Budget priorities?

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We pretty much did the same thing! We prioritized food/booze (had a high-end caterer and our open bar included top shelf liquor), entertainment (9-piece live band), and florals (spent way too much on fresh flowers everywhere)...

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A bouquet of flowers from the grocery store is cheaper than fake flowers. Take a look at Instagram and Thumbtack.com for a dj.

Venue, food, photography didn’t really care about the decor

Our most expensive items will probably be the venue and the open bar. The venue is under 5k so my parents offered to pay to bulk of it. Ceremony and reception are in the same place which is another cost saver.

We are getting a lot of help from people offering to pay for things. I also picked a boho theme so that everything can be a little more laid back and DIY looking.

My FH's cousin also owns a catering company so we have a budget friendly option for food. He also has a friend who is a professional photographer that we are going to try and get. My aunt and uncle offered to pay for my dress. My mom's boss offered to arrange the flowers for free. My grandmother wants to pay for the favors and my other aunt wants to pay for the cake. I'm also very crafty so I will be doing most of the decorations myself. I expect that flowers will cost a bit but since we are doing it ourselves, we don't have to pay a florist a bunch of money.

I used to organize ad photoshoots in my previous job, so I'm honestly treating my wedding like a photoshoot. Anything I can get for cheaper, I'll find it. Any favors I can call in, I'll do it. Even if someone else is paying, I want to make sure I'm getting the best deal I can.

View Quoted Comment I second this!! For us it was definitely the food and the photographer. Everything else wasn’t as important

We definitely spent the money on the photographer as those pictures will be what we look back on in the future and went with a local florist.

The honeymoon is the bulk of our budget

View Quoted Comment Good idea! That’s a separate budget for us

Photography, then venues & catering

We are getting married on a shoestring budget of $5k. The venue was by far the biggest chunk of that money ($1,400), followed by food. Photography is also up there in costs. Priorities were set based on order of importance to us (some things we are skipping entirely) and what things we could not do ourselves and would need to pay for.



We are doing DIY florals, venue decorations, DJ, Hair, Makeup, and much more in order to cut costs and also because we are confident that we can create an event we will be happy with without paying for the pros to do everything. I love to thrift and do craft projects so that will help. We have tallented friends and family who have offered to help as well, such as my parents' all-around DIY skills and FH best friend who is our officiant. Cake will be simple but delicious (regular price for one large round cake rather than an expensive tiered/stacked wedding cake). 'Special Order' pricing for a custom cake is completely different and much cheaper than a wedding cake from the same bakery. Avoid using the word 'wedding' when getting quotes and look at vendors who serve more kinds of events than just weddings since their pricing is not as inflated.

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I love these tips! The only problem I've found with avoiding the word "wedding" when booking vendors is that it totally changes what they can provide. For example, DJs, photographers, videographers, and venues all offer specific services for weddings. Like our venue sets up all the chairs for the ceremony, which isn't a thing that would be needed for a non-wedding event like a reunion or retirement party. Or our photographer only has a 9 hour package for weddings. Love that idea for a bakery though!

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All such good points! I'm not sure if it's a regional/age thing, but in all the weddings I've been in or to, the bridesmaids pay for their own dresses, so I'm definitely asking my friends to pay for those. But in exchange, I'm giving bridesmaid gifts and putting together bridesmaid proposal boxes. And also not planning to have them travel farther than somewhere in the state for a bachelorette party.

View Quoted Comment It works for some things better than others definitely. Food, rentals (tents, misc. equipment, etc.), and decor it generally works to cut costs. My venue does the chair and table set up for all of the different events they host, including the non-wedding ones. I thought that was typical but maybe it is not.

View Quoted Comment I think the reception is typical for venues, but ours has a separate ceremony spot so there’s no need to set up chairs in the ceremony spot for events that aren’t weddings.

View Quoted Comment I keep forgetting about outdoor spaces and separate ceremony locations LOL. My bad. We are having a winter wedding and our ceremony and reception are in the same large room to keep it all indoors. Family members will just remove the ceremony chairs to open up the dance floor.

Our priorities are food, drinks and decorations 🥰

Catering was our big item!

We figured catering first and then low key on the rest. We aren’t super picky and just want to have fun and not spend a ton ❤️

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You can avoid the word ‘wedding’ and still get quality service. Some vendors prioritize weddings because they know they can charge more and no one will blink.. If one vendor doesn’t want your business, keep looking.

View Quoted Comment The problem we’ve found with that is that wedding packages genuinely offer more, at least with the vendors we’ve looked at. Like for the DJs, they bring two sound systems because our ceremony and reception are in two different spots at the venue. Or our photographer included a wedding physical album, but we asked them to take that cost off since we’ll design our own later.