Inexpensive, Nice Weddings - is it possible

In My Humble Opinion
21

We had a 120 person guest list, open bar, DJ and favors, and spent about $4000. Our big savings were -

Silk Flowers - seriously, way cheaper, and they have beautiful flowers for cheap. We used them for center pieces, our cake topper, garland, whatever. Everything looked very classy

Dress - I got a $1,500 dress for $400 because it was “last season”

Make your own stuff - not everything that’s handmade looks like third grade. I did centerpieces, tulle and light garlands, the cake topper, the card box and various things all by hand, and it looked elegant and professional. Talk to relatives and friends, and see if they would be willing to help out in lieu of a gift.

Miscellany - lots of things can be replaced from a big budget wedding by being creative. Instead of spending $50+ on a guest book and feather pen, we did a $20 tablecloth and Sharpies for everyone to sign - it was great, since it gave them room for well wishes and stuff. Instead of a silver plated cake set, we went with the $12 version from Hobby Lobby. Instead of buying table number holders, I used a stack of silver car stock, printed names, and used a $3 corner punch to make them pretty.

The only thing we didn’t cut corners on was food (family style saved us one money there, but the food was delicious) the bar, and the favors - we did tiny bottles of Korbel at each plate with a ribbon on the neck, although I suppose that saved me on bar fees for the toast and serving glasses. It was important to us to not skimp on the guest stuff as opposed to the pretties for us md the room.

I had a beautiful and elegant wedding, on a Saturday evening. It was great. It can be done - most wedding guides are sincere bullshit.

22

Awesome! Yes, it is a special event. Make it as special as you reasonably can. And then ENJOY the day.

23

Also - we saved big on the cake as we just requested a plain three tier cream fondant cake, and decorated it with silk flowers. I turned out well and matched the colors we used for everything else.

24

You can get used dresses online or even get a dress made by a seamstress in China for a fraction of the original price. It’s a bit squicky ethically speaking (since many of them blatantly copy expensive designers like Vera Wang) but many of them get rave reviews. Jasmine’s Bridal Shop is a popular one.

We’re having our wedding outdoors, so we don’t have to worry too much about decorations and stuff, and having a BBQ for dinner to cut down on costs.

Please don’t have a cash bar. If the booze is too expensive, just cut it out completely, but IMHO cash bars are tacky. You can’t invite people to a party you’re hosting and then ask them to pay for their drinks. There are ways to serve booze without breaking the bank. Don’t serve cocktails, for example. Or don’t have the wedding in the evening, when people are inclined to drink more.

We are splurging (relatively speaking) for a photographer because it’s important to me to get good photos. Many brides have told me that the day passes by as a blur and that they were grateful to have a photographer to capture the key moments of the day.

Flowers are freakin’ expensive. My plan at the moment is to get my own flowers and make my own bouquets (I took flower arranging lessons a while ago). For the centerpieces I’m just getting mason jars and covering them with burlap and lace, then sticking some fresh flowers in. Simple and pretty.

25

Yes: we had ours on a family property, outdoors, with flower arrangement done by family members. The reception was at a local restaurant. Total cost- 2k.

26

Doing the music yourself is as easy as a playlist on your laptop. I’ve seen actually “DJs” at who used that set up.

You can jack into an existing sound system (if available), rent speakers, or buy a portable sound system that docks an ipod, if the space is on the small side.

To “feel the room” we invited guests to request a song on the RSVP card. we included 99% of requests, which ranged from “Islands in the Stream” by Dolly Parton to “Please don’t Stop the Music” by Rihanna. We alternated 6 upbeat tunes with 2 slow. People danced to the breakabreaka dawn. And an impromtu singalong broke out over “Sweet Caroline.” :slight_smile:

Whole Foods makes great cakes. Trader Joes has nice mixed bouquets, and many grocery store floral departments prepare arrangements. The are also alternatives to fresh flowers. I carried a dried arrangement of wheat, grasses, and dyed eucalyptus. People make flowers out of wood that look pretty cool, are cheap, and you don’t have to fuss with storage or deliveries.

There’s also a little reality needed. How big a group are we talking about? It happens quite a lot (but I am not accusing you, OP!) that parents present a mammoth list of must-invites then turn around and say “but it’s too expensive!” The single biggest expenses – venue and food - increase substantially as the group gets larger. And not just because the raw numbers get larger. For example, if you have 50 guests, you can have the dinner at a local restaurant. If you have 100, you probably have to rent a hall and hire a caterer and bonded bartenders, at much greater expense.

