Reader Story: How I Got Married on the Cheap — And Loved It!
Published on - January 17th, 2010 (by J.D. Roth) This guest post from Lars is part of a new feature here at Get Rich Slowly. Every Sunday will include a reader story (in the new “reader stories” category). Some will be general “how I did X” stories, and others will be examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success.
I got married last month. It was a bit of a whirlwind romance — at the beginning of 2009, we’d been talking about an engagement later in the year, with a wedding in 2010. Things being what they are, the engagement got moved up a couple of months, and we decided to plan a wedding for the end of the year.
The first question we had to ask ourselves was, “What size wedding do we want?” The next question was, “What can we afford?”
A little background
Let’s talk about our personal situation for a moment before I answer the questions in detail. My wife is finishing school and doesn’t work. I finished grad school 18 months ago, and had a bout of unemployment for the last four months of 2008.
As I’d just gotten out of school, I hadn’t yet amassed much of an emergency fund. I mostly lived off of credit cards during that period. After moving, paying rent for two months on two apartments, and a small weekend trip to Europe earlier this year (before the wedding was in the works…if I knew we were getting married this year, we wouldn’t have gone), I racked up over $10,000 in credit card debt. I set a goal in April to have my debt paid off by the end of January 2010 — a goal I’m quite pleased to say that I’ll meet.
Basically, the take-away here is that we didn’t have much money for a wedding.
For us, the most we could contribute was just a few thousand dollars. My fiancée checked with her family, and the best they could contribute was $1000. My parents paid for our honeymoon, so, we were looking at planning a wedding with a budget of $3000.
What size wedding?
I’ve moved around a bit over the last few years, so it’s been hard for me to keep up with old friends. And since I recently moved, I didn’t have friends that I was dying to invite to my wedding. My wife had a couple of people on the “it would be nice if they could come” list, but their attendance wasn’t critical. So, we decided on a family wedding.
We figured that meant under 10-20 people including us. Some of my wife’s immediate family is local; the others all live in the same town about eight hours away. My family isn’t local, and would have to fly no matter where the wedding was held.
Here’s the challenge: How do you plan a wedding for a dozen people on $3000? We explored some local options, and with facility charges and whatnot, the economics just didn’t work. We would have paid too much for a big facility that would feel empty with so few people in it, or been too stuffed in a smaller facility. Because it was a December wedding, an outdoor event where we are wouldn’t work either.
We both wanted a nice wedding that didn’t feel cheap and that worked in our budget. (My wife told me later that she wasn’t thrilled with the budget we’d set, but she also said that ten years from now, she’d be happy we weren’t still paying for it.) Then there’s the sticky issue of some friends of her local family that we socialize with from time to time… we were being “encouraged” to add them to the guest list. I wasn’t happy about it — if they all came, it would almost double the size of our wedding.
What can we afford?
As luck would have it, we stumbled on some wedding packages in Las Vegas. When I started putting together cost estimates, I realized that this would be the best fit. We stumbled upon the Stratosphere’s wedding packages, and they start at just a few hundred dollars. We chose a package that ran about $800 for a 30-minute ceremony way up in the tower, and it came with a dozen photos.
The ceremony was nice and short. We ate dinner at Fellini’s restaurant in the hotel — we were able to get a private room for no additional charge — and best of all, we had a really nice three-course dinner for $32.95 per person. Wine was available for $18 a liter. The restaurant served us a really great cake for about $80. All said and done, dinner was about $800.
After dinner, we were given passes to the hotel lounge up in the tower, which provided us an excellent venue to enjoy a few drinks, some light dancing, and each other’s company. The VIP concierge was kind enough to provide us a limo at the low rate of $42 an hour — six of us drove up and down the strip for two hours taking pictures all over the place.
Repercussions
Choosing to have our wedding in Las Vegas didn’t go over so well with her side of the family at first. My family didn’t care; as my dad put it, a plane ride is a plane ride. Her family, on the other hand, had to travel. If the wedding had been local, those that were eight hours away would have driven, and the locals could have just stayed put.
My wife and I talked about it for awhile. I asked her, “Who is this wedding for? Is it for us, or for your family?” It was for both, of course, but when push came to shove, the costs came out of our pockets. A local wedding would have cost more, although not by much. It would have been a bit cheaper for her family though.
What was the right answer?
The truly locals do quite well for themselves (and, truth be had, get caught holding the bag for others in their family on occasion) but they also know that we’re just getting started in our married lives, and that every dollar counts.
I would have compromised. If I were in her family’s shoes, I would have sat down and said, “Look, we know it’s going to cost you more to have a local wedding. It’s also going to cost us a lot in travel expenses. How about we figure out what it would cost us to travel out there, and write you a check for a fraction of that?That way neither of us is unfairly burdened with avoidable costs.”
Had they offered that, it’s likely we would have had a local wedding.
Happily ever after
In the end, we decided it was our wedding, and our budget. We also knew we weren’t putting people at a terrible disadvantage cost-wise (flights were running $250 per person from both cities, and the Strat had regular rooms for $30/night during the week and $50/night on the weekends. Our suite ran $120/night.)
It turned out to be, in everybody’s opinion, an awesome wedding. I loved it from a budget perspective — we were able to pay for exactly what we needed, no more, and no less. No minimum charges, no facility rental charges, no nothing. And after the wedding, we had the whole town of Las Vegas to provide our nightlife. I think we did the whole thing for right around $3,000 — if we went over, it was only by a few hundred.
