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Setting a budget, then priorities. My FH and I worked at UPS butt crack early in the morning to kick start our savings. Our tax refunds will be going towards our wedding as well. I'm not going to go to summer school (not sure if that is a sacrifice 
) We are paying cash for everything, because eventhough I love the concept of earning miles, I don't want to tempt myself with carrying a balance. Our goal before having a crazy wedding is being debt free. I cried in the shower, but I'm good now. It wasn't an easy decision for me. For him, it was a no brainer.
This site will give you so many money chic money saving ideas you'll be surprised. You can always sell your non-perishable wedding decor here when you are finished with it. Good luck!
Knowing your budget and sticking to that budget help keep you on the right path to staying on the positive balance sheet. It is a tough task and one i failed miserably. =( Don't do that! Our initial budget was $35K..will be about $5-8k over, we're allowing our guests to bring dates, increasing our guestlist. Cut guestlist to save money.
My fiance and I are paying for everything too. Its nice knowing we can do this for ourselves. Its tough and we'll be a bit short by the time the wedding roll around. My fiance and I are routing a percent of our pay check into a high yield saving account we set up specifically for the wedding which earns us an additional $150 a month. All the transaction is automatic, so it becomes easier for us to save. We hope to continue doing this even after the wedding for a downpayment on our house. 
Also, if you're really careful, using your credit card can benefit you. We use my credit card to pay for everything we can (for vendors who were willing to give us a tax break or discount for paying with cash we pay cash, ask if they will do this for you, helps save a lot). For other vendors and other non wedding itmes, we pay with credit card to get "cash back." I can collect up to 5% back in cash (Discovery card is great!). We pay the bill in full to avoid monthly fee.
Our total budget was about $15,000; we will probably come in about $18,000. We started out with the intent of paying for everything ourselves. However, our initial plans (which would have come in closer to $8000) were disappointing, to say the least, to my parents. They had envisioned something much more elaborate, and being able to invite way more family and friends (our initial guest list was about 50, now up to 120).
And so, the vision was that my folks would pay for all the stuff they want that we initially did not include in our plan. My mom now keeps stepping in and "paying me back" for things that we had intended to cover ourselves. Which is fine - they did pay for quite a bit of my sister's wedding, which was actually more expensive - and they can certainly afford it. I am not sure how much of the total they will end up covering - but I would guess it will be at least $10,000, if not more.
I am also astounded at the cost estimates - but we have found that our wedding will be at the low end of those estimates mostly because we are seriously prioritizing our spending. We knew there were things we really wanted to be quality - the food, the wine, the flowers, and the photography - but there is a lot of stuff we just aren't doing (programs, chair bows, photography booths, elaborate centerpieces, a large bridal party). We chose our country club for the venue, partly because of their great chef and really reasonable prices - partly because they will provide almost all the decorations. There are lots of ways to save money - but the biggest one is always going to be to figure out what YOU really need, and focus on that, as opposed to all the stuff that the bridal books and magazines say that you really should want.
by saving our butts off! :) we are paying for the wedding ourselves. our budget is 60K, but it looks like we've gone over and it will end up being about $80K. :(
but everyone has given you good advice so far. to set your priorities and not be tempted to do everything you want. and in weddings, every little bit counts. we kept going over little by little ($50 here, $100 there), and actually a few splurges that we didn't account for (we got tempted getting each other big gifts, lol), so now we have to be smarter about everything.
but yes, we do not want to go into debt for our wedding as we hope to start saving for our house soon afterwards.
We are paying for our wedding ourselves as well, except for the rehearsal dinner which my fiance's parents are going to pay. While 30K may be average, that varies significantly depending on where you live. I had no idea how much things cost and I just finally went through and made estimates on everything in our budget this past weekend. It was initially at 16,000 but we cut the guest list down to 200 and took out some nonessential things, and now we're down to just under 13,000. We plan on making a lot of things ourselves and we're also relying on friends and family who can do things for us. We have a family friend making our cake at cost; we just have to transport it (which I'm hoping to delegate to his parents so that they'll be responsible in case something goes wrong), and a good friend of mine will do our ceremony music. We're going to make our own invitations, the site we chose is pretty enough that we're going to do very few decorations, and we decided to have people carpool instead of providing limos for the bridal party. I think we're only going to do beer and wine at the reception too. I definitely think it is important to get estimates for EVERYTHING before you start signing contracts because it's surprising how expensive things are and you'll want to know where you can cut costs from the beginning. Decide what's important to you; I would rather have as many people as possible there and have a ton of fun than worry about a bunch of little details people will hardly notice.