Rather than question any one particular expenditure, going onsie-twosie through every goddamn thing a wedding involves, and drumming up no end of strife, the best thing to do is work out among your wife and the couples what budget you can afford to provide, and leave it to them to either live with it or supplement it themselves.

27

I spent fewer than 24 hours about a week ago “planning” my wedding. I got as far as pinning down a guest list (basically immediate family – g-parents, parents, and siblings – only and still nearly 60 people) before giving up. I think I’m probably just not the wedding type.

So now we’re scooping up our parents and one attendant each and heading somewhere for a quiet ceremony, a nice dinner, etc. There are still details to be planned but not nearly so many and now I just don’t care how much flowers cost because I went from feeding 60 people to feeding a dozen. My soon-ish to be husband is thrilled because he wants to get his attendant (best friend EVER and an all around nice guy; we’re hoping he’s not deployed again when the time comes) a new pistol and if I don’t give a shit about spending $500 on hand-made invitations for way too many people, that becomes a doable thing.

I think a “parents only” wedding may be a little extreme for some, but my advice echoes a previous poster’s: cut the guest list as much as you can without feeling like you (the couple) are missing out on some big, important aspect of the day.

28

One word of warning amid the helpful throng. Make sure anything you decide to DIY is actually doable by JUST you. You will likely have friends and relatives ask what they can do to help - this isn’t the time to give them tables to scrub and chairs to stack, unless they’ve specifically agreed to be that kind of gruntwork helper. My sister’s wedding turned into a giant headache (and backache!) for all her loving family, who didn’t feel so loving as she swanned off to have a leisurely lunch while the rest of us sweltered and dressed tables and counted silverware all afternoon.

29

For Madison Wisconsin - check out “Just for You” - it’s a formal wear consignment shop in Verona (217 S Main St, Verona, WI 53593, (608) 848-3773). We had great success there a couple years ago. She also does alterations if you find a used bridal gown that needs tweaking.

On an even more practical note - really discuss what is important to your daughters and all the families involved. We discovered that honestly we cared more about spending time with each other and not going into debt than we did about having a big gala. So we spent a little bit on the fancy clothing, but then planned a relaxed pot-luck in the church fellowship hall (essentially free for church members, about $200 for others). We provided cake and beverages and the rest was a pot luck. Because it was a potluck, we were able to make it an open invitation–everyone we knew was invited–the whole church, all our co-workers, neighbors and family members so distant we hardly knew them. The church has a no alcohol rule, so we didn’t need to explain that there was no bar because we were saving money.

It was a great plan. And THEN the Packers made the playoffs. Who knew? The playoff game against the dreaded Bears started just an hour after the wedding. I threw myself on the mercy of Radio Shack; they came up with a TV that actually had reception in the church basement (with some type of mega-antenna signal booster thingy). The wedding party men trooped down from the sanctuary to the reception, and as they walked in, they stripped off their tuxes revealing their Packer jerseys. During the reception, about half the wedding guests watched the game and the others lovingly mocked us. It was more fun than doing the hokey pokey or the chicken dance and made for a very memorable wedding. And we got a new TV. Total cost of the wedding was about $1,000. I recommended it highly.

30

You could have a wedding for no more than the modest honorarium to a judge. All else is because someone thinks it has to be a large-scale party.

Weddings: the 21st Century form of potlatch.

31

Wow - that is completely not cool! My family spent long hours cleaning up the hall after my wedding, but they did it WITH me and my husband (and we still laugh about passing the wine bottles around while cleaning - welcome to the family, hubby!) :smiley:

Another choice that can be money saving is arm bouquets rather than traditional bouquets. I had a dozen white roses with a bit of greenery, tied with a satin ribbon as a bouquet for not a bunch of money. My bridesmaids had arm bouquets of three roses each.

32

My pro football playing nephew and his bride chose a simple wedding. I suppose it’s more comfortable doing that when everyone assumes you could have spent more if you’d wanted to. But I’m glad they had the sense not to go overboard. Too many marriages end these days before the wedding bills are even paid.

It was in the bride’s backyard - a gorgeous flower garden. The dresses were nicely tailored, hand made with simple lines. They were made of good material and suitable for remaking later for continued use. The bouquets were all provided by the MOB who has a knack for that sort of thing. Friends of the couple provided the music.

It was mid-afternoon and we were served ice cream, cake, coffee and punch. The favors were little beribboned bottles of soap bubbles which the guests blew, instead of throwing rice, to send them off.

