More Tips for Saving on Wedding Costs

Lots of great suggestions and testimonies left on my posts titled Saving on Wedding Tips from a Wedding Consultant, Part 1 and Saving on Wedding Tips from a Wedding Consultant, Part 2. We'll start with some thoughts on saving in some places and spending in others:

My wife got her wedding dress for $150 in Chinatown and it was a gorgeous dress. And we spent $500 more for a professional "professional" photographer and absolutely adore our photos. Find the 2-3 things most important to you (for us food and photography) and spend your money there. Save on everything else.

Maybe that's why the average wedding is so expensive -- people are just spending like bandits on everything. Seems like you can pick and choose where to spend and save and come way below the national average costs.

Next, here are a couple great money savers -- have your wedding on an "off" day and do some of the work yourself:

My wife and I saved by holding our wedding on a Sunday. Caterers and photographers generally will discount their services on this day because they aren't as busy.

My wife also bought silk flowers and did the arrangements herself. This was the biggest source of savings in our wedding.

And then, there's saving on the cake. You can rent your cake or buy it some place cheaply. Also, a tip on saving on flowers is included in this comment:

If you have HyVee groceries near you, they provide a fine cake bakery for a very affordable cost. We ordered sheet cakes, plus a smaller three-tier main cake. Total served (this coming Saturday!!) will be 275 guests. Total price for the cake: $414.00. Many brides are now using wholesale flower companies and spending several hours the day before the wedding (with their bridesmaids or other helpers) assembling simple bouquets. We used flowerbud.com. We ordered a total of 240 stems (mix of calla lilies and tulips) for $420.

Comments

[Katy Raymond]

I'm the lady who contributed the ideas about getting the cake price down and the DIY bouquet assembly. My daughter's wedding was fabulous (she's been married 2.5 weeks already!). She's our only daughter and we wanted to give her a nice wedding, but with some reasonable planning we held it down to 1/3 the national average. And we had nearly 300 guests with dancing and an hors d'oeuvres reception. It CAN be done.

It does help that she wasn't a Bridezilla kind of a girl. Actually, that will serve her well her whole life! :)

[wedding supplies]

is there a link to the DIY bouquet assembly you talk about?

[Katy Raymond]

No bouquet assembly instructions, per se. We ordered bulk flowers online at flowerbud.com . My DIL had done the flowers for her own wedding and so she helped us form bouquets (tulips in the middle, calla lilies around the outside), wrap them with florist tape, then wrap them with satin ribbon. With three of us working, the whole operation only took us three fun hours. We did NOT have those big floral arrangements which often appear in the front of the church. The venue we used was so architechturally beautiful that we felt we didn't need to add huge displays. Which saved us annother large amount of $$.

[Jo]

There are so many ways to save money on weddings and still have an absolutely (and expensive-looking) wedding. I have three older sibs who are all married and each one of them had beautiful weddings and as far as I know all did some creative planning to keep costs down. For instance, my sis had a May wedding so her center pieces for tables were little flower pots from the grocery store and some larger plants for decor in other places. The flowers were only a few dollars apiece and served great as thank-you gifts for special people and helpers.

A nice dollar-store can have nice stuff. My bro and his wife had photos on the tables, the frames were from the dollar store and the pics from family members.

Or thift stores. My best friend had ecclentic decor and her wedding and it looked fabulous. If it all goes matches and goes together it doesn't need to be identical!! Plus, there are so many things that can be reused and borrowed. Honestly, I know dozens of people that probably have yards-upon-yards of tulle to give away!!!

I only hope that if and when I get married, that I can follow suit and have just as fabulous wedding as all of them!!! (Plus, borrow all of their wedding stuff!!!!)

[Ryan]

Two words:

Destination wedding

It rolls the cost of a honeymoon and wedding all into one, plus you have less attendees to pay for due to travel costs.

[Midg]

My wife and I had a wonderful wedding back in 1994. The total cost of our wedding was $2198 for about 100 guests. We managed this with the help of our friends and church. The chapel cost us $100 plus $100 for a wedding coordinator. We got the church's reception hall for free because we were members of the church. We asked a friend to be our photographer as his wedding gift. We got professional quality photos for the cost of buying and developing the film. My wife's aunt is a florest. She provided all the flowal arrangements as her wedding gift. Since she is a florest she was able to get all the flowers directly from a wholeseller. Some other friends who were college students and couldn't afford a gift managed our reception and decorated the reception hall. My wife's mother, aunt, and grandmother made her wedding gown. With a little creativity and the help of a few friends there is no reason a wedding has to cost a fortune.