How to Plan Your Wedding on a Budget

Weddings are expensive! I started this hub prior to our wedding (and just now am getting around to publishing it.) According to Today.com, (in 2013) the average wedding costs $28,000. That is a year’s salary for many people. I just checked now... the average wedding cost has shot up to $35,000, according to some sources including The Knot. Wow!

Doug and I got married in October 2013. We both had moderate debt prior to our wedding (student loans), like most young adults, and this increased after getting married. So, we put our heads together and found ways to reduce how much we spent on our wedding. We didn't skimp though, we even got to enjoy a honeymoon for free! Well, flights anyways. We used our Rapid Rewards Credit Card to pay our bills, then paid it right off and earned two free round-trip tickets.

Read further to find out how we spent less than $6,000 on our wedding day, and how you can do it too.

The venue is a huge expense. Bypass this if you can by not getting married at a country club or location that focused explicitly on weddings. The word wedding always means extra money! We did get married at a venue, that does do a lot of weddings. It was in our college town where we went to school together and met, and we have fond memories there. The venue for us is where we paid the most out of all our wedding expenses. So, if we didn’t splurge here and saved our pennies we may have chosen other options for our wedding down the line.

Take a look at some charges involved with the venue:

• Initial cost to rent the venue night of the wedding - varying from a few thousand to upwards of $12,000 (however we paid $1,200).
• Cost of meals for your guests (around $12 up to $40 a person for plated meals) -look into all meal options including buffet, stations and plated meals.
• Cost for any extra food being brought into the venue such as cake or wine (anything not purchased through the venue).
• Usually a cake cutting fee is customary.
• Costs get high when there’s a minimum guest count, particularly on prime days/times/season such as Saturday nights - perhaps consider a daytime wedding or Friday evening.

The venue is one of the biggest wedding expenses. Before scratching it off the list and having a backyard wedding, consider the conveniences the venue is providing. This is the main reason we went this route. Did we want our families to be frantically cooking enough food for 100 people the day of our wedding? No. Take some stress off and pay up, you can be cheap in other areas.

Decorations can get pricy but fortunately there’s many helpful wedding websites that offer fairly inexpensive decorations, wedding favors and even bridal party gifts. Order in bulk and save some time and money.

Flowers

Wedding flowers will cost a few hundred dollars. If they’re important to you then splurge on them. Otherwise you could get flowers for bouquets from the supermarket. Or, silk flowers! Michaels has a great collection of silk flower bouquets and mini bouquets. I purchased mini bouquets for my bridesmaids on sale for $3.99 each and they were perfect.

You could also make paper flowers like we did for our wedding centerpieces. They are a conversation starter and unique, as well as time consuming to make! So, enlist some help from family and friends and whip some out real quick.

** I also used these mini-bouquets to assemble DIY boutonnières for the groom and groomsmen as well as wristlets for my mom and mother-in-law to wear for the evening.

Handmade bridal party items such as wristlets and boutonnieres are simple to make and save you lots of money by creating them yourself!

Hair and makeup for the bride can cost around a hundred to a few hundred dollars. My very talented hair stylist cousin, Erin, offered me the gift of beautifying me the day of my wedding as her wedding gift from her to me. I saved hundreds of dollars, yet I still was able to have her take part in my important day.

Erin also did my mom's hair and makeup. We had it arranged that I would be her first priority (duh :)), then my mom - and then if there was time she would get to the other bridesmaids. My maids were fine with that arrangement considering that they were all family anyhow!

Use resources if you have them!

**Note- If you’re set on getting your hair and makeup done professionally at a salon, consider going somewhere besides the hair salon at your venue (if there is one) as it will probably be cheaper but yes not as convenient! It is all about what makes the most sense for you!

We ordered our Save the Dates off Walmart.com for under $30. We uploaded an engagement photo to their website and picked them up a week later. The quality was great! I love Walmart photo!

For invitations, you probably want a bit more class. So, we purchased in the sale bin at Michaels all our invitations in our wedding colors at an extreme discount. We simply printed them off and assembled them ourselves.

Then we printed off return labels and address labels in a nice font and mailed them out. Easy peasy.

