What makes you the Ultimate Budget Savvy Bride?

Okay, everyone isn’t Chelsea Clinton and can’t spend $3 million on their nuptials. So, the BSB and Blooms By The Box are joining forces to make your wedding a little easier on your wallet. So, we want to know how are you planning on saving some cash at your wedding! What DIY aspects will you be incorporating? From making your own invitations to arranging your own wedding flowers, we want to know it all. What advice can you give other brides during the wedding planning process? What worked for you? What didn’t?

We want to hear your stories! The BSB and Blooms are looking for innovative, detailed responses. Feel free to write as much as you’d like! Pictures are welcome and encouraged! Submit your entries to danielle@bloomsbythebox.com before 11:59:59 p.m. CST on Sunday, September 19^th, 2010. We will choose the top five entries and open up the contest to votes from BSB readers to determine the winner, who will be announced on October 1! But what’s the prize?

The winner will receive

a $500 gift certificate

from Blooms By The Box!

With Blooms great prices, that’s ALL of your wedding flowers!! I know this could help many of you greatly in your budget savvy wedding endeavors, so I cannot wait to see your entries!

Good luck to all who enter! See the official rules below for details!

Essay Contest Period

Launch: Monday, August 30^th, 2010 at 12:00:01 a.m. CST.

All Entries must be submitted by: Sunday, September 19^th, 2010 by 11:59:59 p.m. CST.

(We (BBTB and BSB) will review entries for a few days and collectively pick the top 5 we think are the most deserving)

Voting Period: Thursday, September 23^rd, 2010 at 12:00:01 a.m. CST and ends on Thursday, September 30^th, 2010 at 11:59:59 p.m. CST.

Winner Announced: Friday, October 1^st, 2010 via blog post on BSB and Blooms By The Box’s Facebook Page.

Official Contest Rules

Eligibility: All participants must be Brides-to-Be and legal residents of the United States (excluding Puerto Rico and other territories and possessions of the United States) at the point of entry. All participants must have a valid e-mail address.

Entry: Limit one entry per person. All entrants must provide a valid email address in order uphold the official rule of one entry per person. All entries will be submitted via email to danielle@bloomsbythebox.com by the times stated above and will then be posted. Any entries submitted after the deadline for submission will not be eligible. Entries must be entrant’s own original work, must not infringe on any third-party rights and must be deemed suitable by both The Budget Savvy Bride and Blooms By The Box.  Entries deemed lewd or offensive might be disqualified, at the BSB and Blooms By The Box’s sole discretion.

General Conditions: All participants must “Like” Blooms By The Box Page on Facebook and The Budget Savvy Bride on Facebook in order to qualify and be eligible for winning the prize. All essay entries submitted after the specified dates will not be eligible. Voting will be conducted on The Budget Savvy Bride via comment where as the voting participant will comment on what essay they liked the most and their reasons why. Comments on the BloomsBlog will not count towards the contest votes. All comment votes submitted after the specified dates will not be counted. Both The Budget Savvy Bride and Blooms By The Box will review all entries and choose the Top 5 essay entries we feel are most deserving. Then the public will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite essay, which will determine the winner. The essay with the most comments (votes) will receive the $500 gift certificate from Blooms By The Box.

The Budget Savvy Bride and Blooms By The Box are not responsible for malfunctions of electronic equipment, computer hardware or software, or any other technical problems related to website entries. Any attempt at entry as above stated is void. Entries become property of The Budget Savvy Bride and Blooms By The Box and will not be returned. By entering submissions, entrants are agreeing to have their submissions published and promoted on both www.TheBudgetSavvyBride.com and www.BloomsByTheBox.com and any affiliated websites. The Budget Savvy Bride’s computer will be the official clock of the Contest.

The Budget Savvy Bride and Blooms By The Box both reserve the right to disqualify any individual they find to be tampering with the entry process or the operation of the Contest, or any web site related to the Contest; to be acting in violation of the official rules; or to be acting in a non-sportsmanlike or disruptive manner.

