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

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Check out somethingborrowedblooms.com !!!

FH and I set a 15k budget from the get go but wanted to come in well under 10k... Realistically for the wedding we came in well below budget..... I also did DIY decorations for pretty much everything and made my headpiece and veil which help cut unnecessary expenses in my opinion.. Between FH and I we are about 100k household and got engaged 14 months before our date so we figured between the two of us we could save 1k a month without drastically changing our lives.. now things happened which caused financial strains so it was nice that we came in below that 15k budget we initially set. Obviously there are smaller things I've purchased here and there that I don't have a tally on but this is a pretty basic breakdown of our expenses.

Our venue: $3200 (my parents covered)

My dress: $1900 after taxes (my mom paid for $500 deposit)

Catering: $1,450

HMUA: $170

Bar: $510 (but we have to provide all the alcohol which we have been collecting last few months and will get beers when we get there).

Photographer: $1200

DJ: $700

Tux : FH got his rental free just had to get our sons which was less than $100

Flowers: I did DIY for all the flowers maybe spent $200

Lodging: $5,700 (this was our biggest expense but with our parents covering small portions it made this possible, we rented a 9 bedroom cabin for our wedding party and us to stay in for 3 days prior to wedding and 3 days post wedding)

Transportation: $625 (His parents covered this cost)

So actual wedding related we paid: around $5,730

Our parents contributed: $4,325

Like I said we covered the cabin too but that was more of a present for our friends and an appreciation gift.

My wedding budget is $2000. We chose that budget because we only have one income. I am a stay at home mom. We didnt want to ve drowning in debt for a big party. A large wedding wasnt important to either of us.
To stay in our budget, we are renting a really pretty cabin and campground for our venue. It is absolutely gorgeous and only cost me a little under $100 for two days. Our family is cooking the food and we are doing it buffet style. Our cake is actually cobbler because we both hate wedding cake. I got my dress for $400 but my mom decided to pay for it! A lot of the decor and flowers we are being given by people in town (very small town. Pretty sure everyone in town will be at our wedding) we arent doing a photographer (FH uncle offered to do it for free) our DJ and music will be done by spotify using huge speakers we got for $100 at Sams club. We just find deals where we can.

View Quoted Comment We did digital save the dates through paperless post. They have evicted that can coordinate with paper invitations or you can upload your own design (which is what we did). It cost less than $10 to send out 50-60 and it tracked who had opened them!

Darn autocorrect... evites

View Quoted Comment Center pieces, signs and the arch

We're in the 4k range.

We have a 20 people guest list. Being family and a handful friends.

We have a nice huge cake, a wedding photographer, floral, a nice dress

We're diying the catering because it's small. We also are doing a dinner house party and renting a home for reception venue cost. We're getting married at a free chapel. There is no dj and it's dj iPod.

Me me me!! Staying at $10k max!! Following!*

Our budget is 8k-10k, no more than that. We chose that budget because we would rather put money towards saving up for a house and furniture, and I am also still in school so we have to pay that as well. To save money, we are doing breakfast for the meal (and also because we love breakfast, so the choice still represents us!). We will be spending no more than 5k for that plus the venue. The food/venue is the bulk of wedding expenses, so that decision is the one that is helping us most with staying within our budget.

I am not having a low budget wedding. out budget is $20,000 but for NY that's low. i've been doing a lot of diy's and cutting budgets where i can. what i have found to be really helpful was https://thebudgetsavvybride.com/ this site has blogs, diy ideas, free printables (invitations, table numbers, programs, photo booth props, etc..) they also have a section where you can look at real weddings based on budgets. the bride has a full breakdown of their budget and where it went to. it was an awesome tool.

View Quoted Comment Thanks so much! I'm about to check them out.

View Quoted Comment DJ iPod is probably better. A DJ quoted me $1k and says that he uses a YouTube playlist 😑 I stared at my phone but like 5 minutes trying to make sense of it

I initially wanted a budget of $500 (elope and rings). But once my husband chimed in, we set our budget at $10k.

Some areas we save on were:

Our guest list was 65; with 50 RSVP.

