Planning an Inexpensive Wedding...HELP!

In My Humble Opinion
21

Yeah, Cranky’s comment is a good one. It’s easy to get bogged down in all the minutae of a “typical wedding” and lose the broader focus. I mean, what’s important is getting married and throwing a party for your [cousin’s] friends and family, not how big the cake is, or who made it. When it comes down to that, you have to ask, “what value does having flowers (or a cake, or those little crystal bells) add to the wedding/reception?” Then decide if the cost is worth the benefit, and, if so, how much cost is reasonable.

With that attitude, you can take advantage of Cranky’s advice. An example, since I mentioned it before, is wedding dresses. The “long white dress with a veil” is so ubiquitous that it’s hard to break. The bad thing is, the dress is worn once and it’s pretty much useless afterward. Why not wear an off-the-rack like Athena did? Or a vintage dress like my wife? Advantages: you can wear it again later, it’s less expensive, it’s a better expression of your personal style, it’s more interesting. Disadvantages: Ummm… none, really.

So I think you can take advantage of doing things differently to make the wedding not only cheaper, but also more fun for the guests and more an expression of your personality. And still keep it “formal”, if you so desire.

22

I just attending a wedding shower on the past weekend.

It’s theme was liquor, it’s sounds scary but it was a lot of fun and we ran with it.

Everybody brought a bottle of booze or wine, for the wedding. This way a guest who definitely wants to drink Jack can insure that there will be some available.

And it really helps with the overall expense of the bar for the young couple.

Clearly this would not be appropriate for grannies and aunties, but at this shower it was all young people.

I thought it was a terrific idea, and it was really a lot of fun.

23

Well, while my wedding wasnt’ exactlly cheap, most of the expense was the photographer. I think we came in around $6K all told, and about half that was for the photographer.

We rented a boat for 3 hours. http://www.americanrover.com
Cost for the boat was something like $15 a person, 100 people minimum. So the boat itself was about $1500.
Because we were doing it there, we didn’t have to pick a caterer, we had to use theirs. We went with finger food, and some salads, total for all the food was something like $500…we could have actually gone with less. We overcompensated. We choose a totally open bar, and that ran about $11.50 a person. Since we only had 50 people, it wasn’t that bad. This also included a champaign toast.

So let’s see…that’s about $2K there.
D.J. was $100
Minister was $100 (this is actually very important. Be sure to get someone that you like, a friend just picked one out of the telephone book, and they stuttered and hesitated all through the cerimony)
Cake was about $90. We didn’t need a huge one…but the lady did a great job…looked beautiful.
Flowers were done by a decorator that’s a friend of my mom. Total was about $200.
And for our invitations, we went to a local outlet, and bought small bottles with corks. We wrote a nice invitation, printed it off on nice paper…singed the edges to give it a work look, and mailed it off as a message in a bottle. Everyone loved it, and I think the total cost even with mailing expense was under $200.

So go with unique things, and look for package deals. You may be able to find a caterer that includes a bartender…or knows someone that they work with a lot.
Get away from the “accepted” norms, and make it a day to remember.

24

Elope

seriously

25

Ours in June came in at under $5K all told. It broke down (roughly) to:

Dress: $250 (bought online. It takes about 4-6 months for it to arrive, so plan ahead)

Shoes: Old. No cost.

Veil: $60 for the headpiece, and $11 for a white scarf I sewed onto it.

Flowers: three bouquets (bride & two bridesmaids), 4 men’s boutonieres (I can’t spell that!), 2 corsages, one alter arrangement, one small arrangement, all for a total of $200. Done in silk by a co-worker.

Cake: 0.00 - gift from my brother-in-law.

Church: $750. Cost of use of the chapel and reception room.

Catering: (finger foods, punch, cups, plates, etc.): $400.

Photographer and Videographer: $1500 – my parents took care of this cost for us as their gift for us.

We had our wedding at 1 PM in the afternoon, so we didn’t end up having to provide a huge dinner. Mostly, I found out the best way to keep costs down is to shamelessly beg friends/coworkers/relatives who are crafty for assistance. Offer to pay for the materials, let them give their results as their gift to you.

