One of my colleagues just got engaged to his longtime girlfriend, and they've planned their wedding in record time, in my mind: a November 2014 date.
They're trying to pay for as much of the wedding themselves, instead of asking parents to pay for it, without going into any debt.
They've booked a great Jersey Shore location on the beach, chosen menus, flowers. My colleague still has to talk to DJs for music and pricing; apparently DJs have a price menu for every extra beyond playing music (first dance request, bride/father dance request). They are trying to do this in the most cost-efficient way possible and still have a wonderful, memorable wedding.
The average cost of a wedding in the U.S. in 2012, according to The Knot and The Wedding Channel, was more than $28,000! That's insane! That's a down payment on the median-price home in most cities! The median-price home in the U.S. in September, according to the National Association of Realtors, was $199,200.
Yes, a wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event (except that 40 to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, according to the Census Bureau — but we don't think about that stat when we get married). And we know the usual saver advice for couples planning a wedding — having a wedding in a non-peak (May, June, October) month at a non-peak time (Saturday afternoon/evening) are huge savers. But what hidden secrets will save couples money when they are planning their wedding?
Can you help my colleague out with some budgeting advice for a wedding? What wedding planning tips do you have for engaged couples? How can they maximize their dollars when planning their wedding? (And yes, destination weddings that cost their guests hundreds of dollars are not an option. I just did one of those.)
And as a little bit of a throwback, for several years we hosted a video contest – a lot of work, but some great submissions. Our 2010 winner of the Success Stories category was Jessica, who described how she has No Regrets for delaying her honeymoon until she and her husband could pay cash for it. This particular option is not for everyone, but in a nutshell is what the Get Rich Slowly philosophy is all about: Making short-term sacrifices for long-term happiness.
Author: Ellen Cannon
Ellen Cannon was the editorial director of the financial services sites at QuinStreet from 2010-2015. She has covered personal finance for magazines and websites for more than 20 years, including five years as managing editor of Bankrate.com. She lives in South Florida with her kitty and sunshine.
Elope! We paid <1% of the "average" wedding costs to get married on a boat while we were on vacation. It was perfect and intimate and we (literally) sailed off into the sunset afterwards.
Then have a backyard belated wedding/housewarming party after you've purchased your first home with a down payment that most people would have spent on a wedding.
This is pretty good advice :-)
Most people I know eloped before their wedding, anyway, and still wanted one because they felt it was important (for a variety of reasons).
More and more people I know are warming up to this idea and I love it. Esp. when I read horror stories of how people take out debt to get married. Anyone who truly cares for the couple getting married will truly appreciate what they have done to cut down the expenses and take a big leap in managing their personal finances.
I don’t know how I feel about the idea of eloping. It’s a great way to not spend money. But for some people having a gorgeous wedding/ceremony is important to them. It was for my wife and I. We spent $20k on our wedding without any debt. It was an amazing wedding, open bar, right on the water. Some people here might think that’s a stupid waste of money and better off spent paying off debt or using it to save for a house but eh – I have one awesome memory.
The best advice I received was to focus on what was important, and direct your resources there. We wanted our guests to have a great time and to eat well, so we paid more attention to food and drinks. I didn’t obsess over flowers or decor. I went with what was in season and went very minimal on decor, and it turned out beautiful anyway. Our wedding was around $12k, for 75 people. We did a Saturday brunch, with several types of food (omelet chef, roasted meats, crepes, etc.) and mimosas and selected wines and beers. Our guests loved it, and it freed everyone up to spend the evening doing something else. Pick what’s important to you and don’t stress about the rest. If you’re hitched at the end of the day, it’s a success.
I proposed to my girlfriend in August and we’re planning a wedding for early 2015. We’ve arranged to meet with some DJs over the next few weeks and have already met with a photographer. I really suggest getting “all-inclusive” quotes (including any taxes and fees) from as many vendors as you can, as it makes budgeting much easier. The contract stipulates exactly what you get. We’re shooting for $10,000 for 120 guests and are well on our way to hitting that goal. Some suggestions:
– Some vendors have discounts for Saturday afternoons. One of our possible DJs is $200 cheaper if we just move everything an hour sooner so we don’t fall into his evening rates. Likewise, most vendors have Friday/Sunday discounts.
– Pick a slow weekend or time of year. We’re doing March 14, 2015 when nothing else is going on. The reception vendor we went with came right out and told us that he would give us every extra he has if we’d book for a March wedding because it will probably be the only business he has that week. So we ended up with a very generous buffet and full open bar for a little over half of what it would have been for a summer wedding.
– Shop around and get a friend in the business to help. We have a friend who has been a photographer for 25 years and, although she doesn’t do weddings anymore, she gave us loads of advice on what to look for from photographers.
– Be wary of online reviews. We found one DJ with amazing reviews, but then we came across him at a bridal show offering discounts to anyone who posted a good review on certain sites. We’ll definitely steer clear of him now.
– Work as a team to avoid vendors’ traps. My bride-to-be would visit a vendor to get an initial reaction and then come fill me in on it. This gave me a much more objective eye on what the vendor was actually offering because I wasn’t subjected to the various sales pitches and fancy displays of things that weren’t actually relevant to our event.
Wow. I don’t even know 120 people.
I don’t consider this an unusual number at all. We invited over 200 and at least 120 came. Family alone can equal at least 50-75 of that number, especially if you have a large or a close family. Plus we ended up inviting a lot of the close friends of my husband’s parents, even though I didn’t know them at all. At the time it annoyed me somewhat, but in hindsight it was the right thing to do. These were people that had been involved in their lives, and we still run into them fairly frequently.
We had 340. Yikes.
Both my husband and I grew up and still live in the Bay Area and invited all family. (Mom youngest of 8, dad youngest of 9)
It was all family or none :)
And we only had 5 regrets!
25 years ago and still fresh in my memory :)
I don’t think 120 is unreasonable at all, especially if you invite both sides of the family plus family and close work colleagues. If the bride and groom both invite 20 family members, 20 friends, and 10 colleagues you’re at 100 guests, and that’s a pretty limited friends list when you consider people often come as couples.
I am unbelievably jealous of your wedding date–being a bit of a nerd, I really wanted to have a pi day wedding, but my fiance didn’t want to wait that long to get married.
It sounds too expensive already…
A Jersey Shore beach location with menus?
My wife and I got married in the church and had our reception next door in the gym. We served food buffet style and her brother cooked everything. We had a nice cake made by Ukrops (local supermarket), she bought her dress on clearance, we booked a just starting photographer to get super rates, and we found a very modestly priced DJ for 4 hours of songs. It was a great time – the people made it fun, not all the expensive crap.
Not sure if you’re married or not, but we have been for 10+ years. Trust me in that the difference between a $5K wedding and a $20K wedding will not make a hell of a difference 5 or 10 years later. It’s the same as the difference between driving a Mercedes and a Corolla – they both will get you to where you need to be going, but one will cost a heck of a lot more to do the same thing :-)
Good luck!
Amen to all of the above. Also, aligning with the off-peak date advice, go off-peak time. If your reception falls at lunch or dinner time, you’ll be expected to provide a full meal. We timed it so the reception fell in the early afternoon, neither lunch nor dinner, and served deli sandwich fixings.
Alcohol also drives the price up. If you have an open bar, you’ll pay through the nose. Certain people find a guest-paid bar to be tacky, so we simply said one glass of champagne per guest, no other alcohol, and all the soft drinks they could drink (which the venue provided at a flat per-person price).
Finally, involve friends and family wherever you can. My wife’s childhood piano teacher played for the service at the church she attends; the sister of a high school friend did the photos; her aunt did the decorations except for the flowers; a quartet of musical friends and relatives sang. While we paid most of these for their efforts, they charged us much less than market rate, and it’s much more special knowing exactly who made the table arrangements in the photos, and who took the photos.
Yikes.
I cannot imagine going to a wedding and being cut off at one glass of champagne.
Sorry.
Agreed. I have been to so many uber-religious “no booze allowed” weddings. What I remember about ALL of them is that the people who attended who would have liked to have some drinks and complained the entire time.
No thanks!
I think it’s sad that some people can’t enjoy an event without alcohol. Do you go to weddings for the free booze?
Reply to Marsha:
No, I don’t go to weddings for free booze. I go to weddings to celebrate people I love. BUT.
Weddings are social occasions and alcohol is a social lubricant. At the non-boozing weddings I’ve been to, there was still plenty of socializing, but the people who wanted to have some drinks weren’t as pleased to be there as the non-boozers. A wedding is a party, after all. What’s wrong with booze at a party?
It’s not that you can’t have fun without alcohol, it’s just that alcohol makes it that much more fun that I can’t imagine not having it. As for attending the weddings for the free booze? No, because you have to buy a gift, so it’s not necessarily free. You attend weddings for the friends, the family, the couple. The open bar though is the icing on the cake ;)
re: Marsha
There are two separate issues.
One is a dry wedding reception. Fine.
The other is offering one glass of champagne and then cutting people off. That is the opposite of hospitality.
Would you invite someone to your home for dinner and then cut them off after a glass of wine or a dinner roll? Of course not.
Which is why “cash bars” and having people pay to attend your reception are considered “improper”. But to each his own.
Cash bars are an interesting topic. Where I live in Canada, they are totally normal and nobody bats an eye. In larger cities this is definitely not the case but overall it’s very cultural.
(FTR, I’m a wedding photographer and I go to a LOT of weddings).
I think it depends on the venue. When my friends got married, the venue said that for a cash bar there had to be at least $3000 is sales or the bride and groom had to pay the difference.
They ended up going with an open bar and came out ahead.
Off peak days and times are great for saving on the venue, but please realize that by making friends and family members take more time off work (if they need to travel on Thursday to attend a Friday wedding, for instance…), you’re really passing some of those costs onto them. So please be considerate of that, especially if the guests that need to travel are early in their careers and might not have many (if any) paid vacation days. Off peak days and times work best when most people are local so as to avoid extra work-days off for travel.
In my experience, the size/grandeur of the wedding has nothing to do with the happiness or length of the marriage. I think people sometimes forget that ;)
I’m not married yet, but the weddings I was involved with the couples decided to “choose their battles”. One couple wanted to spend more on a photographer and didn’t care that much about flowers, for example. Another bride found a great deal on her dress to keep costs down. One couple I know had a small wedding so they could spend more on the honeymoon. Figure out what’s most important to you and don’t use “It’s my big day” as an excuse to splurge.
