He shared with me:
We went down to the clerks office of whatever state we plan to get married in to get our marriage license. That was $50 for kentucky. Then we decided on a place that meant a lot to us to get married at. We hired an officiant that was ordained to do a small ceremony with just me, her, and one witness for each of us. The officiant was like $125.
Make sure if go this route of hiring someone that they look and present themselves how you want. (No one showing up in a hoodie and sweatpants like our guy did.)We were gonna do all this outside but it was cold so we called around to see if they was a venue that we could rent for 20mins for the wedding/ceremony. An art museum called us back saying it would be there treat if we came so they let come there at no cost. (That’s extremely rare and we got lucky, most other places will charge $500+ even if it’s just for 10-20 mins.
Once the ceremony was complete (took 10mins), we took professional pictures from a friend who is a photographer part time. Then we went out to eat, and went home. As far as costs, all our cost came out to about $1,000. Going out to eat twice, the tux, the dress, her makeup, shoes, marriage license, officiant, her ring, photography were the only costs. Again this isn’t for everybody, make sure if you want those things like a nice church, a lot of people, etc, you can definitely find a way to get them, but you’d bring fighting not only costs but covid right now as well.
We just never saw the point in spending thousands on one day when we could save that money, do it cheaply and have a better honeymoon. I’ve seen people go so deep into debt for one day. But different strokes for different folks.
