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Not sure if this is your cup of tea but we did ours at Hazy Meadows Ranch in Lakeside California.
It's totally doable. We did our wedding in downtown St. Louis on $10k and could have definitely spent less had we felt like it. My best budget tips would be these:
1. Prioritize what is the most important to you. For us, we felt that a good photog and a cool venue with good food were the most important things, so we budgeted more in that area. We spent way less on things like flowers, my dress, and decor.
2. If you can, slash the guest list. We wanted a small wedding from the start so we only invited the aboslutely essential people, our immediate families and our closest friends. We had about 65 people. I do understand that this isn't possible for some, so you can ignore this part if you are one of them.
3. HAGGLE. A lot of vendors will give discounts if you ask. Our venue waived the room rental fees for both our ceremony and reception sites. Our florist let us use all the vases, LED lights and such for free so we wouldn't have to rent them. Our photog gave us a massive discount because of our type of wedding and our agreement that they could feel free to use our pictures in any marketing materials they felt like (I know they have also allowed a few brides a discount in exchange for working bridal shows and talking to potential clients for them after their weddings, like living testimonials.) A lot of vendors will give student, military, etc discounts (our officiant did, photog and florist did).
4. Buy used or on sale as much as possible. My dress we got for 50% off. Most of my candy buffet was from craigslist, garage sales or thrift stores. Just look around, you;d be surprised what people sell.
5. DIY as much as you feel comfortable. We did our own set-up at the venue, we made my BMs dresses, I DIYed our invites. Lots of people DIY decor, cake and flowers as well. Don't take on more than you can handle though.
6. Use friendors. Take advantage of offers of help. Our wedding planner was a friend of my mother's who did our wedding for free as a gift to my mom. Another family friend printed our custom invites for free. Some of your friends and relatives may have hidden talents you don't know about.
Eek. I didn't mean for that to be a novel, but I wanted to give some tips. Scout around the bee for inspiration. There are a ton of bees who have had gorgeous budget weddings.
Here's a link to my wedding recaps, if you'd like to see how it turned out for us:
http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/finally-back-for-a-recap-pro-pics-extremely-pic-heavy
You should try Edward's Mansion in Redlands, CA. I think it's pretty affordable from what my family has told me. I grew up there and I always liked that place.
@miksje130: hazy meadows is beautiful but too far for us. We want to have our wedding within an hour of where our family is. Thank u though.
@mexicanabeibi: looking it up now!! Thanks!!
Well it sounds like you are trying to do the OC area, so I suggest The French Estate in Orange. It is omgfreakinggorgeous. But their website says they are maxed out for big events until June 2012, unless you get married in February/March. Their most expensive fees for up to 150 are $3500 for the whole thing. They work with a caterer that gets you ALL your food for $28/plate. I wanted to get married there so badly, but FI insisted we do his church.
I second Edward's Mansion. Although Im a little biased because that's where I'm getting married :) and I'm also an April 2012 bride!
Its fairly reasonably priced, however you do have to use their on-site caterer, but again the prices are reasonable.
If you do like the venue and you have any questions about it, Id be more than willing to answer them!
Tivoli Terrace in Laguna Beach is within your budget. It is almost totally all inclusive for $50-85/person (including flowers, alcohol, musician for ceremony).
Also Angelo DaVinci's in Fullerton puts on a lovely (affordable) reception.
The chapel in downtown Orange (by Chapman University) is beautiful and very affordable.
You can do it!
@cubicalmouse:The French estate is gorgeous!! I actually called them today but no one answered. Weird right. Do you know if their rental includes tables and chairs???
@missbabycakes:Edward's Mansion looks almost perfect if it weren't soooo far. :( most of our family is out towards LA and the fiancé told me no to this place because of the distance. Any useful information u can give me to try to convince him??? Is the food terrible? I spoke with a lady there today and she said food ranges from 18-25/person?? My fiancé seems to think that since the food is cheap it must me nasty.
@Lulusmom:I will definitely start checking those places out ASAP. Thank you!!!
@emarquisee: I totally understand the issue with the distance. They're having a special right now where if you book your reception space by the end of the year, you get the ceremony space for free! Which is a really good deal, it's regularly upwards of 6-700 dollars I believe. You can bring in your own officiant, or you can alternatively use their minister for $200.
They also have several hotels really close by, and guests might be more inclinced to drive the distance if they have somewhere to stay right down the street?
I haven't done a food tasting yet, so I can't comment on the quality of the food. I can't judge it since I haven't tasted it, There are revies on yelp though, and it seems like there's nothing but good things about the food.
I highly suggest cutting down your guest list. You don't have to invite every person you ever were friends with. Who do you see regularly and can't imagine celebrating without? Do you have to have all your cousins there, etc. I am limiting my list to 50 people. That is including immediate family and our good friends who we see all the time and feel like they are family. I don't want to spend the whole time thanking random people for showing up anyway-if they are this close to us, I don't need to do that at all. Anyway, another thing you might be able to do is not have a caterer-at least one that serves you. We are having a restaurant deliver food for us so it will be yummy and there will be enough but we are serving everything with nice disposable plates and flatware that we intend to chuck instead of having someone do the clean-up and dishwashing. That will be quite a bit more cost effective.
@goldendreams: that list of 150 is pretty much only family and close friends we see on a weekly basis. We are very involved in our church so our church is family to us. We've actually cut the list a lot. Our venue is giving us an option of inviting people after the dinner is over at no extra cost so that's great!! Oh yah we actually booked a place! Haha went with Oak Canyon Nature Center for the ceremony and a community center down the street!! I don't care too much for the community center but I'm getting married at my dream venue so I'm HAPPY!! Our caterera also worked with us and is giving us free appetizers and lowered their 18% gratuity to 15%
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I am getting sooooo super discouraged trying to plan my little wedding.. We have a budget of roughly $10,000. We can go up to $12,000 but we'd rather not.. Looking for a decent venue to fit our budget has been sooooo time consuming and frustrating.. My sister just got married a week ago breaking my parents bank with her $30,000 wedding, so my fiance and I don't really have any help paying. He lost his mom at 16 and his dad took off when he was 6 so we're paying it all ourselves.. We want to have a nice wedding with all our family and close friends, but it seems almost impossible with our budget.. We've pretty much been searching in orange county.. Fell in love with Oak Canyon Nature Center but they're pretty much booked. Heritage museum in Santa Ana is too expensive with the facility fee and catering. uuugh
I need advice from other brides who know how this could work.. My fiance and I want to get married in April 2012.. We don't really want to push the wedding any farther if we don't have to.. We have a 7 year old son together and broke up about 4 years ago. We never dated anyone else while broken up and in June we recociled our relationship and got engaged in October. We don't want to wait anymore haha.. But we also want a beautiful wedding, we don't want to run to vegas or the courthouse. Does anyone have suggestions on rustic outdoorsy places in southern california??? LA/OC/IE counties?? We are looking for an outdoor ceremony with an indoor reception, but are will to have an outdoor reception as well. I just don't know how to do it with the budget we have. Our guest list is about 150 people and thats including some kids. My fiance also wants a very good photographer and he wont compromise with that.. Thank you all so much