Reminder: This is a story from one of your fellow readers. Please be nice. After nearly a decade of blogging, I have a thick skin, but it can be scary to put your story out in public for the first time. Remember that this guest author isn’t a professional writer, and is just learning about money like you are.
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To poster Victoria, please don’t diss good old David’s Bridal. I got my dress for $400 bucks that had obviously been made for someone else who didn’t use it; it was really beautiful, had wonderful materials and design, and fit me perfectly. Deals ARE possible on wedding dresses…especially on ones where the original bride puts down a deposit but ultimately buys something else (or nothing…perhaps she changed her mind, or maybe the groom did, LOL!).
Since it was my second wedding, my husband originally suggested doing the JoP route. But since I’d eloped for my first marriage, my family was furious about my eloping, and I also regretted not having the “big day,” I put my foot down. This ended up being a great compromise and we were both very happy about it. (It also helped greatly that my husband just wasn’t interested in doing any of the planning…no arguments, then!)
Ironically, even though my frugal self told me I “should” sell my wedding dress right after the ceremony, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. A year later, I find myself taking conversion classes to convert to a religion that suggests that in the case of an interfaith couple with one spouse converting, that the couple remarry in a religious ceremony. Following my conversion, I’ll get to wear that dress again, bringing my “wear ratio” down to $200 a wearing, instead of $400!
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To those who think the comment about local family pitching in for the wedding was tacky, I disagree. I didn’t get the impression that he ASKED them for money, he simply stated that if they had made the offer he would have made different choices. He also didn’t say what pressure was put on family to attend, it sounded like the couple was very understanding about the change of location being a hardship for some guests, acknowledged the cost transfer, then left it up to people if they wanted to attend. Many people attend weddings because they have to, and are just fine staying home while the couple goes off to Vegas and Ooh/Aah over pictures later.
Personally DH and I ‘eloped’. We lived in Reno so we went down to ‘The Heart of Reno’ chapel and had a civil service. That was for us: $70. Then we let our families do whatever they wanted for a ‘wedding’. I expressed my opinion where it was necessary, but my philosophy was: you pay for it, it’s your call. I got what I wanted: a husband and ultimately pictures. My mom got a ceremony, my sister got to be a bridesmaid, and my in laws got to pretend it was the end of my husband’s life. Everyone was satisfied! (I would say happy, but his family was more ‘happy’ being miserable)
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We got married in my Dad’s living room. The only cost, the Unitarian minister. And my wife paid that.
Oh yeah, she bought her own ring too.
Maybe that’s why we’re now not married.
PS. Take my word for it, the ceremony was a blast. It was a debate whether to send the video to “World’s Funniest Videos” or not.
Come to think of it, she paid for my tux also.
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Our daughter got married a year ago. We spent $4,000 on the wedding, including a professional photographer. About 250 people came, the ceremony was beautiful (the photographer told me it was the most beautiful wedding she’d ever seen) and we had finger foods and cake for the reception. Many friends and family members donated parts of the service as gifts (the wedding invitations from a friend who owns a printing company, the cake and food from my husband’s sister who loves to cater, the decorations from friends at church.) We timed the wedding at Christmas and were able to benefit from the Christmas decorations in our church.
It’s definitely possible to have a great day without breaking the bank.
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Just wanted to say, if family members did not want to pay to travel, they could just decline the invititation. I think that if you love your family and can spend $ on a plane ticket just to see them get married, you should love them enough to spend the money, shut up, and move on!
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I think this was a great idea. I had a friend who had a large “social circle” and when she finally met a guy everyone exepected to be at her wedding. It was overwhelming and they had no money so they set a date 2 months in advance at a place in Lake Tahoe (about 4 hours from where we all lived). They told everyone they were welcome but since it was “come at your own expense” only those people who REALLY wanted to see her get married made the trip. She rented a large suite for their honeymoon and it served as the reception area with finger food catered by the hotel. A fine idea if you ask me.
My wedding ended up costing just over $5000, and that was with friends and family donating their time to put it all together. We didn’t have “professional” anything and rented out the community center and used the garden for the ceremony and the attached rec room for the reception. Everyone loved it.
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We got married in 2005 for a little over $10,000, but we had around 150 guests. I was pretty pleased that we were able to do it for that cost. This included live music at the ceremony (a choir and a pianist) and an appetizer/alcohol reception at a cool Art Deco bar downtown. The things that I saved on was the wedding gown and having only one bridesmaid and one groomsman. I also had recorded music at the reception (which was on two floors, so live music wouldn’t have worked that well anyway). We managed to find a caterer who would let us purchase our own beer and wine, which was so much cheaper.
I tend to agree with Victoria that the pretty, stylish dresses tend to be much more expensive – $1,500 and up. I lucked out and found a decent dress on clearance for $300 at my local bridal shop, but I wouldn’t say it was my dream dress by any means. I just wasn’t willing to spend thousands on a dress that I would only wear once. You really have to compromise if you want a dress that is cheaper (or perhaps have a the type of figure that looks good in any style or cut!).
I personally dislike the destination wedding as well, because it puts a lot of financial pressure on your close family and friends. Sure, no one is holding a gun to your head, and you can say no. But I find there often are hurt feelings involved. I’ve been lucky to not have to be a bridesmaid very often, but I have a few single friends who have been asked to be in loads of weddings, and it can become really expensive to buy all those dresses and travels to the weddings. That is also a financial drain on those closest to you that I wish could be avoided.