Speaking as a bridesmaid, one thing a budget-minded couple shouldn’t do is expect others to pick up their costs. Sadly, some couples have a high sense of entitlement when it comes to their weddings. I’ve seen it happen that the most costly part of their wedding is the relationships that are damaged — or lost — as a result.
I totally agree, while being a poor college student, it is awesome to be invited to be in the wedding party, but once you find out you have to find your own transportation, lodging, and food for all non wedding events 5 states away that gets pretty pricey. Not to mention getting the 100-200 dress and shoes they want as well as using their expensive hair dresser before the wedding. We had a cheap wedding, I wrote about below, and if we had, had bridesmaids/groomsmen we would have at least paid for their tuxes and dresses and gotten them a place to sleep without having to pay(unless they preferred a hotel room.) We ended up not having a bridal party,but that is beside the point.
Yes, pay for the dresses and tux rentals. My girlfriend had a bad experience where she was asked to be a bridesmaid: not only did the bride call off the wedding just after the bridesmaids had gotten their dresses but also the dresses couldn’t be returned so they couldn’t get their money back. As you can guess that bride lost a few friends over that.
I had my sister pick our her dress, I did “approve” it but it was her dress to wear and her dress to keep. Problem solved, LOL.
The most memorable part of my wedding was the way we included our son, then 4, in the wedding. At a cousin’s wedding, a friend of theirs was Native American. His wedding present to the couple was a ritual blessing. Her brother and his wife sang a special song during the ceremony. Every magazine and website will tell you what every wedding needs. What makes a wedding memorable are the things that are unique to that particular event. And the best of those don’t cost a lot, or anything.
It totally depends on the type of event you want to have. It is hard to save money if you want to have a live band, open bar, great food, a wonderful location, etc.
You can certainly have trade offs, like we scrapped the cake and had minimal decorations (b/c we already had a beautiful outdoor location that did not need decoration) but then we spent that money on the band, booze and food.
While there may be no difference between the marriage outcome of a low budget vs. high budget wedding there is certainly a difference in the experience and the experience of your guests. I don’t think it is appropriate to ask guests to travel to a wedding and then not give them great food, entertainment, etc.
A lot of money can be saved on flowers by buying from a local grocery store instead of a florist. Also consider using “green” as the wedding color– green plants are much cheaper than flowers.
As someone who got married this year and eloping wasn’t an option, I saved money by:
1) Having the ceremony and reception at an untraditional location-a historical house that was converted to a small performing arts center. My venue cost was 1/3 to 1/2 of what the traditional places costed for a Saturday evening event. My SIL was married at her parent’s private HOA community clubhouse, which was also a great price. You do have to read the fine print and ask a lot of questions at any location.
2) Since our venue didn’t care which vendors we used, we had our local favorite restaurant cater at under $20pp. We cared about food that tasted good as opposed to serving fancy food that was mediocre tasting. We purchased our alcohol and hired a bartender.
3) Not being a flower person, I was surprised at how much they costed. We provided flowers for approx 20 people for under $100 by buying them wholesale and making the bouquets, etc.
We got married in 2008, but our wedding was a total of $3200. Half of that was the photographer. Our location was a historical site, and we rented it for a shorter time since we knew the wedding itself would be cheaper, and had our friends actually book it. They were part of the historical society so it only cost us $200, also weddings held on Fridays or during the week tend to be cheaper. We printed and and designed our own invitations, and everyone called and asked where we bought them they looked really good! We just found a design we liked online, and then made it ourselves. We wanted a sit down dinner for our wedding but those are expensive so our site was the church we attended, and we had panera bread cater because everyone loved the soups, salads, sandwiches, and at the time we paid $6 a person. (I think it is closer to $8 now) They don’t serve the food however, so we had some friends of the family who want to help in any way possible. If you don’t care about getting gifts, I have heard of people having pot luck weddings where people bring a dish rather than a gift. To keep our costs low, we had just family come to the wedding and reception(which was over 100 people) there was no other easy way to cut off some friends and not others. We made all of our own decor, I used fake flowers that we found online and bought in bulk for a lot cheaper. I did have 1 bouquet that I bought and the flowers for the lapels of fresh flowers,but kept it really simple and cheap. I know a lot of people prefer real, but for us it was all about keeping it cheap. We made our own table runners from cheap fabrics from ikea. A lot of churches have table cloths that are included in the price of renting the facility. If that doesn’t work, Sam’s Club sells them for a pretty good price. We just used the chairs that the church had and didn’t get any super nice ones. My Mother in Law made the cake.(We wanted cheesecake,but were told that wasn’t traditional enough, I am German and didn’t know a lot of the American traditions) I know see weddings with rice crispy treat cakes,etc. IF you did a wedding cake like a cheesecake it can be baked in advanced and frozen. I bought my designer dress(New it was over 5k) used for super cheap on ebay($300 since the person wanted to get rid of it) 3 sizes too big, and paid around $100 to have it altered to my size. My husband wanted a very simple wedding band that was brushed nickel but flat looking almost like a cut pipe. At that time those weren’t “In” so we ended up finding his on Overstock.com for $30 and we bought 2 sizes in case he ever needed one size up or down of his current size. As I said above, we splurged on our photographer and are soo glad about it, we got tons of pictures and were very happy with him. We had seen him at a previous wedding and got in touch through word of mouth. We were planning on eloping at first, but then family wanted to have just a meal with us which ended up just sounding like a reception so that is why we decided to do a short and cheaper wedding. My ring was bought over 5 years ago from Diamond Nexus Labs before they were popular, they now are popular and did the miss america pageants. http://www.diamondnexus.com/ They have great warranties, and all of the diamonds are perfect, lab grown. I was very insistent on not having a blood diamond, and this was the only way to be 100% sure. We don’t even have to pay for ring insurance because if your diamond get messed up or falls out they replace it for free. (I worked previously at a granite place where we had diamond tipped saws, and I managed to scratch my diamond, and they replaced it for free no questions asked.) They are a little bit more pricey now than they used to be, but still WAY more affordable than most jewelers. We ended up not having a wedding party because we didn’t know how to split it up, I have a lot of friends and sisters and didn’t want to have to pick between one or the other or have 8+ bridesmaids since paying for their dresses/tuxes would have been insanely expensive. Some people might find that weird, but looking back now 5 years later we are still happy with the choice. My sister did my hair and make up for the wedding, and another sister had wanted to help and made my jewelry for the wedding. ANYTHING that has a wedding seal on it is just priced higher and it is annoying. I have heard of a lot of people getting things custom made on Etsy.com for a lot cheaper so that could be an option. A friend of the family had a time share and gave us our honeymoon from that which was super helpful in making our wedding cheaper,but I would say you could go rent a house somewhere even beachish and go out to eat for every meal for under 2k if you stay for a whole week. (we just did this on our first vacation this year since our honeymoon.) I also heard that this website http://www.save-on-crafts.com/lilybowls3.html has beautiful things for a pretty good price. We got our vases for the wedding from the dollar stores. Oh, this blogger has a pretty inexpensive wedding and they go into great detail. http://www.younghouselove.com/wedding-album/ Also, the one book I bought was the knot wedding planning guide. A lot of things they say are necessary are dumb, but their timeline check list in the back of the book was very helpful as well as explaining certain traditions even if I still think they are dumb. ;p Anyway, that is all I can think of right now, and sorry if this was way more information than you were wanting. Good Luck, and others will try to plan your wedding,but don’t let them, it is YOURS!
I also meant to say that we had a lunch reception so alcohol wasn’t expected, and the church we were having it in didn’t allow it anyway.
If they have already booked the venue with food and flowers I’m not sure where the opportunity will be to save to much $ will be.
Agreed. They might be able save some money on the invitations and decorations, though, as well as what they’ll wear.
I agree with what everyone else stated – find out what’s important, then spend your money there. If you want nice photographs, then get a great photographer.
Also, don’t “hire” relatives or friends to do work for you, especially if they offer to do it for free. You get what you pay for!
Apparently there are two of us Beths :)
I agree you have to be careful hiring friends or family. It’s a business relationship, and needs to be treated as such. That being said, I’ve seen some some great instances of people contributing their talents to a wedding. It would be a shame to have missed out on that.
Perhaps it’s a family tradition, but we relied on the kindness of family, friends, and church family in our own wedding, and in the weddings of our children some decades later. An old friend of ours was a pastor, and we got a great deal to use his church and have him officiate and his wife played the organ. My mother and her friend made artificial flowers for decoration. My wife’s mother sewed her wedding dress, and her sister did the calligraphy on the invitations and took the photos. There was a brief reception at the church with cake and cookies, candies, mints, then we adjourned to another friend of the family’s home for a buffet style party and reception. If the entire budget exceeded $1000 I’d be amazed.
Some of the high points for the later weddings – DJ’d by iPod by kids’ college fraternity brothers, I self-catered dinner at the reception for 200 people at my daughters wedding, and the bride’s brother in law did the same at my son’s. Photos professionally done by friends, venue provided by our church at low cost, decorations by family and friends. A great time was had by all for a reasonable price.
Number one most important thing – do NOT watch any of those annoying bridal reality shows (Say Yes to the Dress, I’m looking at you). Focus on what matters, spend on what’s important, skip what doesn’t. That includes favors. Nobody cares and most of those almond thingys will end up in the trash. And, as others have said, don’t overlook the DIY factor and helpful/talented friends and relatives. Most of them are happy to help, all you have to do is ask.
All the best to the happy couple for a long and wonderful life together!
My family wanted a cash bar and my MIL wanted an open bar. We compromised and had 2 bottles of wine on the table (red and white) and limited the rest of the alcohol to 100 beers and 100 martinis. (We had a 40s style wedding). This saved us a lot of money. No one seemed to miss a large selection of alcohol.
My husband and I had our wedding last December for just around 4k. We had A LOT of help from family as far as food and decor goes. We just did finger foods and fixed them all ourselves and only used decorations that were already in the family. I also ordered flowers online and my sister and I made all the bouquets ourselves. One thing I don’t recommend doing is going cheap on is either a photographer or a videographer. Invest in a professional so you can enjoy those pictures or videos the rest of your lives. It is worth it!
