Skipping entirely vs skimping

100% on the champagne toast!!

Our florals are so simple too! I think right now we're just going to have the memorial candle on a small table with a little phrase framed, which I can easily make on Word lol.

We are skipping a lot of traditional activities and keeping things simple. This is a second marriage for us both so didn't feel the need to go overboard. We both decided we would rather have a small, affordable wedding and save our money for an amazing honeymoon.

We are skipping the champagne toast, favors, photo booth, videographer, memorial table, bouquet toss, garter toss, menus, printed programs, and DJ. I am displaying a sign at the ceremony in lieu of a program (on a vintage window pane). We are creating a playlist and using a DJ app + borrowed speakers for the reception. If I do print menus, I'm going to do 1 per table (printed on the back of the table number).

I've skimped on florals (arbor, bridal party, aisle markers, and sweetheart table only). I've asked my florist to sub flowers for local, in season options to keep costs down. I've also skimped on Save the Dates (I designed and printed them with Canva for $35). I will be printing half our wedding suite at home and the other half will also be printed via Canva. Skimping on the wedding cake as well; my mom will be making something rustic yet elegant and tasty. We also skimped on our bar by making it a modified bar (serving beer & wine only), but we will have a spiked hot chocolate bar during cocktail hour (:

I hope this helps!

We are not doing the garter/bouquet toss, save the dates, programs or video

We didnt skimp on anything because well its my wedding so if we were indifferent about it, we just cut it out.

We're skipping parent dances completely (his mom is not going to like that lol), using fake flowers instead of real ones, and skipped a videographer because we really don't think we can fit it in the budget. I'm just going to ask people to take videos (a lot of our guests have iphones) and send me the footage so I can do the video myself.

Just want to speak as a former bride, that not having videography ended up my biggest regret. And I said the exact same thing - "I won't even watch it!"

I have about 4 minutes of footage, recorded on a crappy home video camera, and I've watched that footage more in the last two decades since than I've ever looked at my photos.

There is so much that can't be captured in photos. Mannerisms, voices. My dad died last March, and I wish so much that I had his voice (all I have is a brief clip when we were cutting our cake, where I can hear him in the background shout "alright!") I'll never see the two dumb kids that we were, in real time, as an accurate representation that isn't just the carefully-curated photos that our photographer thought looked the best. As the days pass, I've forgotten much of the "real" part of the wedding, and all I remember is the manufactured memories of pictures of centerpieces and bouquets and standing at the altar.

I'm just saying to think this one through more than the impulse of "I'll never watch it." I've cautioned every friend of mine who has been married since, and all of them agreed they watched their video more than they ever thought they would, and far more than they looked at their photos.

I definitely appreciate your perspective and agree that specific mannerisms and inflections can't necessarily be caught in a photo. Nothing about our planning process has been on impulse - it's all very well thought out and calculated. I'm an avid scrapbooker and love looking through my old scrapbooks, so I know the scrapbook I make of our wedding will be something I look at all the time. We'll be live streaming the ceremony and the video from that will be saved. While we aren't paying for it, we still will have a video of sorts. The big thing for us, though, is that we are in a high cost of living area and have a VERY tight budget. We simply don't have the space in it for videography.

Since we are paying for most of it, if we don't want it, then we are eliminating it! Skipping: bridal party, DJ, videographer, all paper products (invites, save the dates, menus), cake, champagne toast, favors. Only exception to the "don't care, not paying" rule is photography, because I know how important it will be for my family and especially fiance's family to take nice family pictures after the ceremony, so we are willing to spend more for a higher quality person for longer time.

At our wedding, we skipped:

Save the dates - everyone was local, this just seemed an unnecessary expense
Programs - everyone knows what goes on in a wedding ceremony
Guest book - I just didn't see the need, I couldn't imagine going back and reading it. Every time I've been a guest expected to sign the book (or alternative), I've just awkwardly signed my name with something cookie cutter like "best wishes," so I just didn't see this as important.
Putting the garter on the bouquet catcher - not sure if this counts as skipping, because we did still do the toss, but I've always found this part of it to be very weird
Anniversary dance - there were only two married couples in our guest list (and one couple who may or may not have been married, I still don't know - that's my MIL, and that relationship is a very sore subject that would have set several people off if they'd gone up during such a dance. I decided not to risk it at all.)
Alcohol - I wasn't old enough to drink, and no one in the wedding party was, either; additionally, my family doesn't drink, so I decided I wasn't paying thousands of dollars for my in-laws to get hammered (also, see above - add alcohol to an already volatile situation, and it wouldn't be good.)
Video - this is the one thing I'd change if I could go back. I would have skimped on my photography to make room for video, knowing what I know now.

I guess we technically "skimped" on flowers, but I don't really feel like that. The venue was naturally beautiful on its own and needed very little, and what I did have, I made sure was done in a way that it would be inexpensive (choosing a single variety of an in-season flower.)