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Disclaimer: All photos on this post are credited to Tara Bryanne Photography.
A few months ago I posted about how we planned to stick to a $6,000 budget for our summer wedding. I knew posting our budget would keep me accountable on our spending, but I was surprised how many people were interested in budget wedding tips. We discussed a destination wedding, but we wanted to celebrate with those we loved the most. So instead, we decided on a small wedding. We had less than 100 guests in a small, beautiful venue. The day ended up being absolutely perfect. I don’t feel like there was a single thing missing from the day.
One of the first things we did, before any planning started, was set our budget. We decided that we could do the entire wedding for $6,000. I knew we might go over but setting the bar low would cause us to still spend less. If we would have set the budget for $9,000 we still probably would have went over budget. Therefore, the lower we set the budget, the less we would spend if we went over. I posted on my last wedding blog post that the average Nebraska wedding budget is around $22,000. As we were booking venues and looking at different things we could do, I totally can see how easy it would be to have it add up that fast without a budget.
A breakdown of our budget:
| Budget | Actual | |
| Venue | $1,400.00 | $1,300.00 |
| Photographer | $1,000.00 | $1,300.00 |
| Music | $1,000.00 | $700.00 |
| Food** | $800.00 | $1,890.00 |
| Alcohol | $500.00 | $500.00 |
| Rings | $500.00 | $70.00 |
| Makeup | $200.00 | $0.00 |
| Decor | $100.00 | $150.00 |
| Dress** | $100.00 | $85.00 ($360 parents) |
| Invites/Thank You | $100.00 | $60 |
| Tux | $100.00 | $40.00 |
| Wedding Party Gifts | $100.00 | $80.00 |
| Flowers | $50.00 | $0.00 |
| Hair/Nails/Tan | $150.00 | $37.00 |
| Total: | $6,000.00 | $6,186.00 |
**My parents paid for these things.
Things that saved us big money for our wedding:
1) We didn’t have a rehearsal dinner.
It would have been an extra $600-800 to book the venue for the night before instead of just the day of the wedding. That is without any of the food for the rehearsal. People were traveling to our wedding town from about 2 hours away, so I didn’t want the rush and chaos of trying to get everyone together. Some people were only coming down for the day of the wedding so we opted for a quick wedding run through the morning of the wedding. This also saved for hotel rooms for our wedding party. It made for a longer day, but I liked doing it this way.
I will admit this one made me extremely nervous leading up to the day. Ultimately, I was very nervous that we wouldn’t have enough time to get ready. If things would have gone smoother at the hotel, it would have been perfect. We had a few hiccups there. If you have a solid place for the day of getting ready, then I highly recommend no rehearsal dinner. Instead we just went out with my parents for dinner and then relaxed some before bed.
2) We limited the flowers
Flowers add up so quickly and while they can look really beautiful, I personally believe that they are extra. We choose to not use flowers for centerpieces and decor saved a ton. For flowers, we did just a bride bouquet, a maid of honor bouquet, smaller ones for the rest of the bridesmaids, flower girl petals, and a boutonniere for just the groom. We chose to opt out of boutonnieres for the groomsmen because often they are forgotten or put on wrong. If they are put on wrong, they often don’t stay on and become a distraction during the wedding. We ended up with one for Brandon and he forgot to put it on, so it just proved the point.
Full transparency, because we did very few flowers, our flowers were gifted to us by a family member who works as a florist. While they didn’t cost us anything, we would have spent less than $250 for all of our flowers. The biggest perk of this route was that I didn’t spend time with fake flowers trying to make our own as well. He was ultimately able to gift them to us because we did so little with flowers.
3) We picked a gorgeous, all-in-one wedding venue.
The venue was truly all in one. The ceremony was outside and then the reception was inside which decreased the amount of decor, driving, and stress for the wedding day. The venue we picked was already decorated with lights and pretty decor. This dramatically decreased the amount of decor that was required to make it look really elegant and beautiful. Decorating a completely empty building/room for a wedding can take a signficiant amount of decor to make it look good. This photo was the head table and the only thing we added to it was the wedding party glasses, candy, and the flower petals. They did everything else for us.
The decor we did end up with ended up being primarily candy. We bought $1 jars and filled them with wedding color M&M’s, Hershey’s kisses and Lifesaver candies. It was a huge hit for everyone to snack on throughout the night and we still ended up with tons leftover. We also used some of the flower petals to add a bit of color to the tables!
