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Biggest bang for the buck for me is handling my own bar. Buying your own wine, beer, booze, and nonalcoholic drinks can save major money.
A small thing is just using a suit FI already owns.
im having a friends mom do my flowers for me which is cutting my flowers costs, and like what monitajb said FI is going to wear a suit he already has, my friend will do my hair/makeup and i have another friend who is a DJ, Officiant and cake. Its nice to have friends that are willing to help out as it has helped us out a lot!
I would say that I'm cutting cost by have 2 different centerpieces. A large one costing $60 and candle centerpiece costing $35. Also, my decorator is getting the floweres from the LA floral district which is cheaper. I'm also baught DIY invite from Target for $100 and adding some bling to it to fancy it up a bit!
DIY!! I DIY a ton of stuff and saved a ton of $$
Flowers, place cards, invites, programs, favors, and decor
I'm recruiting friends to help as much as we can. We have a friend who's family owns a banquet hall, so we're hoping to borrow tables, dishware, silverware, and glassware from him. Another friend is a set decorator for movies, so he's been recruited to decorate the tent with our white lights and lanterns. I'm DIYing as much as I can like our lace wrapped votive holders, designing and printing our invitations, making our own favours.
We're also buying our own alcohol in Montreal where it's half the price of Ontario which will definitely save us a bundle. Oh and we're skipping limos. No sense in them for us really. Wedding shows are also a great place for getting discounts. We saved 10% on our cupcakes/cake and 15% on all our rentals from our tent place, which so far has added up to $700 and we're not done yet!
I feel sometimes like it's an uphill battle though. Every time I find a great deal I find somewhere else to spend the money! LOL!
- we're buying our tablecloths from a vendor on ebay for CHEAP and then selling them afterward to another couple. the prices are lower than renting, and then we can recoup some of that!
- getting married on a sunday lowered our venue fee about 33%!
- a friend who is getting ordained online is performing our ceremony. we're giving him a nice gift and it'll still cost less than hiring an officiant.
- not having a bridal party is simplifying things in a lot of ways, and our friends are still willing to help (in fact, some of the biggest helpers aren't people who necessarily would have been in our party).
- backyard bbq instead of a rehearsal dinner.
- we're having different centerpieces on each table incorporating my vintage pyrex collection. it's going to be A LOT cheaper than buying a bunch of vases and filling them with flower arrangements, especially since we're using stuff we already have.
something that is easier to suggest than do is to keep your guest list as small as possible - the per guest cost is often the most money you spend!
you can cut on each thing - often just doing tons of research on different options will help you cut
i know this is not very specific, but i'm sure you will get lots of great ideas - the bees here are very resourceful!
Biggest cost savings, in order:
1. Going with a non-traditional caterer. Our caterer is head of a culinary program, he does this for his students on the side.
2. Going with a non-traditional venue. Our venue is fairly new and pretty cheap, and since my parents are members, the church is free!
3. Don't look at dresses over your budget. In fact, set your dress budget lower if possible. I've fallen in love with two dresses, one from Aria and one from David's Bridal--and neither are CLOSE to my max budget.
4. Look for other ways to cut costs like DIYing. I'm DIYing all our paper goods (like designing them myself), but our envelopes cost a whopping $6 because I found DIY invite sets at Big Lots. Totally worth it. The thing is, DIY has to be something you know you can do: I knew I can make jewelry, so i'm doing that for my girls. I know how to use Photoshop and Illustrator and a Wacom tablet so i'm making our invites. Experiment a little with what you have, you never know what you'll find! Some of our vases will be glazed pasta sauce and pickle jars (I go through pickles faster than snooki from Jersey Shore), but no one will know when I'm done with them!
The big things for me were cutting out certian things entirely- videography, limo, and flowers in centerpieces for me. Others cut the bar to beer and wine only, or cut the bar entirely. You can do an ipod rather than a DJ (we seriously considered this and have seen it done really well)
We found that using a restaurant instead of a hall saved money. Also, keeping the guest list small is really important. Most "obligation" invitations won't actually be offended if they aren't invited.
Hope that helps...
We are having no (or very few) real flowers. I got $80 of fabric red roses for $8 and am making kissing balls for pews and other decos with them. I also got supplies to make paper flowers out of honeycomb wedding bells. Only sending STDs with free website info on them, won't mail out (or purchase) anything other stationery except thank-you cards. Got both at Micheal's. Also, using 40% off coupon every time I go to Micheal's on one new item. Only having one attendant each.
Cutting your guest list will automatically reduce costs (less people to feed!). Look around for bargains.
Don't fall into the trap that you HAVE to have a certain thing for your wedding. As far as the dress goes, buy pre-owned or look into getting a white BM dress (there are a TON of them out there).