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I have to say, I love this reader stories feature. Seriously. Every week, I look forward to reading the discussion that follows each post. For some reason, it’s different than having guest authors and staff writers. I feel it’s much more community-based.
Thanks, everyone, for participating…
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I’ve read quite a few comments here about shifting the cost of the wedding to the guests by moving the venue to Vegas. I would agree with that if the entire family lived in the area, but his family lived outside of the area, and it sounds like they didn’t take the $1000 from her family, so all-in-all, this put everyone on pretty even footing, I think, and allowed the bride and groom to have a wonderful day without being in debt or leaving a portion of the family feeling shafted by having to foot the bill of the travel costs.
My husband and I went back and forth when deciding where to have our wedding. Our families live on the East coast in different towns, and we live on the West coast. At first we thought about having the wedding on the East coast, but then couldn’t decide where as it would seem preferential to one side or the other. So at the end of the day, we decided to have a wedding in the town we live in and love, which required that almost everyone travel to us. We ended up inviting everyone to the rehearsal dinner as well since they had all traveled so far to celebrate with us. Nothing about the affair was budget-friendly, but we had a great time, and we could afford it at the time without draining our savings or racking up the credit card bills. A lot of the guests made a vacation out of it, so I don’t feel like we inconvenienced them by having the wedding far away.
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Saving money on your wedding is awesome.
More importantly, did you have any kind of discussion with your new bride about thoughts on money, whether your money “blueprints” are compatible, and things of that sort??
Coming from someone who knows, its probably a lot more important than you think.
Great post
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I work at a Catholic Church and assist the priest with the marriage prep with the engaged couple. We always encourage them to remember that the wedding is a day, the marriage is for a lifetime. We also encourage them to use our parish hall for FREE for the reception- the only rule is that they can’t have alcohol unless they buy a special permit from our insurance provider ($100) They must marry in the Church anyways so there is no worries about a place and officiant. We’ve hosted many many potluck receptions with a local free band and everyone had a lot of fun! Very economical and a wonderful way to start a marriage.
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My husband and I wanted to skip the lecture of “wait to get married until after we finished college”, so we eloped. We got our marriage license during my lunch break at work and then got married after I got off work, by the Magistrate. I was in my work clothes and he was in a t-shirt and shorts. I don’t regret a thing. My parents were only mildly upset (mainly my mom) since they wanted pictures, a wedding and to walk me down the aisle. My mom made us (and paid for us to) rent a dress, a suit and get pictures taken at a studeo. We then sent out announcements to our family and surprised everyone. Everyone sent us money and we used it to rent/furnish an apartment, get a car, and go back to college.
I still think we did the right thing by eloping since other than my parents, my family lived about two states over and had just flown/drove to my uncles wedding three states over, two months earlier. We figured no one would come other than my husbands mom and grandma and my parents. So why waste the money on a wedding? We were poor college students and didn’t have the money anyway. Almost 16 years later I know we made the right choice. Someday we would like to renew our vows in Vegas too.
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How on earth do you people do “family only” wedding for ~30 people? My side alone will be roughly 75.
I suppose the main thing is “to each their own.” We have decided to put off getting married until we can afford the wedding we want. Since we live together, actually getting married isn’t a priority for us. If we have to wait four years so that I can hire a wedding planner to handle the details, get a dress I love, and treat all my family to delicious food, well, so be it!
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Great post! My wife and I got married this past October in Nashville on a budget of 5000. We were gifted our honeymoon in Aruba, which was amazing. It turned out so wonderful. When we got engaged in February 2009 we both had somewhat “secure” jobs but were not on the best financial path…..within I month I was unemployed, and within 3 more so was my wife, so our situation felt dire. thankfully due to my new financial wisdom attained by GRS and Dave Ramsey, we are doing well, knocking out our debt, and we had an amazing wedding on a small budget. thanks for the post….
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We got married in 1995, had a small wedding (for our culture) of 175, and spent less than $1,200.
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I love hearing about inexpensive small weddings and I recently had a blast at a friend’s Vegas wedding. It’s a crazy-fun city that works so well as an all-night reception venue. And, surprisingly, I found the Little White Chapel to be an incredibly reverent place for getting married, kitsch aside. It’s really all about the people getting married and the emotions they share and state publicly that make me cry at weddings. I found Vegas no less meaningful as a wedding locale and a whole lot of convenient fun.
It’s hard, because that’s simply not in the cards for us. He has a huge tight-knit family, we live in an expensive city, and a destination wedding doesn’t feel right for us (or family members with mobility challenges.) So we’re resigned to a wedding that meets our values/desires but costs more than we initially wanted (it turns out to be expensive to feed 150 people, even when you’re cutting all expenses and wedding froufery to the bone). Oh well, we’re frugal every day so we can pay for the things that matter to us. Having a wedding with our large family matters to us, so we’re saving up to get there.
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I think the main thing to take away from this is that it’s a one-time event. Yes, a wedding is special and something that both husband and wife will remember for the rest of their lives, but when it comes time to buy a house to raise a family in, it’s quite a bit more difficult to do if that wedding day is still being paid for.
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Love it!! My husband and I married in Vegas in 2004 on Feb 29th at the little white wedding chapel. We started to plan this huge pricey wedding for Nov. of that year. Every day it was more stress and money! My mother wanted this, these people can’s sit together, down paymenys for the venue, bridal fittings. In mid Feb. my husband said “lets just go to Vegas” At first my family was upset but we told them it was our day. We looked at the calendar and saw it was a leap year, so booked feb 29th. We where in vegas for 5 days then got married, so we had our honeymoon first. It was wonderful! Almost 6 years later we would do it again!
