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Weddings are not really my idea of a good way to spend money. For as long as I can remember, I never really wanted a big wedding. I remember talking to a mentor of mine who went to Mexico with their closest friends and family. She said she found a little wedding chapel hut on the beach. They gave her a sheet of paper with the options for their wedding. “Did you want red or purple flowers? Do you want a casual or fancy beach wedding? Do you want this or that?” She said there were maybe 10 “this or that” questions. She and her husband filled out the paper and were told to come back in one hour for their wedding ceremony.
That seemed like the dream wedding planning to me. We spent some time looking at destination wedding stuff, but ultimately his immediate family is 31 people, so the chances of us doing something for a decent price was pretty slim. Ultimately, we were just pretty determined to stick with our wedding budget.
We got engaged almost a year and a half ago.
Brandon and I have been engaged since December 15th, 2019. We have had a baby in between then and now. Our house has become our (for now) home. We just want a simple wedding to celebrate with our friends and family. COVID also ended up pushing the wedding back a few times, but we are finally getting things together!
While I don’t blame anyone for their courthouse weddings, I knew that isn’t what I wanted because our families are both so big in our lives. Finally, we fell in love with a venue. Set a date. Came up with a wedding budget. And started planning the details.
I read the other day that the average Nebraska wedding budget is around $22,000 and 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. After our wedding, I will update you on the exact details of what we actually spent, but here are the goal numbers!
Here is a breakdown of our $6,000 wedding budget
| Venue | $1,400 |
| Music | $1,000 |
| Photographer | $1,000 |
| Food | $800 |
| Alcohol | $500 |
| Rings | $500 |
| Makeup | $200 |
| Decor | $100 |
| Dress | $100 |
| Invites/Thank You | $100 |
| Tux | $100 |
| Wedding Party Gifts | $100 |
| Flowers | $50 |
| Hair | $50 |
We are planning in with just a few months to go, so I am excited to see how it comes together. I am sure there will be a few categories that we are under and a few we are over in. As of right now, we are planning to pay for the entire thing ourselves but might be receiving some help in a few places. In January, we started our No Spend Year, with the exception that all things wedding don’t count towards the spending.
A few things we are doing to keep costs down:
- The guest list is under 100 people
- Our venue is “bring your own alcohol”, so we are purchasing in bulk and serving our own.
- We designed our own invites and thank yous, and just paying printing and mailing costs.
- People will RSVP on a website instead of mailing it in to save on postage and paper!
- We are not decorating with flowers for the centerpieces to save on costs!
I wrote this Instagram post a few weeks ago. While our wedding budget is smaller, I know that the day is going to be absolutely perfect, because at the end of the day, we will be married. My soon-to-be sister-in-law reminded me that we don’t have to spend more on our wedding to make it the perfect marriage. We plan to pay cash for the whole wedding and cut back where we need to so we can pay cash! My word of the year for 2021 was health. By focusing on a small, cheaper wedding we are saving so much stress on my mental and relationship health than going out of the way to impress anyone and everyone we could invite. We aren’t focusing on all of the things that we might not have on our wedding day, but instead looking forward to just celebrating and having fun.
Want to save this budget for your future wedding? Pin it on Pinterest here:
