Weddingbee boards

We're not having a sit down meal.  We're going to do a short, dessert reception in our church basement.  We're also not hiring a florist- the church will be decorated with lillies for Easter (which is the Sunday before), and I'm doing all of our bouquets through Etsy.  Those are the two big money savers!

We found a great venue that gave us pretty great pricing for both the ceremony and reception. The package was all inclusive so we didn't end up paying out the nose for a bunch of separate things. Another money saver was using connections for our flowers, cake, and photography. I had friends from my church do my flowers and photography so was able to work out great prices with them. And we got our wedding cake for free from a friend of my mom's for the "display cake". The cake the guests got was ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. And I DIY'd all of our wedding stationery, as well as made the cookies I put into welcome boxes for our out of town guests. Oh, and keeping the guest list to 50 max definitely saved us some cash. Small and intimate was a must for us!

Mine was several things...

DIY flowers

Secondhand dress

Wedding and reception at friends house

Also no sit down meal

And a small wedding

I'm like a lot of you...

DIY invitations and flowers (even though I'm not sure about bouquets yet).  Although that Gocco gave me hell last week...I hope to have better luck next time!

Photographer search on craigslist. 

Family members will play strings at the ceremony. 

Band search on craigslist - living in New Orleans, I am overwhelmed with options!  We'll have the band play just one or two sets, then switch to a DJ (free - a friend). 

Ceremony at a park - no flowers necessary, and the cost was only a $225 donation to the city's plant-a-tree fund.

Cocktail hour at mi casa, down the street from the park.

All-inclusive reception venue, except for champagne.  We'll bring our own.

Attendants won't have matching dresses.  I told them they can wear any gray dress they want.

Splurges: my dress, day-of makeup, hopefully a honeymoon, too  :)

my biggest saver is going to be well a few things

a) MIL msking the flowers - she is paying for it all

b) makingmy programs - legal paper rolled up tied with a tiffany blue colors ribbon

c) making my own invitations - tiffany blue card stock, tiffany and co. font.

The programs and invite paper together is 30 bucks and my FI printer does wonders. it is a laser jet so it prints thing off like a copier and quickly.  Other than that, we are catering our own reception with finger food such as veggies and fruit.  Oh and the church is great and it is 350 for the cceremony and recption there.

Thanks for starting this thread! It's great to see what everyone is doing to save. We are saving money in so many ways, our budget has gone from heart-attack high to surprisingly low.

LIMITING OUR GUEST LIST! This is very enforcable because we booked a venue that cannot hold more than 70, no matter what FMIL says about her friends that just have to be thereWe made our STDs and invites, and will make programs out of the leftover paper, so the whole thing (except postage) is only $50DIY flowers that my mom, aunt and FMIL are all growing, plus probably buying a few things at the farmers marketThe scariest DIY... making our own food. But we have lots of help hereI was so lucky to fall in love with a dress that was way under budgetA friend is officiating and a friend is DJing, both for freeEither a friend-of-a-friend or an up-and-coming photographer, saving at least $1000Bar is just beer and wine

Our splurges so far are the venue (which is totally worth it to us!), and the cake (which I kind of regret).

Ordering a bridesmaid dress for my dress cost me $163.  Here's a pic. My daughter is wearing the little one, also $163.  I had planned on paying around $300 for mine.

Our reception hall! We were having an enormous wedding, and our reception hall owner personally met with us about it. Since we were inviting over 350, and we had a budget, he told me that as long as we made it worth it for him and brought at least 275 people, we could fill the room with the max it held (325) for the exact same price! We saved a TON of money! 

To save money, my fiance and I have put a 50 guest cap on our guest list. We've also chosen to get married on the beach, which is free. We are having our reception at a beautiful restaurant (because we have more than 30 guests, they are renting the entire restaurant to us free of charge). I also limited my dress budget to $500 (including alterations and accessories). We are making the invitations ourselves...partially. We ordered folio pockets from Paper and More, and I am having the invitations printed at a print shop for $50. We are making our own centerpieces and bouquets. I ordered a book (I believe it's called Fabulous Weddings for under $5000) and it suggests making your bouquets out of supermarket flowers, which is a fabulous idea. I was going to use synthetic flowers to save money, but it wouldn't be the same.

I have also taken to ordering wedding catalogs and making wish lists of the items I like. I then go to eBay and find similar items for a fraction of the price. That way, I get everything I want without going over budget. For example, I admired a bouquet wrap in a prominent wedding catalog, which was priced at $32. I found one I liked just as much on eBay for $7.99. It's time consuming, but I shop for deals. It's definitely worth it since my fiance and I are paying for the entire wedding ourselves.

Buying second hand items and selling them afterwards saved me thousands.

I also DIYd my flowers, invitations, programs, thank you cards, centerpieces, favors.

I also had relatives who had skills in different areas and as their gift to me they gave me free professional wedding planning, free cake, and a free band to play the wedding!!

I managed to save a good chunk of money on my wedding dress by purchasing a sample. I was fortunate that the dress was still in excellent condition and in my size. But it's definitely an option to consider to keep costs down if possible.

I also cut down our guest list from 80 guests to 35. The venue we're using handles most of the details as part of the reception package (flowers, officiant, DJ, linens, food, cake, etc.). Not paying extra for those items definitely made things MUCH more affordable!