Cara is the author of Cheap Ways to Tie the Knot and blogs from her home in Orlando, FL, about cheap ways to spend and save at CheapWaysTo.com

Here’s her advice:

As businesses brace for the possibility of a double dip recession, brides and grooms should plan for the unexpected when planning their wedding day: job loss, vendors going out of business, rising prices and traveling limitations.

While weddings still take place even in a down economy, brides and grooms are scaling back and trimming the excess from their celebrations. The numbers show the dramatic shift:

The average cost of a wedding dropped $10,000 in a year after the recession began. Last year the cost began to recover, rising from $19,581 (2009) to $23,867, according to The Wedding Report. But the latest figures show weddings are taking a hit again, with the average cost of a wedding for the first half of 2011 sinking to $21,277.

Scarcity of jobs, a sour housing market and high fuel costs are making wedding planning a challenge - for couples and vendors alike. Florists, caterers and bakers are feeling the pinch of rising prices and are passing those costs onto their clients.

But there are ways to recession-proof your wedding and make your day of celebration a little easier on the wallet for everyone involved. Here are several ways.

1. Go off-peak. Choose an off-season month (January, February or November) to get married, and an off-peak day and time. Saturday afternoon and evenings are the most desired spots, so go for Saturday morning, or Friday or Sunday night to save money on venues and services.

2. Limit the guest list. Most caterers charge per-person, so the difference between 100 guests and 150 is significant. The reception is usually half of your budget - and with food prices rising, feeding your guests tastefully will be hard. Simplify the reception by serving high tea, dessert buffet, brunch or finger-foods instead of compromising on options for a multi-course meal.

3. Buy discounted gift cards from GiftCardGranny.com. Use them to purchase decorations, supplies and materials from stores like Hobby Lobby, or your wedding attire from Macy’s or J.Crew, which is among a growing number of retailers with affordable wedding boutiques. Combine the cards with coupons or promo codes and increase your savings.

4. Shop around and negotiate prices and packages with vendors. Don’t ever settle for more than you think you should be paying. Vendors will be happy for your business. Get everything in writing and have one to two backup vendors you can call should something go south with your first choice.

5. Get your hands dirty. The key to any successful budget wedding is doing it all yourself. But it requires delegating to friends and family, who are often honored and happy to play a part in your big day. Get your friends and family in the act of addressing envelopes, folding programs, creating favors and making a headpiece or a veil. Some might be willing to cover some costs involved as a wedding gift to you. The greatest benefit of going DIY is saving money, which will allow you to in turn spend on what you can’t do - or don’t want to leave to chance, like photography.

6. Get thrifty. Twenty-two year olds Jonathan and Rebecca Mooradian of Tennessee scoured Goodwill, thrift stores and yard sales for practically everything they needed for their wedding this year. After paying about 50 cents to a $1 for each item (including a 25-cent wedding gown), they sold their wares in their own garage sale after the wedding, according to The Tennessean’s Ms. Cheap. Keep an eye on your local Craigslist and Freecycle for potential finds, and don’t forget to ask friends if you can borrow crystal or glass vases, dishes, glasses, serving trays and utensils.

7. Consider insurance. Wedding insurance can protect you in the event a vendor goes bankrupt or out of business. If you’re spending more than $5,000 on your wedding, it might be worth the extra cost. Talk to your insurance agent for advice, or check out online offerings like WedSafe.com.

When couples or their parents are faced with the choice of paying for a 150-person reception or putting money toward a down payment on a house, the more practical option may win the day. Do what’s best for your situation and remember a lot of people are going through what you are. Friends and family will understand if you don’t throw a soiree of Kardashian proportions.

Read more on Salon.com

L.A. Baby has a smile to melt even the coldest heart. She’s just a happy baby. If you smile at her, she smiles right back. Nothing really gets her down. Last week she received a couple of vaccines and after an ear piercing scream and the most startled, “how could you hurt me like this, mom?” look, the nurse rubbed her sore little leg and began cooing and smiling at her and wouldn’t you know, L.A. Baby forgot all about the pain in her thigh. Total screaming and crying time was about 60 seconds. You can’t ask for better than that.

What was I going to write about again? Oh yeah, work. My brain is mush. I think all the smart cells went to L.A. Toddler and L.A. Baby. This is a good thing for them, not such a good thing for my employer. Although, living in LA there’s one thing I’ve learned - temps are temps for a reason. No one wants them around all the time. This is a good thing for me ’cause my bosses and peers welcomed me back showering me with compliments and stories of how much they missed me. I’ve been back to work for 3 weeks now and I’m easing into my former break-neck pace. Thank you to my bosses for allowing me that ‘easing’ time!