Very nice. Low-key and tastefully done. Fourteen years later they are still married. :slight_smile:

33

Sometimes there’s a hitch in planning wedding costs regarding bridesmaid dresses. The bride wants everyone to match her color scheme and so selects expensive dresses that the bridesmaids will never want to wear again and expects the bridesmaids to pay for them. That creates some bad will. Instead, one wedding I went to this summer used a different system: the bride sent each bridesmaid a paint swatch so that the bridesmaid could select a nice dress in that color in her own price range. Everyone matched onstage, the pregnant bridesmaid didn’t have to lay out a fortune for a dress that she’ll never wear again, and everyone was happy.

34

It also really depends on what you count as “nice” and what you count as “inexpensive”. I mean, I think there are people out there spending $1000 on a wedding and feeling horribly extravagant, and people spending $10k and feeling proud of themselves that they kept it under control and didn’t go crazy. It’s highly dependent on culture and family and, of course, how much money you have.

We were poor as church mice and eloped to the courthouse. If anyone was upset about it, they had the decency not to tell us. But we had NOTHING. We were living on about $1200 a month at the time. We’d have had to put off the wedding for another 4 or 5 year to have any sort of a ceremony. I didn’t want to spend another five years introducing my closet relationship as my “boyfriend” just so that we could throw a party.

35

My son just got married, it was a lovely outdoor wedding at the home of a relative of the bride. One good idea for wine was they purchased cases of wine from Trader Joe’s, and another relative who is an artist made custom labels with the couple’s names, and they pasted them over.

36

I don’t think anyone has said this directly (or might have missed it ) - but the best way to lower the cost is to choose a inexpensive style of wedding, rather than the least expensive version of an expensive style. Don’t get the least expensive formal Saturday night sit down dinner at a catering hall with an open bar and the least expensive DJ. I’ve been to events (not weddings) like that and it shows. It’s better to have a less formal Sunday afternoon buffet with beer and wine in a park with an ipod , even if the cost is the same. And it’s not just the food, venue and music that applies to. It looks odd to print your own formal invitations to that Saturday night sit down dinner, but not so odd to print more informal invitations for Sunday afternoon in the park.

37

I don’t think that’s fair. Weddings don’t have to be either huge gift-grabbing catastrophic parties or courthouse affairs. I think most sensible couples want to have a wedding where the people they care about are there to help them celebrate an important moment in their lives. There are plenty of ways to have a wedding that doesn’t break the bank yet allows people to have a good time together.

38

The idea that you ask your bridal party to pay for their clothing makes me sick. It just seems rude and tacky. We paid for our people, so it was truly just an honor and not an imposition.

39

I don’t know. I suspect there is a floor: maybe $20/head? I mean, you have to have someplace to have it, you have to have some sort of food and clothes. There are ways to spread the cost around–like having a potluck–but then SOMEONE is paying those costs, just not you. And even if people cook food themselves and sew their own clothes, ingredients and materials add up.

I dunno. Some people are lucky and have a family where someone already has a house with a big yard and a stockpile of folding chairs and tables somewhere, but absent that I think it’d be really hard to have a wedding with, say, 50 guests for under $2K. And $2K isn’t cheap, and 50 guests isn’t a big wedding.

40

Here’s what we learned about saving money:

Weddings on Fridays or Sundays are usually cheaper than Saturdays. We chose Friday and it wasn’t an issue. I have heard that sometimes guests will complain about Sunday weddings. Don’t expect people to want to stay up late partying if you opt for Sunday obviously.

I would strongly recommend that the bride should get a pre-owned wedding gown or a “sample dress” (most bridal salons have sample dresses of styles that are no longer being made that they will sell you much cheaper than a brand new dress). A lot of times the pre-owned gowns are almost in new condition since the bride only wore it for one day. You do have the risk that it might require some repairs, but if that’s a big concern just make sure you buy from a local source so you can inspect it before you buy it.
Another option is to buy a dress at the Brides Against Breast Cancer traveling sale: http://www.bridesagainstbreastcancer.org/
When they came to my town, I went there and they had A TON of dresses, all at great prices.

Consider doing a buffet instead of a by-the-plate dinner. Buffets don’t have to be “tacky” - we had very good quality food at a very nice venue, and it was all buffet stuff.

Don’t worry about favors. One of my friends spent a lot of money on favors and a lot of people ended up not even taking the favors home.

I would recommend making sure you budget for a decent photographer and videographer. Having good quality photos and videos will mean a lot more than most of the other stuff people splurge on for weddings.