We're saving just by putting every little extra bit of money we have towards the wedding. My fiance just bought a house, so he won't be able to contribute much; but my personal expenses are very low. I drive the same car my parents bought me 8 years ago, so I don't have a car payment and I'm going to move in with my fiance when my lease ends. We were going to try to wait until we're married, but that's a lot of extra money that can go towards the wedding. I also picked up an extra tutoring job, which if you already have a degree can pay quite a bit! Little bits of savings add up over time!
A combination of hard work, sacrifices, and really amazing family.
My parents are paying for the entire ceremony & reception (about 30k), plus transportation. My oldest sister is paying for the flowers. My other sister is paying for the band. His parents are paying for the rehearsal and hair & makeup.
Still, the remaining money is 10-15k. So I worked two jobs for 6 months, and my fiance is still working two jobs (we got a job together that pays $14/hour). We also contacted lendingtree for a personal loan and found a lender that has a rate less than 10% who would let us borrow up to 8k.
What are the other sacrifices - other than time, sleep? Well, we wanted a very small and personal wedding. My parents want a huge wedding - so straight off the bat this is not my ideal wedding. Since he who holds the purse has the control - I am giving up a lot of my own power and not arguing with my family about what I want vs what they want. I won't be having a bachelorette or bridal shower, because my bridesmaids are either paying for part of my wedding or are too young to be able to host either of those. But I am getting married, and I have an amazing family. What's there to complain about?
First of all, you can definitly do a wedding for less than $30,000. There is another recent thread on this board about the price of weddings and many people were doing it for around $10,000.
I think the key is decided what you are capable of paying (read: what you can afford without going into debt) and then apportioning the costs spending more money on the things you want and less money on the things you don't really care for. In order to cut costs I have decided to DIY a lot of things - invitations, decorations for tables, flower arrangements, favors. I also got a beautiful Pronovias dress on ebay from another bride over 1/2 off, and a second hand veil and headband. So much of this stuff is overpriced and it never hurts to get good used items - no body will know the difference!
Keep in mind that you have a life after your wedding and this is the most important part! I think it's CRAZY that people would be spending absorbant amounts of money on a wedding and not even own a house yet! Remember that once the wedding is over the most important part of your life beings - the marriage! You don't want to be broke or in debt if you can avoid it.
Good luck! and if you have any more questions on how to keep the wedding in your budget you can definitly find lots of ideas here
If you choose to pay for the wedding yourself, an added suggestion would be NOT to budget in the cash gifts that you expect to receive from your guests. Budget on what you can afford right now. Pretend like you'll be getting nothing so you are not tempted to go over your established budget! Good luck and Best Wishes!!!!
Jennifer Melnick Carota
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i hear you on the money issue. we are having 400 ppl at the wedding and paying for this ourselves...based on NY prices. ugh! well, first off, we had a long engagement. about a year and a half just so we could save more. i started bringing in breakfast and lunch as opposed to buying it. we stopped vactioning and eating out so much. Every payccheck, i would give myself 100 bucks to spend on something wedding related (confetti, shoes, paper etc). well you can imagine how many things i can accumulate just by buying them slowly, one at a time. and its cash which will help us at the end - we are trying to avoid using the credit card. we put our money into an ING account which gives us back a lot of interest. and we are trying to do a lot of things ourselves...as opposed to hiring someone to do them. in the end, i feel like taking things slow really helped us out. we were able to pay cash and still recover for the next big purchase. good luck!
Just wanted to second (third?) the posters who mentioned that a wedding does not need to cost 30K+. Of course, this may vary based on where you will be, but you need only spend what you decide to spend. Everything else besides your FI and the marriage license is an extra =) Don't listen to everyone who tells you that you 'have' to have anything.