Returning to work was really difficult at first, but after the second week back, L.A. Baby had adjusted to the schedule that we forced upon her. I’m a big proponent of getting a baby on a schedule as soon as possible. Not a strict, wake at 7am, eat at 7:15am kind of thing. More of a wake around 7am, then eat, then get dressed, etc. As long as each activity is followed by the next activity each day her little world has stability and she knows what to expect and when to expect it. Some mornings she wakes up earlier, but all that means is I’ve got her dressed and ready to go and she gets a little snooze in her carseat before we drop her off at daycare. And this means I get a few extra minutes to touch up my makeup or sip some coffee. And the schedule certainly makes the evening routine smooth. She knows that once we change into her jammies and she nurses, it’s time for swaddling and rocking and she’s out like a light in about 5 minutes. I have a hard time letting go of her and lying her in her crib after being apart all day so she usually gets about 20 minutes of rocking and cuddling. Supposedly she’s old enough that I should be able to lie her in her crib drowsy but still awake but I’m just not ready for that yet. And as much as I believe in a schedule, I also believe that you can’t spoil a baby (at least one that’s only 3 months old). She wakes me up once or twice during the night to eat, but she’s all business and right back to sleep and I’m back to my pillow in about 20 minutes. How cool is that?

All in all, my returning to work has been hectic and sometimes frustrating, but it allows me the adult interaction that I need and at the end of the day I’m a better mom for it.

Are you a working mom? Share your story!

We’ve come a long way since celebrating your 25th all those years ago and I’ve enjoyed every moment since. Thank you for coming into my life, loving me and for giving me the two sweetest babies ever born. You make my life fun -

Here’s to 40 more years!  I love you!

Now on to the other kind of laboring. For the past couple of days I’ve been losing my mucus plug - or as the doctors prefer to call it - ‘bloody show’ - EWW! Can’t they come up with a better term for it? Sure it’s bloody… but it’s not entertaining like a show would be. Again - Ewww! Anyhow, this is one of the signs that birth is imminent and likely only a few days away. Hooray!

So last night I woke up at about 2am with major pressure and cramping and serious hunger. Since I couldn’t get comfortable I decided to get up and eat something. I was quite groggy and was still experiencing the pressure and cramping. About 1/2 way through my peanut butter toast I realized that the pressure seemed to be coming and going. Holy crap! Was I in labor? I grabbed my watch, paper and a pen and decided to get serious. 3 minutes later another contraction, and another about 4 minutes later. Holy crap! I need to wake LA Daddy or do I? With LA Toddlers labor, the contractions were REALLY HARD by the time they were 3 minutes apart. These were just uncomfortable. 20 minutes later I had another one. Then about 30 minutes later another one. Damn. “False” labor. Back to bed I went.

Today has been more of the above. A contraction here and there but nothing worth writing down. It seems as though if I pick up the pen and watch start counting they stop. Is this LA Baby’s way of teasing me?

LA Daddy is worried (like all parents) that she’ll be born and something will go wrong. We’ve been through this before and I’m confident that this time will be easier, quicker, a little more relaxed, etc. But now I’m beginning to think that maybe what ‘goes wrong’ will be that I’m not paying attention and we’ll wait too long to go to the hospital and we’ll have a FREEWAY BABY!

We managed to tear her away from the decorations and get to the costume aisles. She was amazed - wide eyed and smiling, “WOW” was all that she could say. She walked along the aisles looking at and touching different costumes for a while until we said she could pick one if she saw one she liked. We had come to the store with the intention of getting a witch costume. It’s been a long and thoughtful process, this Halloween-costume-choice-thing. About 2 months ago she bounced out of the hallway and announced “I’m a cereal!”. She was wearing a small innertube around her waist and it did resemble the cheerios she’d eaten that morning. So for about 2 weeks we’d planned on putting her in a white sweatsuit (the milk) and painting the innertube to resemble a cheerio. I was so proud of her creative mind!

Then about 3 weeks ago she decided she wanted to be a ghost for Halloween. We quickly realized she’d gotten this idea from her Clifford’s Halloween book. You see, Clifford tossed a sheet over himself and was the biggest and scariest ghost in town. So we started looking online for ghost costumes - LA Toddler was not impressed with any of the scary ghosts and Casper was too friendly looking. So we explained that we’d put a sheet over her shoulders and paint her face white so she’d look like a ghost. She pouted and shouted “NO GHOST - I’ll be a witch!”

