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.
This article is about Frugality, Reader Stories, Real-Life, Relationships
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Alexandra,
Good for you! I’m sure you’ll get a lot of flack for spending so much on your wedding, but the point is it’s YOUR money and YOUR wedding. Congrats on making it happen and not having debt hanging over your head for years to come.
You also made a great point about putting your guests to work. I wonder whether a lot of these people who put their friends/families to work at their weddings realize that they’re robbing them of the experience of being a guest. You cannot relax and enjoy in the celebration of your brother’s wedding if you’re worried about nailing the photograph of the first kiss, or getting into position to photograph the recessional. You can’t really enjoy the best man’s speech if you’re busy wheeling the cake out of the kitchen and setting it up. You can’t dance with your new sister-in-law if you’re DJ-ing. Etc.
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It’s important not to generalize about other people’s choices based on your own assumptions.
A friend DJ’d our wedding for us. He had the gear, we supplied the (premixed) music, and he was in a walking cast so he couldn’t dance anyway.
My sister and her partner did our photography. This was my sister’s choice as otherwise she would have been drafted as one of my attendants, the very idea of which gave her hives.
My husband’s good friend (not a clergyman) did our ceremony. He would have been a member of the wedding party anyway, but was a gifted writer and speaker, and was pleased and proud to officiate for us. In fact, he later officiated another wedding.
Our wedding was a “destination” wedding in our city of residence; nearly all our family had to travel in. This was their choice. We paid for airfare for one of my attendants, traveling from across the country. The other (I only had two) was local as were both of my husband’s.
We shopped for flowers and vases at a wholesaler; the hotel’s staff assembled the centerpieces the morning of the ceremony for no extra charge.
I bought my dress on eBay for $150 and did the alterations myself. My husband spent 15 times that much for a custom-made dance tuxedo (we are ballroom dancers).
We had one hour of open bar, wine service with dinner, and a champagne toast. Our guests did not have to buy their own drinks but some of them managed to get drunk anyway.
Our wedding, for about 80 people, cost just under $10K. This amounted to about $100 per person for the seated dinner, room rental, setup, bar services, extra-large dance floor, ceremony setup and decorating assistance from the Marina del Rey Hotel. The extra $2000 went to a string quartet for our ceremony, gifts for our wedding party, flowers, and the cake.
I would have been happy with Vegas, but out of five kids between our two sets of parents, we were the only ones in a position to have a big family wedding. At 35 and 41 respectively, we didn’t have any fairy-tale ideas about “the biggest day of our lives;” we just decided to accommodate some of the FAMILY’s fairy-tale ideas.
Our most successful “rule” was no kids (no one under 18 invited). The extended family griped a little, but it was a formal evening wedding with drinking and serious dancing, not an afternoon in a park, and neither of us wanted our party to be about other people’s kids. Speaking just for myself, I would have a hard time relaxing and enjoying myself with kids running round, diving under tables, climbing the railing by the marina, etc.
Our least successful idea was having disposable cameras on the tables. Most of those shots were a waste of processing fees. When we have our 10th-anniversary party, I’m going to get a couple of cheap digital cameras and hand those to people who a) I can trust to take meaningful pictures and who b) wouldn’t mind taking that on.
To this day, the thing most people remember about our wedding is the dance lesson that kicked off the reception, which was donated by our teacher (in whose class we met).
We planned for this party by deciding first what kind of wedding we wanted (formal, with dinner and dancing). Then we had to research how much that would cost in our city ($80 to $150 per person). Then we had to figure out how many people we had to invite. And then we set a wedding date far enough out to let us save the money.
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Weddings are all about choices. The bride and groom choose to get married. In theory, they choose where and when and how much. Guests choose whether or not to attend. And if there are expectations or pressure or hurt feelings or rifts, then sometimes you just have to make your choice, deal with it and move on. We got married in Jamaica in 2001, had exactly 6 guests (4 parents, two friends). It was fantastic, beyond expectations! Our families are scattered all over the country, so no matter where we decided to get married, someone would have to travel, so we decided to make it equally inconvenient for everyone, have the wedding/honeymoon we wanted and call it a day. We knew from the start that most of our favorite people would not be able to attend and if there were any hard feelings, they have yet to surface 8+ years later. A dear friend from college got married at a B&B in a resort town and they invited only 2 people (me and my husband). No hard feelings from any other friends or family members. At the end of the day, the couple should have the wedding THEY want and what THEY can afford (be it frugal or extravagent) and nobody else should judge. Anybody who has a problem with that can make the choice not to attend. A successful marriage is infinitely more important than a splashy wedding.