26

A few more ideas (all the previous ones are great - I’m archiving this thread for when I plan my own wedding!):

  • a friend got her cake from the local grocery store bakery; it was $45, and beautifully decorated (I think the bakery people made a special effort because they knew it was a wedding cake)
  • bar tickets could also be an option - two tickets per guest, and after that they buy their own
  • the early afternoon reception is a great idea - I have also considered having a barbecue/picnic type reception; much less formal, but lots of fun (with a warning to guests to change their clothes before the barbecue)
  • other people I know have gotten married in a very small ceremony (usually in a more exotic locale than the neighborhood church), and had a large reception party at a later date, thus splitting up the costs
    (Athena, the lilacs are a fabulous idea! What a lot of bang for your buck with those flowers!)
27

Biggest tip from mom: Keep in mind what things symbolize for the couple - those things need to be addressed with care, though they don’t have to be expensive. Example: The ring is a symbol, not jewelry. Choose with care for the symbol, and you won’t be disappointed. The object itself is immaterial, as long as the meaning is intact. Meaning is easier to get cheap. :slight_smile:

For a wedding, you need the couple, the license, the officiant (except with Quaker licenses), and witnesses. That’s all. Everything else is optional. Some of the most meaningful weddings my mom has done were where everything fell through and all that was left was the essential core. Like the couple who neglected to get their license (they thought they could do it the day before, but the office was closed!). So mom held the ceremony with all the glitz that day (carefully never ‘pronouncing’ them anything), then they went and got their license, and she married them a few days later under a tree just across the state line (closest mutual meeting point). Just them and their two best friends as witnesses. The ‘real’ (legal) wedding was perfect, and vastly more meaningful, apparently. Not to mention a great story.

We did a lot of things others here have done, printed our own invites, made our own music tapes for the reception, got family and friends to donate services instead of a gift (our cake, my dress, decorations), shopped around for caterers, found the greatest photographer (and didn’t wince, especially since he was actually pretty cheap), etc. Many family (350 invites, 192 guests, all captive from 10 to 4), but still got a good solid meal for about $2000 - including lots of nice touches (shop around!!!).

I have to echo Duke - you want cheap, you’ll have to trade time. But some of the most elegant weddings I’ve been to have been cheap! And even the endless attendant gifts (we had 16 of them - hey, I have a lot of siblings!) were not too pricey, because I could afford the time to find just the right thing at a better price.

My hottest tip - shop around. The first caterer I went to quoted me $16,000 (no foolin) for what I wanted, food-wise. I almost cried right there. I got it for VASTLY less, with about two days of phone calls and one day of legwork.

My second hottest tip - get to know the people you hired. Don’t hesitate to ask them for more ideas, their thoughts, etc. They’ve done this before, and they may have ideas that you like better than the ones you came up with yourself. Our reception hall (victorian mansion in a township park, $200 for the whole day) was suggested to us by the caterer, who knew we were trying to save money. The florist ended up doubling the number of roses in my ‘field-flowers’ style bouquets, for free, because she thought that the initially planned amount didn’t make quite what she knew I wanted. Plus, if they like you, they are far more likely to offer suggestions that will save you money, even from them.

Third hottest tip - get the photo package that includes the proofs. That way you don’t have to get every d*mn picture enlarged for your album, just the ones you really WANT enlarged! We have a huge album, much of which is proof-sized photos. And you’ll have extra pics you can send to people with thank-you’s, if you want.

If they want to elope, but still have people ‘present’… One of my coworkers just eloped ‘online’ - you could tune in to her website to see the event live (or view it replayed for the next month). Las Vegas. Cheap, and you can invite anyone you want, as long as they have internet access. Bonus, if your uncle gets drunk after the wedding, you’ll never know! :slight_smile:

(Athena, how’d you keep the lilacs from wilting? I thought of using white lilacs, but they wilt so darn fast out of water…)

28

My wedding was at an ante-bellum mansion in Charleston, SC owned by a hospital, cost was $200 IIRC. Wedding in garden, reception inside. No amplified music allowed, so it was short and sweet. Heavy hors d’oeuvres. Those who wished to really party retired to an Irish bar still in tux and dress, and we couldn’t buy a drink all night! And a free band!