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Forgot to add…once home the following weekend we had a big reception with pizza, wings, drinks for 50 poeple at our house (and most of our yard).
#7 – I will be proud to tell my kids I married in Vegas. Have no debt from our wedding, and can pay for their college…
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Great story.
To Shannon (#9): I WOULD like to tell my children that we got married according to our own tastes, in a way that was meaningful for us, under our own control, and expressive of our own values, including frugality.
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Our wedding is on March 17th this year. With a three course meal for 10 guests we will be doing this for under $500 including the license and person administering the ceremony which is being held at spectacular five star Old South manor turned bed & breakfast. I was looking for inexpensive and found a gem!
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i’ve been married for almost three years, and our ceremony still brings a smile to my face. it was incredibly elegant, intimate (40 guests) and tasteful. we spent $8K, all cash, no credit card debt was incurred. it was more than we planned, but i could have not been more pleased, a solo violinist, breathtaking floral arrangements, a absolutely goregous off-the-rack dress – scrumptious plated meal with all the trimmings at a local french restaurant, the owner/chef was actually trained at the cordon bleu in paris. it was exquisite – and so intimate that i actually got to interact with my guests. i still get compliments years later. sometimes if you cannot compromise your tastes, you can always invite less people. whatever route the couple chooses its so important to remember that this is your day and your financial future at stake if you overpsend.
best wishes to the new couple
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Some of these stories are amazing. I’ve always thought the $28k average was just silly, it is just a party. I’m throughly impressed with the creativity some couples have been able to come up with.
Lots of inspiration here, I’ve definitely bookmarked this and will pass it to friends as it becomes appropriate.
Great story Lars, and good writing too!
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I had a small wedding with less than 10 guests. Though my husband and I originally planned on just going to the courthouse with a few family members for witnesses, that unfortunately fell through. We ended up planning a wedding with about three weeks notice. Of course, we had several talks about what our budget for the wedding should be now that it couldn’t be us eloping.
The ‘trick’ to getting the numbers down was to invite only siblings and parents (no aunts, uncles, cousins, friends…), and the grandparents understood not being invited to the worlds smallest wedding on short notice. They also understood that if it got any bigger, someone else would feel left out.
The ceremony was held in a gorgeous meeting room of a historic hotel (with white linens and candles provided as the decor). After the ceremony, we went downstairs to the hotel restaurants private dining room where everyone got to have the meal of their choice.
There were no flowers, limo, photographer, videographer, invitations, DJ, gift registry, guest favors….because we didn’t want any of those things. I didn’t want to get married in a white gown, so I didn’t. My husband did not rent a tux. Everyone had a good time, and no one was stressing about the centerpieces or a speech.
Total cost was under 3K, with about $800 going to the reception/JP/license, and the rest going to our rings. (After all, we plan on having those forever). If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.
One of the most interesting things I found out afterward: everyone who wasn’t invited wasn’t feeling left out or angry. They were happy that we were happy. They understood the concept of ‘immediate family only’. We were congratulated on having a simple wedding that didn’t bust our budget. Everyone(!) said that if they had it to do over again, they would have had a small wedding.
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We married 24 years ago at the beach (on the beach); then held a reception at the local Women’s Club for about 60 people. The best thing I did, was to ask the best man’s wife to be the “coordinator” – she “managed” the guests, the timetable, and the reception as a whole, and I didn’t have to think of a thing as the afternoon unfolded. Father-in-law insisted on Champagne, so we asked him to pay for it. Otherwise, we took care of the costs. I found a wonderful silk and lace blouse, and added a ready-made skirt for my outfit; husband-to-be chose a coordinating jacket and slacks. We wanted out-of-town siblings to attend, so we scheduled the wedding for the week after Christmas when they would be here anyway. The ceremony and reception were lovely, but the true testament, is that 24 years later (and two kids) we are still a couple, and plan to be for many more years together.
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When I read the title of the post, I was very excited, but after reading the whole article + comments, I must admit I am a little disappointed. Vegas? 20 people? Its just a party? Our wedding will be one of the biggest rites of passages/ celebrations in our lives.
We’re getting married in September of this year, and have been saving money for the last few months. (We are debt-free and have an emergency fund set up.) We are certainly not making all our friends fly to Vegas, yet we are also not putting anything on a credit card or throwing money around. We’ve haggled with every vendor, and cut costs when it made sense. (No favors, no limo)
I really don’t appreciate it when people assume that a large wedding = debt, or no college for your poor future kids, or what have you. We are proof that you can have a wedding that includes all 137 of the closest people in your life, and come out the other side debt-free. I just wouldn’t have it any other way.
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It’s great you had a wedding that met your goals and stayed within your budget. Thanks for posting your story.
Our approach was different and more expensive, but mostly because we included more people. We stayed local and I paid $80 for my dress, including alterations, having bought it from a consignment store (it wasn’t a traditional wedding dress, but a nice white suit in a brocade … much more “me.”). DH did splurge on a $500 suit. The service at our church cost nothing. We hosted a dinner at our home the night before … grilled the food ourselves and served about 40 — not sure of cost. The flowers I bought at the Farmer’s market. The reception was catered by a bbq place at a cost of about $10/person and we held the reception at a friend’s farm and rented tents, tables, and chairs, plus paid for quite a nice cake — all of which drove the total cost up to about $10K for 120 people, but obviously for a smaller group we could have rented a picnic shelter in a park ($100; I did this recently for another event) and had bbq (or whatever) served much cheaper. All of which is a long way of saying that there are many ways to keep costs down, particularly if the numbers are small.
