I agree, a wedding is simply the first step in hopefully a life together. Our wedding cost perhaps $200 and almost 25 years later I’m still somewhat embarrassed by how hockey it was. On the other hand I’ve been to several top of the line expensive weddings, and at first it used to really bother me, but seeing all of them end in divorce after a year or two has tempered my feelings about our wedding.

I personally expect as America is forced to live within its means that low key weddings will become the norm again.

BTW I often tell people that I’ve made a lot of stupid decisions in my life but marrying my Wife wasn’t one of them.

Just ask – it can’t hurt – and could help a ton!

My tip: Keep it simple, the guest list short, and add one unforgettable moment to your big day that your guests will keep remembering forever (for us, this was the balloon ride). If you’re offered help from friends and family, accept it; it allows them to participate in your big day rather than being a “consumerist recipient” of the fun. And ditch the costly wedding planners–you can do this yourself if you’re organized and know how to use tools like those at theknot.com.

I personally had a lovely wedding for less than $7000. My cousin had a lovely wedding for less than $800. My best friend had a lovely wedding for less than $20,000. In all cases, everything from the catering to the photography was paid for in cash. The money had been set aside for this purpose, and each of us spent it in ways that made us happy and made our celebration special.

It sounds like a lot of people are pretty bitter about weddings in general, and I have to wonder why…?

In 1931 my grandfather sent a letter back to his hometown in Sicily to ask for a suitable bride to be sent to him in America. My grandmother was matched to him (an original mail order bride) and with money my grandfather have sent to her bought a third class ticket to join him in Cleveland. Once she arrived they went to the local Catholic church and exchanged vows and wedding rings (10 dollars a piece). From there they walked to my great grand mothers house to celebrate with a lunch cooked by relatives. This marriage sadly ended earlier this year with the parting of my grandfather.

So what I think we can all take from this is that just because you can spend oodles of money for ice sculptures and custom wedding DVD’s does not guarantee anything. Only a lifetime and investment in each other can yield a long and fruitful life together.

Some other fun facts about my grandparents:
-My grandfather was 17 my grandmother 14 on their wedding day.
-My grandmother did not speak English when she arrived and didn’t really learn till WWII.
-My grandfather was buried with his wedding ring, my grandmother is still wearing hers.

Sales commission (15%): $450
Second Photographer: $300
Equipment rental: $300
Online Proofing: $50
Proof Album: $100
Subtotal: $1,200

This is just a basic offering. If you want an album then you would be looking at an additional $1,200. (the cost of the album and binding is $500, plus my time designing it).
I also use a super 8mm camera to capture some motion and incorporate that into a DVD slideshow. So I need to pay my editor.

So out of my base $3,000 package that is $1,800 that I profit… But wait there’s more. I spend a week editing the photos in addition to the 6-8 hours on Saturday shooting. It ends up being more than 40 hours for any given wedding.
Plus the fact that Uncle Sam wants 40% of my money.
It may seem like a lot of money for “just a bunch of pictures” but Ken said it right when he said that these are your memories. Along with your dress, the photos will be the only thing left to remember it. And you really want someone who knows what they’re doing. You may be able to skate by with a student or something (I remember shooting my first few weddings for $600 and still use some of those in my portfolio), but to get professional results it will cost you.
It is after all a business. And I run mine like a business. P&L, expenses, overhead, equipment. Not to mention experience and artistic value. It all factors in.

On the other hand I do work with people. And if people have the courage to ask for a discount because they like my work, I will do what I can to make it work out. Like Anne said above it must be short notice for a date I have available, they must be excited about my work, and there really should be budget considerations. I have done pro bono work, and have shot weddings for friends for the price of a roundtrip ticket and accommodations.
I don’t want to get rich by gouging people. My wedding pricing is pretty close to what my portrait work is when you break it down.
And, in fact I actually give half of the sales of my photo shirts to disaster relief (once a tsunami volunteer – always one).
But I still need to make sure that I am covering my operating expenses and still making a profit. The photographers that you find on Craigslist, etc. don’t understand that yet. And in this digital photography age it is easy to not see that there are still expenses to cover for each wedding.

I guess the moral is really… Just Ask.

Things that meant a lot to us:

Photographer: We paid $2000 for the best photographer in that price range.

Location: We had a scenic outdoor ceremony on the mountains.

Food: We like quality food.

Music: Hired a string quartet for ceremony only. CD music at the reception.

Dress: Custom-made but only $450.

Drinks: The caterer offered a bartender for $150 and we bought the all the drinks ourselves, no corkage fee or anything. So the guests were very happy.

Things that we did not care to spend much but still important:

No DJ, just CD music. We brought a CD changer. The best man did the announcements.

Flowers – bought everything from Costco $200. Arranged by friends and family.

Honeymoon: 5 days in NYC (not that exciting but good enough for us as we were preparing for a 6-month trip)

Cake: From a lady that works out of her home (with professional equipment)

Video: We bought a brand new video camera and had a student shoot the video.