Flowers (bride and bridesmaids) were bought at Bi-Lo grocery store. If they have a florist section, they have somebody who generally knows what they are doing, and would love to show their stuff. For Cheap.

We hired a local newspaper photographer (didn’t want all the posed shots, just “live action” shots of us and the guests enjoying the event). We bought all the film, and he gave it back to us undeveloped the next day. He gets free drinks and pretty girls to hang out with. I think it was $200 for three hours. DO NOT DO THIS IF SHE WANTS THE POSED SHOTS!

Do whatever you can to leave her nothing to do the day of and the day after.

29

The bride needs to keep in mind that the marriage is more important than the wedding. The wedding is a one-time party, whereas the marriage should last a lifetime.

A few things I did at my wedding to try to keep the price down:

My wife and I wanted both sedate background music and rippin’ jump swing, so a band wasn’t feasible. After interviewing several DJs, all of whom were some combination of expensive, annoying, and unprofessional, I went out and bought a minidisc player. That way I could record my own compilation of exactly the music my wife and I wanted, it was way cheaper than a good DJ, and I still have the minidisc player. Also, it was a lot easier than burning CDs, because I could change the playlist at any time.

My wife was going to go non-traditional for the wedding dress, and we were looking for them together. And then she tried on a traditional white gown. She says my eyes got real big and my jaw dropped. She liked the reaction, so she searched high and low for a traditional dress, and finally found one on the final clearance rack for $237. It had a full train and everything.

We wanted some flowers for the wedding, but the wedding florists were incredibly expensive. She shopped around, got one relatively small and inexpensive bouquet for herself, and bought the rest of the flowers at a floral wholesaler for very little money. We arranged them ourselves in some cheap but beautiful glass vases decorated with a little ribbon in our wedding colors.
Another idea is to buy live flowers at a nursery. They’re just as pretty as cut flowers, and since you’re having the wedding in her mom’s garden, they could be given to her mom as a thank-you gift.

I bought my tux rather than renting. I dunno, I just didn’t want to get married in someone else’s clothes. But, I bought the tux used from a rental place, and I still wear it to formal events. Of course, you wanted to know how to save money, not spend extra money on clothes for the groom. :slight_smile:

We had a friend as the solemnizer (that’s the official term for the minister/officiant/whatever in California) which was of course free. (Although we paid the $50 for her to get her one-day Deputy Commissioner of Marriages license. This price varies by county in CA) It was someone we both loved and trusted and respected. She was great, although it had the unexpected (bad? Good?) consequence of the minister crying during the ceremony.

We also had no wedding party at all. No best man, no maid of honor, nothing. Having seen other people struggle with their wedding party’s strange personal politics, I was happy not to have them, especially if I was going to have to help pay for any of their dresses/tuxes/kilts/speedos/etc.

I drew and hand-lettered our wedding invitations. Contrary to what a previous poster said, people can remember your wedding invitation, if it’s interesting. Mine had a crocodile with two champagne glasses trampling some yellow tulips, and formal calligraphy on the inside. I made color photocopies at Kinko’s onto cardstock and bought the envelopes from the leftovers box at a greeting card store.

We didn’t have a photographer. We weren’t interested in posed shots. All our guests made sure to take portraits of each other. My favorite shot of my grandfather ever was taken by my mom from a disposable camera.

My wife got the champagne (just for the toast) at a local liquor store for $5 a bottle. It tasted better than some of the $30/bottle types we’d tried. Rental for the glasses was free from the liquor store for buying a case of champagne.

For beverages, we had bottles of juice. It felt a lot classier than sodas. We went with a caterer for the dinner, and that was the major expense of the wedding, something like $3500, plus tip. (BTW, we opted to tip separately, rather than have the tip part of the caterer’s bill. That way, we didn’t pay sales tax on the tip)

We ended up keeping the wedding cheap enough to be able to afford a month-long honeymoon in australia, which was more important to us than the wedding festivities anyway.