We'll be coming in under 5K. It's only one day, and our money is going towards a house instead =)
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We are paying for the wedding ourselves and fresh out of college so it has been rough! But thankfully, we come from a smaller town and will have a smaller guest list (around 90 invited but many from out of town who we are not sure will come). Thus our budget was 8000 with the assumption that it would be 10000 eventually - however, i dont think we will need all that! We are saving hard for it as well - 200 dollars a week is directly deposited from our checking into a 4% savings account and we've only been doing this since Oct (our wedding is in Aug) so we will just barely make it I think.
Definitely don't budget in cash gifts! We aren't counting on it, however, if we have it, after the wedding we would love to start chipping away more at our credit card debts. I have to say that we are not planning on a huge honeymoon at all though and that really helped costs - maybe just a few days in California for now and hopefully save up for something bigger next year. I don't get much vacation time anyway so it works out pretty well! Good luck!
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The Bank of Dad. I guess I'm one lucky lady but honestly, we're graduating from college a month before we get hitched and we'd be having turkey sandwiches in a backyard (which isn't a bad thing!) if it weren't for our parents. We're probably putting in a couple thousand of our own money for decorations, invites, honeymoon, shoes and veil etc. (i hope this makes me seem less like a small child and more like a soon-to-be-married woman
)
As for $ saving advice... don't believe the bridal magazines or the knot. You don't NEED anything at your wedding besides a marriage certificate. If you keep in touch with reality (and skip serving filet) then you can easily host an inexpensive wedding. No one is going to notice the details anyway!!!
To be honest, a long time ago, I felt very cheated when I realized that my parents won't be able to help us with the wedding payment. Since my parents can't help, I didn't expect his to pay for it either. Turns out, they're worst off than my side of the family. We come from very middle class families, so right off the bat, we have an understanding that this will be on us when we decide to have a go at it. There are no surprises there.
When we first started planning, I sat down with my fiance and draft a saving plan (an accelerated one at that). So, we decided that for every paycheck, we will put $500 each in our saving account. We figure that within a year (which is when we expect the wedding to be), we'll have $24K if we are consistent. On top of that, everything unexpected that comes up (trips that we have to go to, graduations in the family, etc), as soon as we know, we start putting additional money aside for the funding of such events. For example, we know we will be travelling to the east coast in May, and have put an additional $100 on top of the $500 each paycheck. That way, we don't have to dip into our saving. I find it extremely helpful to do it this way, even though it is very hard on our lifestyle lately.
We made a lot of sacrifices. We don't eat out as much anymore. We cut down on going out and keep going to the clubs to a bare minimum (only when we have to). We are planning to do a lot of DIY projects, where we can and be reasonable in our expenses. We are starting to identify what is important to us to incorporate as part of the wedding. I keep thinking back to the weddings I have attended and determined what factors were present that I didn't even take notice or care very little about, and maybe exclude those things. I am one of those girls that have thought a lot about the wedding day. I want something very intimate but nice. Unfortunately, I live in northern CA and things are extremely costly here.
Thanks everyone for such great advice and so much details. This is exactly what I was looking for.
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My FI and I live in Southern Cal and the price for a 250-300 person wedding can get pretty steep. Since we both have big families, we made a deal with both set of parents. They will pay for the guests only. My FI and I will pay for the rest (decor, stationary, floral, photography, video, honeymoon, attire, etc.). It's working out quite well because they can invite whomever they want (as long as it doesn't exceed the 400 maximum of our venue).
Although my FI and I are not paying for the guests, the cost for the other expenses can still be a bit high. We're cutting back on eating out, vacationing, going to bars/clubs, and shopping. We're also planning to send out postcards for out STDs and RSVPs to cut back on postage costs.
We're having a pretty long engagement - a year and a half. This allowed us to really think things through and decide what we want to do for our wedding. We set an initial budget and presented the per person cost to our parents.
It's pretty ridiculous how some vendors (reception venues especially) rack up their prices when it comes to a wedding. A hotel that I'm familiar with charged my cousin about $30 per person for her birthday party. However, a friend of mine got married at the exact same ballroom with the exact same package and had to pay $90+ for each person! Ugh. Sorry..just had to vent a little.
