<fx Sean Connery mushmouth> But of coursh they can. </fx>
Echoing this. My husband and I still joke about the time we catered a friend’s wedding. His wife-to-be, who we knew ok and liked ok but were not very close to, asked us if we’d be so kind as to help out by being at the reception hall to receive the food from the caterer. This meant skipping the cake & punch at the church and going to the reception hall straight from the ceremony.
Well, this morphed into asking us if we could swing by the hall before the ceremony to drop some things off. Ok. Only it turns out she meant picking up food (and the cake) from 4 different people’s houses to take to the hall (4 separate trips in our 4-door sedan), plus setting up the tables & chairs at the hall, figuring out the seating chart(!). We arrived at the church sweaty in our finery (and at one point almost decided to skip the ceremony) and then hauling ass back to the hall (across 3 towns worth of Boston traffic) to receive the food from the caterer - and PAY the caterer! - and get it all set up in steam trays. Then we discovered there were no serving utensils, so someone ran back to our house to get as many things as they could find. Then they wanted us to cut & serve the cake. And the damn reception was dry, but some friends went out at bought a bottle of whiskey so we could nip at it outside the back door.
I doubt very much that the bride or the groom had any accurate idea how much work they were asking us to do (we had 4 other people helping, two of whom were disabled and couldn’t lift & carry but at least they kept up a funny patter to get us through the day). And on the day of the wedding it was waaaay to late to back out or protest. But I’ll never help anyone with their wedding ever again.
We pulled off our wedding for 75 guests for around $5K.
-We rented a nice park shelter with air conditioning, restrooms and a kitchen.
-We had church friends of my husband’s parents do the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting of food prep etc, and paid them handsomely.
-We had a local soul food restaurant provide pans of fried catfish, okra, pulled pork barbecue, and macaroni and cheese–then got relish trays and fruit salad from Sam’s Club.
-Beer and boxed wine
-Disposable utensils and table covers.
-Grocery store wedding cake.
-Ordained buddy to do the ceremony.
-Photographer buddy to do the pictures
-Audiophile buddy brought good speakers, and the music was an iTunes playlist I made
-My dress came from eBay, and was a sundress not a wedding dress… that is my one regret in the whole thing, I wish I’d bought a real wedding dress
The tables were decorated with blue Ball jars with candles in them that we snagged off of Craig’s List, and the favors were English crackers that I made myself, the contents of which kept all the kids very happy. I liked this better than the “elegant” tchotchke I see at many weddings.
Picnic wedding. Someone told me it’s very hip right now.
Greatly appreciate this thread. I got engaged in January, and for various reasons, we’re going to have to plan celebrations across three states: Hawaii, California, and South Carolina. You bet your butt we’re in a money-saving mindset.
I’ve been to a few weddings so I’ll just offer this: cut the guest list as much as you can. Remember that they’re going to want to congratulate you etc. And you want to see them. If you invite 100 people and assume a mere minute apiece, you’ve allocated nearly 2 hours. And many people, particularly elderly relatives, will be delighted to just be invited despite being unable to attend. Send them photos afterwards!
My fiancee said she was more than willing to get married by a JotP or county clerk, but I was the one who wanted to ‘have a grand bash’ as I put it. We expected to spend up to $4k on a budget wedding (I was ready to plunk up to $5K on a card) and managed to shell out just over $3K in the end. But we managed to save in some odd ways:
She collected a bunch of old jewelry that she didn’t like any more and sold the gold to the jewelry shop where I got her engagement ring. She turned the funds from the old gold into a partial-payment on a wedding ring, and the shop gave us a major discount on the balance because we had done business with them twice (I had once bought a watch battery and, later, an engagement ring), making us ‘regular’ customers.
Years before we ever met, my fiancee had found a wedding dress at a garage sale and bought it to use the material for something else (drapes or a tablecloth or some such, I dunno). Minor modifications made it fit her, so it was essentially free.
We rented the recreation room at our condominium complex. It was really cheap because we were residents.
