Thanks, everyone, for your wonderful suggestions on my post telling you about a Florida wedding that’s in our future.

THE FLIGHT: $398 (or maybe $378) I used several strategies that have already saved me money:

• Shopped around for the best deals
• Inputed frequent flier rewards #
• Tried to get a $20 rebate through my Entertainment Book.
• Could have used Ebates, but decided to try for the $20 rebate instead (Update: I clicked through to Hotwire from my Ebates account, and got $6 back after making a purchase. Whoa.)
• Paid for the flight using a rewards credit card

I booked our flight today. I shopped around, checking Kayak.com (I love that site as a starting point, because it checks lots of other sites for deals). We ended up booking it through Hotwire.com. The flight is nonstop and the flight times are good. Total cost including taxes and everything: $398 for two people. Hooray, we’re already $2 under my projected figures :).

Before booking the flight, I signed up for the airline’s reward program. I typed in my reward #, and I don’t know if I’ll get points, but it’s worth a shot. There is a $20 rebate coupon in my Entertainment Book for Hotwire flights. I’m not entirely sure if the rebate will apply to my flight, but I’m going to mail it in anyway to see what happens. I could have first logged into Ebates.com to get 2 percent cash back (and that would have been $8 guaranteed) but I wanted to see if I could save more with the rebate. I wasn’t able to combine offers (Update: Yes I was! I got cash back on the pre-tax total).

I paid for the flight using a rewards credit card. The flight purchase gave me enough points to finally get a $25 Amazon gift certificate and a $10 Amazon gift certificate. Those should be in the mail at the end of this month’s billing period. I hope I can use that "free" $35 toward her wedding gift. The bride-to-be has a cookbook on her registry … and if I get the gift certificates in time, I’ll put them toward that book, if no one else has purchased it yet. Otherwise, perhaps I can use the gift certificates toward something else on her registry that’s also on Amazon.

FORT MYERS ENTERTAINMENT BOOK

I’m already happy with my Entertainment Book for Pittsburgh, so after considering the advice of some commenters, I decided to purchase an Entertainment Book for the Fort Myers area. The list price was $25, which includes the $10 off discount and free shipping. I logged into my Ebates.com account, and accessed the Entertainment Book site through Ebates. I’ll get $6 cash back thanks to that.

This was my first purchase using Ebates. I  had $5 in my Ebates account that hasn’t yet been sent to me (your account has to reach $5.01 first, I believe). So, I’ll get $11 back total, reducing the price of the Entertainment Book to $14. If you decide to sign up for an Ebates account, won’t you use my referral link? I hope we’ll be able to save some money at restaurants, attractions and more using the Entertainment Book. I’ll be sure to keep track of how much we saved thanks to the book. When we leave Florida, I’ll give the book to my sister-in-law, so they can use the remaining coupons in their town. Total spent on the trip so far: $412