Favors/centerpieces: Glass candle holders with ribbon filled with dried petals that my husband gave me over the years. More meaningful.

Limo: No need, the ceremony and reception was in the same location.

The focus was on family and friends: priceless.

-Charlotte

Then, tell them…
1. You can spend it all – and more out of your pocket. (though I strongly discourage debt for anyone – especially newlyweds!!!)
2. You can spend less than X and I’ll give you the balance in cash

When it’s “their” money to spend – or not spend – I’ve found that they get a little more frugal/practical/efficient with the money.

My wife & I got married on less than $300 over 27 years ago… and we’re a whole lot better off than all of our siblings that spent much, much more – and they’re all divorced.

The amount of money spent on a wedding might…. or might not make for a great wedding, but it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you will have a great marriage!!!!

Even that will probably run us a couple thousand dollar between cost of food, beer/wine and renting tables/chairs for everyone. But it will be exactly what I want. I would die from stress if I tried to host an “event” instead of a fun party (I can do parties, I’m good at them! events stress me out)

Photos are also a reminder of how you felt when you chose to marry someone. When half of couples get divorced, this can be an extraordinarily valuable asset to a relationship when times get tough.

Photos are not about material crap.

Ken

I definitely second asking friends and family to help. My mother is a caterer; she did all the food and the cake, which let her feel useful and kept her out of our hair! My husband’s dear friend is a florist and did the flowers. We had the ceremony and reception at a restaurant where we know the owners. An ex-boyfriend of mine did the video and a former coworker took the photos. My first boyfriend makes books and bound our guest book as well as a little book that held our homemade wedding vows. My husband’s stepfather gave us the run of his apartment (conveniently located in Osaka; we paid for the air tickets with frequent flier miles) for our honeymoon so that we didn’t need to stay in a hotel. We didn’t need anything sleek and super-fancy; it meant a lot more that everything had a personal touch from someone we care about. When we offered to pay, some people insisted on making it a gift and others gave us discounts.

Finally, I heartily recommend DIY and avoiding the wedding industry for everything possible. Ask your bridesmaids to wear dresses in a certain color and then let them do their own shopping wherever they like; I ended up getting my maid of honor’s dress on eBay, and we bought our shoes at a little independent shoe store. Buy flowers wholesale and arrange them yourself. Print your own invitations. Research local non-chain hotels and go there in person to negotiate discounts for your traveling guests. Do your own wedding favors: ours were little jars of organic dried thyme and oregano (our favorite cooking herbs), which we labeled with stickers that had our names and the date and then put into little gift bags that were super-cheap from an online wholesaler. Not only do our friends love them and tell us that they enjoy cooking with them, but we kept the extras and still use them, with a smile every time.

A wedding is about uniting two people in love. Not about tons and tons of tons of material crap. It’s not as if you’ll have a happier marriage with a $25K wedding than with a $5K one.

Use the money you save for something that DOES matter; securing your financial future. Financial difficulties, in contrast to $5K weddings, *ARE* among the most frequent reasons a couple break up.

Here’s a counterexample. My cousin paid around $5,000 for a professional photographer for her wedding. That price included the photography and two wedding albums — it didn’t include the digital negatives, and anyone who wanted copies of any of the pictures got to order them from the photographer at $10+ per print plus $20 s/h.

My cousin certainly paid enough to get some damn good pictures. Unfortunately, she didn’t. While the pictures of the bride and groom turned out well, the family portraits were terrible*, and there were more pictures of wedding details like wrapping paper, bows, and ribbons than there were candid shots of family members.

Paying the fool money price doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get a great product.

*No, really, they were terrible. Very bad wide-angle lens action going on there.

We have noticed at the thousands of weddings that we’ve attending is that you get what you pay for. Usually the most expensive in the area command that price because they’re the best and they don’t have to give deals to fill slots. We turn away many people simply because we can’t take any more weddings each year.

My best advice to get a good deal is to plan ahead, we’ve booked client for 2010 and they’re locked in to our prices now. Clients who did that 3 years ago saved themselves 50% over our current prices. Choose good quality and don’t spend your money on places it doesnt’ matter, printed napkins, favors, etc.

And like all those others before: Friends don’t ask their friends to give them free services at their weddings. Real friends offer to pay and let the other offer or give something else. We refuse to work for friends in any case, don’t want any hard feelings or missunderstanding to ruin a friendship.

Wedding Dress. Found one for $350 bucks that we could alter to have it the way I wanted. And I had a friends mother alter it (we did pay her) but much cheaper than a tailor.

Wedding flowers: Again I had a friend do it, I did pay her to do them, but we got them cheaper that way.

My mother did all the table decorations. It was a spring wedding, so we used live flowers and “planted them” in baskets.

We got married at our local church, and it was free.

