How to Plan a Budget Conscious Wedding
a NON exhaustive guide
My husband(!) and I recently got married and I read all the blogs, I listend to all the Podcasts, I watched all the videos about how to plan a wedding, both in general and on a budget.
My biggest points of advice include venue advice, food, decor, and budget as a whole.
The venue is what should probably nailed down first especially if you are not committed to a certain date yet. We got married at a church, and I loved that decision especially if you care at all about budget and if you’re a fellow believer, city park facilities are the next best option in this regard as far as I’m aware. This can either be a huge budget line item or a relatively small one so chose carefully if you’re looking to save money in any way. We loved the church setting not only as Christians but because it was timeless, beautiful, classic, and had wonderful backdrops for us.
Decor was important to us don’t get me wrong but we definitely found a balance of having gorgeous pieces and keeping things minimalist and clean. We were very grateful for all the elements the church had including many tables, chairs/pews and plants around the church for us to have in the background as well as use. We bought faux florals for all our wedding party members and family as well as ourselves and for our altar table. We were very happy with this decision, it looked lovely, it was incredibly budget friendly and it made life so. easy. No joke. No worry about floral delivery or pick up day-of (much less building bouquets day of), no worry about keeping flowers in water either. I prepped all the flowers a bit before the the wedding – from building centerpieces to putting together bridesmaid bouquets and the wrist corsages, not to mention hand building my bouquet from scratch, which I was admittedly rather proud of as I was able to make a beautiful bouquet that looked exactly how I wanted it to look for a fraction of what it cost anywhere else. I will warn you I had to go to multiple stores multiple times as I narrowed down what I wanted to finally include in the end. We also bought one flower swag online that we used on a table at the altar, thankfully that was ready to go pretty much the second it came in the mail, though it was a stand alone item.
Decor for us also included photo frames and stands as that was a large part of our decor for the reception including parent and grandparent photos, though our cake and a few signs were most of the decor otherwise. We also were gifted a slideshow that my Dad put together of the 2 of us that added a personal element, additionally I had used photos of each of us at the age on the table number for the table numbers making the decor more personal and unique on a budget. We also recommend putting your engagement photos together in a gook with lots of white space to use as your okook, the free form writing allowance worked well for our case and we thought it was a fun use for the pictures we had. The one note to add is that we had mentioned a desire for friends to share favorite Bible verses for us and that admittedly didn’t happen very much, but we probably should’ve included a note on the invite or in front of the guest book as well.
We also chose to buy one large customized sign for displaying on a stand borrowed from our church outside the venue. This I designed with the same font and graphics we had used for our other limited stationery. I then downloaded the design and had it printed at a local print shop for rather cheap. We decided to do this as our venue wasn’t a “wedding and event venue” nor was it our church so we wanted people to feel welcome as soon as they got to the door, at what may have otherwise been a largely unknown venue.
We asked our wedding party to purchase their outfits, this was the same if not cheaper than most rental options, and everyone was able to get things that fit them well and that they can hopefully use again, that said we had rather traditional colors and styling. We also provided accessories that we knew they weren’t as likely to automatically own as their gift, largely instead of items that said groomsman or bridesmaid, in an effort to make it reusable to each party member. I also loaned out a couple unique pieces we used for photos which worked well in my opinion.
We decided to book a DJ for the reception and we were thrilled with not only that choice but also our choice of DJ. We recommend getting a DJ if you can afford it but we also recommend being picky about who you pick and hire for your day, we chose an independent one that we met at another wedding he did a good job at. He was incredibly personable, accomodating and communicative, as well as a good listener. He was also very reasonable cost wise in our opinion. We recommend Rheo at The Beats Boutique.
We decided on a relatively simple pasta, bread and salad meal, that was delivered as the reception started ready to set out and be served. This worked great and although it was not the fanciest set up money could buy it worked well. It worked great on account of two added elements; we asked friends from our church to serve the food and then sent them a small thank you gift afterward, and we bought plates, cups etc separately from amazon that were disposable though classy and had them set out on the table to add to the decor as the reception began. While we think fancy plated meals are lovely our solution worked wonderfully on a budget, since we still wanted to serve a full meal.
I will also acknowledge we were also gifted our cake and cupcakes which were beautiful and delicious! So this was not a budget line item for us outside of the extra plates and forks.
Our favors were hersheys kisses in small organza bags at each place setting for our guests to either enjoy when they wanted a sweet treat or to take home with them. I would recommend a consumable – this was a easy crowd pleaser though.
The last note i have on consumables is that we only did non alcoholic beverages and this was mainly due to budget constraints when we initially put together a budget, but was also because our venue did not allow alcohol on site. We provided lemonade, water and coffee as well as sparkling juice bottles on each table, which was a tad minimalist, but worked well as far as I’m aware.
I should also note we were gifted our videography, so that was also not a budget line item that we had to account for, though we recommend looking into it if you can, this can range quite a bit depending on the coverage/style you’re looking for.
Here are some things I would recommend skipping if you’re looking to cut items or wondering what we didn’t miss that may be advertised to you in your planning: photo booth, polaroids for guest (though we borrowed my sisters for 2 special couple portraits to be fair), neon sign, almost anything that said bride, groom, fiance, fiancee, groomsman, bridesmaid, maid of honor, bestman, you get the picture… though I did buy a couple shorter white dresses for events like my bachelorette and bridal showers, floral walls, balloons, candles besides tealights.
We also recommend getting dance lessons or at the very least practicing if you’re swing dancers like us! This mad it easier day of, not fun, and I would argue more entertaining as a whole! That said we didn’t really choreograph or first dance. My dad and I did some light choreography for our father daughter dance though which worked well in that case.
We also highly recommend having your wedding all at one venue if at all possible, including where you get ready makes it even better in my opinion, that said you don’t need fancy getting ready rooms because almost anything is better than getting hair and makeup and getting dressed done somewhere else. That and there’s space to eat some lunch to boot. I will note that we also wanted our venue to have both a ceremony space and a reception space and were very happy with how that worked out. But arriving at one venue in the morning and leaving the same venue that evening made all other logistics much easier in our opinion. Though I’ll also note that we got the chance to set up or at least bring almost everything to the venue the day before. Though this included stowing bouquests in the reception hall before we could get into the getting ready room. This meant less chance of forgetting things off site before the wedding.
As for hair and makeup for brides, I would HIGHLY recommend getting one if there’s room in your budget, and I would prioritize this above real florals for instance. I’ve done my own make up for other events, but the way I didn’t have to worry about planning for product outside of purchasing the hairpins I wanted, and I didn’t have to worry about a shakey nervous hand for make up application or worry about color matching or smudging throughout the day was a game changer for me. I had tears of joy multiple times that day and as far as I’m concerned my make up and hair held up at least 90% across the board, though I did apply extra lip color I was provided with by the gal I hired from Blush Beauty Room just before I walked down the aisle. I found a very reasonably priced hair stylist (she’s actually my regular hairdresser, Nina B’s Salon), and a great budget friendly makeup artist whose work I liked, and I got the chance to do a trial run with both. My hairdresser also included a simple, beautiful, and classic french manicure as well day before the wedding.
All in all we feel like we ended up on the more budget friendly end of wedding planning though there’s certainly ways to make a wedding even cheaper and far more expensive. We were happy with the balance of making some investments so to speak, while holding off on a lot of what has gotten popular in recent years and we found to be unnecessary.
Cover photo courtesy of our wedding photographer Lucien Photogrpahy – yes those are our rings ♥️💍
