Below is how a bride, Megan, came in under the $5K budget, in her words.
For inspiration, see product suggestions at the end of the post.
“Just graduated!!! Here’s a few shortcuts I took to keep everything under 5k 😁😁 we invited about 75 people, only 50-55 showed up. I preferred a smaller wedding due to the venue being farther away (like an hour) from our hometown, and having an open bar. We started planning our wedding last December, so we only had 5 months to work with. I think our grand total was about $4,600-4,800
Sola Wood Flowers
I bought like 300 flowers, received all the greenery to make my bouquet, corsages, boutonnières, and dye for the flowers – all for like $120 and it was A LOT in the package, and I was getting compliments all night. Also they last for so long, plus are better environmentally, way better than real or plastic flowers! And, making everything only took a few hours total but we did those a month ahead of the wedding during downtime on the weekends. No rush to it.
stillwhite for my dress
I went to David’s bridal to find the type of dress I wanted and exactly my size and everything for free tried on who knows how many dresses to find a few options, but I couldn’t rationalize spending $1000+ on a dress I’m hoping to only wear once. Hopped onto stillwhite, filtered it to dresses in my size and type I liked (even entered my dress number to get specific), talked to quite a few ladies selling theirs then found my perfect dress, exactly the color and size I needed for only $500 instead of $1000!! Only needed slight alterations due to gaining and keeping a lot of weight in my hips, so letting out the hips and pulling in the bust only cost $150 – it would have been fine without altering, I just couldn’t sit.
Got married on a Thursday
I know it’s a slight inconvenience to get married on a Thursday, but for us it was perfect. Weekdays at our venue were nearly $1000 less than weekend days so we spent only $1000 total for two days during the week for all access to the venue, had a day to decorate and rehearse after everyone got off work, then planned my wedding to be later in the evening so most people were off work or only had to take an hour off to come see us. Plus we were given Wednesday to Sunday off of work!
Bridal/groom Party Outfits
We decided to go with tux rentals through GenerationTux and I have no regrets. It’s an easy website to figure out, you can duplicate the outfit and make many changes to find what’s best for you and add all your groomsmen to it too so everyone gets a link to sign in, enter their sizes, and the box gets shipped straight to your doors two weeks before the wedding. They offer options for trying it on and sending it back for adjustments if your sizing or colors aren’t right, but we didn’t need to do that. The grooms tux was $240 and included everything but underwear. The groomsmen’s outfits were $80 since we didn’t want them to have the pants or jacket, but still included socks, belts, shoes, shirt, undershirt, and vest! My bridesmaids all bought their own infinity dresses off of Etsy for about $50 each and that way they can use them for any event after this if they want!
Alcoholic Beverages
We bought all of our alcohol needed for the night for about $300 (but we went for the huge Malibu bottles, massive whisky bottles, and did the little plastic shots as our party favors) and did end up getting a caterer who served pulled pork, mac and cheese, potato salad, and baked beans for about $750 ($10 a plate) and had so much left over we were sending home like 10-15 pounds of food with the wedding party. It filled my fridge all the way up.
Small Bakery
Ordering cakes from a smaller bakery in town!
Love supporting smaller businesses and the lady in our town is so sweet. Our personal cake and the sheet cake (large enough for 80 servings) were about $110 total and we still have most of each left!
Photographer
We found our photographer when she was running an end of the year sale, so we booked with her before really even knowing when our wedding date was. Engagement photos, 2 hours of travel, 6 hours of wedding coverage, advice and poses, and the entire end package of photos was all included for only $700
Etsy
I used Etsy A LOT. So I decided to get everyone the groomsmen, bridesmaids, my father, and his parents a customized whisky glass or tumbler and spent about $200 for all of their gifts and a personalized cake topper and ring holder for like $40 total.
Other Decor
Other decorations I slowly accrued from Walmart or Amazon.
Plastic tablecloths, I know it looks tacky but no one is going to care if your tablecloths are fabric or not, people only sat at the tables for like an hour during dinner and conversations. Eucalyptus leaves were like $40 for 1,000 leaves. I got terrariums for centerpieces for about $7 each during the spring-winter sale. My shoes were from the Shoe Dept online store for like $30. Flower girl dress from Amazon for $20. Lights and candles from Amazon in bulk packs for like $15 each.
My only “ish” thing I could have saved more on is using Canva for my invites instead of Zazzle. My Zazzle invites were like $140 for 70 when I could have made them myself and saved a lot more, but the Zazzle quality of gold and they accidentally send me double my order, so I have plenty of invites left over or I messed up somehow.”
Product Suggestions
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