Today we poured over 3 or 4 witch costumes, but since none actually came with a broom attached she wanted no part of them and announced she didn’t want to be a witch. She was going to be a princess like Cinderella. Great! Let’s check out the Cinderella costumes - there were 2 to choose in her size but neither satisfied her. “I want to be a princess LIKE Cinderella.” She didn’t actually want to BE Cinderella. OK. Good thing for us there was an entire wall of princess dresses in every size, color, fabric… fairy princesses, halloween princesses (apparently adding orange toile to a black witches dress makes it a halloween princess dress), ice princesses… you get my drift. We finally ended up with a “Winter Princess” dress. It’s adorable and I can hardly wait to post pictures of her in it… but that will have to wait until the big day.

Finally, I’m pulling for throwing a white sheet over LA Daddy and letting him be the biggest and scariest ghost in town. What do you think?

I’m sorting through the mail and look up. She’s standing there, holding the open bag of jelly beans, fist inside fishing for as many as she can hold in one hand.  So I say in my best mom tone, “I had better not see you put even one jelly bean in your mouth until after dinner. Those are for dessert, not an appetizer.”

She looks at me, seriously and firmly states, “Mommy, if you don’t want to see me… then just look away.”

A grin slices across her face and she shrugs her shoulders. My mouth opened, but I had nothing.  I reward her with one jelly bean for being so logical. I’m a total pushover, I know.

I’m eating well, exercising, not allowing myself to get too upset about anything – all good stuff. But I realized that by this point in my pregnancy with L.A. Toddler, I’d read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on about pregnancy and the upcoming birth.  And I had accumulated a bunch of clothes for her, had them washed and in her dresser. The infant seat base was installed in both cars, my hospital bag was packed, and I was having nightly conversations with her, in my belly, on my commute home from work every evening.

So… I’ve managed to buy a couple of new outfits for L.A. Fetus (since she’s going to be an Autumn baby and L.A. Toddler was a Spring baby.) I can justify any shopping - watch - ’she can’t wear pastels in December for crying out loud!’ See?!

Those clothes are still in shopping bags on the floor of my closet. I’ve washed the liners for the infant seat and stroller. They’ve been hanging on the line in the laundry room for a month. They’re probably covered in dust and need to be washed again. I made L.A. Daddy fetch the infant clothes from the basement. I managed to sort through one box (of 3) and retrieve the multi-seasonal pieces.  I tossed them in a shopping bag and plopped it in my closet with the other new clothes.  At least I’m sort of organized – right?!

I suppose it’s not as bad as I think.  I do have multiple daily conversations with L.A. Fetus – she’s got a great habit of waking me up 4 times a night to pee. She likes to party (kick and punch) at midnight, 2am, 4am and 6am – although the 6am is a “get up and feed me” kind of party.  She also likes to remind me that I’ve been sitting at my desk too long during the workday.  But most amazingly, she likes to defend her big sister.  She starts her own assault on my stomach when she hears me fighting with L.A. Toddler. Of course, when L.A. Toddler is being her usual sweet self, she sings to L.A. Fetus who applauds (literally!)  L.A. Toddler gets the hugest kick out of feeling her baby sister bump around in my belly.

L.A. Toddler has also made up several songs for her sister… mostly consisting of words like “baby sister, little baby, I love you.”  It’s these things that keep me sane – L.A. Fetus is going to be just fine. And I’m sure she’s going to be showered with affection just like L.A. Toddler was (and still is).

I’ve also realized that it’s high time to get going on the Kegel exercises – oh joy. My recent OB visits have been really good – we had a bit of scare early in the pregnancy because my blood pressure was higher than it should have been, but that issue is gone and I’m back to normal bp. AND –- the highlight of my most recent visit was stepping on the scales. Yes, that’s really what I said.  I only gained a pound last month.  Yahooooo!

I might just top out at the same weight as I had with L.A. Toddler.  That would make me happy – cause I know I can lose that weight relatively quickly. Breastfeeding, chasing a toddler around and working full time… who’d have time to eat?

I am really looking forward to the next couple of months before her birth. This is the fun part, taking the hospital tour, getting the room ready, planning for the grandparents visits, receiving gifts … all fun stuff. But the most fun is learning about L.A. Fetus’s personality before she leaves my body. Feeling the little kicks and punches she gives me when she’s happy or irritated.  I can already tell she’s going to be the wild one and she’s really going to give her older sister a run for the money in the ‘independence’ department.