Poor Girl Wedding Pitty Party: You're Invited!!!

FILs wanted us to have a local reception after the wedding in Vegas and are helping foot the bill. We're doing it at the zoo in December, which is off season and a lot cheaper than doing it in summer or spring, and guests can stick around afterwards for the Xmas light displays (that's my "entertainment" for the reception).

Got clearance vases at Tuesday Morning and clearance Xmas bulbs at Big Lots and collected pine cones (free) to make the centerpieces.

My budget is 8000, and we found a weekend get away at a resort for 6000, for 25 of our friends and family to stay, ( we have alot of out of town family that we are saving the 12 rooms for them ) and that package includes everything from the wedding to the fairwell breakfast two days later. and 60 people can come to the wedding. bought my dress off of ebay for 80 bucks, Love it! we are asking the groomsman and best man just two wear black pants with a white dress shirt and ive asked the bridesmaid and MOA to just wear a black dress that they are comfy in, i'll order silk flowers instead of real. for a couple of hundred bucks, and make my own centerpeices. I'm planning on doing a few DIY projects to personalize it to us. most likely we will stay at the resort a couple of days longer for our honeymoon, So far we are way under our budget. Our Dj and photographer was free, since we know them personally. So good luck, it can be done cheaper the the t.v shows tell you

OMG Where do I begin. Let's see. FH's cousin is an officiate, my sister is having my cake done, I made my own save the date photo cards and I'm doing my own formal invitations. My engagement ring and wedding band set was alittle over $100. Price doesn't mean squat to me. It's the thoughts that count the most and will last a life time. Even though it's a nice set. I bought most of my wedding stuff at Walmart. A friend and I is doing my bouquets my my girls and myself with artificial flowers so that gives my girls a keepsake for them to keep forever. And my FHs cousin is helping me with decorations. And another cousin of FH is making my cake topper and letting me use the arch that her and her husband made for her brothers wedding and she's decorating it for me. My girls get to choose a dress in there favorite color and style and the guy they walk with has to match just their tie and cumberbund with the girls dress color and them with black tux and white shirt and my FH a white tux and royal blue tie and cumberbund since outline and back of my dress is royal blue. And I found my dress for $115 hopefully to be ordering it this week or next week. And for our reception a few of us is making foods/dishes of our choice and favorites And a BYOB after party later that night since we are getting married in the local church. I live in a very small community. Either everyone knows everyone or they are all related somehow or another.

And I fail to mention the band for the after party is a group of guys that played together in band that use to play the local bars and clubs and not charging us a dime nothing but to get fed. An they are pretty good players. And for my photographer is a friend that does professional photos with her own digital camera and her work is better than most professionals that's been in the business all their life. And she's only charging me $275. For before ceremony/reception and after and no limit on photos and I will get a disk with all the photos to do as I wish. I can print them myself or take them to Walmart or walgreens or where ever to have them printed. Which I will prolly prin them myself. So cutting corners and saving money where ever we can an still have a nice wedding. So it pays to know people and have close amply and friends with the hookups

I've found lots of good stuff at thrift stores and garage sales. I bought my wedding gown from a place that sells samples and discontinued dresses. The cake topper and ring pillow will be the ones from my grandparents. The fancy clothes for my kids came from Burlington coat factory. And we're buying flowers at the grocery store the day before the wedding. All in all it should be less than 5,000

My parents are donating my dress; DIYing all the flowers with silk from Micheals/Hobby Lobby when i have a coupon or theyre on sale; buying a lot of my stuff from Oriental Trading; Found shoes on sale for $20; Made my invitations; DIYing my aisle runner using petals from Ebay, 2000 for $5; making our own wedding cake and cupcakes; making my veil; printing our own programs; i can get about half of our postage for free through my work. that right there saves us tons of money. Our budget was a lot lower but i became selfish bridezilla and insisted upon a fancy venue with a dance floor and dj, so that spiked our budget up by about $500

Bought my dress on sale from DB well under my moms budget, got an all in one venue (ceremony, reception, food), making my own centerpieces with flowers from Garden Ridge and the Wal, wine bottles, and vases from DT. Making bm bouquet with flowers from the same place. Shoes were bought on clearance for 50, tiara I bought like 5 years ago for ten from cl, veil for 20 from ebay, petticoat from goodwill for 5, attempting my ow.n make up. So far the big ticker items will be the venue and photographer/videographer.

Also only having 50 guests, got invites n such from vistaprint for 26.00. The flowers from garden ridge come in huge bunches so buying a bunch and using wire cutters to cut them apart so I can mix them up.

Although my wedding is 19 months away. I like you don't believe in spending a ton of money on this day. Plus we are paying every single penny ourselves. Our guest list is 40 max including us. I am only having a MOH and FH will have BM. Our son is our RB. I will be DIY'ing, invitations, centerpieces, card box, bouquet's, boutonniere's, corsages, our ceremony and reception is happening in the same space. It is a historical mansion so no need to decorate. We are doing consumption bar rather than open bar (thankfully not a lot of heavy drinkers), no dance afterwards (so no extra food required), no limo, no honeymoon, no bridal party's or stag or stagettes. music will be on IPOD.