We skipped the flowers. She had been a flower-grower and knew how insane the mark-up is for wedding flowers, and I’m allergic to just about everything anyway. Instead, we decorated with ribbons and sparkly confetti – purchased at a 99-cent store instead of Party City.
We asked the manager of our favorite restaurant to provide the food. Since he knew us by face, first names, and usual table, he gave us a major discount.
My brother, who had been my manager at a restaurant when I was in college, let me reverse the roles and tell him how to set up the buffet trays and tables.
We discovered, while doing a walk-through of the wedding/reception venue, that the kitchenette was stocked with plates and glasses and silverware for use during the monthly HOA meetings. We used those and washed them the same night, thus saving on the cost of renting them from a party supply shop.
We were married for free by a retired pastor – her stepfather, who was planning to attend anyway.
My friend and I happen to have experience as wedding photographers. I said I’d do it myself:eek:, but my wife appointed him to do the job.
Plus, though we didn’t suggest or prohibit it, many of the guests brought their own digital cameras and, later, sent us copies of everything they shot.
Another friend offered to bring his band and provide the entertainment – but even though I like thrash metal, I didn’t think that would really be appropriate for a wedding. :dubious: Instead, my wife accepted an offer from her Belly-Dance teacher. Our guests still rave about that surprise performance.
–G!
Baby!
It’s a party and nobody cares
What we’re doin’ here
…–Brad Delp (Boston)
…Party
…Don’t Look Back
That’s crazy! Good for you for being good sports about it and not telling them to shove it all up their keisters (I recognize that these situations happen - by the time you realize how much work they’ve got you into, it’s too late to back out!).
I am the worst person to ask this normally. My first wedding was John’s division from the sub and a few scattered nonmilitary friends of ours. We held it at our new apartment as part of the housewarming part, the ‘uniform of the day’ was tahitian camo [we had a hawaiian shirt contest :D] where the justice of the peace was a friend of ours, the wedding cake came from Super Stop and Shop, we had a keg of beer and the food was a huge lot of BBQ and sides picked up from my favorite BBQ place up near Williamsburg. My second wedding was just the justice of the peace, mrAru, myself and the Jo’Ps wife as witness.
If you want a fancy wedding - limit the size of the bridal party. Bride, Groom, maid/matron of honor, best man. Limit the size of the audience. Limit the size of the party afterwards. Heck, have a ‘private’ wedding with just the participants, and then the party afterwards can be better. Do you really need photographs of everybody getting dressed, driving to the church, walking down the aisle, everybody in all sorts of combinations, people acting stupid doing a bunny hop at the party and upchucking in the bushes afterwards or can you make due with standing at the altar, formal pose and first dance? Does it need to be formal? I don’t know many people who like getting into monkey suits and sitting around sweating while waiting to listen to music they dislike and being forced to do stupid dances. How many times in my life do I need to bunny hop and hand jive?
Why yes, I think the whole wedding industry has gotten way out of hand.
Oh look - wedding dresses that do not cost thousands of freaking dollars … from 2 to 26, or custom to your specific measurements. :dubious: I bet you could get like, bridesmaids and mothers/mother in law gowns there too … :rolleyes: One of the biggest rip offs of the entire industry. Men can rent, women have to buy. :rolleyes:
Some people want all those pictures. Because they enjoy looking back on them later. For some people (many people), the wedding is a very ceremonial, very important, social event in their lives, and they WANT that ceremony and the ensuing emotions and the party afterwards.
And as always, a wedding is not a summons. If you don’t want to get dressed up and socialize, don’t.
I usually advise people not to bite off more than they can chew, DIY-wise. If you are an awesome baker and regularly bake cakes to feed 50 or 100 people, and don’t stress easily, then you’re probably a good candidate to bake your own wedding cake. If you have trouble making a Duncan Hines box cake without several major kitchen disasters, then probably not. If you’ve sewn a lot of clothing before, and you don’t want something incredibly ornate that will involve a year of beading, you are probably a good shot to make your own wedding dress. If you’ve never operated anything more complex than a safety pin, don’t start googling “sew your own wedding dress” and buying satin by the yard. DIY can be a good way to go, but it’s not always the most cost-effective, either. You can do your invitations yourself on Vistaprint, or you can invest in a letterpress machine and learn to do calligraphy. Both are DIY–just different levels. So A) Don’t bite off more than you can chew, work-wise, B) be sure you haven’t overextended yourself (if you work 80-hour weeks you are probably not going to be wanting to invest a whole lot of time into hand-making escort cards), and C) you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.