Our venue was an art gallery (cost $900);

Food trick catering;

we used my husband's contacts in the art field for photography;

bought my dress custom made online for about $375-450;

DIY alcohol bar (wine, beer, signature drinks only - cost about $200);

DIY decor - used succulents instead of flowers

First - Congrats on your engagement!

We initially decided on $5,000 - but I have a very large family of 90 that we see multiple times a year, so because of food purposes, we moved it to $6,000.

We were really smart on picking our venue. It comes with tables, chairs, linens, TONS of decorations, rooms to get ready, a fridge and fully equipped bar area. This alone saved us a lot of money. The only decorations we will be adding is flowers.

We have a grocery store near us that makes these super light and fluffy cupcakes. We are ordering about 150-175 of them from there, along with a small 8" cake for us to cut. The total cost will be less than $150.

We booked a bartender that allows us to provide our own alcohol, so we plan to buy in bulk and return what is not opened. The perk, they are providing the serving licence for the event.

When it came to invites, we are ordering them from VistaPrint and using a coupon "invite30" for 30% off. We are also doing our RSVP's online to save money. I already did my Save The Dates (because we have a lot of out of town people coming) and spent less than $20 including postage.

Hope these help!

We invited about 200 people & have a budget of 10k but is flexible. If we go over by 1-2k it won't rlly upset me. I've had very miniscule help from my parents (which is fine I expect none). They paid for our invites ($111 for 200) & my mom is making my cake.

View Quoted Comment SAME! We are only having 22 people, immediate family only and 2 couples that we are close with. We will have a party later at the end of the summer. Our budget is around $5000.00, we would rather spend $ on our honeymoon.

We Spent about $8K over one year because we didn’t want to use credit cards. Here’s how we kept costs down: no photographer. We used an app that my guests downloaded and all their photos taken during the weekend were uploaded to a cloud in real time. Got some great shots!

We had 30 guests.

M y daughters were my bridesmaids. They’re all working adults and ordered their own dresses according to my color palette. I think I sent them each $50.

We booked a block of rooms at a boutique hotel and held our reception there, in a small Italian bistro. Because our wedding was in the morning, our reception fit into the afternoon slot when the bistro is closed to the public. So not only did we have the quaint bistro, we had the outdoor back patio and garden to ourselves.

We chose brunch items for food, had one champagne toast, had an open bar, and had pitchers of iced tea, cutting down on the per consumption cost.

The only decorations we had was baby’s breath in mason jars on each table.

My daughter made me an origami bouquet. Materials cost me about $60. My daughters carried a swag of dried lavender in the ceremony.

We got married on the upper balcony of the Kennedy Center overlooking the Potomac and Georgetown. The space was free because it’s taxpayer funded.

I used Etsy for everything! For invitations, save the date, and hand fans I got digital images I could edit with our info and then got them printed online. Everything was spectacular. Ordered envelopes from Etsy.

I also used Amazon for a lot. Our give sways we’re miniature mason jars filled with pink and lavender Hershey’s kisses. And we had small bottles of bubbles instead of rice.

That night we all went to a piano bar and everyone paid for himself or herself.

The following day our friends held a bbq for everyone we couldn’t invite to the wedding. Shopping around, we got Southern bbq food for $400, enough food for about 75 people.

It was a blast! Very intimate and relaxed. Our biggest expenses were my dress and my husband’s suit.

My budget was $5k but we pushed it out 8 months so now we made it $10k. I’m making my own invitations, and a lot of my decor will be DIY as well. I’m making cupcakes I stead of buying a cake.

My budget was $7000 with 75 guests but because of my FMIL who has decided she wants to invite everyone she knows...it's now $8,000. She's offered to pay some extra cash since we're going over the guest list and budget.

I have to admit it's been really tough to keep things under control. There's so many small things that you just don't think about and it all piles up into more and more money.

My Mom paid for my dress and my venue is one of those everything is included places so the only other things i've had to purchase are flowers, candles, place cards, and invitations.

View Quoted Comment I have not heard of an invitation kit before! I’ll def be checking that out! We are having 20 people, including niece and nephews ages 14-2.