Prize details: The winner will receive a $500 gift certificate from Blooms By the Box. Cannot combine with any other promotions or discounts. The awarded $500 can be spent on any items available at www.BloomsByTheBox.com. BloomsByTheBox.com will only ship in the United States. Prizes are not transferable. No cash redemptions or prize substitutions are allowed. If the prize or any part thereof is unavailable for any reason, as determined by Blooms By The Box in its sole discretion, Blooms By The Box reserves the right to substitute the prize with another prize of equal or greater value.

Winner Notification / Selection: The winner of the contest will be announced on Friday, October 1^st, 2010. The winner will have 7 days from notification to respond to Blooms By The Box via email (danielle@bloomsbythebox.com) to accept the prize. Failure to accept the price within 7 days from the notification, the winner will then forfeit the $500 gift certificate. In the event that no one claims the prize, the participant who received the second most votes will receive the prize and the same rules apply. Odds of winning will depend on the total number of eligible entries received during the Contest Period. The drawing of the top 5 essays to be voted on  will be conducted by The Budget Savvy Bride and Blooms By The Box, the judges of the Contest, whose decisions on all matters related to these official rules shall be final and binding.

I’m excited to report that The Budget Savvy Bride has been chosen as a finalist in the Budget Wedding Blog Category for WeddingChannel.com‘s 2010 bridal blog awards! Thank you to the kind readers who nominated BSB- I can’t tell you how much it means to me to hear how much this blog has helped you! Voting is now open so we’d love for you to go give us a vote! While you’re there, take your time to vote for all the other categories!

Hey brides- listen up! I’m always on the lookout for great tools to assist you in planning your wedding, and today’s contest provides just what you need! Want to win a free year’s subscription for My Wedding Workbook’s Premium Wedding Website with online RSVP and lots of other great planning tools?

In case you aren’t familiar, My Wedding Workbook has a great set of wedding planning tools available for do-it-yourself brides, providing everything you need to plan your own wedding from start to finish. Their tools are all online (so they’re easily accessible), and they all work together, so you don’t have to jump from site to site re-entering your information. I love finding ways to make the planning process easier! With My Wedding Workbook, you’ll have access to:

• A Personal Wedding Website – with online RSVPs, photo galleries, your own blog and more!
• An Online Wedding Organizer – where you can manage, track and plan every detail of your big day.
• And many additional tools such as checklists, worksheets, an ideas and inspiration board, email communications center and more!

The regular price for this service is $7.95 per month, so around $95 per year, but you could win this subscription for free by entering this contest! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment telling us your favorite feature of My Wedding Workbook for your chance to win. Entries will be accepted until July 6, 2010 at 11pm CST. The winner will be announced on July 7, 2010!

Good luck, and happy planning!

So I submitted my wedding for The Knot’s ‘My Real Wedding Awards’ back in June or July and kind of forgot about it until now. I logged into the Knot today after I received an email alert from them to see that voting has started (and has been under way for over a week- oops- I’m a little late in the game!) I navigated to our entry page to see this:

In case you can’t see it, that tiny orange text under Eric & Jessica’s Wedding… yeah, that says Editor’s Pick! Talk about humbling! If you’d care to do us a solid and place a vote for us, we’d be much obliged. That yellow box where you have to type the illegible and hard to read words is how you vote.  Winners in photo categories will have their photos published in The Knot magazine. How amazing would that be? There are other grand prizes that I’m not eligible for due to the fact that I submitted my wedding months and months ago, but being in The Knot would be a dream come true- a real wedding in a national bridal mag that cost $10k?? How fab!

Click the link below to go to our page and place your vote!

My Real Wedding from The Knot and The Nest.

Thanks as always for reading, and for your support. You can vote every day until March 21, when they will choose the top 10 finalists.