4) We supported a lot of small businesses
With our wedding, we were able to support 12 small businesses. Supporting small to us meant that we were able to support individuals rather than big companies. We did use Amazon, Walmart, and Target for a few things, but many of our major vendors were small businesses or individuals. This also means that their pricing is more flexible than a lot of big companies, so we were able to pay for exactly what we were using instead of the package deals.
Our DJ prices were per hour without anything extra. Our photographer was my sweet sweet friend, who discounted the day as our wedding present. We also didn’t do engagement pictures with her, so she took that 90 minute session and “used the time” on our wedding day. Our caterer was super flexible with what we wanted. An last, our venue allowed us to book for only that day instead of the entire weekend since we weren’t using the venue for a rehearsal (an extra $600 off our total). Often times, big companies have very set prices and packages, where small businesses are more about their customer’s exact needs. We were also able to choose some small businesses that were newer or less known. This can be a huge money saver because we took the risk on them being new.
5) Stuck with the important things
The number one money saving thing we did was picked the 3 things that were most important to us. It is really easy to get wrapped up in Pinterest and all of the fun ideas that you can do. There are so many creative and fun things ou can do to make your day unique, but too many things gets overwhelming. After we booked our venue, photographer, and food, we split up the budget to what we thought we needed for each thing. Categories definitely got changed from there. I was very surprised as to how much some things were compared to others.
For the bar, we paid for all of our wedding parties’ drinks, and a few drinks for everyone else. Our venue had us set a budget for our tab. We said we would pay $500. Our average drink was $3 and we hit it right before closing time! I think we could have probably covered a little more, but it seemed to work out really well for us.
6) The tux shop had a sale
The tux shop had a “buy 5, get the grooms free” sale. There were 5 groomsmen, so it worked out perfectly! We only ended up paying the deposit for the tux which was about $40. We actually didn’t know this until he went to pick up the tux the day before the wedding. This was a nice surprise for the budget.
We also decided not to rent or buy from the tux shop for Carter. It was going to be about $60-80 whether we rented or bought from them. We really had a hard time finding clothes for Carter to wear. We ended up ordering a suspender set from Amazon and getting black pants from Wal-mart. Target had mini tux suits for $40. It would have been easy to just grab it from Target, but he will probably never wear it again, so its hard to justify that purchase just for the wedding.If you have littles, check out thrift stores or second-hand kids shops for used formal clothes.
7) Hair, Tan, Nails, and Makeup are all extra and optional
These little things prior to the wedding can really add up. I went about a week and a half before the wedding to get my hair colored and cut. That is not included in the budget because it came out of my beauty fund instead. The day of, my hair lady was amazing! She was a family friend and ended up gifting me my hair because we didn’t get to do exactly what I had planned. My hair still turned out absolutely perfect and it lasted all night through the heat and sweat!
I did pay $37 for my spray tan! This was one things that you could have easily opted out of doing for your wedding. Because my dress was really white and it was the beginning of summer, I wanted a little color.
My Maid of Honor was so kind to pay for my nails when we went together to get them done! I am normally not the person to get my nails done since I cut it out of my budget at the beginning of my Debt Free Journey, but I actually really loved it!
Originally, one of my amazing friends was going to travel for the wedding and do my makeup, but things got double booked! I had originally wanted her to use all of my products anyway, so I just ended up doing all of my own makeup (with a little help from a friend!) I already had all of my own Mary Kay products, so I didn’t need to purchase anything for this!
8) We planned the entire wedding in 90 Days.
We booked our venue on March 17th and got married on June 12th. It was a very very quick turn around, but it was honestly absolutely perfect for us. While I do not recommend this as a wedding money saving tip, it did save us big time. I definitely do not recommend if you have a baby at home like we do. I think the more time that passed, the more I started looking at things to do for our wedding. Ninety days was enough time to get everything in order, but not enough time to keep adding a bunch of things to our to do list. If we would have had more time, I would have had more DIY projects and other unnecessary things.
**Just be warned, that there was a lot of stress in booking some of the things. Also, some wedding vendors are booked out 2+ years to make up for all of the 2020 canceled weddings, so a 90 day planning time might mean that you miss out on your favorite vendors.
In the end, all that really matters is that we ended the day married. I really tried not to stress about the things that would not change us actually being married. The day was absolutely perfect. We have amazing photos and memories from the day. There is so much stress that goes into trying to make the day perfect, but I can safely say that there are a ton of things that didn’t really seem to matter once the day got here.
What is your favorite memory from your wedding day?
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