Where are my fellow low budget brides ($10k or under)?

So, in looking at our budget, if we spend $200 a night just on dinner on our honeymoon (Tuesday-Saturday) we will come out spending just barely $12K on wedding and honeymoon. I think our actual wedding is closer to 81/2 K or maybe 9.

Before we got engaged, FH sat me down and said he was scared because weddings were so expensive. His cousins and friends had spent an upwards of $30-$50K on a wedding, and he was scared we couldn’t make that happen. To which, I said “I got this!” And we decided that when we got engaged, we would have a longer engagement to help us save a pay everything off. We also decided it would be cheaper (Saved is $5K alone!) to get married on a week day.
I then told him we need a cap. We need a number that NO MATTER WHAT we cannot go over for wedding, that way we wouldn’t end up in a hole. We settled on $15K as our cap because we felt like we could reasonably save up and pay that off in what ended up being 26 months.
We’ve managed to save by doing some simple DIYs (invites, decorations, etc) and some of our vendors have blessed us with discounts. (20% off photography, 20% off catering, a free wedding cake, 25% off suits, etc)
Literally, research is the best thing in helping to save for a wedding. Look at ALL your options, not just the first ones. Talk to people. Sometimes you get a discount for booking so far in advance 🤷🏻‍♀️ But research and keeping your budget in mind is the BEST advice I can give.

We would like to stay under $10K, but not sure yet if we'll be able to do that. As of now, we have our guest list capped at 100, but we would be more comfortable with 75. Still some work to do there. We are saving money by not having: favors, programs, escort cards, or flowers. I will be doing some artificial flowers for the bouquets/bouts, but no floral decor. No videographer. We basically figured out how much we could realistically save each month, times the number of months until the wedding. That's our budget. But like I said, I'm hoping to come in under budget.

Setting our priorities is another way to save. We care most about the food, music and the people. Everything else is kind of extra. I also booked the major vendors early on, so that I could make monthly payments to them, and have the whole thing paid off before the wedding. So far, we're on track.

Our budget is $10000. We are doing a lot of DIY, cut the guest list to 100, no attendants, and picked a venue that allowed us to bring in our own alcohol.

I wasnt going to get the grooms cake but hes been so supportive of me doing it all my way the way i want and not having much say at all not even tux color that i had to do something special and just for him ! Wasnt that bad a price either hes going to love it and i cant wait to see his face when he does will be priceless

View Quoted Comment We did same thing my venue is almost paid off only like 200 left bc we started paying early so no debt after the wedding its never good to start your married life in debt specially bc of getting married. They say it doesn't pan out well for the married couples so we started early paying on it once we booked to

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I love all of your plans and I can't wait to see your BAM! Where did you get your faux florals from? They are beautiful!

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All over the place! Michaels, hobby lobby, wish, craigslist. I’ve been collecting roses and peonies in my colors from wherever I could find them.

My budget is 10k becuase that is all we can comfortably affordable. I refuse to get into any debt due to my wedding. Fortunately, the 10k includes help from both our parents so our portion after their help will be around 5k.

To cut cost we will be using the help and services of some of our family members. FH aunt is making invites for us, another aunt is baking almost all the desserts, his uncle is our officiant, and his cousin will be decorating the venue. Also our friend is a DJ and will be doing it as a gift to us.

My aunt is our day of coordinator, my cousin is helping with creating table numbers and centerpieces, and a few family members will be making food (cultural dishes).

All in all my family and FH family is helping us alot with this. I am beyond grateful because at 25 and 30 we really were not going to be able to afford a large wedding that included most of our family. (we both come from large close knit families)

Also our venue allows us to bring our own food and alcohol. We are doing the wedding on a Sunday (for religious reasons) which is alot cheaper. The venue has space for our ceremony and reception and provides us with some lines, tables, chairs, and ice machine so that helps alot. Our guest count is 180 but the low price of the venue is what is saving the budget right now.

Our budget is $5000 and that includes our honeymoon. I feel like I am in an extremely fortunate situation. First off, this is not our first marriage for either of us so we are more willing to let the little things go. My sister is a professional photographer and owns her own bakery so all we had to do was buy her a plane ticket and she will take care of the rest. We are compiling our favorite music and will have a friend be in charge of piping it in. My daughter is my MOH/Bridesmaid and FH is only having two groomsmen. We are getting married in his parents church so no charge there, we will have the reception there as well. I have a girlfriend who caterers her church events and is used to feeding 200+ people so that is being taken care of for $500 (she is a manager in a grocery store so she has the hook ups) . We are having a brunch wedding and serving eggs, pancakes, bacon, a fruit and yogurt parfait bar, 5 flavors of assorted muffins (compliments of my sister) and mini cheesecakes. Another group of friends (mutual between FH and myself) have volunteered to handle to decorations and they want them to be a surprise so we will find out on our wedding day what the venue looks like and my daughter's Godmother is gifting us the flowers. I found the most amazing dress on Amazon for $99 and a close girlfriend of mine is a seamstress who will be gifting me the alterations. We decided to do evites for the wedding invitations so that was free and our biggest expense is our honeymoon which we decided to take the 4 day Mexican Rivera cruise. So far everything is running smoothly and I can't wait to see how everything turns out in 59 more days!

