How to Plan a Budget Wedding
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It is possible to host a beautiful wedding without spending a million dollars. Here’s how we did it on a “smaller” budget.
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Eighteen years ago this weekend we got hitched after only four months’ engagement. Yes, it was short. We had dated for two years, though, and once you find the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with, well, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. (Name that movie.)
In that 3.5 months’, pre-internet, pre-pinterest time period, we planned a beautiful wedding. It was by far, the best day of my life, featuring the best wedding food I think I’ve ever eaten, and definitely the best cake.
And we did it on a budget.
Weddings are expensive.
My dad was willing to pay for a wedding for his eldest of three daughters, but he wasn’t going to be extravagant. I groaned with dismay when he set the limit at $5000.
To give you perspective on that number, the average wedding expenditure today is $27,000. The average wedding cost in 1990 was $15,000. So, even though plenty of people have tied the knot for less than $5K, Dad’s number was still pretty low for the time, 1994.
Quite honestly, I was fit to be tied, but there was little I could do about it — unless I wanted to wait and save up more cash. Which I didn’t. Hehe.
Instead, a few years later I lobbied for my youngest sister to get a COLA on her wedding budget. Her budget was $8000 in 2001. And my sister Jamie spent only $3000 on her recent wedding reception. Dad got like three weddings for the price of one!
That said…. today I’m thankful that I wasn’t allowed free reign to spend more than we needed to on a beautiful wedding day. Here are some of my thoughts on the subject, almost twenty years later.
You might already be married, but chances are you have siblings, children, or nieces and nephews that aren’t.
How to plan a budget wedding:
1. Keep perspective.
One thing that I wish I had remembered and am now passing on to others is that this shindig is not all about you. This is a hard thing for brides to come to terms with. We imagine the day all our lives as the day we get to shine like a princess. And while I’ve been there, I also think it’s important to keep things in perspective.
A wedding is a celebration of a new life, a blending of two families, and a transition of roles. While the bride is a princess, she is also not the only who cares about this special day.
So, brides, don’t be a spoiled brat. Be prepared to compromise and consider the needs, wants, and personalities of both families. Keep in mind the sheer amount of money that’s at stake, also. My sister Janel now says she’d rather have that cash to spend on a really nice vacation!
Enough is as good as a feast.
2. Enlist friends to help.
Canvas your friends to find out who is willing and able to help with your wedding event. Guess what? You don’t need a wedding planner. Really. Instead draw from the wealth of skills and talents among those close to you. An older, married friend served as my coordinator. Since I lived with her and her family, she was right there to make me get things done, too.
We were blessed by friends who baked and decorated the cake, arranged the flowers, acted as DJ, served as shuttle drivers, as well as those who set tables and cleaned house in preparation of the Big Day. Our landlords even provided their home and garden as the reception location.
3. Do it yourself.
There are an amazing number of things that you can do and make yourself, even moreso now than there were 18 years ago. The trick is not to overdo. (See tips 1 & 2.)
From invitations to party favors to place settings, you can pull together pretty things simply and affordably. Don’t go overboard, but consider what special touches are just fine homemade. Instead of a bar, bartender, etc, we went to Costco and bought cases of bottled water, pop, beer, and champagne and made our own serve-yourself bar.
4. Splurge on the things that matter.
I really wanted good food, nice invitations and quality photographs so we splurged on those items. Today I have friends who would have done those things for me. But, I was content to fill the gap, knowing I was getting my druthers in a few key areas.
As it was, we priced things out and still bargain shopped. We chose the same caterers I had worked for in college and since they knew me, they gave us a great deal and superb service. (It pays to know people, sometimes!) The food was absolutely fantastic!
5. Let go of the things you don’t care about.
We didn’t have a wedding planner, a videographer, or professional hair and make-up people. It didn’t bother me in the slightest that a driveway was our dance floor. I only just now noticed the basketball hoop in the photographs!
Our “live music” was a wanna-be jazz singer who literally crashed the party! He wasn’t even invited to the wedding, but wrote a song for us spontaneously at the reception.
None of this bothered me. They just didn’t matter that much in light of the big picture and small budget.
6. Just smile.
What makes a wedding a beautiful one is the happy couple. Keep smiling — even if things don’t go the way you expect them to. In fact, be ready to laugh — at losing the rings right before the ceremony, at the party-crashing jazz singer, at the dead altar flowers from a previous event catching fire during your vows. (True stories.)
There will be plenty of things to go “wrong”.
A wedding doesn’t make a marriage. A good attitude and a lot of love and grace do.
You can have a beautiful wedding on a budget — just remember what’s important.
Today’s Frugal Friday!
Time to swap ideas and inspiration for saving money.
How do YOU save money?
Please remember to follow the Frugal Friday Guidelines or be deleted.
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You know that scene in “Father of the Bride” when George comes downstairs and finds Annie asleep on the couch with an open copy of some bridal magazine? Then he picks up the magazine and reads, “bake your own wedding cake…have a friend take the pictures…” and that’s when he decides to give her whatever she wants. Well, it makes for a great movie, but I laugh at that scene every time because that’s exactly what we did!