In general, be wary of wedding-specific goods and services. The wedding industry prices everything ridiculously high, knowing that many people will pay whatever it takes. If you can get the same thing from some place that doesn’t specialize in weddings, you’ll probably get a better deal.

I hope some of this has been helpful. Good luck with your wedding planning, and congratulations to the bride.

30

Again, thanks for the comments, everybody. Everything is going to be helpful.

I think this is going to be the best thing to keep in mind. If we can find someone other than a wedding-vendor to do things, I bet we will be able to save a lot of money.
Good news is that her sister is friends with a caterer and so hopefully they will be able to get a great deal on the food. I think she’s leaning toward heavy hors’d’ouvers (or however you spell it) instead of a dinner.

The bad news is that she seems to have her heart set on at least 4 bridesmaids, if not more. She doesn’t seem to get that this will cost more money. I’m working on it.

Thanks, everybody! Please keep the ideas coming!

31

Oh, I dunno. Granted, some tux rental places will rent the groom’s tux for free as long as you have a certain number of groomsmen, but buying a tux needn’t be significantly more expensive than renting (depending on what you’re looking for). I bought my wedding tux, too, from a vintage shop. Got a black wool suitcoat with tails, pants, vest, shirt, bowtie, studs & cuff links, and spats, for about $80. I had to have some extensive tailoring done, but that cost probably $60 more. So I wound up spending a little more than a rental would cost, but I got a tailored-to-fit suit that I can wear agin, for free.

Yeah. We made our own, also, and got a lot of comments along the lines of, “Where did you find your invitation? You made it yourself? Oh! That’s so cool!”

Pardon my ignorance, but why is this so? I understood that the heaviest cost associated with bridesmaids, that of the dress, is borne by the bridesmaids themselves. What costs asociated with bridesmaids are borne by the bride?

32

I have been a wedding photographer for years so I will mention some cost saving photography tips.
Do hire a professional! They don’t have to cost an arm and a leg! After the flowers have faded, the food eaten and the dress packed away what do you have? Photos! Shop around and find one that has the style you like. If you are not crazy about posed shots stop and think. You need SOME of these. If you want more candid shots find a pro that will do that but do have some posed shots or you will miss out on something important. A good photographer will not take hours to do the formal photos.
Hire a photographer that does not make you buy a package. Most will sell you a package that includes the album. This can get expensive. Do your own album and just buy the photos from your pro.
I am a photographer and it sounds like I am selling but I don’t mean hire me! Photographs document our lives. We cherish our family photos so don’t leave it up to Uncle Ernie!

33

I agree that you don’t need to get a band or professional DJ. My husband DJ’d the wedding of some friends of ours last summer, and got many many compliments. One thing no one has mentioned is that it’s easy and not all that expensive to rent a good sound system. In Boston, the places to go for rentals are E.U. Wurlitzer or Daddy’s Junky Music, but I’m sure any reasonably sized town has some. Expect to pay a couple hundred dollars to have professional equipment for the weekend.

Then find a friend you trust who has more time than money, and ask if they’d be willing to DJ the wedding for you, either for a small fee or in lieu of getting you a wedding present. Borrow music from friends to burn CDs or minidisks.

I don’t know what the rules are in your state, but in California, anyone can apply to be a Deputy Commissioner of Marriages for one wedding. I think the fee was about $25. My husband and I were married by a close family friend (my “other father”), who has known me for my whole life, and it was the most beautiful ceremony ever! (I know I’m biased, but a lot of people at the wedding told us it was the most moving ceremony they had ever attended).

The best wedding book I found, which had a lot of cost-saving ideas, was (believe it or not) Weddings for Dummies.