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I think a couple should get married anywhere they want. However, I don’t think there should be any hard feelings if someone invited decides not to travel for the wedding.
I had a friend that got married last year – a destination wedding, and many of the invited guests could not make it because several had lots their jobs, or had some health issues – just life popping up. It caused quite a rift.
I am not saying don’t ever do a destination wedding. I just don’t think it it is reasonable to get upset if your guests don’t want to travel.
Vegas is wonderful – and I am glad it worked out for you. I would love to renew vows there or in the carribean.
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I liked your post! I think too many people get caught up in either pleasing their family or “keeping up wiht the Jones’”
My attitude has always been – pay for your own wedding, that way it is your wedding. If you can’t afford it then you need to wait and save or change your idea of what you want.
My only caveat to that is: your family. If your parents expect you to invite all of their frieds (dear Sally invited me to her daughter’s wedding) then they should pay the cost of those additional guests. If they demand that you have a reception at a certain location or at a certain time of year or whatever, then they should bear the cost.
For the main post – the more affordable wedding was going away. And – most of the family had to travel regardless.
I am a big believer in – have your day. At the end of it, I usually remember the look on the bride and groom’s face as they said their vows and if we had a good time. Most other things are not nearly as critical as bridal magazines make them out to be.
Congrats on having the wedding you wanted…best of luck for the future.
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My husband and I were married in 1972 at my family home in front of the fireplace which my sisters decorated. I made my simple wedding dress which I’ve kept through the years along with the pattern. A family friend made the cake. My husband gave me his grandmother’s wedding rings which she first wore in 1918. Our only costs were the license, the minister, the cost of the material for my dress, $35 for his ring, and my bouquet of yellow roses. Flowers for the house were brought in from our garden. Several family members took photos which are still cherished for their unique perspective. My parents provided punch and finger foods. We camped at a state park for our honeymoon with borrowed equipment before flying off to the midwest to start our life together. Total spent was probably $200. My advice to newlyweds is to invest their time in each other, not money in an expensive one-day event.
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Wow. We got married in 2004, had about 100 people, and only paid $1000. Of course, it helps that my husband was (and is) very involved in the church, so we had plenty of people helping out and donating their services. I wore my sister’s wedding dress, and we had vespers between the ceremony and the reception. It was a chance to focus on our marriage, rather than just the wedding.
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I have to agree with Samantha #76, that a wedding is an important rite of passage and a sacred event. It doesn’t have to be a slave to the Wedding industry extreme, but I believe it is a lot more than just a party. Planning one’s wedding can be really creative and fun.
I have to agree with another reader’s comment that if my husband had been super stingy with our “budget” (I put that in quotes because we didn’t set one; hey, we didn’t have access to blogs like this and we can be very idealistic and impractical.) than I would have definitely been insulted.
We got married 13 years ago, the day after our anniversary of being together for 10 years. Now, I tend to be more frugal, and my husband can be a big spender. He wanted to get married at the Hotel Bel-Air which is a five-star hotel in Los Angeles; it has a very beautiful wooded area with a gazebo and swans where you can get married — and they take care of everything and work with you. And it was close to where we lived. I would have never, repeat never, have chosen this location simply because the cost alone (I was a performer – okay, waitress- and didn’t have a lot of funds; although come to think of it I did get a lot of commercial work during that time and I was able to contribute $2,000 in the end.)
Marrying at that location was very important to my husband. And having a big formal celebration was important to us. During the 7 years prior we had endured the deaths of my father, his mother, his father and many other relatives (all at different times). Creating a positive, life affirming event was vital to us in starting our new married life and we wanted to share that wonderful feeling with our families and closest friends.
Because the cost of the location/event was so expensive we kept costs down by limiting our guest list to 60 (we didn’t pick that number, we just pared down to relatives and closest of friends.) I also got the photographer and flowers from a different vendor to cut costs. I also found myself unable to spend thousands of dollars on a dress — yet, I did want a beautiful dress. At one of the boutiques I went to I tried on a dress that I thought I would never want to wear (it had a huge tulle skirt) to get an I idea how an off-the shoulder collar line would look; I fell in love with this dress, but not the $2400 price tag. One idea I got from a wedding budget book was to look at a wedding dress consignment shop; so I did, and that exact same dress was there for $500 ( I should have negotiated a lower price, but I didn’t know at the time that one could do that — go ahead and point and laugh.) That was my dress and I felt so happy.
We spent a lot of money on our wedding; but because it was mostly from my husband’s inheritance, we did not go into debt. If we had been practical people we would have set a budget and maybe had a more practical wedding. At the time we were very impractical and we created a magical wedding that our family and friends still talk about today. In fact, one of my bridesmaids chose the same location because our wedding was so memorable.
My daughters were just recently flower girls at our cousin’s wedding in Florida — I am sure glad she and my aunt and uncle weren’t practical. It was a beautiful, grand and wonderful affair. Everyone had the best time. Our families hadn’t been together since my wedding. And she fulfilled a dream my daughters had of being a flower girls.
While I don’t think any one should go into debt for such an affair, its a great thing to save for. Or if you have the funds, it’s okay to create a magical time that everyone will remember — giving pleasure to others is a good thing. I am so glad my cousin was not practical or frugal.
