Guest creep in a wedding is horrible, and it frequently happens when its “someone else’s dime” - i.e. if the grooms parents aren’t paying, why not invite 2nd cousin Ed! And if your parents are paying half, it becomes really easy for them to justify inviting their friends - suddenly you are hosting a party for your parents friends, with no money for dress or flowers - or to invite any of your own friends. And it becomes really easy to not put your foot down. To stop this, tell everyone how many people they get to add to the list given your budget. If they want to add more - great, you’ll need them to front some cash for their guests.
Marriage is nothing more than a legal contract, straight and simple. It provides for obligations and protections upheld by civil court. On that basis, all you need for getting married is a visit to the Justice of the Peace or whatever local magistrate, and a couple of witnesses, to make it all legal and documented. And certainly unromantic.
After that, going through all the religious or ceremonial rigmarole is a matter of preference and affluence. Even with the romantic aspects maintained, a little chapel affair, along with special clothing for the occasion so you have pictures for the memories, I just can’t see a $10,000 wedding as being “inexpensive”. I can easily say that you don’t have 150 “closest” friends. Hell, there’s probably 2 or 3 couples I might invite as my closest friends. The rest are acquaintances. Family? Fine, let 'em come. And they’re on their own for eats. I don’t owe them a meal because THEY want to show up. Why spend thousands upon thousands of dollars just to impress everyone else? (Which is what ceremony really is all about.)
Spend a few hundred, maybe a thousand, if you’ve got it, and save the 10 Grand toward a down payment on the house. THAT will last longer and have more value. $5 G’s on a wedding dress? For something that’s worn once??? And spare me the rhetoric about it being your one Special Day for the rest of your life. With the divorce rate about 50%, it’s not all that special. And the day my firstborn son arrived was equally one the most special days of my life, and I sure didn’t spend $10,000 and up on that. (Afterwards, well, that’s another story, but at least a lot of it was spread out over time.)
We spent an obscene amount on our wedding - first class all the way. However, we were able to save a little bit of money by printing our own invitations, and then assembling them. I even went so far as to cut down the oversized paper stock to match the envelopes. The entire invitation was pretty complicated - maybe 7 printed pieces total, so it was a bit of work. We probably saved $500 or more doing it ourselves, plus we were able to do some cool stuff that would have been really expensive to have done professionally.
And may I comment I paid $200 for my wedding day, and it has lasted 20 years.
My brother spent $30 000 and got divorced at 9 months.
My ex roomate paid $12 000 for hers and it lasted just under 2 years.
My wedding was on two weeks notice. That was because people didn’t shack up before marriage in those days–at least we didn’t, so we pushed the planned June wedding to March. It was at my in-laws with only 35 guests and probably cost under 1000 1964 dollars.
On our original wedding date in June, we went to a ball game and saw Jim Bunning pitch a perfect game.
Both of my parents are Roman Catholic and I grew up spending nearly every holiday with all of my dad’s siblings, so I’m going to have at least 70 people at my wedding even if I just invite close first cousins. I plan to have a wedding for 100-120 people that will cost under $5000. It is totally do-able. That being said, if you can trim down the guest list, do it.
First, pick a location that is low-cost. I’m looking into renting out a B&B for the weekend in a beautiful area. If you pick a site that isn’t traditionally used for a wedding, you can get much lower rates. A backyard generally isn’t going to fit 100+ people, but one of those guests might have a farm or know of some house that does have a large yard.
Second, rent a dress or buy a used/display one. My fiance will be wearing his Army uniform, and I’ve been looking through dresses on ebay and other sources. I plan on hitting up various thrift stores and searching there as well. I refuse to spend more than $200 on a dress.
Third, do as much decorating as you can on your own. Websites like Offbeat Bride have lots of cheap, DIY suggestions. I’ll be making my own Tin can lanterns.
Fourth, a photographer can be a huge cost, but it’s also something that you don’t want to skip on. If you don’t have friends that are excellent photographers, then contact the photography department of a local college and ask for a college student. Ask to see a portfolio and then sit down with whoever you are hiring and explain the type of shots you’d like to have. This way can be better than pro because you can make certain you keep the rights to your photos.