Think outside of the box. Instead of getting catering (all of whose quotes were outside of our budget), we decided to hire a food truck. People will love it or hate it, but we’ll still be in our budget!
Also, make compromises: we’re having a professional photographer capture the ceremony, but not the reception – friends and family will be doing that.
We should be right on target for our $5000 budget – but I can report back on that in 3 weeks!
Very Interesting! I like this idea.
Oooh … food truck. I didn’t even think of that, and Seattle has a *ton* of great options!
Other awesome Seattle ideas:
Pike Place Market on the day of (or day before) for awesome, inexpensive flowers.
You can get married on a WSDOT Ferry for just the price of a ferry ride/person (currently $8 per adult, $4 per senior/child), and have incredible views of the city and the mountains behind you.
You can save a lot in terms of your choices with the flowers. We did bouquets and boutonnieres, but skipped on centerpieces. That can add up to $1,000 (or more) fast. Also choose flowers that are in season. If you pick daffodils (a spring flower) for a November wedding…you are going to pay a premium for forced bulbs being grown in a greenhouse.
I also saved a bunch enlisting the help of family members and bridesmaids to make my own favors, centerpieces, placecards, etc. We also had a friend marry us and another friend play the music at the ceremony. It adds some stress to do everything yourself, but it’s your time or your money and it makes it so special to see what you accomplished in the end.
The best way to save is to keep the guest list low and don’t worry about showing off to other people. If at the end of the day, two people who love each other and are devoted to spending their lives together are married, then your wedding was a success. Everything else is just extra – so don’t get bogged down in thinking you have to spend to have this or that.
YMMV, but we got married in the courthouse for the price of the marriage license plus cab fare. Almost 10 years and going strong, plus another 19 months of prior shacking up.
At first my wife missed not having had a wedding, and there were plans and talks of re-weddings at some future date, but after she witnessed some family wedding catastrophes she became very happy she dodged a bullet and all future plans have been cancelled. Ha!
Obviously the easiest ways to save money are by doing non-peak days/seasons and cutting your guestlist, and if you don’t do those things then frugal folks will judge you immediately. I have about 100 people in my family, just counting grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins, and they all live in town and are close to my husband and I. By the time we included his family and our friends, the guest list ballooned, but we made sacrifices elsewhere to still be surrounded by the people we loved on our special day. We did lots of small things to save money, and it really added up.
-The groomsmen wore black suits instead of tuxes, so no money was spent there.
-Also, we provided ties as part of their groomsmen gifts (2 birds, one stone!), and they were purchased very affordably on thetiebar.com.
-I made all of the flowers (brooch bouquet for me, paper flowers and boutineers for everyone else), which saved TONS of money.
-We negotiated in our contracts specifically what we wanted from our vendors so that we weren’t paying for anything we didn’t want or need.
-We DIY’ed a lot of things, but other than the flowers it wasn’t really anything that required much creative skill.
-I did buy table runners online, but between a sale on the website and a coupon code, I got a great deal and was later able to sell them on Craigslist for what I originally paid.
-Overall, we decided which things were important to us and focused our energy and resources there, and were not afraid to cut things out. There are so many traditions surrounding weddings, but they aren’t all necessary – choose those that are meaningful to you and get rid of the rest – don’t do them just because that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Even if the obvious ways to save lots of money aren’t options, there are still other ways to save and so often personal finance fans ignore those. True, refinancing your mortgage and eliminating cable from your monthly budget will save you way more than nixing the latte habit, but every little bit helps, so let’s not neglect the impact that the lattes can have.
Wait, what DJs are they looking at that nitpick prices like that? I’ve NEVER heard of that before! They need to find some more people to interview. We’ve been to weddings in something like 10 states now, all close friends that we talked wedding prices with, and no one has ever mentioned something like that. We got married and the DJ billed per hour! That makes so much more sense to me.
We got married last year and paid wayyy less than the “average” wedding costs.
Here are some tips
1) Consider the venue- we got married at St. A;bans Chapel in the Snowy Range, Mtns., Wyoming. It’s basically just an outdoor alter with seats, and was $75 to rent for half the day. Since we had beautiful mountain scenery surrounding us, the venue, decorations, and seating we already taken care of for $75.
2) Invite less people. Not that many people REALLY want to go to your wedding. In fact, most people find it a burden to have to fly out the your wedding and by you stuff. Spare them the obligation by inviting only those closest to you.
3) Consider rings. We bought $99 (each) Titanium rings- they last forever, are the strongest stuff on earth, and are easier on the environment than some other metals. We actually just used them for the ceremony, then resold them after.
Some great advice above. I got married in March 2013 for under $2500, with a very nice buffet and open bar. We did not have family or friends help, except for a friend was our dj for $100.00
We cared about a nice cake and spent $10 at Micheals on a cake decorating course and $40 on nice pans. We spend about $50 on ingredients and made our own 8 (buttercream frosting with yellow cake, and raspberry jam inbetween) layer cake, 5 layer (chocolate amaretto) grooms cake, and 4 layer gluten free vegan, sugar free cake. It took a lot of work and practice, but our cakes looked amazing and were fresh and tasted great. We actually have submitted our cakes on cakewin and have gotten up voted for it looking awesome.
Another thing, I bought my wedding dress at a thrift shop for $12.00. His suit was also at the thrift shop for $4.00.
We spent the bulk of our budget on catering and alcohol. It was a classy wedding without the price. We also used the same place we got married in as the reception afterwards.
It all depends what you want. We kept ours to around 4k by a couple things:
-Inexpensive nice Dress at Jessica Mclintock $150
-only 1 person standing for each
-Reception for the 50 most important people in our life at a room at historic restaurant in a romantic historic part of town by the water
-open bar for 1st 2 hours, most people left by the third hour ,
-string duet for music for ceremony and first 2 hours $250
-Basic flowers only and table settings handmade,
Got married 31 years ago…you know, I don’t remember much about that day. But in the last 31 years…OMG the memories.
We, like others, didn’t spend a lot and our friends and family gifted us some of the important bits and pieces (like paying for the license itself) At the end of the day, that’s the part that I remember.
A budget now? I’m with the others…if you have to have family, make it simple and about the people. Otherwise, small, small celebration (elope if your religion allows it)
Make it about the people.
When I see the $28K stat I wonder, does that include rings? My engagement ring and the stones in my wedding band are CZ and the bands are white gold, so they were pretty inexpensive. My husband’s ring is also white gold and was very affordable. My dress was $110 because the store was closing (though I think it was $150 more or so for tailoring).Get the most comfortable shoes you can, I was practically in tears by the end of the day my feet hurt so bad. No one really sees the bride’s shoes anyway.
I think considering not only your costs, but also the cost of the bridal party is important. I didn’t pay for my bridesmaids’ dresses, but they were off-the-rack summer dresses from Macy’s and they didn’t need tailoring. I let them wear whatever shoes they wanted.
We didn’t have a rehearsal dinner since we got married on a cruise ship (the ship wasn’t even in port until the morning of the wedding). So instead of a rehearsal dinner we invited all our guests to a pub and paid for appetizers. I don’t think we mentioned to the venue that it was related to a wedding, that always makes the price go up.
I’d recommend Evites for the Save-the-Dates and inexpensive invitations. Don’t forget to account for postage as a cost!
The “no destination” is hard. When people say that they mean no exotic location, but with my husband being from Arizona (but growing up in the midwest) and me being from Florida (but growing up in the NE), most people were going to have to travel no matter what. We ended up picking FL mostly because that was the only way we could get my dad to come.
Looking back, I think the photographer was the best thing about our wedding, though I’d recommend seeing if you can find someone who will sell you all the digital proofs INSTEAD of making you buy a minimum number of hard copy photos. I look at my photos all the time on FB, but the actual photos are just sitting in a box in our office. You can always use a third party later to print the photos you actually want to frame.
I’m not sure why people think that they need more than a year to plan a wedding. I just got engaged in September of this year and am getting married at the end of December. Venue, photographer, flowers and dj were all booked within the first few weeks. We’re getting married on a Sunday evening – Dec. 22nd – so not only do we have the entire venue to ourselves (it’s considered an off-season date) but all of the vendors gave us some kind of discount.
It seems to me that the more time you give yourself to think about the planning, the more you tend to include. Whereas if you are planning in a shorter period of time, you save a bit because you have to stick to the basics.
We got engaged in August and married in December on a Saturday at noon because that is when the Polka band I wanted was available. A good thing too because the temperature dropped to 15 below that night. The polka band was great fun!
Engaged in December, married the following July. ITA long engagements = more troubles. Ours was at the local conservation club, married outside next to a stream. Cost abut $200 to rent, would have been half had we been members. (this was 16 years ago). My parent’s friends helped SOOOO much – decorating, setting up, grilling. We had a potluck-style reception. Not something for most people and I’d probably do that differently, but I’ve heard from multiple people that our wedding was one of the most fun and memorable because it was relaxing and like a backyard BBQ.
I only had a matron of honor and one bridesmaid and we bought their dresses off the rack and got sandals – something they would wear again, and they both did. Guys didn’t worry about having matching jackets and ties because 1) didn’t matter and 2) kept them from spending $$ they didn’t have.
Flowers game from the floral department at the local grocery store. I made the bouquets. Vases on the wedding party table held them and acted as centerpieces.
Frugal wedding can be wonderful – it’s about celebrating what is important. Determine what is important and focus on that.
We had our wedding at a church and the reception in the church hall. Food is expensive so we just had a BBQ buffet catered by a local restaurant for $7.95/person!! Food was less than $1000 total and all of the guests really enjoyed it.
We eloped so I’m not sure how much it cost. We had a small gathering at our house after being married (less than $100, said no gifts), and then my father had a small reception for just the immediate family when I visited. the only thing I regret, is I only had a disposable camera for the actual wedding, and the pictures came out distorted so I don’t have great photos of the actual day. In retrospect I would have recruited someone with a good camera and good skills (like my sister, who was in another state) to be there, paying the way if need be.