And finally, lots and lots of people really enjoy weddings. They are not a social failing.
We spent about $3000 on our wedding:
[ul]
[li]50 guests - 25 for each of us, even then I don’t think I used all my spots so my wife invited a few more of her relatives.[/li]
[li]We had our wedding at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon at a small country tavern. The wedding was outdoors and the reception was indoors at the same place. We were done and heading home by 9pm.[/li]
[li]Wedding party was the two of us + my best man and her closest friend as bridesmaid (who purchased her own dress and got one she could use at other events). We colour matched the bridesmaids dress with the best man’s tie.[/li]
[li]Did all the flower arrangements/decorations/invitations ourselves with a few friends helping.[/li]
[li]Music on the ipod.[/li]
[li]Photographs were done by a friend who is a professional photographer and were her wedding gift to us.[/li]
[li]Food was just ‘finger food’ rather than a large sit-down meal[/li]
[li]Bar: FIL put $500 on the bar and the place we were at had an arranegment that 1/2 the cost of drinks were covered by the tab. So you want a $5 beer, you pay up $2.50 from your own pocket.[/li]
[li]Wrote our own vows, had a wedding celebrant etc.[/li][/ul]
I am going to bring a slightly different point of view, because I had a… ridiculously expensive wedding, honestly. My wife’s parents paid for most of it, my parents covered the rest, and other than a few things I felt very strongly about (music and food, mostly), I mostly did the stereotypical nodding. I am naturally as frugal as the next SDMB’er, so this was not a painless experience for me, but I was able to attain the necessary detachment since the extravagance was not being funded directly from my bank account. I am also in that age range where I’ve been to 5-10 weddings a year for the last three years or so, which gives me some more applicable experience and some opinions. Thoughts:
-
It is very possible to do inexpensive, but I agree with those who have said that the best way to do it is to go for an awesome version of your (inexpensive) wedding vision, and not for the cheap version of the Dream Wedding. Out of 20+ weddings I have been to recently, only three or four have felt ‘cheap’, and they’ve all been the 100+ people at a banquet hall type where they skimped on the hall and/or food to fit within their budget. Even though those couples probably spent 2-4x as much as some of the others.
-
The best wedding I have been to other than my own was a backyard BBQ with about 40 people, but they were all close family and friends that I really liked. That bride and groom basically took the position that if they haven’t seen an aunt/uncle/cousin/etc for several years, why do they need to be invited to the wedding? I’m sure there were some mildly miffed relatives, but I’m also sure that they threw an awesome party under a very restrictive budget.
-
With regard to time day of week, there is definitely room to save money, but you’re also changing the tone of your wedding and/or imposing costs onto your guests. A Saturday wedding usually means that most of your guests are driving/flying after work Friday and traveling back Sunday. Shifting it one way or the other means that you’re asking other people to take their vacation days for you, on top of whatever travel costs may already be. Apply this 100x to destination weddings, which I sort of detest, but that’s another thread entirely.
-
Similarly, with time of day, there’s nothing wrong with an 11am or noon ceremony, as long as you realize going in that you’re getting a completely different experience than an evening wedding. How well this will work depends on the crowd you’re inviting. It can often be a great idea, just make sure you think about it!
-
All in all, a wedding is just about throwing a good party. I can tell you basically nothing about flowers, centerpieces (other than how to avoid taking them home!), or the ceremonies/announcements/first dances at any of the weddings I have been at, including my own. I can tell you which lunches/dinners and which cakes were particularly good or bad, but as long as you reached “mmm, that’s a good meal/cake!” it didn’t detract from the party. I can tell you that cash bars always annoy me at the time and seem vaguely wrong, but that I end up drinking less and not minding them that much in the overall scheme of things. Most of all, I can tell you which weddings I had a lot of fun at, mostly as a result of the guests (friends, but having a family that is awesome to hang out with even if they’ve never met you before is really helpful!) and the entertainment (if you’re going to skimp on a DJ, make sure you have a really good iTunes playlist).