Fifth, for everything else (gifts, music, food, drinks), appoint friends as much as possible. DIY is great as well, but you also want to be able to relax on your wedding day. I’ve heard of people using craigslist to find DJs and such, but we’ll probably create a playlist and appoint one of the relatives to be the DJ. We also plan on renting as much as possible.
What size are you? If you are a curvy 6 you can have my dress for the cost of shipping. It will need to be dry-cleaned but it is not dirty or stained. Pale gold/butter color (not white or cream). Silk-poly blend. Fully lined torso with integrated underskirting.r. Barely altered (just had the straps shortened, and the dress was hemmed to the floor). As seen here.
I’ve been wanted to get rid of it. Not that I didn’t love it, but once I accepted I really wasn’t going to cut it down and overdye it like I said I would, it needs to go.
Invitations - I calligraphied myown wedding invitations. I had them printed but if I were doing it today, I wouldn’t hesitate to create and print them off myself.
Dispense with party favors. They’re not necessary.
Flowers & cake - Price out “regular” cakes and “wedding cakes.” Some vendors mark up the price for the latter.
Instead of a limo, ask a friend with a nice car to chauffeur you to the wedding.
My SIL was on a budget and the cheapest venue was, remarkably, a local Embassy Suites. The ceremony was held in the atrium and the reception was held in an adjoining ballroom. They didn’t charge anything for the ballroom if you ordered the food there. This was much cheaper than local halls.
The things we did to save money (our wedding was for 25 people and cost us about $6000, which kind of blows my mind thinking about it - weddings seem to somehow drain money out of you without you even realizing where it’s going):
Made our own invitations with our inkjet printer and purchased embossed card stock.
Cake from Safeway (it was delicious - none at all left!).
Very simple flowers - a long-stemmed rose bouquet for me, single roses with ribbons for bridesmaids.
Friend as photographer. This one is kind of tricky - you need a couple of good shots for your official wedding, but if you’re like us, you won’t spend a lot of time looking at your wedding album in the future.
No videographer. In almost nine years of marriage, I haven’t once wished I could watch a video of the wedding.
Used a local community hall for the ceremony and reception.
Burned four disks of a playlist that we spent months putting together - it was very important to us to have good music at our wedding, and we did.
I also wore a bridesmaid dress as a wedding dress.
We used a caterer for an italian-type dinner (which was actually very good), but I think I’d have preferred a buffet. A local barbecue place apparently does parties - I would have chosen them if I had it do over.
We just used our own cars. We weren’t even slightly interested in having fancy cars just to get to and from the hall.
Our favours were also our decorations - candle holders with our name and wedding date on them.
I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell my family or friends. Do you swear? Okay, here it is.
We’re having a surprise wedding. I’m 55 and my fiancée’s somewhat younger. It’s her second marriage and my first, and we just don’t feel the need to spend tens of thousands of bucks on a big fancy wedding. We’ll be combining two full households, so we don’t want any more blenders, crockpots, etc. (I even considered setting up a reverse registry: guests would go to a Web site and have to pick an item they’d take off our hands.) We just wanted it to be simple and easy.
Since I proposed last summer, everyone has been asking when we’re getting married. So we’ve invited about 35 of our closest friends and family members to an “engagement party,” and told them we’ll announce the date of the wedding then.
When they get there, we’ll hand out the invitations:
and on the other side:
NOW!
And we’ll start the ceremony then and there. My sister the Unitarian minister, and a rabbi who is a friend of my fiancée’s, will co-officiate.
The party will be a champagne tea at a nearby historic inn: no expensive dinner, no flowers, no band, no bridesmaids, etc. The whole thing – food, champagne, photographer, rings, and our “honeymoon” night at the inn (for which they’re giving us a break) – will total less than $4,000.
BTW, it’s happening this Sunday! Remember: you promised not to tell anyone!
Maybe the biggest moneysaver is to have the same venue for ceremony and reception.
Another one is to not have attendants; what ceremonial purpose do they serve anyway? It’s nice to want to honor friendships, etc w/ a special place of honor but the reality is that it costs the attendants money on top of what they’d already spend just to be wedding guests and puts additional stress on the couple from beginning to end when they should really concentrate on themselves.