I know not everyone will like the ideas I suggest. I will also say that I have been married twice; my first wedding was large and more traditional/expensive, and ended in divorce 7 years later. Which made it far easier for me to be very frugal the second time around (I had no illusions, fantasies, and I had 3 young children at that point).
My second wedding was perfect and cost $2,000 about 10 years ago, including my dress, the rings, the flowers, the fee for the minister, the invitations, the photos, the music, the food and the rehearsal dinner. We had 50 guests. I was 40 years old.
How did we pull this off?
Rings: gold bands for each of us, mine had 3 tiny diamonds. This was our largest expense.
My dress: anthropologie lace skirt and beaded lace top for $200. I felt beautiful and received many compliments.
rehearsal dinner for 15 people: local restaurant, we pre-ordered and picked it up and served it at our house.
the wedding was in our backyard. The ordained minister was a friend of ours and yes, we did pay him. We customized our own vows/ceremony, working with him.
reception food: Costco. We had teenager guests who were more than happy to help arrange it on platters while I was getting dressed for the ceremony. The cakes were from costco, too. I found a nice bride/groom cake topper to put on top. Lots of food, very tasty. We had wine, beer and champagne, too.
Music: from our own collection, on our own stereo.
invitations: we did them ourselves, on our computer.
Flowers: I pre-ordered a bouttoniere for my husband from a florist and then bought several bunches of assorted flowers from Costco/Trader Joe’s and made my own bouquet and used the rest in decorative vases.
My hair: my cousins helped me. :)
Photos: at the time, digital cameras were not so ubiquitous, so we bought several disposable cameras and asked our guests to take lots of pictures with those and with their own cameras and send them to us. They all did, and we had many beautiful photographic memories of the day.
This was the most peaceful, pleasant day. I loved it that it was so personal, because we did almost all of it ourselves. And didn’t go into debt or wasteful spending. The mood was festive and though it was frugal it wasn’t “cheap.”
Maybe there are some hints or suggestions here to give people ideas on ways to save money with weddings.
Oh, one more idea if you can pull this off: ONLY invite people to your wedding who love you. No need to invite strangers. Small weddings are lovely! I realize there are people from both sides of the families who may be strangers to each of you, but if you have a personal, loving connection to each and every one of your guests, you will feel the love and that is what it’s all about.
We got married 6 months ago. My biggest piece of advise, which others have already mentioned, is to focus on what’s important to you and prioritize this in your budget. Our church service and the musical accompaniment was important to us, so we paid accordingly. Our church fee was $1000 and the choir $500, but we sing in that choir and met in that church, so it was important to us to get married there, with the choir singing. My dress? Not as important. I bought a sample dress in-store for $299 that was exactly what I wanted. My sister’s ex-coworker did the alterations for $80.
We married in early May, which got us discounts on our reception venue ($1000 rental fee waived), and photographer (25% discount). My aunts graciously offered to do our flowers, so I bought them wholesale for about $500 and they put in the labor. We printed our own invitations. We only paid for wine and beer for our guests, which saved us on alcohol costs. We only had limited offerings at the cocktail hour. At our venue, a plated dinner was cheaper than a buffet, so we went with that option. I looked into making my own centerpieces to save money, but renting them for $10 from the venue was cheaper and much less hassle.
A Practical Wedding is a wonderful website for ideas on how to focus on what’s important, and has a lot of good tips for those who want to DIY their wedding.
Remember that if you doing things to impress people you are going to have to spend a lot of money to impress some people. Your true friends are going to be happy for you. Keep it simple and special.
I have a wonderful wife that didn’t NEED a whole lot to make our wedding a wonderful event. She worked with one of the ladies at Hobby Lobby (flower department) to buy artificial flowers when they were on sale – and she and this lady put together all our flower arrangements, her flowers, and our boutonnieres. She had another friend do the desserts (dessert buffet) instead of a sit down meal. We didn’t have a dance or DJ. The decorations were cross stitch projects she had made to that point – in fact she cross stitched her bride’s maids gifts too. We bought simple invitations and I put together the RSVP cards (got perforated card stock and wrote up something in Word and printed them post card style). In fact we did a mail merge to keep from having to hand address everything.
Like many things in life, if you are willing to do a bit of the work yourself and get creative, things can be much less expensive and still be beautiful, special, and memorable.
I just got married last year I had a beautiful ceremony and reception for over 100 people for $5000. The most important thing we did was to find a venue where we could control the food and alcohol. A friend sponsored us to use the clubhouse at her gated community which was beautiful and only cost us $150.00. We negotiated with our own caterer and had a lovely buffet dinner, we bought all the alcohol ourselves on sale and then hired a bartender off craigslist. We also found a photographer from craigslist who was very inexpensive and did a great job. A friend played guitar at our wedding as his gift to us, and we had a DJ who was a friend of a friend and reasonably priced. My dress was $100 it was a sample at a bridal store, my husband wore a white linen suit that we bought on sale and outlet mall. Friends arranged the flowers for the tables and my bouquet again as their gift to us. We did not want the cake we instead had a large arrangement of small desserts for everyone to choose from. The most important thing for us was that people have fun and dance at our reception, people told me later they could not believe we did that wedding for $5000. BTW we spent more on our three-week honeymoon then the wedding!
Just got married this June! Here are my “pro” tips …
– Sam’s Club and Costco sell flowers in bulk – they are beautiful, and totally cut the floral budget by 3/4 what we would have paid with even a “cheap” florist.
– CRAIGSLIST and Ebay should be your #1 and #2 for anything and everything. You don’t need to buy new all of the decor and accessories. I can’t even calculate how much I saved on centerpieces and they looked exactly like the ones I saw in a magazine and loved.
– On that note – SELL everything you can after the wedding. I got back about 80% of the money I had spent on items that could be reused by selling through Craigslist and Ebay.
– Enlist the help of anyone who offers (but don’t if they don’t offer first). Having a handful of our guests on hand to transport things to the venue saved a boatload of stress and time (time=money right).
Good luck!
Think about what you really want from a wedding. If your priority is having a huge party to show all your friends and family how much money you have and that you are “better than them” then yes you will spend a fortune. If your priority is to have a great time and not really care about what other people think about how much money you have, then do the following:
– plan for an afternoon wedding. We had our wedding at 1:30pm and provided some finger foods at the reception for about $5-7 a guest (rather than $15+++ for a dinner buffet reception). Actually most people didn’t even eat much, so we took some of the leftovers with us on the honeymoon.
– limit the number of guests to close friends/family and the people you actually care about. Do you really need to invite your second cousin once removed?
– pay for what matters to you. I can’t stand flowers, they are wet and drippy and smell funky. So I spent about 1/3 of the price and purchased pre-made faux flowers from someone on E-bay. I knew exactly the bouquet I was getting and was able to afford more than I would have with fresh. They were also lighter than real flowers, less messy, didn’t bother my allergies, and I could much more easily “preserve” them to remember later.
– ask friends and family to help. One of my aunts brought some wedding decorations and toasting glasses for us to use. Not only was this good for me, it was good for her too, because I can remember that and value that more than whatever wedding present she actually got. One caveat, don’t ask them to do the pictures for free. If you really want them to do the picture, pay them for it, it’s their job! Do you ask all your doctor friends for medical advice? Well, you probably do, but it’s really annoying…
– pay for what you reall want. My mom offered to help us out by paying for the photographer. I am glad she did, because we got three beautiful photo books (one for us, one of my parents and one for the in laws) that will help us remember the event forever. Prints and 8x10s and canvases will increase your cost, but think about what you really want from your pictures in the future.
– ignore “conventional” advice if you are not conventional. I tried wedding dress shopping, I really did, but it is not for me. I bought my dress at Dilliard’s. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be a confirmation dress or something similar, but it was exactly what I wanted. I also remember going to Moe’s and eating a burrito with my fiance and some of the wedding party before the ceremony. I don’t care about old wive’s tales like not seeing each other before the ceremony, but I started the day off right – spending time relaxing with people who cared about the future of our marriage – and that’s what the focus should be on anyway.
Total spent ~ $3,000-$4,000 (I don’t remember exactly the numbers, but the expenses were flowers, caterer, photographer, $100 wedding dress, $100 location fee (we had the reception and ceremony at the same place), a few hotel rooms for the officiant, etc. This includes the amount that my mom spent on the caterer and photographer.
I’ve some friends who had a fridge magnet that said “The cost of the wedding is inversely proportional to the longevity of the marriage.” Their marriage is closing in on the 40 year mark. 29 years ago, my husband and I were newly minted college grads and utterly broke. We spent a bit over $300 – and that included the license. We bought no flowers – it was a lovely church, needed no decoration. It was a mid-morning wedding, and I hated all the dresses I saw in the shops, so my Mom and I made my dress, and my sister wore a very nice dress she already had. No bridesmaids, most people tell me they’ve completely lost touch with their bridesmaids inside 5 years so why bother? The wedding bands we got at a pawn shop are still on our hands. We had a reception featuring a very large deli tray at a friend’s house; they had a nice large deck where everybody could visit under the trees. All my favorite pictures of the day were informal snapshots taken there. No professional photographer, my brother is a good amateur photographer and his present to me was taking all the pictures – something I did years later when my nieces got married. Since we knew all the people involved, we recognized the great shots when we saw them, something no professional can do.
The fact is, while we make such a big deal of weddings, a shockingly few years later, you won’t be sure where you put the album. You’ll be far to busy with the marriage. My favorite memory of my wedding – my oldest sister started this, I don’t know where she got it – was giving the first slice of wedding cake to my grandmother. To the day she died, she talked about how we “paid her special honor” at our weddings. Avoid the wedding industry like the plague and keep it about the people that mean the most to you, the people who were there when you were a baby, and will be there when you’re going gray, and you’ll do fine.
We had a small ceremony in the Army chapel where we were stationed. We had no family there, just a battalion of friends (grin) to make sure neither one of us chickened out. Thirty six years later, we wouldn’t change a thing.
A couple ideas we used to save on our wedding:
-Utilize friends and family wherever possible. Saves money and makes it more special to have them involved. They also may have great connections! My in-laws were able to reserve their golf club for a nominal fee. My husband’s aunt made our cake. The photography teacher at his school was delighted to photograph us (also let us use his discount to have the photos developed).