34

It is true that the big cost of outfitting the bridesmaids usually falls on the bridesmaids themselves, but there are additional costs that can add up. First, if she wants, say, 6 bridesmaids, she will also want 6 groomsmen. That means they have to pay for bouquets/bouttiners (sp?) for all of them, as well as gifts. Plus, the more attendants you have, the “bigger” and more formal the wedding seems and it would be noticable if the decorations, site, food, etc. do not match up with the impression the wedding party is giving. (I had 4 bridesmaids and I think that’s PLENTY…no offense to anyone, but more than 4 and I think it starts to look pretentious, and she certainly can’t afford to go for that!)
Then there is the bride’s luncheon and if the groom wants to do something similar, a groom’s dinner or whatever. I know she doesn’t have to do all this stuff like gifts and luncheons for her attendants, but I think it would be a little rude to have these people be in your wedding and not give them any type of thank you gift.

Anyway…I’m going to get Weddings for Dummies and see if we can’t find a way for her to have all the bridesmaids she wants. Oh, and I agree on the photographer. That is the one thing in my wedding that I didn’t worry about the cost, and that is what I’m recommending to her. Get cheap flowers, don’t do favors and pre-printed napkins and matches, print your own program…but get a GOOD photographer and don’t skimp on the cost. Mine was $1500 for 8 hours, an album, a large framed picture and the negatives. I look at that album all the time and am so thankful that I have it.

35

“Save yourself the trouble of getting married. Just find a woman you hate and buy her a house.”

– traditional Jewish proverb

36

All three of the weddings I have been in the bridemaids had to buy their own dresses. Well I got out of buying two of them because they were family and I was flat broke both times…family has to understand that if you can’t hardly afford to put food on your table it’s out of the question to expect your sister to pay for a dress she will wear once.

My best friend’s wedding, that’s a different story, first of all, her and her mother shopped very hard for just the right outfits for us. She ended up getting us finely crafted poet’s blouses (pretty buttons) with a burgandy broomstick skirt that was a jacquard (sp) print. To this day I have worn both pieces several times and it was pretty reasonable in price.

Now, keep in mind, her wedding was over the top, financially, as it was held on top of Keystone Mountain, a ski resort. It was probably the best wedding I have ever been to though because of the people. Anyhow a few of the bridesmaids barely make much money so she kept the costs down for us buying our own dresses. I was glad she was smart enough to choose something we can actually wear again…this is key. No foo foo dresses that have big bows and are made of material not suited for anything but tarps.

37

My parents are capable of topping anybody’s cheap wedding story:

Location - 0$. The ceremony and recpetion were in their own backyard.
Flowers - 0$. Done in the spring, when the dogwood trees were in full bloom. Also daffodils and tulips.
Photographer - $75 in 1977 is about $400 now. Friend of a friend.
Food - $100. Had only hors d’ouvres. When around 20 guests stayed longer than they expected, my grandmother (dad’s mother) ran out and got some KFC (really).
Music - $0. A friend played the piano. He was a professional.
Bridesmaids & groomsmen - none.
24 years of mostly happy marriage - priceless.

Of course, it might not fit some people’s idea of a wedding, but their memories from that day are wonderful.

One final note: if you know someone in a garden club, they might be willing to provide flowers at low cost.

38

This is what I need to remind her about. She has only just gotten engaged, so I think right now she still has her head in the clouds and a big smile on her face and hasn’t thought too much about the reality of planning the wedding and having a successful marriage.

Having recently planned my own wedding and started my own successful marriage, I seem to be looking more at the realities and am forgetting that she needs to enjoy being a “fiancee” for a little while before getting down to the nitty gritty.

Anyway, thanks everybody. I really appreciate all the excellent responses.

39

Hi Sunshine. Is your cousin also in Denver? I just bought my wedding dress (I’m getting married in June) from Bride’s Boutique. It’s at Iliff and I-225. Just west of 225. I bought a nice off-the-rack dress for $99. The alterations cost $150, and I believe I got quite a bargain. They have lots of pretty dresses available, and bridesmaid dresses too.

40

I haven’t read all the other posts, but i’m just gonna spill it re. my own wedding, which I’m very proud of. It’s a lot about who you know, but I had a lot of help from skilled friends and I think we pulled it off for under a grand including the honeymoon.