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For us, the most important part of a wedding is the shared joining of two people together in front of their friends and family– those who mean the most to them. It is a shared day but it doesn’t have to be an expensive day.
As a guest, what most people seem to notice are if the bride is beautiful (she always is), if the couple is happy, if the venue is nice and if the food is good, timely, and there’s enough of it. It’s also nice to be able to catch up with or meet new people at the reception. That can all come at $40,000 or it can come at $500. People don’t remember the flowers or the favors or a million other details that can drive the planners crazy at the last minute. They’re not important.
I have noticed an inverse relationship between the amount of money spent on a wedding and the fun had by guests. Usually that’s because fussy formal weddings are no fun and stressed out brides are no fun. Often the DJ has the music too loud, the photographer is constantly in the way recording an event that didn’t really happen (is the photographer really supposed to come down the aisle backwards before the bride?), and there’s a huge wait between wedding and reception which are in two different venues. Sometimes people are blessed with a wedding planner who takes care of things and everything runs beautifully, but more often than not, the fancy wedding is a much more unpleasant experience than it needs to be. Less expensive weddings just tend to be more relaxed.
The best weddings we’ve been to were simple ones full of love and shared commitment. The ones we’ve left early obviously cost a fortune.
We’ve had the opposite experience of another poster… as we’re getting older the weddings we go to tend to be simpler rather than fancy, even among those who have cohabited for years. The couples are paying for them rather than the parents, and our friends in their 30s are more focused on what their wedding means to them (and learning from previous weddings they’ve attended) rather than some external dream of a fairytale wedding.
Side note: If you’re having an outdoor reception… don’t choose shrimp as an appetizer. Wasps like it too much.
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In my opinion, there’s only one thing worse than destination weddings…it’s destinations at all-inclusive resorts.
This is a practice that’s becomming more prevalent, and in my opinion it’s really inappropriate.
So not only are the guests shelling out for plane tickets and their hotel, but they are now also paying for their own meal, drinks and entertainment.
I have been invited to two of these weddings in the last year, and I really feel negative about it. On top of that, both parties made it a point to let their invited guests know where they had registered. If you are going to ask your guests to pay for your wedding, the least you can do is make sure they know that their presence is the only gift required.
It just stuck me as selfish and greedy.
Truly, if you cannot afford to have a wedding, just don’t have one. Maybe you aren’t ready for it.
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“So not only are the guests shelling out for plane tickets and their hotel, but they are now also paying for their own meal, drinks and entertainment. ”
Not only that, but many of these destination weddings are in places that might require a week off from work – time to get there, the actual wedding and reception, then flying home. I have a coworker who went to a friend’s destination wedding (I think it was the Bahamas) and tried to only go for as little time as possible. She still missed about three days of work, and that was with flying out after work and flying home the night before she was due back at work.
Actually, destination weddings themselves don’t really bother me. It’s when the couple guilts guests that makes it rude – “Why can’t you spend $3,000 and a week’s vacation on OUR wedding?!”
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@Kevin in #99 (not talking to myself, don’t worry)
I don’t see these types of comments as a “race to the bottom” as you said. I think it’s good for someone thinking about getting married to read this kind of information. Otherwise the only exposure they’ll get might be watching Bridezillas on TV or hearing from wedding planners and other people depending on the event for their livelihood how much they “should” spend.
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Agreed that destination weddings should come with NO expectations, NO guilt and NO mention of registries or anything else relating to gifts. Our invites read “the gift of your presence is the best of all presents.” Basically we told our loved ones – we’d love it if you can make it, but we understand if you can’t and we’ll take lots of pictures either way.
OTOH, destination weddings that specifically exclude one or both partner’s young child(ren) are just wrong.
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We did almost the same thing. My wife and I got married in Costa Rica on the beach. It was a wedding for us. Then we spent our honeymoon right there. When we came back home, we had a reception for close friends and family at our house – about 35 people with whom we had a great party/celebration.
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@ David N. – We are getting married in a church, and initially I thought it would also cut down on expense. But, just the opposite has turned out to be true. Most reception venues will include the ceremony in their price quote, but I’ve been unable to find a quote for a church in the city where we’re getting married for under $2,500, and costs have gone all the way up to $6,000 for a 30 minute ceremony!
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Congrats on the nuptials! My husband and I absolutely loved our wedding day and kept it cheap too.
