If you’re thinking of getting married but putting it off because you think the cost of a wedding will be to much there are many ways you can have a beautiful wedding for a low cost. Did you know that the average wedding cost around $25000 when it’s all said and done? Don’t let this discourage you because I will teach you how to do a wedding on a small budget. In fact it’s easy to have a full wedding with reception and all for less than 5k by following this wedding budget.
Pre Wedding
The only thing you need to worry about pre wedding is your invitations. Don’t waste your money on wedding planners they charge to much for work you can do yourself. If you really want to save money you can make your own invitations. There’s invitation software you can buy at Wal-Mart or Staples all you need is the paper and a printer. If you decide to buy your invitations I’d advise looking around for the best deal. Some places want $2-$3 dollars each for them but some you can get for under $1 a piece.
Getting Married
If you want to have a beautiful wedding your going to need a church, priest, flowers, rings, bouquet and tux/dress. If you go to church you may be able to be married there for no fee but if not make some phone calls, visit some churches and ask about renting them out for a wedding. I paid $280 to rent out my church and that included a changing room. Of course now your going to need someone to marry you so the first thing to do is ask your friends and family if they know anyone licensed to do marriages. Most priest marry people for a small donation and some might charge a flat rate. Don’t think you have to give hundreds of dollars for this. I’d say anything from $100 to $200 dollars is acceptable. Now your going to need rings. You can spend thousands of dollars on rings if you wanted to but do you really need to? I know it’s going to be on your finger for the rest of your life so you don’t have to get a $5 dollar ring but there’s no need to spend thousands. Depending on what you like you can get a nice gold ring for the husband for $150 or less and a gold ring with diamonds for the wife for around $300 . Try to stay within $500 for the rings. Now arguably the most important part of the wedding is the dress. It’s hard to say no when your soon to be wife says she found the perfect dress the only problem is it’s $1500. What to do when she goes dress shopping is to not even look at the price tag and just look at the dress and if she finds one she likes then look at the price. If its under $500 that’s great but if not I wouldn’t go more then $700 on the dress because you only wear it once and it’s not smart to throw that kind of money away. If you want to get a really good deal you can shop in the discount section only for the dress. You sometimes can get a beautiful dress for around $200. Before the man gets fitted for the tux make sure you call around because sometimes if all your groomsmen get there tux at the same place which they should you get your tux for free. If you can’t find any deals like this a rented tux shouldn’t set you back for more than $100. For the bouquet and flowers you can really cut the cost down if you want to. If you go to a regular flower shop to have your bouquet made they will want $200 or more for a 2 dozen rose bouquet. To me that’s not worth it because you can easily make a better bouquet yourself for less than $30. How you do this is go to K-Mart and buy 2 dozen of roses. That will only set you back about $20 bucks then pick up some ribbon and whatever else you want to decorate your bouquet with and you get a nice looking bouquet for under $30. Do the same thing for all the flowers you want to decorate your church with. If you want 10 dozen that’s only $100 in flowers and believe me this will save a lot of money . Most flowers shop want upwards of $30 a dozen for basically the same flowers do yourself a favor and don’t fall into their trap. The last thing you have to worry about is who is going to play your wedding music when you walk down the isle. Most organ players charge around $50 dollars for this which isn’t really much but if you don’t want to pay for this you can always bring your own cd player and burn the music yourself. Just make sure you have a designated person to play the music. The best man would be good for this. Ok now you have your whole wedding done and guess what if you did everything I said you spent less than $2000 so far.