The first dress I tried on was a gorgeous Allure dress priced at $1,100 at a local bridal shop. I felt guilty considering this dress. I felt silly thinking about spending over a grand on a dress. A dress!! So, I found a place that sells used AND sample dresses. I got a dress that was a sample dress meaning it’s from a designer store where it was tried on numerous times but never worn down the aisle.

I bought it for $400. After alterations ($300) the total cost for my wedding dress was $700. It’s gorgeous, and unique.

While I'm at it- let's discuss another wedding dress tidbit.

Please do be careful when shopping for dresses and mindful of what is and is NOT possible when it comes to resizing a dress if it's needed.

When I got my dress I was quickly reassured that it would be able to be resized (not onsite as they did not have their own) at any seamstress very easily. Well, this wasn't really the case initially.

The dress was a size 10. I am a size 2. That's going down a lot in sizing and the first seamstress I brought the dress to told me this was impossible. She actually told me I should sell my dress because she (and no-one) would be able to size it for me.

Sad and discouraged I went home and was researching selling it. Of course we called the shop that I got the dress from and they weren't willing to take it back, but still believed I could have it sized.

Going out on a limb, I inquired to one other seamstress locally and she replied right away saying that it was totally doable. End of story- she did a wonderful job sizing it even though there was some very intricate detailing and flowers that had to be removed and reattached! She charged $300 for the alteration.

So, don't get discouraged! Sometimes it takes some time to find the perfect dress and have it all work out.

Rehearsal dinner’s the night before the wedding can cost as much as the wedding itself. That’s how it was looking at our venue. So, we opted to not have a rehearsal dinner. The morning of the wedding we briefly ran through lines with our small bridal party and our officiant. The night before the wedding we met up with any family and friends who were staying at the Inn or in the area nearby for some drinks and appetizers. It was very low-key, casual and inexpensive. It was fun having the wedding at the Inn where our families were all staying for two nights (night before wedding and night of) and we could all be together.

Beyond saving money we wouldn’t necessarily want a big event such as the rehearsal dinner the night before. As it used to be tradition, now a days many couples opt for a smaller low-key event the night before, more like a meet and greet for out of town guests, which is what we chose to do.

Cake!! The best part and I almost left this out! Oops!

Doug and I were lucky to have had a few of the same professors in college. One professor in particular was very influential to us and still is. Needless to say, he and his wife were both invited to our wedding. Lucky for us, his wife just so happens to have a cake decorating business! Their wedding gift to us was a cake or cupcake arrangement of our choice.

We decided on cupcakes for the guests, and a small cake for the two of us.

Our cupcakes were adorned with beautiful fall leaves for our October wedding. They were delicious! Everyone loved them...and...they were free. A quick Google search suggests Wedding Cake costs are between $400-$500 dollars. Now, that would seriously be money gone right down the digestive track within seconds. I'm not saying that would be a waste of money because for some people (myself included) it just might be worth it.

Wedding Photographers and Wedding Djs are going to rack up your wedding bill.

Wedding Photographers tend to cost at least $2500.

Wedding DJs can cost at least $1000.

In these categories, it really helps to have some connections. Now a days, a lot of people are establishing themselves in photography in particular. Often there are great photographers who just haven't been covering weddings a long time. Or perhaps there is a photographer in the family!

We were lucky in both areas. My husband had two coworkers - one a photographer, and one a DJ. Both of them were available and able to cut us a bit of a deal.

Keep in mind though that the DJ is basically the person who pulls your wedding together the night (or day) of. They keep you on track timing-wise. They do introductions of the bridal party. They announce first dances. The DJ's job is to keep it lively and so that your guests don't want to leave! A good DJ is very important to keep your wedding night running smoothly and stress free.

A good wedding photographer is important too for obvious reasons. This is the person (or persons if they have a second shooter) who will be photographing your night and capturing these precious moments.

Best of luck to you when planning your wedding!! Have fun and try not to stress too much about the budget by just considering what is most important to the both of you. Cut back on things not so important and eliminate things you could live without.

Remember to enjoy each other and think about what big events lie in your future ahead such as a honeymoon or buying a home. Do you want to spend all your money on a big wedding? For us, we were looking to buy a home shortly after our wedding so we were really trying to conserve and budget our wedding.

Good luck and Happy Wedding Day (or night!)