My only regret was not having a wedding video. Neither one of us can remember exactly what our vows were since we wrote them ourselves and have lost our “notes”…plus I cried all the way through mine so nobody could understand me anyway (happy tears…I’m an emotional girl).
Our expenses were as follows:
Apparel: $300 ($125 gorgeous David’s bridal special, a $150 tux with tails and accessories rental, and my mom spent $25 on all the materials to make my 5 foot long veil…it was amazing and decorated with shinies and fake pearls…the patterns were awesome against the back of my dress and went great with the train)
Rings: $250 ($250 for hubby’s band, my two wedding bands are from his mother and my engagement ring is from his grandmother)
Music: $0 (my mother set up a sound system and we played CD’s)
Miscellaneous: $500 (reception decorations and the fake flowers used for bouquets and decorations)
Ceremony Site and Officiant: $250 ($150 for chapel and organist and $100 for the preacher)
Flowers: $50 (the roses that my youngest sister handed out as the flower girl came from Sam’s Club)
Cake: $125 (3 tier decorated in our light blue wedding color from Kroger’s…it was really yummy)
Reception/Catering: $500-$800 (reception hall for 60 guests and linens were $125, my mother bought trays from Sam’s Club of shrimp, vegetables, meat, and fruit, my MIL baked and decorated an awesome groom’s cake, and my aunt-in-law and my MIL decorated the tables with glitter and little reception souvenirs)
Photography: $500
Videography: $0 (But we wish we had one)
Invitations: $100
Limo: $0 (our reception hall was in walking distance and we lived nearby so we used our car)
So our whole wedding was less than $3000 and was absolutely fantastic!
I totally agree that the marriage is the important part. My husband and I were 21 and 22 respectively and it was nice to start our married life with no wedding debt. It’s been about 5 years and we still remember our wedding day as absolutely perfect.
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Here’s a couple of other things that my wife and I did for our wedding that made it extremely inexpensive. We had a big wedding (over 300 people at the reception) with great food, live music and dancing. We’ve been married 14 years now, and people still remind us of what a great time the wedding was. So, while it was extremely affordable (probably $1500 in 1996) it was a great time for all! So, here’s some of the things we did.
1. Had a potluck reception. Many might think this is tacky, but it in keeping with older traditions (think 1800′s) and believe me, you get much better food, a wider variety, and folks are happy to make their “signature dish” for such a special occasion.
2. Borrowed a wedding dress and tux. I borrowed the tux from my brother and my wife actually borrowed two dresses, one for the ceremony and one for the reception.
3. Asked friends to do the pictures in lieu of a gift. We weren’t expecting professional quality photos from this, just fun pictures of people at the wedding and reception. They had fun taking pictures and did a fine job.
4. Friends volunteered to play music and call contra dances (which are like square dances).
5. My boss volunteered to make our wedding cake.
6. We didn’t serve alcohol for the reception. The hall didn’t allow it and we didn’t really think we needed it, since we had great food and entertainment already.
So, the things we DID spend money on were
1. Invitations
2. The church
3. The hall
4. Pop and some sparkling cider for the toast.
I’m sure there’s a couple of things we are forgetting. The point is that, if the shared experience with your guests is what matters, a potluck reception is fine. And think about the talents that your friends have–cake baking, cooking, photography, entertainment. We had people who volunteered to do all of these things as their gift to us.
BTW, we got married in Alaska, but since that is where we live we didn’t count it as a “destination” wedding. However, for many of our guests, it was a destination. Since we were married in our hometown, we put the word out that we would be having guests, and many friends offered housing for free. Again, having a good network of friends made our wedding memorable and far, far richer than a more expensive one.
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Author here…
Sorry for the late response to most of the comments. I don’t read blogs much on weekends, and this was a long one to boot.
Our wedding was too small to get any “bennies” from the hotel. So no, we didn’t get any freebies or discounts at the expense of our guests. I did outline the travel costs in the main story, and they weren’t terrible.
My side of the family would have had to travel by plane no matter what. It was actually cheaper for my family, all things considered, for them to go to Vegas. Truth be told, my family preferred Vegas over where my wife and I live. So it’s not like the destination and cost issue was merely “us vs. the world.” And I had more family present than she did.
But then some people say, the wedding isn’t for the groom, it’s for the bride. And if that’s the case, shouldn’t the bride’s family be paying for it, as tradition has held?
For those that say, “don’t have a wedding you can’t afford…” well, one thing that did come across our minds was to simply have a JOP wedding. But then we would be leaving out people who wanted to see us get married!