-I made the invitations myself with a laser printer and some beautiful handmade paper.
-The church ladies’ group did the flowers for us and enabled us to purchase them at a discount.
-Instead of a DJ, my father-in-law’s folk band played for a while. After, we used an ipod and asked guests to contribute songs for the playlist. My brother acted as Ipod DJ for the first dance and other special songs.
-We provided a set number of wine bottles and let guests buy their own drinks beyond that. A local winery may give you a deal, ours were from a very small winery and we got the bottles for around $4 each.
-We did buffet style open seating with minimal decorations, mostly purchased at Ikea. The have a great selection and are very reasonable. For example, instead of large floral center pieces, we had a single rose head floating in a glass bowl on each table, with tea lights and some other bits. It was stunning and very reasonable.
Shoes were one of the best decisions I made. I went with a pair of silver ballet flats I picked up for $10. They were super comfortable the whole day and I’ve been able to wear them again many times since.
The best piece of advice I can give is to decide what is really really important to you, spend money on that, and forget all the rest. It was really really important to us to feed our families really good meals; food is very important to us. So we had a fairly lavish (yet pretty cheap) rehearsal dinner at our favorite Lebanese restaurant, and had the reception at the restaurant where we had our first date and got engaged. The cake was from a fancy French pastry shop and everyone said it was the best wedding cake they ever ate.
Things that weren’t important to us, and that we saved a lot of money on:
1. Photography. We had no photographer. Both of us hate the cognitive dissonance of spending a ton of time, money, and effort memorializing the event, rather than enjoying the event itself, so we allowed ourselves to be posed in whatever configurations people wanted pictures of for about 20 minutes, after which we went off to enjoy ourselves with our friends and family. We have tons of pictures; they’re just not professional shots.
2. Flowers. A florist did my bouquet; everyone else’s was from Whole Foods. (Single roses pinned to my husband’s and the two groomsmen’s lapels; calla lilies for my two attendants.) We used whatever flowers the restaurant already had on the tables; no centerpieces.
3. Invitations. We bought some nice stationery and hand-wrote them.
4. Big party. We were able to hand-write the invites because we only had 47 guests.
5. Evening party. We had a morning wedding and a lunch reception, which was significantly cheaper than an evening reception would have been, without compromising quality of food. (Plus, it meant that when it was all over we still had plenty of time to take the party down the street to the Willard Hotel bar.)
6. Clothes. I got my wedding dress at a consignment shop. My attendants wore whatever they wanted; my husband and his attendants all wore dark navy suits.
7. Favors et al. We didn’t do these.
8. Pre-wedding party stuff. We had absolutely none except the rehearsal dinner. No bachelor party, no bachelorette party, no showers. Nothing.
That said, we still ended up spending about $10K on our wedding back in 2001. That sum covers absolutely everything, including the suit that my husband bought and still wears, the stationery for the invites, the rehearsal dinner, the reception, the money for the ceremony musicians (the other thing that was important to us; we spent about $500 on the organist and a soprano), the gratuity for the priest, the rings, et al et al. It adds up.
Wow, Saturday evening is NOT considered an “off-peak” day… I’d say it’s the peak day of the week! And May, June, and October are also the peak months here in New England – where is your friend based that a Saturday in June is off-peak???
My husband and I got married on a Friday in October, which cut our venue cost significantly – but not as much as if we’d chosen a Sunday or weekday. (We chose the particular date because it was our anniversary.) We spent on what was important to us: good food, good company, and an open bar. Our cake cost $55 from a local bakery, and we had an ice cream sundae bar. My mom (VERY) generously paid for my dress and alterations, and our parents combined provided the funds for the wedding. Yes, we are lucky and grateful.
I’ve never heard of a DJ charging for song requests – if that’s standard for Jersey DJs, I’m glad I don’t live there! Our DJ was practically falling over himself making sure we got what we wanted – and played/MC’ed the ceremony, cocktail hour (piano!) and reception. We used a then-local photographer who’d gone to high school with DH. We’ve since referred two close friends to her (and the DJ as well), and she gave them huge discounts, and us a great thank-you gift for the referral. The DJ also gave them a good break on his pricing.
We got almost all of the centerpiece materials at the Christmas Tree Shop – other pieces were borrowed from a friend of my MIL. My veil was $6 on clearance. My mom added some bling to it and nobody knew the difference from the $300 ones I tried on in the stores!
Edit/addition: my grandfather performed the ceremony for us (family tradition), and we made a donation in his name to his favorite charity.
My advice? Set a “spending limit” early and stick to it – and spend on what’s important TO YOU. It’s your party!
Wow, I kept remembering things as I read the comments! My brother’s gift to us was designing and printing the invitations (he was a printmaking major in college) – we helped with some of the manual labor, but it was his first big project. Also, our photog’s price included engagement photos, so no extra money there (although I think those are becoming more popular these days). DH’s sister addressed the invites for us, and we used The Knot’s online RSVP system to track who was coming instead of including stamped response cards.
I think ours cost < $5k and that's including FIL's splurge on food and flowers. Ours was the first proper wedding for any of our parents' kids – BIL & SIL eloped & quickly divorced, & neither of my sibs had married yet – so it was a treat for his mom & my grandmother to have an actual wedding to go to. My in-laws hosted the event at their house; we had 20 guests; friends and family offered photography, videography, and officiating services. We received wine and champagne as a gift from my husband's work associates. My non-traditional dress cost < $50 and his rented tux maybe $100.
The biggest – and best – expense for us was the 'party bus' we hired to bring our friends down from our home in Portland to the wedding in Eugene. We rode back up with them afterwards, leftover wine and champagne in hand, and it was nearly the best part of the entire event.
I had my dream wedding for $5000. We got married on a beautiful private beach, and it was great! I’d say that location is one of the easiest ways to make or break your budget. We got married at a resort during the off season, which meant venue cost was 50% off. Then, the resort we chose didn’t have catering, so we saved a lot of money by being able to shop around for lower-cost caterers. Also, because the resort didn’t supply catering and we didn’t ask our caterers to serve any drinks, we were able to buy alcohol at Costco with no corkage or service fee. (Our guests just served themselves). The beach scenery is very pretty, so we didn’t have to decorate much, which also saved money. We used an iPod instead of a DJ, and hired an up-and-coming photographer who had lower fees since she was new, but still did an amazing job. I opted for gourmet cupcakes instead of a wedding cake (and, again, was able to do this because our venue didn’t restrict what food we were able to bring in). I made my own centerpieces and bouquets. I bought white Christmas lights at 75% off after Christmas to add romantic lighting. Etc, etc, etc. A lot of DIY, shopping around for the best deals, and choosing a location that didn’t restrict what vendors I could use were the keys!
1. Sit down with your fiance/ee and write down a mission statement or a list of values you want your wedding to convey. This will help you prioritize what’s important if you get caught up in the frenzy. For DH and I, we wanted our wedding to reflect our covenant to God and we wanted it to be our first act of hospitality to our community as husband and wife. So everything we chose from that point on was informed by those ideas.
2. Put 10% of your wedding budget in a savings account and vow to not spend it until the last 30 days before the wedding. Towards the end, there may be last minute problems that only money can make go away. You’ll also have anxiety about spending so much money and having that cushion will make you feel better. If you don’t end up using it, congrats you have a starter nest egg.
3. Don’t be bullied – you can negotiate contract terms. If you don’t like something in the contract, tell the vendor and see what they do. For example, most hotels want you to include a clause that says you will rent a minimum number of rooms or be on the hook for it. Tell the hotel you want that clause out of the contract and most of the time they’ll be fine with it.
4. Get a good photographer, but see if you can negotiate the terms to exactly what you need instead of booking a package. A lot of times photographers have packages that book them for 10 hours at a time or something and then include a “free” engagement session. But not everyone needs that much time. Ask if they’d be willing to do 6 hours for less money and then ask how much they would charge for an hour portrait session for engagement photos. An hour engagement session will get you 60-80 good quality photos which is plenty for most people and may save you money. Also, go with a photographer that will give you all the digital proofs and then have your books done via Snapfish or Shutterfly using all their internet coupons. It will take a lot more time, but those wedding photographer books are crazy expensive!
5. When buying your rings, pay with cash or check and then ask the jeweler to give you 2-3% off the purchase price since they wont have to pay the credit card transaction on your purchase. DH did that for both my engagement ring and wedding band.
6. I got DH’s wedding band from Blue Nile. Around now (Christmas time) they will usually run a 20% off coupon that applies to everything. I saved over $200 purchasing his ring using the coupon and they shipped it via FedEx with engraving and everything. Its free returns (even if its engraved – you just lose the $30-ish engraving fee) so it was a no-brainer for me.
7. You don’t have to buy expensive bridesmaid dresses from a bridal store. Check the websites of normal department stores first! I bought high-quality satin dresses for my BMs at Nordstrom (on sale for $60!) and they looked amazing. Best of all, they could be returned if they didn’t fit.
One of the things that helped me budgetwise was a wedding planner. I know it sounds like an extravagance, but the one I hired helped me immeasurably in finding vendors, doing an initial rejection based on what I was wanting, checking their references. And her knowledge of the industry and wedding etiquette saved me a lot of time and headache. She was able to advise if a vendor’s price was reasonable or unreasonable, and to make sure contracts stipulated things that I wouldn’t have thought of (but would have learned to my disappointment at some point down the road!)
I initially hired her because I was traveling a lot at time for my work, and wouldn’t be able to put in the legwork for planning an event, but in hindsight it was one of my best expense decisions I made.
You do have to interview and find the right one for you!
P.S. I did a traditional type wedding but it wasn’t an extravagant deal — my wedding dress cost $200, for example!
I agree, my wedding planner saved me tons of money because planners have close relationships with vendors and vendors often give discounts to planners that they don’t give to the public.
The money I spent on a planner was some of the best money I spent.
As others have pointed out here, when there’s a budget it’s important for the engaged couple to pick out what’s important to them and focus their resources on that. However, that’s really got to be balanced with the experience that they are giving their guests (a.k.a. please at least feed them well). I attended a wedding once where the couple clearly was on a budget (fine) so they had the groom’s family make food (also fine), but they were in the kitchen the whole night (kind of sad) and there wasn’t enough food for all of the guests (not fine).