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Caitlin Says: “When I was in the planning stages, I’d be on bridal/wedding forums and hear people whine and moan about having “only 10k” for their wedding, and wondering what those people thought was a lot of they thought 10k was a tiny budget!”
It’s funny… I’ve been thinking the same thing about people who say they got married for “only $3,000″. It makes me think “wow, that’s a lot”.
When I got married, I had no idea some people paid thousands of dollars for their wedding.
We organised our wedding to be as perfect as can be for us, and it turned out it was also cheap. 25 people, us included, for the ceremony (free ceremony, since it’s a civil contract they can’t make you pay for it in France, it’s against the freedom of everyone to get married). About 15 people stayed for the meal in a restaurant, nice meal, everyone could order what they wanted (when we were organising everything, people all had different food requirements, it was a nightmare).
People offered to pay for their own food but we wouldn’t have it, I mean who invites people and then makes them pay? It just seemed wrong.
Only cost about 300 euros for the meal, then we spent all afternoon in a center where we played bowling, arcade games and pool.
It was wonderful, and all together it cost us maybe 400 euros at most. And at the time it seemed like a lot to spend in only one day, I would never had thought people spent fortunes on their weddings like that.
I realise we were lucky – free ceremony is apparently not the standard everywhere in the world, and since we’re not religious we didn’t have a second ceremony at church like some people do. On top of that, a friend of mine who is a photographer offered to take pictures of the wedding as her wedding gift, which “saved” us money. (I use quotation marks because if she hadn’t, we wouldn’t have hired someone, so we wouldn’t have spent more. But the pictures we would have had would have been from the guests, and they wouldn’t have looked as good, so we got more value.)
We didn’t cause too much trouble for the guests – for one thing, we told them all not to bother with gifts, since to us the gift was having them here. A few still brought gifts (and my photographer friend still offered to take pictures for us) but since we had told them not to bother, we didn’t feel bad that they spent money on us.
Altogether, we spent around 500 euros if you include our clothes, that we bought especially for the occasion (and wear again every anniversary, which is wonderful).
But everyone is different. For my husband and me, a wedding was no big deal. We would have been fine with just signing a paper without inviting anyone, and be officially married. To us, it was really paperwork, we were already living together, we were already planning on spending all of our lives together, and it wasn’t going to change much.
But it was an opportunity to see all the people we love and have a day of fun together, and it was a wonderful day. It went perfectly – for us.
On the other hand, we spent more on our honeymoon. we went all the way to New York for two weeks and probably spent as much as 2,000 euros on it (flight and hotel included of course).
I can imagine that some people would have preferred putting that money into the wedding and having a honeymoon in a closer, cheaper place instead (or even no honeymoon at all).
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Our wedding was also around $3000 for 17 people (closest family, parents, siblings, and a few aunts and uncles … we did not want to deal with the logistic nightmare of managing a lot of people we never see anyway in the days before and since most of our friends were in school at the time we did not want to ask them to fork over hundreds of dollars for plane tickets and hotels), divided as follows: Engagement+wedding rings: 1600. Dress: 600. Canopy-thingy: 500 (turned out we did not need that). Food: 500 or so (big BBQ). We held it in SIL’s big back yard—this was how DW always wanted her wedding to be—and changed to shorts and hawaiian shirts right after the ceremony. What can I say, we’re doctor engineer and doctor scientist, function over form. (I defended my phd in a pair of hiking boots
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We got married in 2008, and it cost us almost nothing.
There were 10 of us, just friends. The party was at our place. One friends gift was helping clean the house, another one made my wedding bouquet and the tablepieces, and two friends brought the wine.
We already had nice silver rings we didn’t wear often. We had them cleaned and put a nice text inside. That cost us 80€. The Italian cold buffet was about 330€. My husband wore his best clothes, I bought a white linen blouse and trousers I still wear, so I don’t count that as a wedding expense. I knitted a silver tunique to wear with it.
We went to a notary for a marriage contract and a testament, wich cost us about 300€.
And I got a 700€ marriage bonus at work!
It was a wonderful day the two of us think of as one of the most beautiful days of our lives.
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I gotta say, I HATE destination weddings.
It is just rude to make me pay to see you get married.
My wife’s side of the family has done this, we went to the first few and were bored silly. OK, I saw them get married, now what?
The Honeymoon is for you to go where ever you want…
Besides, 3k for 20 people, should not be that hard to have a decent ceremony/dinner for that.
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Wedding these day are crazy. Why is it that everyone else seem to get a say in what we want? I am currently planning my wedding for about 200 to 250 people. I know this seems like a lot but my finace and I have 58 immediate family memebers.
When we were looking for places to get married people felt they could tell us where we should and shouldn’t get married. For example my finace grandparents told us they wanted it close to their house. The also told us if we picked the place they wanted they would pay the rental fee.
Sometimes going into a little debt to make sure everyone can share in the special day doesn’t seem that bad to me. I am not talking about a platium wedding, my dress only cost $500. But does having a special day/great party to celebrate your new lives together really something people aren’t willing to afford?
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Just thought I would throw in the fact that to have an inexpensive wedding, it doesn’t mean you have to only invite 20-50 guests. I got married in 2007 with a budget of a little over $5000 and we had roughly 300 guests. We had the service and reception at my church (free), no dinner (just fruit and dessert buffet), no alcohol, friends did flowers, the cake, photography, video, set up, take down. We never wanted to not invite people just because of budget….so we didn’t. I think we actually made more money in gifts than we paid for the entire event (literally)!