So yea, the thought crossed my mind that if the bride’s side wanted to help us out with a local wedding so they could keep their travel costs down, we would have obliged. What is true is that you can’t keep everybody happy. If you can’t, then what do you do?
The guest list was CLOSE family… brothers and sisters, moms and dads, and spouses. (And a close aunt and uncle.) These are people who are going to attend your wedding no matter what.
To the poster who asked if my wife and I had the money talk prior to getting married… oh yeah. She tells me I talk about finances more than anybody she knows. We’re reasonably compatible when it comes to finances, but it doesn’t always mean it’s easy.
Nonetheless, what really matters is everybody had the time of their lives, and nobody feels put out about the fact that they had to travel to our wedding. I brought up the issue because I wanted to hear how others may handle a situation like that.
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This was a great article. For not being a professional writer I was impressed! Thanks for taking the time to write it up and share.
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In some cultures the wedding is a very public event. The parents host the wedding reception, the guests come to fete the bride and groom. Weddings for 30 won’t work, nor will cost-shifting to guests so couple can be in Belize or Vegas already for their honeymoon.
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Great post! My husband and I spent less than $5000 (2 1/2 years ago) for our wedding. We decided we did not want to start our marriage in debt. The location made a huge difference in price for us. We got married in his hometown in Northeast Nebraska where the wedding hall rent was only $100. Our family made all the food (kind of a pot luck thing). No one cared about where the reception was held and what kind of food there was, all they remembered was that it was a good time celebrating two people in love!
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I am so glad that there are people saying that they are happy with their JP wedding. My fiance and I are getting married that way in March (with 5 guests and a restaurant lunch afterward) and I am getting flak about it from my family. My parents have been married multiple times so they have had their shot at their dream wedding many times over (they like to renew their vows about every 5 years or so) but they still want to have an EVENT wedding for me. I just want a low key wedding with as little financial pressure as possible and it is the option that I want to take. I just wish that there were bridal planning guides suited to this kind of wedding, they all seem to be pushing the extravagant kind of weddings. I just need a guide of how to get a JP appointment, do I need blood tests, how do I change my name, etc. So if anyone wants an to write a simple manual for JP weddings, please do.
Also, it would be nice to see wedding announcement cards for sale somewhere on the net. I can’t find any.
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We did the same thing by marrying in Mexico. The wedding cost was $1500. We did it at an all-inclusive resort, so our guests that were staying there effectively paid for their own dinner (since meals are included in the room rate). Of course, we were prepared to pay for any guest that stayed elsewhere. The other nice part of this is that we didn’t have to limit our guests list, extra people did not cost us extra so we were able to invite anyone who wanted to make the trip. The rate at the hotel was competitive with US hotels that did not cover meals with the rooms, so we did not consider this a hardship for guests. People complain about destination weddings as passing the cost to your guests. But my family is all out of town and spread across the country, so travel was going to be required no matter what, and I gaurantee you they preferred flying to Mexico than Houston for a wedding. Actually, I spent far more being a maid of honor in my best friend’s traditional wedding, between the travel, the dress, the hotel, the gifts, than my family did coming to my wedding, and they got a trip to a Mexican resort out of the deal!
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Good for you! Sounds like the wedding was just right, and you started your married life on a good financial footing… which almost guarantees less fighting down the road.
Congratulations on your marriage!
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We got married in 2007 and spent 2.5k and had 50 guests. We had it in a backyard with a big tent and a deck that lent itself well as a “stage”. We called in some favors and the only “pros” we hired was the harpist and the guys who sent up the tent. Everyone who attended said it was one of the best weddings they had been to mainly because it reflected our personality and it was low key and *gasp* fun.
In retrospect, the only thing I would change is I would have hired someone to come out and do pictures rather than rely on friends with a photography hobby.
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f you are trying to save some money on a wedding than don’t have a “free bar”
People are more than willing to pay for their own drinks. You can have wine on the tables if you want but anything else is unnecessary. It’s your wedding! People should be buying you drinks!
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This may have been mentioned before re: Vegas destination weddings, but for those of us with friends and families all over the country “a plane ticket is a plane ticket,” as Lars’ dad so aptly put it. (Unless it’s an international destination wedding and then yea, IMHO you’re asking a lot of your guests and their budgets).
I appreciate the story about a reasonably-priced wedding though! Too often I hear about the other end of the spectrum, so this was a really refreshing post to stumble upon.
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