Reception
You definitely want to have an awesome reception so your going to need a hall, DJ, car, food, cake, decorations, picture taker and alcohol. You can spend a lot of money on renting out the hall depending on the size of space you need. I’d recommend calling around a bunch fire halls and asking about the price and seating. Some places will want upwards of $800 to rent but you shouldn’t have a problem finding one under $500 that meets your needs. DO NOT spend more than this. Some DJS charge around $600 so I would ask around to see if any of your family knows a DJ that can do a wedding cheap. You don’t need a famous DJ to do your wedding as long as they have music and have experience you’ll be ok. If you look hard enough there’s DJs that will do weddings for under $300. You’ll also need a ride to drive you from your wedding to your reception. If you get a limo plan to spend around $500 but if you want to save a lot of money get a nice rental car and have your best man drive you to and from the wedding. You can get a really nice rental car for under $100. Believe me if you roll up in a new Camaro at your wedding you won’t be disappointed. You can also save a lot of money on your cake. In fact the average wedding cake cost $500 but you can lower this cost by making your own cake. You can easily make a nice 3 tier cake for under $100. All you have to do is buy the pans, fondue, cake mix, and icing. If you don’t think your capable of doing this ask friends and family maybe they know someone who’s good at doing cakes. Before you make your cake look up pictures of a cake you like and try to copy it, thats what I did and as you can see from the picture my cake it turned out beautiful. You don’t have to be the ace of cakes to make a nice one. You can also save tons of money on the food for the reception. If you get your reception catered it will cost $10 or more a person. You can save alot of money by making your own food. When I say make your own food I don’t mean by yourself. I’m sure if you asked your family they will gladly help. Just designate certain family members to make certain foods. I’m sure most of you family members have a recipe that everyone loves. Have them make a lot of it and bring it to the reception. If you have 10 family members bringing 2 different foods each that’s 20 different choices of food, plus if your family does this for free it cost you nothing. For the alcohol if you have a lot of drinkers your going to need lots of beer. You can get 2 kegs of bud light for under $200 also you’ll need some shots for the bridal dance. Just get a few bottles of different liquor. I’d recommend getting a strong whiskey and then something weaker like apple pucker for people who don’t like the taste of alcohol. All together the alcohol should set you back under $300. If you want to get out of paying for the alcohol try jokingly to convince the best man its his duty to supply it, it’s worth a try. To decorate your hall your going to need center pieces of roses or other flowers in a vase, also party favors and table cloths. Like I said earlier buy your flowers at K-Mart because you can get 10 dozen of them for around $100. The vases will cost around $1 a piece and you can get can ribbon to decorate you vases for a few bucks. All together for around $125 dollars you can have 20 half a dozen rose center pieces for your wedding more than enough to make the place beautiful, but if you want more center pieces you can buy more vases and put less flowers in each vase and still save lots of money. Your party favors you can make yourself. Buy boxes and ribbons and fill with candy or whatever else you want. Depending on what kind of candy and how many favors you need you should spend less than $100 on these. Now to really make the wedding nice I’d recommend getting personalized napkins and matches. You can set one for each seat on the table and put your names and the date of your wedding on them. They only cost around $30 for 100 of them and you order them online. Also What makes a wedding nice is lots of candles you can get nice candles that with a good smell at Wal-Mart for a dollar a piece. These candles come in a small jar and can be decorated with ribbon. I’d get around 50 of them and set the matches you bought by them so people can light them at the reception. Just make sure your going to like the smell because the whole place will smell like it. Finally your going to want a lot of pictures for your wedding. Some photographers want $1000 to do a wedding but if you have a family member good at taking photographs you can designate them to do the picture taking for free. I’d recommend having more than one family member to do this because the more people you have taking pictures the more pictures you will get. Make sure you let them know what kind of pictures you want and make sure they are always close by so when a moment comes up that you want a picture of you can just tell them to take one. So now you have everything you need for your reception and if you listened to me you spent about $1500 on these things but there will be other small cost like the paper plates, eating utensils, etc. but after all that you should still be under $2000.
After Wedding
After the wedding you’re going to want a hotel. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on a hotel but you want to make sure it’s nice. You can get a nice room at a 3 star hotel for under $150 dollars. On the honeymoon you need to go somewhere fun and exciting. Not the same old beach you went to as a kid or a campground you love. I went the Las Vegas for my honeymoon and I had a blast. You can get a nice 7 day Las Vegas vacation for under $1000 dollars and for spending money you can use the gift money you got at your wedding it’s usually $1000 dollars or more.
You Did It!
So now you see you don’t have to spend $25000 dollars to have a nice wedding. If you listen to this guide you will have spent around $5000 including the honeymoon. The extra $20000 you would of spent would make a nice down payment on a house.