I’m leaning more towards a small wedding everyday. Besides the obvious fact that money is tight, I’ve never been one who needed a big wedding. Initially I wanted to accommodate everybody. With two sets of parents, five brothers, two sisters, four grandparents, and “close” extended family members just on my side, a small wedding was never really an option for me. Then we have Tej’s family which includes 10 siblings and even more extended family members and friends. The price of a wedding that had a minimum of 150 people was getting way too expensive.
Then it made us think. Why would we shell out tens of thousands of dollars we didn’t have for a few hours? We would be feeding and entertaining people we don’t see on a regular basis, and going into debt by sharing a moment that is very intimate and personal anyways. This was looking more and more like something we should reconsider.
With a smaller wedding, we could ensure we are surrounded by people that really care about our union as opposed to just wanting to be seen. We could afford a good time with our family and close friends, and a honeymoon for ourselves. At this point it’s a no brainer. We will be downsizing our wedding.
Invitations will most likely be sent via social networks (saving money and saving trees), we will probably have our wedding on a weekday, and we’ll be keeping our number of guests to a strict minimum.
How big was your wedding? How did you reduce your costs? Who did you invite?
Beach weddings usually save a lot of money look at http://www.destinbeachweddings.org prices for weddings on the beach in Florida.
I would love to, but with my allergies and my fiance’s disdain for water, beach weddings were ruled out early 🙁
We have about 75 people coming to our wedding and saved a lot of money by making it a DIY wedding. We’ve only invited close family and friends and have kept a tight grip on the guest list (ie., our parents aren’t inviting anyone random and who we don’t know)
Yeah we have to make sure our parents know we don’t want people we don’t know at our wedding. Just to people we know and love 🙂
You already have seen my post on this, but here I go for anybody else reading…
We invited 75 people, but knew only 30-40 would come (our closest friends and family) since we scheduled our wedding one week after college graduations.
We kept it cheap by having the wedding on campus (discounted prices), I bought my beautiful dress off a clearance rack at David’s Bridal ($125), my in-laws and I handled the decorations, and my parents provided the reception’s food via shrimp trays and fruit trays from Sam’s Club. Even the gorgeous cake was a simple $100 special from Kroger and the groom’s cake was made and decorated by my mother-in-law. The biggest savings was finding an experienced photographer that was trying to get back in the business ($450 for 6 hours of photos – like 350-400 very pretty photos from beginning to end).
The whole thing cost $3000-$4000 total and was split between my in-laws, my parents, and us. The only regrets I have is that we lost our self-written vows and didn’t have a videographer.
That sounds like the best way. My parents offered to help pay, his parents haven’t mentioned anything but we won’t ask. Just working on getting all the money in one account so we can make sure we don’t go over our budget. A friend of mine is a photographer and I’m sure he’d like to expand his portfolio to weddings, so that could be a great savings for us too!
I am having a big wedding. We were expecting 200+ people yet we are still only spent around $3,000 total. How is that? Well my husband’s cousin is a photographer so she did our wedding for free. My dad has an amazing DJ system so we just paid my husband’s little brother’s friend $20 to DJ for the night. My great aunt is a caterer so we got all the food and wedding cake for half price! And we had our reception in my father-in-laws well maintained barn (don’t worry there were never any animals in the barn it had hard wood floors that were totally clean, it is like barns they have in the movies when they have “barn dances”). The wedding was in my local church so rental was cheap. My dress was bought of craigslist for $100 and tailored for free by my neighbor! I borrowed my veil from my mom’s friend. I am only 20 years old so I still had all the jewelry from my high school prom and shoes. All the decorations were bought secondhand and assembled by my mom and sisters. Our wedding party was only 4 people (2 bridesmaids and 2 groomsmen) so that saved on flower cost as well.
I was really lucky to have so many connections for my wedding and living in a small town a lot of people chip in to help out. My husband and I were both in college still when we got married so we had hardly any money to spend. But the bill was split between my parents and his so neither had to fork out a lot of money. When getting married sometimes it is about who you know!
That sounds super fun! Congratulations and have a great time at your wedding 🙂