As for an actual money saving wedding tip, you’d be surprised what your guests find special and memorable about the big day. For our wedding, we made personal seating cards that had an image representing a memory that we shared with the guest. We did this for all guests, including the +1s (meaning that we spoke with and got to know them PRIOR to the wedding). It’s been more than five years since, but our guests still remember that personal touch, and the ones that have gotten married since have incorporated that into their own weddings.
I just got married last month and we spent way less than the so-called national average, and we planned it in less than 6 months.
1. Kept it small. I don’t have a large family and my husband doesn’t have any living relatives. We planned to have about 30 attending and ended up with less than 20.
2. Dress – I paid less than $100 for a dress from nordstrom.com. Nordstrom tailored it for free when I got it in.
3. Small wedding party – My sister and his best friend stood up for us. She picked our her own dress from Nordstorm (something she will wear again!) and he wore what he had in his closet.
4. Flowers – Since the wedding and reception was so small, spending $25 for a few dozen roses from a local grocery store and placing them in small glasses was no big deal. The venue is pretty enough that you don’t really need any extra decor.
5. Bouquet and Boutonniere – Small wedding party so it was no huge expense. Instead of going to a independent florist, I went to a local grocery store, Zupans, and spent a fraction of what I was quoted elsewhere.
6. Photographer – We only needed him for 4 hours so that took off a fraction of the cost. I wanted a professional because the last thing I wanted was to have a bunch of unflattering photos from the small number of guests that I would want to burn!
7.Invitations – DIY. I went to Paper Source, got the equipment and made my own. $40 total including postage.
8. Venue and food – I lucked out on this one. A friend owns a beautiful, small restaurant in a building where he also has AirBnB units upstairs where my mother and sister stayed.
Because our guest list was so small, we were able to splurge on food, booze, etc. We had a gluten and dairy free menu, gluten free cakes, etc. People raved about the quality of the food despite the limitations. We were also able to have a plated dinner instead of buffet.
We negotiated the price based on what local vendors were offering.
9. Rings – Me: ONE ring (no engagement ring), gemstones, no diamonds. Him: Tustin from Amazon, $20.00 and he LOVES it.
We hired an officiant which did cost us a few hundred, but it was well worth it.
We did consider going to the courthouse and having a party later but we really wanted my family (everyone is from out of state) and our close friends there. To me, the ceremony is more significant than the afterparty.
Continued:
Though we didn’t spend much on the wedding, people STILL had ideas for us that would not have worked:
Backyard – We don’t know anyone in the city of Portland with an adequate yard to host, even a small wedding.
Park – October + Portland + outdoors = rain. Though we had a beautiful October in hindsight, its usually quite wet.
Friends to cook/bake – Ummm, no thank you.
Quests and family to help – All of my family is from out of state and came here on a tight schedule, (my sis and father works in education, cousin is in school and mother is an RN) so the last thing I wanted them to do is help out on their limited time here. Everyone had to fly back Sunday morning.
Use your friends, family, and bridal party to help rather than hiring out. The bridal party can set up tables, chairs, decorations, etc. Family members can contribute dessert, even the full meal if someone is a talented chef. Have any photographer friends? Florist friends? Seamstress friends? Friends of friends? Let people make their services a gift to you on your wedding day.
Sorry, but I couldn’t disagree more! Using family and friends as free labor to keep wedding costs down is CHEAP, not hospitable at all.
There are other ways to keep costs reasonable that don’t include abusing your friends’ and families’ good nature. Many of them have already been mentioned – book off-season or mid-day; limit attendants; limit guest list; serve champagne only, instead of a full bar; do your own flowers; limit the formal photos to 4 hours or less.
Our intent was to serve as GRACIOUS HOSTS, not to create our wedding day on the extracted labor of our friends and family. YMMV.
@Sandi_k – I totally agree. I wanted my out-of-state family members to relax on their days off and mini vacation, not work for me for free!
Some of us are cash-poor and would far rather donate our services and talents than money. Plus, doing it for a friend or relative lets us make it extra-special.
I would have loved it if my niece had let us play in a swing band for her reception.
I totally get but I would rather do for other than ask anyone to do anything for me. We just did without certain things we didn’t want to pay for. iPod for music worked just fine.
She didn’t ask. We offered. There is a huge difference. I also offered to do her centerpieces.
I love her dearly, but sometimes the biggest gift you can give is to accept the gift someone wants to offer.
Accepting an offer from loved ones is a whole different thing than PLANNING YOUR WEDDING based on the EXPECTATION that others will do the work so you can keep costs down.
We had help with centerpieces, floral arrangements, table cards, etc. But we didn’t assume that we would get that assistance, nor did we budget with that expectation.
The Knot and The Wedding Channel have a vested interest in reporting some “average” number that probably disregards a lot of variables. They get a nice sliver of every wedding cake, so they want couples to feel good about spending “only” $15-20k. I’ve never seen a realistic figure quoted, but I think $10k is a more reasonable average (i.e. half spend more, half spend less).
My favorite tip is to stock the bar from a liquor store that will refund unopened containers. My final tab was $400 on 200 guests. We didn’t have many heavy drinkers, so that helped even more.
Of course, venues on the Jersey Shore probably won’t let you stock your own bar :)
Wow! I’m jealous about the bar tab! That’s my husbands favorite tip about getting married at a venue where you can bring in liquor and then return bottles if needed. We did that, but spent about $1600 for 100 people or so. I wonder if we overpaid at the liquor store or just drank a lot :)
Google Median vs Average, you’re comment clearly meant 10K is the median not average. If you read about the Knot’s article, they did point out that the $28K number was an average and not a median.
Eh, this is the kind of article that ends up with a lot of pearl-clutching. “You spent HOW MUCH on your wedding?! Why, back in 1973 I spent $200 on mine and I’m still happily married!”
The fact is that weddings are expensive. If you save up cash to pay for your wedding, you don’t go into debt, you have a good time, and you get the wedding you want, who cares if it costs $28,000?
Mine did. It was fun. We paid cash. We loved how it turned out. We’re still married and have no regrets about spending $28,000 for a four-hour party.
Haha, thank you, that’s true. To add to your excellent point, I’ll just say as long as the happy couple isn’t fundraising among the relatives for more cash to pay for this event, then it shouldn’t matter how much the couple spends on their wedding.
My husband and I had a $3k wedding in 2002, and that number includes our wedding bands, the dress I wore, flowers, officiant fee, food, cake, groom’s tux, invitations, chocolate fountain, rental of the church hall.
I had quit my job to start grad school, he didn’t have a job yet having just graduated from college.
We didn’t take a honeymoon. We postponed that until we could pay cash for it, in December 2005. And yes, I got pregnant the next month after that and we haven’t had a vacation since. We do have 3 kids now though, haha.
As the pastor who married us 41 years ago said, the only requirement for a legal marriage is the right signatures on the right paperwork. EVERYTHING else is optional.
Do not feel that you have to stick with the formula. Do not assume you need fancy clothes, a caterer, attendants and all that other folderol. Do not assume that you have to hold the ceremony in any particular building or place. Once you throw out all those assumptions and start thinking about what matters to you and not to the people who make a fortune off people who can’t move past the formula, you’ll have a better wedding and a better start to your life.
(Our wedding was a gathering in a state park. We had 30 guests and 30,000 mosquitoes… but we’ve been married since 1972 even so.)
Don’t tell the vendors it is a wedding. Call it a family reunion, and prices will be much lower.
Weddings are ridiculously expensive considering it’s just one day.
Do you have a baker in your family that can make a yummy wedding cake? Use them.
Are you creative? Make your own invites, thank you cards, and get your friends involved.
Tech savvy? Program your own music so you don’t need to spend unnecessary cash on a DJ.
Have a friend who is a photographer? Hire them to do your photos for a special deal.
Dress? Shop around, try online, and be realistic about how much you want to spend. No need to fork out $2000 for a dress you’ll only ever wear once.
Elope and spend the cash on a unforgettable honeymoon.
I just (almost literally, been married for 13 days) threw a budget wedding for 75ppl, paid in cash by me and my new husband. Here’s what we did:
-Completely skipped buying flowers. I made a few paper flowers for the bouquets (free) and grew succulents from Home Depot ($50) and potted them in white planters from IKEA ($40) for centerpieces. Those were also our favors.
-Beer and wine only, no liquor ($700)
-Made the invitations ourselves and printed them at Kinko’s ($25). The postage cost more than the invitation!
-Made our own photobooth with some PVC pipe, cloth, and an app on our laptop (maybe $100?)
-Did all our own music for the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception, and skipped the DJ entirely (free)
-Negotiated EVERYTHING.
That said, there were some things that I was willing to pay more for. I wanted a Saturday night wedding. My husband wanted a really good photographer. We don’t regret either of those things. If you have the money, it’s ok to pay more for things you want. You don’t have to have a $28,000 wedding, but you don’t get a special prize for only having a $200 wedding either.
I think its important to remember that the wedding industry does not care about your happiness or your marriage. Don’t get sucked into things based on shiny advertisements or advice of wedding professionals.
I agree with those who say– focus on what’s important to you and utilize your resources in that direction.
Haggle! Barter for everything. This was the best part of helping my (now) wife organise our wedding.
From 80% off wedding dvds to 12% off evening venue and meal (after their discounted advertised price), its worth asking for a discount.
Set a minimum, middle and max budget for each bit of the wedding and aim for the minimum, be happy with the middle and under no circumstances, go above the maximum.
Get friends and family involved in craftworks for decorations and helping on the wedding morning or evening before.
Smile, laugh and relax. Three free things which will make the experience even more amazing.
We just got married last year. Our local college has a great photography program, so I went down and asked the instructor if any of his students would be open to this sort of opportunity. We also put disposable cameras on the tables. It turned out a lot of great candid shots!
Before I make my comment, let me say: weddings can be incredibly expensive, and I think wedding culture has gotten out of control. HOWEVER, while the initial sight of the “average” cost of $28,000 is enough to make anyone freak out, I think we can definitely be optimistic that it’s not an accurate representation. Two reasons:
1. Sites collect data from their users. $28,000 is the average *for people who are on sites like The Knot,* but leaves out anyone who does not use a wedding website. Couples who plan more low-key weddings are less likely to use a wedding website, so the average for absolutely everyone is probably lower.