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A good thing about a destination wedding: Many guests use it as an excuse for a vacation for themselves. My sister was married in Las Vegas (that’s where she lives) the year I got married, and a number of extended family members attended her wedding that didn’t attend mine because they were able to make it a whole weekend, rather than traveling across the country for *just* a wedding.
One thing I’ve noticed with wedding priorities is people who are less religious are often willing to put more time and money into a wedding because they are willing to live together first. I don’t mean this as a moral judgement, but I got married at 20 as a poor college student marrying a poor college student. I did NOT want to spend three years engaged and living apart. But some people want that big wedding and they live together and save up for it.
It’s an interesting quandary to me. I know a lot of people disagree, but I don’t understand how living together to give you time to save and have a big wedding makes it more special, when the only thing missing is the license. To me that would cheapen the day and at that point make it ‘just a party’. Versus having the wedding on the cheap as a ceremony to signify blending your lives together as it happens.
To each his/her own, but that doesn’t mean I will ever understand.
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Re: 63, Kaitlyn: “How on earth do you people do “family only” wedding for ~30 people? My side alone will be roughly 75.”
My husband and I got married this past December with 25 people at my parents’ house. He also has a huge family and we made the cut at inviting only siblings and their spouses. Our priorities were making it intimate and about us, and putting our savings into a house rather than a wedding. Of course, some friends and family were disappointed to not be there, but when we get the house we are planning a huge housewarming party for everyone. I am so glad we did everything as we did – and I can’t imagine having had too many more people there. We also celebrated by running a 5k road race together the morning after the wedding, that race being an annual event for his family.
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My wife and I just got married earlier this month, 1/2/2010, and we did it on a $3000 budget. The trick for us was that we would have the wedding were her family is from, which would lower their travel costs (they are also mostly eldery) and lower our venue costs dramatically (she’s from a quiet little mountain town in northern Pennsylvania).
The wedding was at her church where she’s been a long time member and our minister was a close friend of ours that agreed provide us his services as a gift. The church was still decorated from Christmas, so no need to spend money on flowers. I have very little family, but I had my younger brother be my best man and my wife choose her best friend to be her maid of honor. Music was also provided by childhood friends (professional musicians now) of my wife, so was photography/videography (this did cost us about $100, but it was well worth it).
The reception was at a local hotel where my out of town family could stay, we had about 30 guests plus the wedding party, a professional DJ ($250, my wife felt this was important, and I definitely agree more in retrospect). We our favorite wines served, in an open bar style format, however, other liquor would have been cash only (nobody seemed to care for anything else though, which was good).
In all, the reception cost about $700, including wine.
We had cupcakes made at Acme and my wife had another special surprise cake made for me, in all, this cost about $50 (I must say, we had tried for a “real” baker really really hard… we had three cancel on us, this was a bit disappointing to us).
We stayed at the hotel for the night ($110) and then had breakfast the next morning (my family paid for this).
My wife spent about $200 on her gown with alterations and probably another $500 on odds and ends (cake stand, ring pollow, centerpieces, craft flowers (she made all of the flower arrangements herself, and they where amazing).
I am sure I am forgetting something here… but all in all, I think we did very well, and everyone had a good time from what we heard.
If we had tried to do the same thing where we live (smaller metropolitan area), $10k would have not been enough.
We had looked at Vegas options way back, but I just couldn’t get myself to do that, it just always seems tacky.
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We got married in 2005 for about the same budget – and invited about 125 people to the reception. People still tell us how much fun they had at the wedding and how great the reception was. They’d probably be shocked how little we spent.
Cost breakdown (as best I can remember):
Engagement rings – $600 (I bought my wife’s grandmothers’ diamond necklace from her aunts and had the stone moved to an antique ring we picked out for about $125)
Wedding location (a historic 1800s chapel) – $200 http://www.lindenwood.edu/boone/chapel.asp
Photographer – $250 (a friend of my father-in-law that does it as a side business)
Reception site – $75 (a community center backing to a lake anyone in my wife’s town can rent since they pay annual dues)
Reception food/drink – the biggest expense at around $1500, but most people tell us it was the best reception food they’ve ever had – my Mom’s cousin catered it
Reception entertainment – $500, a terrific rock band that is friends with my wife and even learned Elton John’s “Your Song” that my wife and I danced too.
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My husband and I got married 5 years ago. We had a wedding for 200 guests and spent forty thousand dollars. Yes, that’s right, forty thousand.
We both worked in jobs that had good salaries, had no debt and spent the engagement year saving up. No help from our parents. Just a vision of exactly what we wanted, and the determination and work ethic to make it happen.
Our wedding was exactly what we wanted with no compromises. No one needed to be cut from the list. Six courses of gourmet food, open bar, the best photographer in town, etc. Our guests were not put to work on our wedding day – they were pampered.
We emerged from the wedding with zero debt.
Just wanted to let you know that not all expensive weddings end in disaster. If the couple can afford to do it and that’s what they want, it can be done without any financial harm to their future or their kid’s college funds
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For people who say that it was the guests’ choice to attend – it wasn’t, not really. In many families, wedding invitations are like subpoenas – you kind of have to show up.
If I had been invited to Lars’ wedding, then had to hear him crow about “cheap” it was (after I had to spend $$$ on airfare, hotel stay, etc.), I wouldn’t be too happy. It’s no better than asking people to contribute to a potluck wedding reception.