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Our wedding started at a budget of 25K, but has grown to around $31k at this point and I'll admit it's tough. But you will find that many vendors that you work with only require an initial deposit of a couple of hundred dollars, so as long as you can clear the remaining balance the week of the wedding, you are good to go. You don't have to have all of the budget available at this exact moment, I know I didn't. Just be sure as you go along you keep a tally of your balance for each vendor and make sure you are both able to afford it at the end of the day. It's tough, but prioritizing what's important to you and what isn't will make a huge difference at the end! Best of luck!
My parents are paying for the reception hall (~14k, but it's held at that price with an estimate of 250 ppl, which will go down I'm sure!). Beyond that, my FIL's are contributing 5k and then my FI and I are attempting to pay the rest.
I've been using my credit card for the bulk of it and opened that last summer, so with wedding expenses and other expenses I will be able to get at least a few hundred dollars off of our honeymoon with the miles I've racked up (I have a Discover Miles card).
I've basically been stashing away money in a savings account since we got engaged (a little over a year ago) and I've been very stingy on buying things, unless it's an absolute necessity or something i've thought about carefully.
I'm hoping our wedding will come in under 25k and it seems we're heading toward that goal. Still 6 months to go, so we'll see.
We are doing the old-school breakdown (my parents pay for almost everything, his pay for rehearsal dinner, etc.). We are very grateful, but to be fair, both of us went to college entirely on the military's dime, and my sister got an athletic scholarship, so my parents can afford a very nice wedding for us. I am very happy that we don't have to pay for it!
We are paying by prayer! HA. We are actually paying most of it by ourselves which is where most of the prayer part comes in. We have a few contributions from parents, grandparents, and Aunts/Uncles.
we are paying for both our weddings ourselves. our wedding in hawaii this august will be right at $6K and our church wedding next year will be around $80K
one of the first things we did when we got engaged was prioritize the top 5 things we HAD to have and went from there. first on our list was just us - something so pure and simple that it had to be a small intimate ceremony - nothing personal against having fam and friends there, but we wanted something just for us - so private wedding in hawaii it was!
we are getting married in hawaii for ourselves - we wanted a small (just me and him) ceremony and to be left alone for 3 weeks while we lounged and just enjoyed each other - no laptops, no cellphones, nothing...
but we are not completely barren of family obligations and church, so we are also having a church wedding next year so our family and friends can celebrate with us, and so our nuptials will be recognized by church.
my father offered to pay for it, but we declined. we are grown and while i do appreciate the gesture, i dont feel 'right" accepting his money when we're quite capable of paying for it ourselves. he still gave us the money - but i think we're going to use it for downpayment on a 2nd home/rental property...
we're doing away with our weekend trips and aimless shopping and instead are paying roughly $5K a month on wedding-related expenses. our "social" life has not quite dwindled, but we are pinching our pennies more than before - i want to pay this monstrosity off the sooner the better.
we've already paid off our hawaii wedding, so we're on to paying off the larger, more formal wedding next year...
My FH and are I paying for some of the wedding and my parents are paying for the other half. We haven't got a very set budget, but we are trying to save for a house so we are doing our best to get what we want but keeping the price low.
I feel horrible asking people for money especially since I have a specific taste. The Mister as well does not like to ask for $. So from the beginning we opted to pay for everything ourselves. Our engagement is a total of 21 months and I sat down made a "payment plan" for us to put money away weekly. We are golden right now. All of our vendors have a small amount left to pay and all that is left are the DIY projects and hair & makeup to pay for.
Shay! What are/were some of your DIY projects? We are saving money buy making all our flower arrangements out of silk flowers! They are coming out just as good as real ones! My mom is doing them so I've been buying flowers and putting them with the stuff she has collected so my dad doesn't know I'm paying for anything!
I come from an big Italian family and they are big on tradition so my family would be insulted if they didn't pay. My dad would get a lot of flack from his parents (my grandparents) if they knew me and my FH were paying for things! So we talked them into paying for some stuff but we are paying for more then they know about otherwise they would not approve if they knew we were paying for things! We just have to be sneaky about it unfortunately!
Setting a budget and sticking to it is key, but it can also be the hardest part. I used a couple of wedding budgeters (the knot and martha stewart weddings and maybe another couple) that ended up being useless. They give you a formula based on what you want your overall budget to be, but it does't reflect reality. We have about 150 guests and the knot recommended we budget about $30/person for dinner. I would be THRILLED if we could find a caterer to provide staff, tables, linens, place settings, and food for that little, but when we got our first quotes, my eyes bugged out of my head.