Ours is coming in at around $3000 for 120 people
[ul]
[li]We found an awesome venue (historic house) that’s run by a charitable trust. We’re able to bring in our own food, drinks, whatever we want.[/li][li]Food is a buffet, being catered by a local restaurant (and paid for by my uncle and aunt as their wedding gift to us)[/li][li]Little things like appetizers, etc, we’re making at home (I have my mum and 4 aunts coming in for the wedding, we can easily make 250 samosas between us!)[/li][li]No wedding favors or stuff like that. Its really unnecessary and people will just leave them there anyway.[/li][li]Using the throwaway china-like tableware. [/li][li]Photographer is a good friend of ours, who does semi-professional stuff as a hobby[/li][li]I’m making both the wedding cake and the groom’s cake[/li][/ul]
At a family wedding this summer, the bride and groom had swapped the party planning (really just the hosting) duties with another couple who had their wedding two months earlier. So on the wedding day, the opposite bride organized the table and chair placement and the linens, etc. while her husband set up the bar (~30 kinds of beer and soft drinks with some token wine). No cake, but rather huge numbers of cookies and pastries from various bakeries in the area. And the catering was done by a food truck (brick oven pizzas with salad). ~300 guests? and it worked. They had a DJ (actually the real DJ’s friend and his old equipment) with a song list already done.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a wedding ceremony at 5 or 5:30 followed by the reception/dinner/dancing is plenty long and can all be in one spot- and on a Friday night! (Think of the guests, no one wants to go to a 1:00pm service with a reception at 5 or 6- that is just selfish of the married couple to have their own dream wedding.)
So my big recommendation other than a friday wedding is- use a creative caterer (lots of church ladies have a side business or even more interesting for everyone is a food truck) and keep the decorations to a minimum.
To have a fun party and get people dancing, you need alcohol and a good amount of it. But you can rent huge coolers and go to CostCo. You could easily get 10 kegs for under a $1000 all in.
Here’s a business idea.
For a wedding, the tables and church is all made pretty with flowers and decorations, right? Why cant those be used for, say, two or three weddings in a row, as long as they happen in the same two days?
Don’t venues and churches, in combination with flowershops, offer a pre-decorated church so you share costs with the other bridal parties?
Anyway, at my wedding, for the JOP, there were four people present. The whole thing cost 100 bucks. Ring 50, office-formal dress I already had for free, matching tie for my husband 15 bucks, JOP for free, photographer for 50 bucks (he only needed to be there for an hour and gave us his pictures only digitally). Lavish brunch for five persons at home afterwards, 30 bucks.
If you count the legal paperwork for the pre-nup, and the wills, it was 900 bucks.
Too late to edit.
Here’s a business idea.
For a wedding, the tables and church are all made pretty with flowers and decorations, right? Why cant those be used for, say, two or three weddings in a row, as long as they happen in the same two days? A bridal party could rent a pre-decorated church/venue, so they share costs with the other bridal parties, and the flowershop/decorater still makes a decent profit. It would also mean the venue can sell more parties closer to each other, because the bridal party does not have to rent/occupy the venue all day to do the decorating.
I’ve no doubt it would fly at some level, but then, so do roadside wedding chapels. Weddings are supposed to be highly individual and “special,” not brief visits to a wedding McDonald’s. I agree with the gist of your idea, but I think it will have little appeal and less success, and success would be of a slightly twisted kind. We need to stop pandering to the common vision of what a wedding simply must be, darling.
My point in prior posts is not that there aren’t brides willing to do a simple and low-cost wedding, but that they are in a pretty small minority… smaller if you differentiate them into (1) really want something small and simple and (2) don’t have the budget to do anything larger, but would if they had the money.
