married.

Doesn’t appeal? Then another approach would be to apply to the government for a bailout. Don’t scoff. That’s not as tricky as you might think.

If you can prove you’re related to AIG, you’re in. (The prospect of future jail time shouldn’t deter you.)

Alternatively, simply change your names to suggest that your marriage is a merger of two banks, and you’ll have a very good chance of government assistance.

Besides, something like the Grandbank-Cashflow Wedding would make for a very nice headline in this magazine.

However, if you prefer keeping your own names and are inclined instead to be inventive in other ways, then simply fire up Good Old Alaskan Know-how; it may be priceless, but it costs nothing.

To ignite your thinking, here are a few tips.

WHERE

An easy way to save money on a rented facility: Write the entire ceremony using only twitter-length statements. You’ll be in and out in no time at all. Toot tweet.

Or avoid the cost of a pricey venue entirely by staging the wedding on the street in front of your house.

You could even make it a drive-in wedding, with everyone attending in their vehicles. Don’t run the engines (fumes, cost of gas), but use the vehicles’ CD players to provide the music. Later, for extra entertainment, play some rounds of chicken.

THE RECEPTION

Share space by timing the event to coincide with:

a) your high school reunion

b) a nice big prom

c) a University of Alaska commencement

If you choose c) you may even be able to wangle honorary degrees as part of the deal.

BRIDE’S DRESS

Hard times have hit the bridal stores too, so they’ll want to work with you. Finagle a terrific deal to rent a dress displayed on one of their mannequins. You may have to pin it in here and there, but that’s no big deal.

Heck, rent a couple of extra mannequins to stand in as bridesmaids.

FLOWERS

Theme your wedding in green and yellow and put loads of Alaska’s much-maligned beauties to really good use. Yes, we mean dandelions. (If you’re in Anchorage, this ties in with option C, above.)

If your wedding falls after dandelion season, preserve the flowers in formaldehyde (or in cheap brandy – see below) until the proper date.

MUSIC

Aren’t you glad you’re part of the iPod Generation? Simply ask your guests to download identical tunes to their personal electronic players, then have them hit play when the moment arrives.

If they’re not all in sync, so what? They’ll boogie just the same.

PHOTOGRAPHY

I’ll bet you think I’m going to suggest this important element be done by guests using cell phone cameras. How cheesy!

How inexpensive. So try it. Just tell them to turn off their ringers.

THE CAKE

Make it yourself. No low-cost recipe comes to mind? Well, since these are dire times, we’ll break a decades-old promise and share the secrets of Grandma’s UltraPerfect Celebration Pouffe:

Soften 12-15 loaves of day old white bread in microwave.

Into a large clean oil drum, place bread, one gallon of half price expired-date milk, four quarts of low-end beer, two pounds of inexpensive margarine. Stir.

Separately, shred five pounds of potatoes and mix with two packages of generic shredded coconut.

Blend your cocopotato flavor mash into the existing mix.

Add one quart imitation vanilla extract. Stir.

Bake for 1 hour in backyard firepot or on large barbecue.

Use conventional icing generously thinned with cheap brandy. The more the merrier. Your taste buds – and your guests – will love this extra touch.

Finally, splurge at Goodwill for decorations. Or skip the decorations and instead flame the cake at the right moment. It’ll wow ’em!

Thanks, Grandma. We won’t forget you.

IN GENERAL

A few other ideas:

Check on Craigslist for a good used (‘pre-owned’) wedding. There certainly should be one at a price you can afford.

Find an existing fancy wedding video, have yourselves edited into the key spots, then show it on a big screen in a large family room. Lip-sync your vows in the appropriate spots.

Sit at your computer and do the whole wedding on FaceBook. Think of all the extra guests you could include. Worldwide.

Plan an all-Salvation Army wedding: inexpensive attire is readily available in their thrift shop; they have meeting halls, kitchens for catering, handy officiants, plus great brass bands. And they can offer pastoral counseling for any unruly guests. On top of that, the S.A. benefits from your donation. Salvation may be at hand!

A final thought. If you’re a really bold Alaskan, the type who does things on a huge scale, then consider taking a totally reverse approach to all this cheap wedding stuff:

Go ahead and make your wedding so grand, so big, so intricate, so wildly expensive, the government simply can’t allow it to fail.

You’ll get your bailout after all.