We had our reception at our local church and it was free.

We did not cater the event, I went out and purchased everything we needed, the food, the mints, the napkins, silverwear ect from different places. We used a bakery to make big sheetcakes as part of the refreshments.

My aunt made my wedding cake, this was her wedding present to me.

Now this was the day’s before digital, we did have a photographer, not cheap and frankly wasn’t that good. If I could do it over, I’d just have someone I knew do it, and pay them.

Tuxes we couldn’t get cheaper.

We printed our own invites

Back then I could drop off many of the invites and it was cheaper, but with gas now, it probably would not be.

No alcohol

I borrowed a hoop skirt (instead of purchase one).

I did spend good money on shoes though, not something to skimp on as your feet will hurt.

And our clergy that married us was free.

Just exactly when did rehearsal dinners become such an affair? Wedding budgets seemed ridiculous already, they had to expand the chaos into other days?

While we didn’t have a huge budget, we did pay for the things that were important to us. We hired student musician’s ($225 for a string trio) to play at the ceremony, we hired a talented commercial photographer who was just starting to build a wedding portfolio ($500), hired a DJ ($300) and decorator ($400), had the cake baked by a local hobby baker and purchased the flowers ourselves – the bridesmaids made the bouquets. We also hired a reasonable venue, a community hall that was quite affordable.

The real “shocker”, where we saved the most money, was on food. Instead of paying for expensive catering, we asked our guests who lived locally to each bring a food dish – potluck style – to the wedding. This might shock some people, as its customary for fancy food to be provided, however honestly our guests seemed thrilled to help out and the spread of food available at the wedding was far more impressive than any catered party I’ve ever seen. Many of our guests told us such after the fact, and 2 friends who attended have since done the same with their own weddings.

Overall everything for our wedding cost about $4500 for 100 guests, including photos, music, tuxes/dress, venue, etc. We had the time of our lives celebrating with our close family and friends and didn’t go into debt doing it. Anyone who would have been turned off or upset about the informal style of our wedding didn’t belong there anyway – we’re not those people!

In the end, it’s about what’s really important to you. For us, the wedding was about celebrating our love for each other with our loved ones, and not about throwing the most impressive party we could concoct. We had a great time and have wonderful memories that will last us the rest of our lives.

Also, vendors were willing to throw in extra stuff for no additional cost if they were unwilling to lower the total price or if they were concerned about our budget – just for asking. For example, the florist built up our chuppah above and beyond what we expected simply because they recently built something new for a previous client and she knew that we couldn’t go over our budget with her, but thought that it fit our vision so well. It helps to pick nice vendors, and then treat them nicely!

My extended family is full of engineers who live in the suburbs (in New Jersey!), so if I want someone to design a machine that dispenses alcohol or someone to construct an antenna that beams wedding footage into space, I’d be set. Catering, not so much.

My family has been looking forward to my/my sisters’ weddings since we were about 16, and I see no reason to deny them the opportunity to do the electric slide. It will be more expensive than my preferred wedding (drive-thru chapel in Vegas!), but ultimately it will be a good time for everyone. My family is worthy of my money.

Anyway, thanks again for writing a REALISTIC article on how to cut costs and not another “exploit your friends & family or fun & profit!” article.

Many of the brides who saved money by using less skilled vendors don’t publicly admit that they made a serious mistake. Having lackluster photographs to keep for the rest of your life is not fun. Sometimes it’s better to pay a little too much for certain things than not enough.

Luckily, I’m beginning a career in event planning, my boyfriend has a lot of ties to the gourmet/wine industry, my housemate is the best meat expert in town, my best friend is getting her MFA in photography, and we know several amazing DJs. I can’t wait to celebrate my union with the help of all of my wonderful friends. And resources like GRS help a ton too!

I had my boyfriend read Your Money or Your Life and we’re getting practice in being financial partners by saving $1000 by February for a trip to Disneyland. I’m so excited to share a future with someone — and his understanding just how important personal finance to me is one of my biggest sources of joy.

edit to add: I’m glad to read all of these comments from people about not abusing the generosity of friends… one friend’s first reaction was ‘Can I please DJ your wedding?’ Another friend did a photo shoot for me for my birthday and was honored that I asked her to donate her time and talent instead of cash, while my sister is a veteran of wedding memory production (she filmed and edited a DVD o my mother’s wedding, since she is a talented visual effects editor @ a major movie studio). I’ll definitely discuss it thoroughly with everyone so we’re all on the same level of what contributions are expected, what is too much, etc.

I just got engaged on Saturday, however… so I’m so excited! The fact that neither my fiance (eee) or I have consumer debt is a major source of pride. We have 2 years to be as creative as possible for this celebration!

When the holidays rolled around the cost of these venues went up so much that we usually cancelled half our weekly events and for those we did have, we budgeted up to 30 to 50% more for room rental cost.

Keep that in mind for a Holiday Wedding theme!