Dress- a vintage silk white kimono from eBay for $95. This set the theme for the wedding, and the best (wo)man was an avid SCA Oriental character-type. This became important later. Anyway, the dress under the kimono was sewn by one of my co-workers for the cost of the materials only. Hubby got a man’s kimono for like $25 and had a shirt and pants made by the same friend again for the cost of materials. I had a (male) bridesmaid and hubby had his best (wo)man, and when they asked what they should wear, I think I said something like ‘whatever you want. Maybe not a t-shirt with profanities on it, but anything else is fine.’

Locale- we went to a local Japanese botanical garden in March (in Texas) and it cost $75 for 3 hours. No chairs, no music, and we couldn’t block the area off, but it was so obviously a wedding that people steered away. This made buying flowers absurd. I did have a garland on my head that cost about $7 in materials (silk flowers, ribbon and some wire from Hobby Lobby). We had the reception at our house.

Food- his mom likes to noodle around in the kitchen, so we asked her to make a pile of various hors d’ovres (sp?) and hubby’s sister’s fiance (who, by the way, got married in a ceremony so mind-blowingly expensive that I can’t even believe it; I think her dress cost more than our whole wedding) is a cook at a seafood place and managed to get us a large pile of shrimp for very cheap which he then fixed up for us himself. My mom got the cakes from a lady she liked as her present to us.

Pictures- my brother and his best (wo)man both had some professional photography experience and we bnought them both a ton of film and told them to just go nuts, then we got the stuff developed at WalMart. It wasn’t really fancy, but I got picture disks and made a web-site which everyone seemed to like fine. I know some people are really hellbent on having top quality photos, but really, I think someone that more or less knows their way around a 35mm and doesn’t cut people’s heads off does good enough. That’s just me though.

Invites- hubby used to work at a print shop so we designed them ourselves and bought the paper at an office supply place. We didn’t request RSVPs since we weren’t doing a fancy dinner thing. I stuffed a letter inside with maps and suggested instead of buying us stuff, they give to a favorite charity, or barring that give gift certificates to home improvement stores, linen stores, and the like. That way we didn’t have to screw with registering anywhere but we could still get stuff we liked/needed at several different places.

Atmosphere- I also told everyone on the invite to wear whatever they wanted, jeans or formal wear. The SCA girl brought a box full of kimonos and the womenfolk grabbed them up and tied them on, which gave the whole thing a nice Oriental feel, which was completely unplanned on my part in the sense that I didn’t expect anyone else to tart up. That was cool! We wrote the ceremony ourselves, and got a friend to marry us. She wasn’t ordained initially, but in Texas the laws about that are pretty loose so we went to Universal Life Church online and got her ordained in like 10 minutes. The house was basically given a good scrubbing for the reception and that was it; no flowers or swans or anything like that. We borrowed 2 buffet tables and just got party supplies from a party store (plastic tablecloths, paper napkins, plastic plates, flatware and cups all in our ‘colors’) and a few Oriental things from eBay. We downloaded pics from the digital camera hubby loaned to someone and made a slide show, and played mp3s through the computer. We just bought several bottles of cheap wine, a few 12-packs of beer and soda and that was it. For favors I bought a hundred pairs of those washable decorated chopsticks for about $3/dz. and put them in a nice vase I had.

Honeymoon- we rode motorcycles 1000 miles to New Mexico and stayed in cheap motels. We spent 3 days at my dad’s place in Albuquerque and then rode back, visiting Carlsbad and aliens in Roswell. Nothing that involved any more planning than taking out a map and deciding where we felt like going that day.

I think what helped, besides exploiting all all my friends and family with the promise that I wouldn’t ask them to wear dresses with big butt bows or make them shell out for a fondue set was the fact that I had a theme and sort of designed the wedding around it, with ample help from nature and eBay. The more time you have to work on all this stuff, the better. I also had a freind who was a wedding planner who gave me a timeline to keep us organized (‘by 3 weeks before the wedding, you should have this, this and this done’).

Good luck!