The cultural imperative, driven by 50 years of provider hype, is that only the most lavish and detailed affair you can afford (without looking too closely at “afford”) is “suitable” or “appropriate” or (the slimiest of all) “what you really deserve.” Read this thread carefully: even those who say they did it on the cheap have weasel words of explanation and apology, as if they realize they went against Tradition and Expectation and have to somehow justify themselves.
My suggestion is to look at weddings from the simplest aspect of the ceremony up and add in what you truly want, rather than start with the lavish, spendy, detail-laded, tradition-soaked notions and painfully pare down to what you can afford. To do it the latter way is just a path to disappointment, heartbreak and overspending few new couples can afford. Done with a clear mindset, the first approach will produce lasting satisfaction no matter what the budget.
The fiancee of one of my daughters MUST HAVE 8 groomsmen and they are radically cutting down their guest list to 200 people. It’s going to be a monster any way you look at it. She’s got no illusions about the cost, however and knows cutting a few corners isn’t going to make it inexpensive.
Daughter two is looking at the farm of her grandparents for the venue and it will be much smaller and within budget.
I went to one of those back in the mid 80s. BF of the time was one of 12 groomsmen, I broke my ankle and got lucky because they wanted me as a bridesmaid 
and I detest being a bridesmaid.
$120 000 destination wedding at some resort in the Pokonos. I will say that the food was amazing - they had full sides of smoked salmon, the vats of black caviar, prime rib on the bone in the carving station, huge 5 tier wedding cake champagne, open bar. They worked some deal with the resort that the rooms would only be $50 for the guests though Keith and I got our room free for being in the wedding party and they paid his tux rental. Nice way to spend a 3 day weekend - we got there Friday about noon - Keith hooked off from university and I took a vacation day and we picked his sister and her date up in Binghampton on the way down [she was in school there.] There were about 300 people there all told as I remember.
I think my wedding cost us about $75 and has lasted since 1991, my brother paid $35k for his and it lasted 8 months … and that $120k one? 5 months. :rolleyes::dubious:
Here are a few things that I did to reduce the cost of my wedding (total of $3500-ish).
- We used a JP and got married in an outdoor park. The permit cost $100, the JP also cost $100.
- We advertised in Kijiji for a student photographer to take pictures. We paid her and her boyfriend $800 plus travel to take pictures all day, and edit them before sending to me (we did run in to some issues that would have been resolved with a simple contract, so make sure you do that too).
- We hired a guy to bring a big BBQ to the reception and cook a pig and two turkeys. We purchased a bunch of pre-made sides and had a giant buffet.
- My husband made the wedding cake. I do not recommend this because he was up at 5:30 am day of to finish decorating it, but it turned out beautiful.
- I made my own centerpieces using IKEA square flower vases, immersible tea lights, fish tank stones, ribbon, fake gerber daisies, glue, and real gerber daisies and some other flower I can’t remember.
- I ordered flowers individually and put the bouquets and table flowers together myself.
- We decorated the reception hall ourselves the night before. It was actually really fun and a great memory. I ordered all the decorations online and did not order from the ‘wedding’ section (it’s always more expensive).
- I hand made my invitations using good paper and pre-made rubber stamps. This took some effort, but it was worth it just for the sentimental value of the invites to my family and friends.
- My husband is a firefighter, so we contacted the small volunteer fire department in the small town we were married in (not our home town, but a place where many family members live) and our transport was a vintage fire truck. For free (actually, we ended up donating $250 to the hall, but that wasn’t required). He also wore his dress uniform for the ceremony.
- My mom made all the guest gifts (small pillows in our colours) which were used for the outdoor ceremony for the guests to sit on (it was an outdoor auditorium set up).
- We hired two local teen age girls to do the ongoing and after party clean up of plates and garbage. They cost about $150 and were paid for by a relative.
- We did put out for a DJ. He was great.
I am still told now, four years later, that it was the best wedding most of my family and friends have been to. It was personal, small, and much of it was done by us, but it was relaxed and fun.
I:
Got my Wedding dress here
Used baby’s breath for my flowers
got married at our church (free)
Got married by our pastor (also free)
Burned a custom made wedding playlist
got the cake at a local bakery (delicious!)
Had a beautiful little wedding for practically nothing.