Advice & Ideas on Saving for the Day!

Two pieces of advice:
1. consider how inclusive the venue is. It’s always cheaper to go with a venue that has more services added on. E.g catering, place settings, alcohol, planning/ coordinating. Hiring all these things yourselves separately is much more expensive and requires much more coordinating!
2. Flowers. This is where costs can really spiral. There is almost no limit to how many flowers you can have at your wedding. It’s not just place settings and bouquets - add on garlands, floral arches, ceremony arrangements, table arrangements, additional reception arrangements, boutonnières, in season vs specialty flowers... it’s endless. I’d recommend setting a strict floral budget first and talking to each particular vendor and see what you can get for that amount of $ and then making your decision that way. If you leave it open ended you can spend outrageous amounts of money in the blink of an eye!

We have a certain amount that comes out of each paycheck and goes right into our joint wedding fund. We also put both of our bonuses/tax refunds right into the account. I have a google doc’s spreadsheet that shows total price for each vendor, how much I’ve paid and how much I have left. Then I have a binder for every receipt and contract since we started planning almost two years out and I didn’t want to lose any important info in case I needed it closer to the wedding.

Doing electronically online...

Once you finalize your budget, divid that by how many months left till your wedding and it’ll show you how much you need to stash away each month. It was super helpful for my fiancé and I to see exactly what we needed to reach our financial goal. And some months we didn’t meet it but other months we exceeded it.

1. For starters, do not rule out all inclusive venues right off the bat. I did because the price seemed outrageous but now that I've picked all vendors and planned everything, I think it could have been more cost effective if I'd gone that route. Oh well.

2. Look long and hard at your guest count. Would this person really make or break the happiness of the day? If the answer is no, don't invite them. Between our friends, relatives, and the guest list being hijacked by parents, we quickly rolled up on 250 guests invited. You don't even realize how much it costs per person until you've already invited them and it's too late to change your mind. The more people, the bigger (and more expensive) the venue needs to be. You have to purchase more invites, Save the Dates, place settings, tables/chairs, centerpieces, food, alcohol, etc. This is the number one thing to destroy your budget.

3. DIY all that you can. I am DIYing flowers because they are outrageous. I chose a very simple style of completely neutral white roses/peonies/hydrangeas and greenery. I figured the more simple, the harder to mess up. I'm purchasing through Costco and Fifty Flowers. I am getting SO MANY flowers for under $1000... and this is for a larger wedding of 200 guests, 16 people in the bridal party, etc. I also chose to DIY my invitations because I wanted plain black and white. For 115 invites, I'm spending a quarter of the "normal" cost to do them myself.

4. To keep track, I made an excel spreadsheet. I have my personal budget at the top with my income, bills, food budget, etc. Writing it all out made it way to see how much I could afford to save each month. Multiply that by the number of months until you get married, and you have yourself a wedding budget. I also set a general budget for each vendor and tried to stay on track for those. My spreadsheet has every single wedding related item and what I have spent on it. I can see what is still owed and total that has been spent to date. I'd be happy to email it to you if you need some guidance. All the cells are connected through formulas so it would be very easy to alter it to fit your situation Hope this was helpful!

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much for this! Like your guest count, we came to the number of 125 but once our parents took a look at it they added more relatives/extended family members we are now at 150 about. Our venue is already chosen and we have have a few of inclusive centerpieces. I do want to go to the ‘simple and classic’ look as it is an August Wedding but I’m having trouble with a color scheme and what decorations/flowers to consider. Any other advice on that as well? Thanks so much!!

View Quoted Comment Thank you!!

View Quoted Comment Ah thanks so much! I love the look of flowers but definitely do not have the budget to go crazy with them. I’ve been thinking of some DIY flower arrangements and even having my bridal party bouquets be fake flowers just to save some money. I’m afraid some may think that’s cheap but then again it’s my wedding and they’re the guests.

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I'm not sure what your budget is but I was able to get enough flowers for 8 bouquets, 15 boutonnieres, 4 corsages, 25 greenery centerpieces, 25 foot garland, flower girl petals, 2 huge arrangements for wine barrels, and cake flowers for $740. I originally did a consultation with Fifty Flowers and gave her a budget of $1100. She asked how many of each item I'd need (bouquets, centerpieces, etc.) and then gave me a recipe for each of them. At the end, they send you how many of each thing you need to buy (200 roses, 150 peonies, 45 bunches of eucalyptus,etc.). Now that I knew how much I would need to make everything I wanted, I went and price checked those things with other stores to shave the cost down. White roses at Fifty Flowers were $80 and at Costco $40 so I decided to buy those at Costco. Garland at FF was $190 and at Costco it was $99. I was able to cut the flowers from $1089 (purchasing all at FF) to $740 (purchasing at FF and Costco). I definitely recommend doing a consultation with them even if you don't buy from them. It gave me so much guidance and was completely free!

View Quoted Comment Yes I think these are all great ideas and 100% your wedding your choice! One other tip is that floral greenery (like ferns, eucalyptus etc) is SO much cheaper than actual flowers. So is babies breath. At most places near me it’s like a few dollars for a huge bunch. So you could do DIY arrangements / bouquets that are mostly greens or even all greens for much cheaper. Here’s a DIY tutorial that actually does it with fake flowers: https://www.afloral.com/blogs/how-to-diy/diy-greenery-bouquet
Anyways I’ll stop now but I once used to work for a florist so I just love talking about this stuff lol.

View Quoted Comment You are a life savor! Thank you I’m on FF right now to check out prices and will be double checking with other places before buying!

View Quoted Comment Awesome thank you ladies!

We are spending around $5,000 total (excluding venue). The trick is to prioritize what's important and to DIY as much as you can. I found a wedding book online for free that's helping me stay organized and i'm getting quotes from many people before booking. Always make sure to ask if there's any wiggle room with a price. We ended up knocking a couple hundred off our photographer by doing 6 hours instead of 8, and we were able to get our venue for a lot less by doing it on a sunday. Put back all extra money you get and keep an eye out for sales or items/services you can borrow from friends and family!