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That is great luck!

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For sure! I am definitely feeling spoiled right now!

I have $10k to spend but would like to keep it under $5k and use the rest towards redecorating our apartment and our honeymoon.

-We're skipping the DJ and doing Spotify.
-I will either pay for a photographer for the ceremony only, or my friends son who's a student will do the whole wedding on the cheap.
-I'm committed to buying a dress off the rack, for under $800. I've had one appointment so far and there's a good selection of clearance at David's Bridal!
-Under 50 people
-Taco Bar
-Grocery store sheet cake
-Cheap booze from Costco
-DIY decorations

The prices on everything is really overwhelming! For my venue we'll have to rent chairs and tables too, and I know there's a ton of other "little" stuff that carries a hefty price tag that I'm not thinking of right now. But I truly belive under $5k can be done!!

We started with a 6k budget. Now it is between 10-13k. We decided to spend the few extra grand on a wedding planner to take some of the stress (actually, most) off of me. I don’t have family helping or taking part in the wedding and we both work and have two boys. Now that most is paid I do wish we would have waited past that “engagement haze” and budgeted less. It’s possible. We said no to the beautiful 10k+ venue and chose one that was much much cheaper and included the rehearsal dinner. But still, it’s sticker shock for sure. A few things we did to save money (even though we will probably be a little over that 10k) was:
Choose a cheaper venue with all of the “bells and whistles”
We are having a dessert bar and small Walmart cake to cut.
My dress was under $500
We will most likely buy his suit instead of rent. He will get use out of it with work I’m sure.
We will have plenty of food and a cocktail hour but we aren’t “stuffing them to their gills” lol
Not using many fresh flowers and the ones we do use will most likely come from Sams club

I am proud to be part of your tribe! We originally set a budget of $3500-$4000 but not wanting to go over $5000. This is both of our 2nd marriages so there was a lot of things we just didn't care about this go round. We are saving up what we are saving on the wedding for a house. We saved a ton by doing pretty much everything decor wise ourselves. We kept the guest list as small as possible with me having such a big family. No bridal party, no dj. We will have a dessert table with donut towers and a s'mores bar instead of a cake and will do a buffet of heavy apps instead of a plated meal since we are having everything earlier in the day. Our venue doesn't allow alcohol so that was a big money saver. Ceremony and reception are at the same place. My dress was $99. The only thing we really splurged on is our photographer.

It was a huge money savor that my family owns a print shop, I also work there so all my signs, invitations, save the dates, etc were all free other than the certain stock I chose but that was discounted from our supplier.

If you are doing paper save the dates and invites, I know Shutterfly can be very tempting. I'd recommend Basic Invite who has much better quality and very affordable pricing. From what I've been seeing on a lot of posts, it's barely more or even sometimes less than lower quality sites like Zazzle. Plus there's more customization options!You can check it out and if you like what you see, I do have a 20% off code for non-clients.

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For my crowd, evites are plenty good enough.

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We're doing digital Save the Dates! Are you doing them through Evites or emailing them yourself? I don't want to pay for one of those delivery services but I'm not ready to insert every email either

It sounds like you are already well on your way to a budget friendly wedding.

1. What is your budget? Is it strict or flexible?

Our budget was $10k originally. In the end we paid less than $10k and that included our honeymoon. It was strict. If anything I wanted to spend WAY less NOT spend more. Luckily I had a lot of this already saved up before we even got engaged, ha! My logic was if he doesn't marry me at least I'll have a decent savings account.

2. Why did you choose that budget?

I wanted us to pay for it completely ourselves. No debt! That was really important to both of us, I also had to ensure I was able to save up the rest of it prior to the wedding date. This was comfortable for us. Believe me I would have rather spent it on our house down payment fund, but in the end it was amazing and we wouldn't have done it any other way.

3. What are you doing to save money on wedding expenses?

My Budget Breakdown <<link So I know my budget was more than what yours is now but that doesn't mean some of the items I saved on won't help you. We ended up saving loads on the attire, honeymoon hotel, flowers, and a few other keys items.

Wish you loads luck! Happy planning.

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Not sure. We're so far from that right now.

Our mutual wedding budget is 6K and we are paying for our respective attire separately. We are having a very intimate wedding with twenty people at most and an all inclusive wedding package at a beautiful bed and breakfast on the off season. We gave ourselves some wiggle room in the event that we wanted to splurge on something.