Click, Claim, Save

Since she began looking in March, bride-to-be Audrey Molina has saved about $1,500 on her wedding. She hasn’t been cutting corners, instead, Molina’s been scouring daily-deals sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial and MyDailyWeddingDeals.com, a site with wedding-specific deals, to score discounts for her October 5 wedding in Las Vegas. When Molina and her fiancé, Josh Watts, both of suburban Indianapolis, sat down to calculate the budget of what Molina calls the “traditional wedding,” they realized the cost was much too high. “We found out that we really didn’t know what went into a wedding,” Molina says. “We tried to do it the traditional way, but right now we don’t feel like we’re cutting back at all.” If there’s one tradition nearly all brides honor, it’s the slashing of the budget.According to wedding-industry tracker The Wedding Report, the average cost of a wedding in 2011 was $25,631. Paring back that number often meant paring back some other part of the wedding, most often the number of invited guests. But just as recessionistas turned to daily-deals sites to score half-off manicures and dinners out when the economy tanked, today’s brides are employing the same tricks to keep their budget in check. MyDailyWeddingDeals.com offers money-saving deals on wedding-specific services like DJs and rehearsal-dinner venues. A recent wedding-inspired Groupon campaign featured a name-changing service, salon deals and savings at bridal boutiques. So far Molina has used a deal from MyDailyWeddingDeals to save on her wedding cake. For $50, she was able to get a faux wedding cake made out of dense Styrofoam with real fondant and cake decoration. The faux cake contains a secret compartment that holds a real slice of cake for the cake-cutting tradition; afterward, the cake is taken away and budget-friendly sheet cake is served to guests. Molina had to make a decision on quality versus savings when it came to booking her wedding DJ. Although a discount deal was more economical up front, she ended up using that to negotiate the price down $500 from the DJ she and Watts really wanted. David Cupps, co-owner of MyDailyWeddingDeals, says although the company offers some national deals, they’re usually the company that’s one-of-a-kind in most of their 15 localities. Cupps notes having several local markets, such as Indianapolis, Detroit and Columbus, Ohio, helps him maintain better relationships with the vendors and local brides he meets at bridal markets. At first, Cupps and his then-girlfriend Leah had run a photo-booth business when Leah suggested creating a deals website exclusively for weddings. The site operates similarly to other deal sites: People sign up with their email to get notification of deals. Cupps currently has 6,000 people registered in his home state of Indiana, with 25,000 nationwide. As for Groupon, a wedding-focused offer appeared on their site for national offers in April. It included nationwide and local vendors for deals, such as a nine-day Kenyan safari for two, wedding invitations and stationery, photo books and wedding gowns. This was the first time Groupon decided to bunch several wedding deals together, says Nicholas Halliwell, a spokesman for the company. “We’re always looking for cool things that will be of interest to our consumer base,” he says. “With wedding season approaching we felt like this would be a good opportunity.” While Groupon did try to keep expiration dates in mind when setting up their wedding deals, most of the deals had an expiration date typical to other Groupon deals, with deals expiring six to 18 months after purchase date. Some merchants involved in the collection simply benefited from the exposure to consumers. TBS bridal, a bridal salon in Oak Brook, Ill., offered $1,000 toward any gown for $500. When the buying window closed, one deal had been bought. “We definitely got more calls than we’ve had,” says shop owner Danie Roberts. “It’s a very personal decision though and brides don’t just usually know what they want. They need to touch it, feel it and research it first.” Having saved $1,500 already, Molina is hoping to reach an ultimate goal of saving $2,000 by getting a deal on a photographer. When it comes to advising other brides on how to stay on a budget, Molina says it’s all fairly simple. “Keep looking outside the box and don’t be nervous about the quality of the vendors,” Molina says. “They’re perfectly fine places, and we’ve never had trouble with any of them.”