Yes, we baked our own wedding cake. Two of them actually. Five layers each. It. Was. Insane. When people ask me what I would do differently, I always say, “I’d buy a cake!”, but some cakes cost as much as our whole wedding did, so you have to be careful there too.
We also had a $5,000 budget (including tent and chair rental costs) for our wedding in 2000. We had a friend take the pictures (their wedding gift to us was the film and having them developed), and another friend videoed the whole event (with our video camera). We got the fruit and veggies in bulk at Sam’s club, which friends spent the morning cutting up, and we served lemonade. We saved money on flowers because we used daisies (my favorite flower) and nothing extra.
In the end, we were as married as my sister who spent twice as much on her wedding a year earlier. We were happy, married, and everyone had a wonderful (relaxed) time. Like the Nester says, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. 🙂
P.S. Happy Anniversary! 🙂 I’m looking forward to seeing the pictures from Paris for your 20th… 🙂
I think I remember your posts about the cake. Weren’t you totally caked out by the end of it? Such a fun memory. Sort of. 😉
The remembering the wedding isn’t just about you is a good one, but a hard one, there are a few things I know I didn’t allow loved ones to do or say for my wedding, and looking back they were really little things which would have meant a lot to them, and really would not have changed the day that much.
Great suggestions! I have been a wedding planner for several weddings and agree that less is more. More brides (and grooms) seem to be “getting” that these days! I’m doing a wedding this weekend…ice cream sunday reception! How cool is that?!
That sounds very cool! How fun! And how great of you to volunteer to take on the headaches. 😉
I just submitted a link above that was this exact topic! We only spent $5000 for my daughter’s wedding in October and it was amazing. Thanks for sharing!
Happy anniversary! Your wedding looks lovely! We also had a short (5 month) engagement and a frugal wedding too. Since I was getting married in LA in winter I saved a lot on my dress by buying a “summer” wedding dress. It had long sleeves made of lace and was perfect for the weather. We saved money on the photographer by using a “celebrity” photographer (someone who covers parties and events for a flat fee and gives you all the negatives) instead of wedding photographer who sales packages. I splurged on the flowers and the food.
You make a good point. We used the Westmont campus photographer. He was experienced at weddings, but it was a flat fee for the day and a set number of proofs that we got to keep. Years later I wrote and bought the negatives for like $50 since they didn’t want to store them anymore.
Good advice. We were very young and poor when we got married (I was in college and my husband had just graduated). Nobody had money for us, but he has a huge family and people offered to do almost everything. We had friends come to us to ask if they could give us the flowers, the cake, the food, the video, the photos, etc. We were very blessed. Now, there were drawbacks since we really had no money. The church was not pretty, no two ways about that. And the person who did our photos messed them up big time. So if I had to do it all over again, I would have checked out the location better and I would have figured out a way to hire a real photographer. Apart from that, it was a great day, and I’ve often told people it is the way to go. Save your wedding gifts and money and go on a great trip. We got maybe $2,000+ in gifts and took a trip to Paris and Copenhagen. The wedding lacked in some areas, but there was tons of love.
Oh oh oh! When Harry Met Sally. We actually used that same line in our wedding ceremony!
Ours was also a wedding with a small budget ($5,000). The biggest splurge? The photographer and the flowers. If I was to do it again, I would splurge less on the flowers, though.
These are great tips. Thanks for sharing!
I’m currently planning a wedding so the reminders are perfect.
that said i will have a planner because the location is about 5 hours away. So to have the planners expertise and help is invaluable.
However I will be saving money many other ways. My Fiance’s sister sings well so that can work for us. My Cousin who baptized me I’m going to ask to marry us. ( i hope he has the license to marry as well). Also my theme is more laid back therefore i wont have to spend as much on frilly linens and other fancy things that I dont care about. Likewise the Invitations dont have to be that fancy.Because we do have the internet nowadays, I can create my wedding website, and use that to send the Save the Dates, and ask the invited guests to RSVP online as well instead of paying for more paper and stamps for reply cards.
I will save some on flowers due to the area being already very naturally pretty and it will be spring.
My groom and I are just having one person each, stand up with us and i dont think i will have a flower girl or ring bearer.
As you can see. Many Many Many ideas to save on a wedding.
I can’t imagine how much the technology has changed. That is very cool!
We were very simple too and splurged on a photographer. Unless your wedding is very small and simple, I would tell future brides to think about hiring someone professional. We go to A LOT of weddings and we’ve seen some really tacky photographers who aren’t professional, get in the way (one stood the next to the pastor on stage the whole ceremony), or don’t know what they are doing. Wedding photography really is an art.
Yes, that was one of my splurges. I now have a lot of pro photogs for friends. I would bribe them. 😉
Definitely agree about the photos, that was very important to me. I lucked out and one of my best friends brothers worked for a tv station and he video taped our wedding for around $100. I thought that was so awesome since we had a professional doing it and using professional equipment!
When Harry Met Sally! Brett actually used that line when he proposed to me. 🙂
I did not know that about my brother-in-law, or else I forgot.