And I’m with Alexandra – we had a nice wedding, too, for about $25,000, including a 10-day honeymoon to England, without incurring any debt. It was a fun way to kick off our marriage, and we had a lot of wonderful memories.
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A wedding should be about what YOU want – not what your family wants – or is convenient for them. It’s your wedding, do it your way.
My husband and I were married in 1999 – in Vegas. We chose to semi-elope and have a big party afterwards at home. His brother is a minister and was living in Vegas at the time, so he married us and his wife was our witness. We drove out to Valley of Fire State Park (really gorgeous), a huge stone was our altar and the sun was setting. We wore jeans and hiking boots. I carried flowers from Albertson’s. It was beautiful and stress-less. Afterwards we all went to dinner. Total cost: $200.
Now for the really cheap part. We knew in advance we would be in Vegas on business, so planned the wedding for the end of the trip. Airfare and hotel accommodations were written off as a business expense. Hey, I’m a bookkeeper, what can I say! Of course this was a second marriage and we were more interested in being married than getting married.
We had a wonderful time exploring the natural beauty of Nevada – Lake Mead, Red Rock (the park, not the casino!), Mt. Charleston. And of course, the desert in the spring is fairly alive with color. Nobodies feeling got hurt because NOBODY was there and we had a great party when we got home.
My daughter liked the idea so much, she’s doing the same thing in Hawaii this March – just the two of them. With a party later this summer when the weather’s better.
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I would like to add: I would have preferred the JoP treatment with a couple of witnesses and no fuss – just a party later. DH would have really preferred a grandiose event with everyone we know in attendance and no expense spared. Financial reality reined in his dream, and mine took a backseat to honoring our parents. My grandmother and his mother would have been sad not to see us married. In the end, DH used his creative genius to make our tiny wedding special, unique and memorable. My grandmother was thrilled. For his mother, who has dementia, the wedding was a focal point which kept her present for months. It was the last time she was really present, and the last event she was able to attend, and she has never completely forgotten it.
In the end, the best of all possible worlds.
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Interesting story. That’s a key question y’all ask: “who was the wedding for?”. Plus, y’all were paying for it. I think the best advice for weddings is to ensure that you don’t end up in debt after it, or at least a lot of debt.
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Brava to you! I always have to laugh at what a big deal wedding productions and Bridezillas have become. Granted my wedding was 25 years ago, but we had 50+ guests, tux rentals, wedding gown, church, location and food for around $600 out-of-pocket. Family members and friends helped cook, decorate, made bouquets, bought the booze, took photos and generally had a great time. The marriage didn’t stick, but neither did any debt.
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I never like “Cheap Wedding” posts like this, because it always feels like a race to the bottom.
“You spent $15,000 on your wedding? Outrageous! We got married for $8,000 and had 125 guests!”
“$8,000? What decadence! We got married for $3,000 and only had 20 guests!”
“$3,000? What a waste! We got married for $18, and we didn’t even have rings!”
I tend to agree with the posters who pointed out that having a Vegas wedding isn’t really saving money – it’s just shifting the (increased) costs onto your guests. And for those who say, “no one’s forcing them to go,” that’s not really fair. There’s an expectation that guests will come. If the couple really didn’t care about having guests, then they’d just get married on the courthouse steps and be done with it. The very fact that they’re organizing an official ceremony, with reception and everything, reflects their true desire to have friends and family be present. That creates pressure on invitees. They feel that if they decline, they’ll be disappointing their friend/sister/whatever, not to mention their own feelings of regret between being forced to choose between saving money, or attending a close friend/relative’s wedding. I think Vegas weddings like the one described in the post are a selfish decision. If you can’t afford a real wedding that your friends and family can actually attend, then put it off. What’s the hurry? Save up until you can do it properly.
Weddings can either be about YOU, or about your guests. If it’s really just about you, then go ahead and do the Justice of the Peace thing and get it over with. No one will blame you. But if you’re organizing a big wedding, then clearly you want to share it with friends and family. That’s fine too, but you have to accept that there’s a cost associated with that. Doing the Vegas thing just seems like a cop-out. It’s saying, “We want a fancy wedding with all our friends and family, but we don’t want to pay for it, and we don’t mind inconveniencing our guests and having them foot the majority of the bill for OUR wedding.” It’s selfish, in my opinion.
One last thing. I’m a wedding photographer. It breaks my heart to hear these stories of couples who put so much work into having a memorable, romantic ceremony, handcrafting the decorations and having a really personal, meaningful reception, and then skimping on the photography. At the end of the day, after the food is eaten and the flowers have wilted, what do you have to remember your day? The photos vividly take you back to let you relive every moment of your once-in-a-lifetime day. You’re saving so much money in other areas, why not spend the cash to ensure you have a top-quality record of your day? 25 years from now, when you’re going out to dinner for your quarter-century anniversary, do you really think your wife will say, “It’s too bad we don’t have any photos to remember what we looked like on our wedding day, but I’m sure glad we saved that $800!”
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Kevin (#99), I agree with you, especially regarding the photography. Couples don’t need to hire the most expensive photographer out there, but they should hire SOMEONE (a college starting out who wants to build their portfolio might be a good find). Don’t rely on your friend/family member to take pictures – it’s unfair of them, and that’s really a task for which you have a professional contract, not just “but he said he’d do it!”
We got a mid-range photographer, and I’m so glad we did. We got great pictures of family members who have since passed away. I have some great pictures and vides of me dancing with my dad.
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