I was able to find a reception hall that does a complete wedding package that includes, dinner, dj, photographer, cake, centerpieces, open bar, linens etc. for about $5,000 for 125. Since that takes care of most of it i am just left with favors and invitations. I found wedding templates at weddingchicks.com and plan on making all of the invitations myself using pearlescense card stock. Hope that helps

My orignial budget goal was about $2K for 200 guests, but in reality it may be closer to $3.5K. Ill have to come back and post all of my actual expenses!

The further I get into wedding planning, the more I just wished we eloped..lol

I can't justify spending this money..ugh

We are having both ceremony and the reception later at the homes of family. So no venue fee.

Cousin is doing photography for airfair and hotel (both events)

Brother officanting.

BP getting dresses and suits to wear again.

FLowers DIY

Main Reception in memphis

Mom making cake

Mom and I will do most of the cooking and decorating.

Using mom's already set up annual flower budget as our flower budget there.

We are doing every thing !

We got all our flowers , holders and ribbion with couponsand sales (100)

using things in our house to decorating

family is doing flowers cooking decoration and tear down

cousin is playing the sax for me as I walk down

and any other extar thing has be cut

2000 for a diy wedding isnt bad

We are doing every thing !

We got all our flowers , holders and ribbion with couponsand sales (100)

using things in our house to decorating

family is doing flowers cooking decoration and tear down

cousin is playing the sax for me as I walk down

and any other extar thing has be cut

2000 for a diy wedding isnt bad

I cut corners and comparison shopped whenever I could. We're in Delaware.

- Cocktail hour & 4 hour Brunch reception for 55 ppl - with action stations (omelette & pancake) in addition to brunch buffet, including $1000.00 consumption bar - $3,000.00

- Goodwill Bridal Extraviganza dress - $299.00

- Won $100 off my wedding cake - net fee $125.00

- Shoprite flowers - $215 (incl delivery)

- Photographer - up & coming - did at least 20 weddings prior and now charges 2x the cost $1600.00

- DJ - also did my twins HS graduation party - but has also done several weddings $450.00

*Made my skirt, my mother bought the blouse (she wanted to buy the dress, but there's no "dress" that I liked, so this worked out!)

*Making paper flowers (LOVE scrapbooking sales!) for centerpieces and for the WP and myself.

*BMs and GM are wearing dresses/suits they can wear again in the color pallette I give them.

*making my own wedding cakes/cupcakes

*venue is a place that belongs to a friend of my father who took pity on us LOL

*venue is pretty much self decorated

*MADE the ring bearer's pillow out of an old embroidered hankie I got for 86 cents and a brass key charm I got for just over a dollar and fabric/lace I had on hand.

*Flower girl's basket came from Dollar bin at Target for $3

*VERY simple invites we ordered from Vistaprint and glittered/decorated up.

I'm sure there's more, but my head hurts LOL

So reassuring to know I'm not the only budget bride making it work out there! Love these ideas ladies <3

A wedding should be amazing because its the celebration of love, not because someone had the best decor or had a really neat photoboth ect. Things are nice and sometime it seems easy to forget that things mean nothing... if at the end of the day you marry you're true love the wedding was fabulous! So screw the people who would rather judge your etiquette and critique every detail cause they're not fortunate enough to get to see the true beauty.

@Celia, I actually do have over 150 close family. Lol. 90% of that 150 is on my dad's side.

Our wedding is for 300, and we've made the recent decision to cap our wedding at $25,000. The bulk will go towards food BC we both love food.

---

* I made our bouquets & bouts.

* We bought our vases from Goodwill, Michaels, and Dollar Tree. For our centerpieces alone, there will be a total of 70 vases, which we've spent less than $50.

* I found my wedding gown, brand new, at Goodwill for around $50.

* I found my veil for $3 at Goodwill, too. It isn't new, but I love it. It's a 2-layered elbow veil w/satin and pearl flowers on top.

* I bought my MOHs and MOHs' dresses on sale at DB.

* We aren't serving cake. Our reception dinner includes a dessert, so we're just serving that in lieu of cake. My friend, a baker, is baking a tiny cake for us.

* I'm making our altar, which we'll use as a photo backdrop at the reception.

* A lot of the decor are things we had already or we plan to keep.

Im glad im not the only one with a realistic budget! my girlfriends mom is making our cake, her dad is a dj although im still not positive he'll want to do it, hes not a big fan of his daughter being a lesbian, but it could be so much worse. were doing a potluck, she got her dress from a very kind lady paying it forward, weve got lots of friends helping out, making food, friend is doing the photography, all our favors are diy....our engagement rings and wedding bands are from the pawn shop so they were all cheap....getting married in a park so that limits the flowers nessecary...and after all of this, i still dont have enough money!!