2. An average is not the best measurement tool here. The reason is because there is a definite lower limit (let’s say about $500 for a rock-bottom price), but there is NO UPPER LIMIT. So you can have 10 couples who have $5,000-10,000 weddings, and 2 wealthy couples who can blow $75,000 on their wedding. Guess what? The mathematical average is $20,000 – but that’s not representative of what most people spent.
Looking at the median (middle) cost will probably give you a better idea of what most weddings cost.
Anyway, as I said, I know it’s REALLY easy for wedding costs to get out of hand (I mean, even $8,000 is still a lot of money!), and I love all the tips and stories everyone has posted so far! I’m just saying, if you’re an engaged couple looking to plan a wedding, don’t look at that number and feel like you’ve got an insurmountable task ahead of you. It takes work, but many people have great weddings for much less.
I agree with focusing on what’s most important to you and your fiancé. Weddings can be anything you want these days!
Also, we found as soon as we mentioned we we’re planning a wedding, prices seemed to go way up. Where we could, we just said we were planning a party.
People think destination weddings are more expensive. I guess it depends on where you have it. But it cuts back on the amount of guests that will come, and narrow it down to just the important people. Also, things tend to be cheaper here in Puerto Rico. So you can have those extras that you always dreamed of. Its also a built in honeymoon!
Re actual wedding costs — read this one from Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/weddings/2013/06/average_wedding_cost_published_numbers_on_the_price_of_a_wedding_are_totally.single.html
Don’t underestimate the talent of students! We had a string quartet from a local private college for our ceremony, and they were so good that guests who work in the music industry were impressed.
Agreed! For the ceremony, we used a student pianist and community madrigal group. They were both awesome and cost $300 total.
We were married on a Sunday morning in March. As my husband says ‘get up, get dressed, get married!’ It was much nicer than evening weddings we had been to where you feel like you’re just wasting time during the day until the ceremony. Also, as it was a Sunday morning we had mimosas and wine for guests. The costs were much lower than the Saturday night prices we had seen.
My husband and I got married for around $10k other than the cost of flying in the photographers (two friends). What I recommend:
– prioritize. What do you want? Make the most important priorities the things you spend on.
– what do you not care about? Even if that is “standard,” you don’t have to have that. For example, we didn’t want a dance in our one-room venue, so we saved a lot by not having a DJ.
– where can you compromise and not lose out? We wanted to do a cake cutting, but our venue charged an outrageous amount ($2 or $3 per slice) just to cut the cake and provide forks and cake plates. We got a tiny cake to cut for ourselves and then got a cupcake tower for everyone else. Or, at another friend’s wedding, I baked all the cupcakes as a gift and bought her $40 cutting cake too.
Set a budget, and find ways to work within that budget. Be creative. And, at the end of the day, remember that everything went well if you’re married to the person you love. Everything else is gravy.
We got married in 2010 and spent about $5000 for one of the best days I can remember.
http://apracticalwedding.com/
A practical wedding was a major inspiration. I felt quite overwhelmed with deciding what we were or weren’t allowed to say ‘no’ to and how to have the elements we loved without accepting the whole bundle.
Major ways we kept things not too expensive:
I didn’t wear a traditional wedding dress. I went to monsoon (a UK shop) and bought from their off the shelf wedding collection rather than going to a wedding dress shop. My dress cost £150 and I loved it.
The venue for the service was free – it was a building associated with our university that was beuatiful
We used a fancy cafe for the reception – we had a buffet style mean (no seating plan, but lots of tables). We bought some wine and an open ticket on soft drinks but if people wanted more to drink they were in a licenced, reasonably priced cafe and they could go ahead.
We had a fairly small wedding – including us there were 40 people at the wedding. For me that was perfect, our initial thought was 70, but 40 turned out to be big enough to have a party and small enough to see everyone.
In general we thought hard about only doing each wedding thing if we actively wanted it. We weren’t keen on favours or table centrepieces or any of the other things that people suggest that cost a fortune!
My son and his girlfriend are getting married in June, so I am reading this avidly. They are both pretty sensible and are paying for a lot of it themselves, so they are being pretty sensible. I figure when it’s all said and done, it should run between $5K-$7K, which is pretty reasonable for a 100 guest non-fancy wedding. One thing that I’ve seen in a lot of the comments are outdoor/backyard/beach weddings. Yes, they can be beautiful and romantic, but the problem is, if the weather happens to turn nasty that day, you are just plain screwed. You will have spent thousands and end up with a bunch of hot, cold, or wet and uncomfortable guests who are going to end up going home early. I argued hard for this point, so we compromised on a site that has a rooftop garden for an outdoor wedding if the weather is nice (and hopefully in June, it will be!), but also a large indoor reception hall that can double as the wedding site as well. They are going with recorded music on an iPod and speakers (very sensible), no bar (sad, but a big savings), and a very simple menu. I’m hoping it will be a wonderful day for both of them.
Ask if the site will allow champagne only, in addition to water, sodas, and coffee. It’s what we did, and we bought the bubbly ourselves, which cut the cost substantially.
Champagne is festive, and can be done without the expense typically associated with “alcohol” at a dinner. Beverages & More, Safeway or Costco, all have sparkling wine with case discounts.
We spent, on average, $6 per bottle of a decent sparkling wine on sale. We bought 30 bottles for 80 people, and had loads left over. For $200 or so.
1) Remember above all else, it’s YOUR party, do it the way YOU want.
2) That said, make a budget. A $3000 wedding sounds tight, but a $3000 party on a Saturday night sounds awesome! So, just think of it that way.
3) Where to cheap out: Fresh flowers (You can make homemade decorations eons in advance and store them, a great DIY); Fancy stationary (again, DIY); really fancy dress and tuxes (keep it simple); the DJ’s extras (no one will remember); personalized ANYthing (honestly, people throw this crap away); a bagillion bridesmaids (too many cooks…); a honeymoon; and the rings (you can save for these last two later if you want, this is a long-term commitment after all…)
4) Places to splurge: Great food (a BAD DIY, unless this is your personal area of expertise); the booze (needn’t be pricey, just be sure to have enough and people will forget everything else. Cheers!); photography (many would disagree, but you will treasure these memories); and a location for it all that brings you joy (it’s called phenomenolgy: your environment affects your temperament).
5) Also, plan a solid buffer of a day or two before and after with as few responsibilities as possible for the couple to just be in love. It will keep up the joy and keep down the stress. That’s what it’s all about.
These are some generalities that kept our wedding under $3000. Obviously, not everything applies to everyone (see Rule 1: it’s YOUR day), and we actually even went ahead and broke some of our own rules (pricey rings). But once I got my mindset in gear (#2) and priorities straight (#5), it was smooth sailing. Have fun!
Be practical. What’s the use of spending a lot when after the wedding both of you will find yourselves in a financial seesaw? Better to save for your life together than plan out an expensive wedding.
I could share stories of our wonderful, inexpensive – but lovely – wedding over 40 years ago, and of our daughter’s wonderful, inexpensive, and lovely wedding(around $5,000 for over 200 guests). But instead I’ll speak as a guest and let you know that the more unusual, creative, and inexpensive the wedding, the more I remember it fondly. The ones with all the bells and whistles that embrace the latest fads (like lots of crystals in the reception décor and the philosophy of ‘bigger and more expensive is better’) the more they run together in my mind and become forgettable.
Brunch weddings are much cheaper, buffet food and everyone drinks less. You can keep the festivities going later in the day with other activities. We took a break after the wedding to relax with our guests, some of the guys went golfing with the groom (he didn’t have a stag party), and we all met up in the evening for a cookout in a local beautiful state park.
You could also just do appetizers and or desserts which are usually better tasting than plated dinners anyway. You can get creative with centerpieces as well, instead of expensive floral arrangements.
Our wedding costed us $12,500 (only!), despite the fact that we spent a bit more than $6,000 on flying in relatives (interstate and from overseas), who could othwerwise not have afforded to attend – but that’s another story.
So, in a way we overspent $6,000 or so for the fact to have less than budget savyy family members. Still, we do not regret any of it and are actually very proud of what we have achieved for the day given a relative small budget.
We got the full deal in a boutique hotel, which was exclusively rented by us and our 45 guests for one night in the middle of the most amazing setting we could have thought of.
How did we manage to get such a good deal?
Top advices in perceived order of priority:
Generally:
1) Marry the one you love and make sure she understands saving is not sacrifice, it’s just smart; ensure she shares your values
2) Understand the value of hard work and do as much as you can yourself. If you can’t do it yourself delegate in your network and manage the process carefully.
3) See number 2
4) See number 2
5) Does a big wedding make you happier? I thought our 45 guests is plenty?
6) Plan, then plan again and allow for things to go wrong, i.e. have Plan B and Plan C; make sure both you and your partner are happy with Plan B and Plan C if you either cannot afford Plan A or Plan A doesn’t work.
7) Use everybody in your network with skills, e.g. photographer, DJ, wedding cake, transport, decorative skills, and muscles. Many people want to help you and take pride.
In more detail:
1) Choose one location only where ceremony, reception, photo shoot, etc. can be held. Avoid going to several locations.
2) If you follow number 1, understand you have bargaining power. The venue owner knows they earn more if you stay on. If you use your bargaining power wisely, the venue will earn more while you spend less.
3) If you can never mention the “W” word when shopping for stuff. Case in point — flowers: We got quotes for “W”edding flowers ranging from ridiculous all the way up to “which currency are we talking about”? If you are planning to pick up the flowers for e.g. table decoration yourself, the florist does not have to know it’s for your wedding. We saved 60% on flowers this way. (Note, we couldn’t avoid buying a bridal bouquet and felt ripped off). Second case in point: venue. We couldn’t avoid telling the venue owner we were after a wedding of course, but since we arranged almost everything ourselves, we made the venue owner understand we were after a celebration with nice food and accommodation. The venue’s job was to cook and serve, everything else was handled by us. If you start negotiating like this, you will get quotes closer to say a business conference. YOU PUT IN THE HARD WORK FOR MAKING IT A WEDDING, not the venue = save thousands
4) Wedding planner???