I understand that wedding budgets are tricky, but one way you can ask friends about what they spent is to focus on a particular cost--i.e. would you mind if I asked how much you spent on your photographer? i really loved the pictures you sent out after the wedding! You can get realistic estimates on a couple of the key expenses without ever saying (or knowing) "and how much did you drop on this whole affair?"
We've been putting away a good chunk of change every month into savings and that will cover all of the wedding + some. We also have just been taking things out of our checking account as we buy them and not dipping into the savings account. Most of the purchases thus far have been handled this way. The big costs: photography, catering, venue, will come out of savings. We knew approximately how much we'd have available when we made a budget, but our budget is honestly pretty loose. Since we already can cover all of the big costs, we aren't really watching what we spend on smaller things. The wedding is essentially part of our disposable spending at this point. I look forward to having a lot more money to play with after June 27 :)
We're paying for it ourselves and saving a set amount each month. Our budget for a year and half engagment was $6000-$7000. We are giving up a lot of the luxuries but I still think we can pull off a fun wedding with that budget. I had a strange mindset. FI and I live in a condo (for two years now). We are both itching to get into our first home but have to redo our kitchen and bathroom and the market and the money just isn't there yet. I didn't want to elope for the sake of our only living grandparent who will only see 1 of her 3 grandchildren get married. So I decided if the wedding was going to cost us more than what it'd cost to redo our kitchen and/or bath I'd sooner save for that and be one step closer to selling our place and just do the JP/restaurant thing with immediate family. In our area we figured a way (w/scarafices) to make a wedding for 60 people work on $6-$7k. To be honest, I can't wait til the wedding is over to start saving for the house part.
We're budgeting about $5k for the wedding and $5k for the honeymoon. We'll have 50 people there, and we're planning on doing a lot of thrifty things like opting for silk flowers, buying my dress/veil off ebay/consignment stores, making everything ourselves, etc...hopefully it'll all work out. We've already saved $5k for emergencies, and we're registering through Honeyfund for our honeymoon registry so hopefully most of the honeymoon expenses will be taken care of. We're both remarkably good with money and are simple in terms of taste, so I'm actually excited about getting to cut corners and come out with a unique, cheap wedding day! This whole wedding planning process has actually brought us closer together.
Our budget is $5-7K. Mr. Oates' family is quite wealthy and will be more than happy to help pay for things and I'm sure my family will pitch in as much as they can. However, we are waiting until 2012 so that we can save and pay for the wedding ourselves.
Ummm where does it say the average wedding s 30k? Wow maybe in the upperclass areas but what about the rest of us? I have never attended or known of a wedding personally that was a 30k or higher wedding and I know people from all walks of life in different states. I am a school teacher and consider myself a middle class person but I do not have 30k laying around for my wedding. It just gets on my nerves we are being brainwashed into thinking the average wedding costs 27k is what I read. What about all those vegas, backyard, courthouse, beach weddings? Sorry just tired of feeling like I am a cheapo bride for not spending the supposed average amount.
@Ms. Meowerson:LOL I think we share the same twisted sense of humor because I was going to say pole dancing ;)
@unixfairy: i dont know why i wanted people to know this was "on the side". Somehow only whoring myself out as a secondary profession seemed more dignified.
@Ms. Meowerson:ROFLMBO in a dignified manner of course
and my apologies to the original poster who had a legitimate question
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Hi Everyone,
I am new to the hive, am recently engaged and am curious about one question...
How are you paying for your wedding?
My fiance and I are paying for the wedding ourselves and have started saving since we first talked about it (a couple of months back). However, it seemed as though an average American wedding is $30K and that's a lot of money, not to mention our accelerated saving plan has put quite a strain on our normal lifestyle. We're trying not to go into debt to pay for the wedding. So how are you paying for your wedding, and if you are mostly paying for it yourself, what saving tricks do you utilize and how do you stay consistent with your saving plan?
BTW, I have a lot of friends that have gotten married, but finances seems to be a very sensitive subject and nobody is willing to discuss about it openly. Hopefully with the anonymity with this site, I can get a better idea.
Thanks everyone.