Costco makes an amazing sheet cake for less than $25. If they absolutely MUST have a darling wedding cake for cake-cutting pictures, get a single tier one for that and share the sheet cake w/ the guests. Costco also does wedding flowers, they can be ordered right from the website, same w/ their invites which we used as well.
Buffet or family-style saves lots of money over a plated dinner. Many restaurants cater, they don’t necessarily need to use a dedicated caterer.
Reception favors are less common than they used to be, I’ve noticed and I never knew what purpose they had anyway; matches you’re not supposed to use 'cause they’re special, etc. At our destination wedding the favor was a home-addressed postcard every guest could fill out and mail to themselves w/ their impression of the day.
They’ll be so much happier if they avoid getting hung up on what other people’s opinions are; don’t go full Bridezilla, but keep in mind that the bride and groom are the ones who’ll ultimately look back over the day w/ a fine toothed comb, while the grandma who insisted that brides wear enormous and expensive gowns w/ trains and take a limo everywhere they go on their wedding day will not.
We had a reception for about 200 to 300 people. It cost us nothing and it cost our parents nothing.
We had been living together for years and only married when we decided to have kids. We told all our friends and relatives and told them that while the wedding would be a private affair during the day, they could bring whoever they wanted to the reception - spouses, lovers, kids even friends, but everyone had to pay for their own food and drink. We insisted on no presents, just the pleasure of their company, at no cost to us, to help us celebrate, was enough. There were no invitations printed - everyone was welcome.
We married during the day with only our immediate families (parents and siblings) plus our best friends as witnesses.
For the reception I just booked out a whole restaurant by promising the staff and management the biggest night they had had for a long time and that’s how it turned out. Old school friends and old workmates found out through the grapevine and the place was full of people we would never have thought to invite. There was no “wedding party table”, my wife and I walked around and sat at as many tables as we could. Twenty odd years later it is still a well remembered wedding because it was the biggest wildest reception most people have ever been too. There were a lot more speeches than at your average reception (everyone seemed to adlib one) but since it didn’t finish until after midnight no one cared.
We did it all ourselves. Wedding dress from J. Crew for about 200 bucks. Bought our own alcohol, made our own food. Used cheap candles/holders and loads of tarragon from our own garden for centerpieces. Rented a sound system and had four friends burn cds for us. Married by a friend. Oh, got divorced last October. : (
I was in my mid-teens for my mom’s second wedding. We had an outdoor ceremony at the lakefront gazebo within walking distance of my house, and the venue didn’t cost anything except for the minister’s time. The reception was at the community center, also in walking distance. They paid a couple hundred I think to use the premises all day. We invited tons of family and did food potluck-style. You can invite as many guests as you can stuff inside the reception hall, as long as everyone brings a dish. My mom found her dress at goodwill for $35. They invested in a couple kegs and had to pay a police officer to watch over things. A family member brought his stereo equipment and DJd for a very small fee. Instead of paying a photographer, we put disposable cameras on every table and asked people to take pictures (and keep them clean! no dick shots in the bathroom, lol). It was very laid-back and non-traditional.
I thought it was all extremely fun. I’m sure a lot of people would view this type of setup as low-class, though.
The first thing to do is to get a budget and stick to it. For us, we got a certain amount of money, and could keep what we didn’t spend.
Second is guest list. We had 25, no relatives except for the very closest we lived with, since that would have put the count to over 100. All the guests were friends, and there were few enough of them that we could actually talk to every one, since almost all came from quite far away.
When my wife’s cousin got married, she had a private ceremony and then a pig roast as the reception. It was more a picnic than a normal reception, and one of the most fun weddings I’ve ever been to. How many weddings do you get to play volleyball at?
Alternative locations for wedding and reception:
We had our wedding at the Lena Pope homechapel. It was cheaper than most of the venues that were specifically for weddings, and the proceeds went to the Lena Pope Home. The chapel is so beautiful that it didn’t need any sort of decoration.
Similarly, our reception was at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.
We had an afternoon wedding and reception with no alcohol served - several of the guest were coming from Dallas with young children, and wouldn’t want to do an hours drive after an evening reception.
Other than that, several friends helped with the other items that generally cost lots of money. Come to think of it, I can’t remember anything that we hired a stranger to do.