5) Groom: hire your wedding suit
6) Bride: be savvy when it comes to your dress, shoes, accessories; you can save thousands
7) For the reception: Create menus with pre-selected items and limit the choice. If you have e.g. two choices for main, ensure one is a more budget savvy option. Note, budget savvy is not the cheap or ugly; you basically have to think like a restaurateur and think about the caterer’s margins to understand how to bring your own costs down. Often, popular dishes served in restaurants attract very high margins.
8) Limit choices for your guests especially for alcohol. We had one type of white wine, one type of red wine, one kind of beer, no spirits, end of story. Everything else was available at a cash bar. We offered filtered water served in jugs instead of bottled water, and orange juice served in jugs. We negotiated with the hotel to bring our own orange juice and beer.
9) Wedding cake: see number 2 above, and yes, it was nice to look at and even nicer to eat.
10) Decoration: See number 2 above
11) DJ/ music: See number 2 above (family member)
12) Photographer: OK, here is where we got lucky: Our friend is a professional photographer and did not charge for the day
13) Save on everything that can be substituted with a Plan B or Plan C. If it cannot be substituted, chances are it is very important to you (or your partner). Get the best only for stuff that is very important to you (like getting our broke relatives over: their attendance could not be substituted, thus we spent $6,000 more than budget, but what the hell!)
14) Remember: If you really spent more than planned for stuff that is important to you (see above), be happy and grateful. It won’t bankrupt you or make you work in a job you hate forever!
We got the full deal in a boutique hotel, which was exluse
Location, location, location. Almost everything is more expensive in larger cities (DC, NY, Chicago) – food and reception spaces, especially!
However, if you are going to get married in/near a city, it might actually be cheaper to have your reception in a restaurant rather than rent out a space (even a cheap space)and pay for vendors to come in. My husband and I were shocked at how much table, chair, and linen rentals cost – we really would have been better off paying higher meal costs at a restaurant but avoided paying the rest of the rentals. However, by the time that we figured all of this out, we had already put down the deposit for our venue. oh well – it ended up being a lovely wedding and a lot of fun!
A few things that were really helpful to us when we paid for our wedding:
– We were able to source our own liquor/beer/wine, though we paid the venue’s bartender’s to serve it (this covered the insurance liability). Thus, our 4-hour open bar bill for 208 people cost us around $2200, which was a huge cost savings. We also found a liquor store willing to buy back all unopened bottles (this is a pretty typical practice called consignment you can ask about). We were originally quoted $6.50 per beer and $7 per glass of wine using the venues bar prices, so this allowed us to have an open bar at all.
– Many hotels and venues in our city (Boston) waive their site fee if you plan to spend over a certain amount of money (usually around $10k) with the venue on food/booze/staff, etc. We asked our venue manager if she would honor this and she did, shaving $3k off our bill
– We were very honest with some of the open-ended expenses like food, and asked our caterer to work with us on getting maximum value for our money since food was our biggest expense. When she gave us menus and quotes, we would ask if substituting certain foods would be cheaper. This is how we wound up with a great asian appetizer station (because dumplings, which she bought frozen, and veggie lo mein, which she made and served in tiny takeout containers) were much cheaper than meat-based alternatives and we were able to take advantage of that.
I echo a lot of the comments here.
– research local parks; state parks are great although may not allow alcohol if that is a factor for you.
– B&B’s, especially off-season
– join a local wedding message board for location ideas
– skip favors, nobody keeps them
– don’t go overboard on flowers. If a particular kind is really important to you, maybe make it the focus of your bouquet but skimp or eliminate table ones.
And you said destination is out. Looking back on it, I spent probably 5-6k for my small local beach budget wedding (no DJ, free venue etc). Just sayin, destination would be an option for me if I had to do it again, as I’d probably pay similar but get a honeymoon included, which we could not afford so never had one. :) I would have contributed for our parents costs to help alleviate that $$ factor. I think I still would have come out comparable.
My friends asked every guest to bring their favourite flower with them to the ceremony. Result? A hall full of beautiful, varied flowers without any money spent on flowers by bride and groom! And we loved being involved in this way.
We are having an April 2014 wedding, planned in 9 months from our July engagement. 100 guests invited.
To save money we:
-Picked an earlier date (also less competition for venues)
-Scheduled a noon ceremony (saved venue costs) and afternoon cocktail-style reception (no seated meal)
-Doing own hair and makeup
-Buying fiance a suit he can wear to work and the wedding
-NO FLOWERS. I REPEAT: NO FLOWERS. Woof.
-Looked for ways to use what we have: Bought all supplies for decor from Amazon with gift cards we found that fiance had forgotten to cash in (total for 1000 paper cranes + handmade cherry blossoms + way more = $15), all candles from my mom’s house
-Used an integrated e-vites/website service…$130 for all invites, site, and RSVPS
Food and drink are most important for the party, so we spent most of budget on catering, and will be supplying open beer/wine bar with Costco/Trader Joe’s libations
If I could marry now, knowing what I know now, I would go for one of those all-inclusive event deals the Hard Rock Hotel chain is offering (link). I like the idea of getting married in a resort, and more if they won’t charge anything extra for setting up the salon, decorating the place and serving the dinner and drinks to my guests. Sounds cool.
The average wedding cost is a little higher in my area (Boston)compared to the national average, but there’s definitely ways to lower that.
Restaurants and alternative wedding venues (like Art Galleries, Museums, House rentals, etc.) are often a lot cheaper than typical wedding venues and ballrooms, and often just as nice or even nicer.
Figuring out the budget and what is and isn’t important in the beginning of the engagement is important and it makes sure that all parties involved are on the same page.
Figure out what the musts are, and what’s flexible. For me, I ended up saving $3,000 by moving my Spring wedding up a few Saturdays to get an off-season rate and I allocated that savings to another area that was more important to me and my husband… like good food and music :)
My #1 piece of advice is really limit the number of guests and those in the wedding party. Most of the people who came to our wedding, we are not that close to now 12 years later (1/3 were parent invites!). And I wish I’d just gone with my gut and had only my brother stand up for me (the bride) versus going traditional. The conclusion I have is you should plan your own wedding not cater to other’s expectations! I love the flash weddings I’ve read about (in museums, etc.). What an adventure!
get quotes. have companies bid against each other. get reviews.
use a park, or friends home, and not a facility that requires you cater with their food and minimums.
cater BBQ, cheapest food you can get that everyone loves. nobody will remember the plastic plates, trust me. They will remember how much fun they had.
buy flowers from a farmer’s market. I got 8 bouquets of flowers, enough to do my own flower arrangements in a few hours, for less than $60! it was fun and I got to be creative and have my own touch. I used antique vases and tea pots that I had in my home that I collected for years. use mason jars. etc.
Stay in season. it’s better for the earth and your prices. don’t order flowers that must come across an ocean.
buy and serve your own alcohol if you can. just hire a bartender (or two) or good friend to do it right. that part is critical.
instead of gifts, ask for money towards your honeymoon, there’s websites to manage that.
rent tents, tables, chairs and forget those goofy covers.
DO NOT, DO NOT, go to bridal shows. you’ll just want more and more crap that you don’t need in order to really have a nice wedding. you will just go away wishing for more and thinking you need more. be careful of pinterest for the same reason. just pick a theme, stick to it, and minimalize. trust me.
for gifts, i planted shamrocks (Irish theme party) and gave those away. took a few weeks to grow them, so they meant more. planted them in tiny plastic cups. made my own programs, flyers etc. i printed photos and made my own guest book for folks to sign.
our biggest cost was food (about $15/person) and the band and we had rave reviews. we could have gone cheaper on those, but chose willingly not to.
our friend married us.
remember, it’s about experiences, not things. it’s about memories, not money you can spend. it’s about your family and friends, not your wealth and what looks nice. believe me!
We rented a beach house (Traverse City, Michigan (but we lived in California)) for 5 days (Wed-Sun) and had the wedding on Fri (but only because we wanted to avoid having our anniversary on 9/11) on the beach and the reception right there as well in a tent at the house (it was a big house, something like $3000 maybe 4k for the 5 days). Buffet style dinner (vegetarian) where the caterer also served the booze we purchased (keg, handles of pretty good liquor, and a case of red and white wine, mixers). There were 80 guests. DJ was great. Our wedding party showed up a couple days early to help set-up and decorate the tent and just celebrate in general. The wedding party all stayed at the house the whole time (10 people, 12 counting us).
We went a little cheaper on food, since when we thought back we never cared what the food was at weddings we’d been to, also the wife is a vegetarian (which helps with costs). Buying our own booze was cheaper (drinks stronger too, since the caterer wasn’t pressured to be accurate with pours). We had the photographer leave an hour or two earlier, which saved a bundle, and we didn’t need a bunch of pictures of people drinking. We did cupcakes (GOOD cupcakes) instead of a cake, because again we didn’t care.
Whole thing cost us about $14k (including a week (maybe 5 days?) at the Ritz on Maui!). The in-laws did pay for the booze, but otherwise we paid for everything. We went over budget, but we had loads of fun!!
My wedding event is coming soon and I am also worry about wedding expenditures. I have no idea how to save money on this special event but I am thankful to you for sharing these wonderful money saving points. I will be try for my coming wedding.
Hello,
Thanks for sharing this post.Its is very useful for how to can save money.
Thanks,
@amyjcool
To save money we asked every person potentially providing services what the discount would be if we paid cash. We saved about $2000 by doing this. Most notably was the $500 room rental fee for the venue. Second was the alterations for my dress. We also used the bridesmaids simple rose bouquets as the center pieces at the reception (we had to buy one extra). Finally we used photographers off Craigs list that had a small portfolio (enough to see their work) but still new enough that their prices were cheap! Our wedding was 75 guests and spent $10,000 (had a band, great food, an open bar) many commented on how fun and memorable it was!
Of course you can save money by having a smaller wedding or by cutting back on the frills that most people think are must haves for a wedding ceremony, but why? All going well you will only every have one wedding. Have the one you want, but don’t overdo it either. There are more important things than a ceremony. After all you gotta live somewhere when the ceremony and honeymoon are over. It is probably more important to get a good start than it is to have the biggest wedding ceremony in the neighborhood.
Nice way to save money from un-necessary expenses.