Craiglist is your friend. So is Ebay.
While cutting the guest list is a way to keep costs down, that's not an option for everyone. Since we both have big families, there was no way to get around having a big reception. We cut costs by doing the following:
- No videographer or limo hired
- A small rehearsal dinner
- We had two kinds of floral centerpieces - one looked just like the bridesmaids' bouquets, and we used the BM bouquets as centerpieces on five tables. The other kind of centerpiece was made with only two kinds of flowers, that are generally cheaper. We bought all the vases on sale at Hobby Lobby for something ridiculous like $2 each.
- Buffet instead of plated dinner. Didn't have the costs of as many waiters.
- Handwritten escort cards and table numbers
- No favors. No one said anything about this to us. Taking home extra cupcakes was a good enough favor!
- Made the programs on Publisher and printed them at Office Max. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done.
- Bought our wedding rings on sale, FI's suit on sale (almost 80% off!), shoes on sale, jewelry with gift cards from Christmas, etc. It pays to look for sales far in advance.
Buying your own alcohol is also a great way to cut costs. Unfortunately, our venue wouldn't allow this. We thought about limiting the bar to just beer & wine after an hour or two, but when we did the math we realized that it was exactly the same price as an open bar all night! Go figure.
As with a few other posters, FI and I both have big families, so cutting the guest list was not an option. In fact, we did cut it...drastically...and still ended up with 350 guests (90% family), haha!
Because of our families' need to propagate, we had to look elsewhere to cut costs, including a lot of bargain shopping and DIY stuff.
--Bought plain invitations, envelopes, rsvps, etc for $100...added ribbon ourselves that we bought at walmart for CHEAP. They now look like ones we saw online that would have cost us nearly $400 for the number of guests we have.
--Dollartree.com and Walmart for vases, accent gems, etc. They ship to the store for free and are literally $1 a piece...unbelievable and cheaper than anything you can find online!
--Costco for bulk flowers. We are getting 300 roses for $225 dollars. The same amount of flowers with a local florist would have been ridiculously expensive.
--Bridesmaids are carrying a single rose instead of a full bouquet...$15. My bouquet will be smaller because of the intricate design of my dress...$60.
--We shopped around a LOT. We were told in our town that no one makes cakes for less than $4 per slice, found a lady who does em as a hobby (for the past 20 years) for $2 per slice. The florist that "everyone goes to" was nearly 3x as expensive as the florist we chose, and much less helpful. Etc.
Buying outfits and accessories from non-traditional stores (H&M, BCBG), having BBQ style reception food, having it at his grandparents we were able to hand pick all of our vendors and not pay extra venue costs, shopping around online and in stores for deals, buying his ring from Amazon.com
We saved money in the following ways:
The only things I am downright splurging on are my hair and makeup, flowers, and open bar.
i'm doing all of my own centerpieces
Having the wedding in winter and on a friday
Things I have done so far
First off thanks for starting this, it is helping me too! So far for us we are DIYing a lot. And I'm making the cakes, we're making the food, with help from family, and are shopping around for some of the best deals we can find!
Craigslist,ebay, and things like that. Even borrowing things from friends and family, glue guns, whole punches ect.
wow! icant believe how many responses we got already. you bees are awesome!
-We are having our ceremony at the JP and reception at a restaurant
-Only 70guests are invited
-DIY invites from Michael's, lots of DIY projects outside of just invites
-Aunt is doing flowers
-LOVE those 40%off Michael's coupons
-we aren't doing favors, but are donating to a charity instead
Spend time looking for deals and check odd places. I found our (possible) photographer yesterday in a local free publication that will only cost us $500. I was budgeting about $1k for it, so we have an extra $500. By going through a local church, we can get married for free. We're using FFIL to marry us and cutting flowers out almost completely. FSIL is on the lookout for silk/real flowers for cheap and we're bulk buying our food most likely instead of getting it catered. We're doing the entire wedding on a $5k budget with 70-75 people and I have enough that I can spend $1500 on food, no problem.
If you're DIYing anything check Michaels and the like for sales, because the tiny ribbon that you'd want often goes on sale for $1 or less.
We are having a dessert table instead of a wedding cake...it's saving about $2.25/person. We also cut our guest list down, which was hard to do, but made a huge difference. And, before I buy ANYTHING wedding related I search online for coupons/discounts/coupon codes. I found on local wedding blogs discounts for both our videographer and our bakery. \
Here's another great article that has some other cost-cutting tips:
http://www.ehow.com/how_6033557_lower-wedding-costs.html
Good luck!
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calling all resourceful bees!!! share your tips on how your cutting costs? I'm looking to cut costs and would love some ideas, to see if i missed anything or anyone has some really creative ways to cut costs! we could all use some tips, im sure they will come in handy!