12 WAYS TO SAVE MONEY ON YOUR WEDDING
- Sarah Powers
- Aug 21, 2019
- 5 min read
Let's be real - weddings are expensive.
After getting engaged, I quickly realized that planning and budgeting a wedding was a lot of work and also overwhelming.
I thought I would share some tips that we learned along the way that saved us money while still having the beautiful wedding that I had always dreamed of!
I also wanted to say - we couldn't have done it without the help and support of our family & friends! We are truly blessed with some of the most talented and generous people and so many of them offered their time, talents, and energy to make our day special. A huge thank you to both our families that supported us and spent countless hours helping to make our wedding happen!
1. CONSIDER HAVING A SUNDAY WEDDING. Our venue offered a significant discount on a Sunday. It worked out perfectly for us since we had our wedding on Memorial Day Weekend which helped with people not rushing to leave since it was a holiday the next day.
2 . BUY YOUR BRIDAL ACCESSORIES FROM A RETAIL STORE. There's no need to buy your bridal accessories from an expensive bridal store. I purchased my shoes from Target, my earrings from Etsy and the bridesmaids shoes I found on sale at a mall!
3. PURCHASE A DOWNLOADABLE INVITATION TEMPLATE.
We saved a lot of money by purchasing a downloadable invitation template from Etsy.
It was a much cheaper alternative to a wedding invitation website, especially printing them ourselves.
FLOWERS
You can save a lot on flowers and still have beautiful bouquets! On the first meeting with the florist, my Mom and I were overwhelmed with the estimated cost of bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages etc. We found some good ways to cut the cost and still have beautiful bouquets. For my bouquet, we had the florist use a mix of artificial and real flowers which cut the cost significantly.
4. MAKE YOUR OWN BOUTONNIERES & CORSAGES. My Mom was SUCH a saint and handmade all the corsages and boutonnieres with artificial flowers we got from thrift stores and hobby lobby. She also made the junior bridesmaids bouquets. You can find plenty of tutorials on YouTube & Pinterest.
5. MAKE YOUR OWN BOUQUETS/INCORPORATE ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS.
My Mom made the Junior Bridesmaids Bouquets.
The bridesmaids bouquets were also made with a mix of real & artificial flowers. I couldn't be happier with how they turned out!
It was really important to me that my Mom & Mother-in-Law would have a hand held bouquet to walk down the isle with. These were also made with artificial flowers.
I loved the way the flowers turned out! You couldn't even tell that there were fake flowers in the bouquets!
TIPS ON CUTTING COST ON GREENERY DECORATIONS
My vision for the wedding was to incorporate lots of greenery throughout the wedding! I quickly realized that would be really expensive so we got creative with the decor.
Here are a few ways we did it at a lower cost:
5. USE FERN PLANTS
If it goes with your theme, fern plants can be a great filler decoration. We used them for the barrels we had at the entrance of the ceremony area outside.
Using borrowed lanterns from one of my husband's relatives, we lined the bottoms with moss and then put a mix of flowers and greenery I had found at thrift store inside them. We attached them to shepherd hooks and they lined our ceremony isles. Funny story; I was blissfully ignorant that this was going on but the shepherd hooks kept breaking the day of the wedding while they were trying to hammer them into the ground. My family and the bridal party were amazing and sweated it out while figuring out a way to get them to work. I think they even went to the store to buy more!
Having a Christian element in our wedding ceremony was really important to me since we were not having our ceremony in a church. My brother was so kind and made a cross for us to use as a backdrop. It turned out just like I had envisioned!
For the tables centerpieces at the reception I wanted to decorate with amber glass bottles. We found them on places like craigslist, and at garage sales. Recycled beer bottles worked too. My family and friend's really helped to get a hold of a lot of them and I am grateful for their help! A special thank you to my Mother-in-law - she hunted down a lot of those bottles for me! :)
Another way that we incorporated greenery into the decorations was these greenery hoops. They were super cheap and easy to make! I bought some $1 hula hoops at the store and tore off the plastic lining. Then I spray painted them with brown paint and we attached the baby's breath and greenery with florist tape. To hang them we used fishing line.
6. SHOP THE THRIFT STORES FOR ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS. You can really find some beautiful flowers super cheap if you hunt for them!
7. BUY GREENERY IN BULK FROM A WHOLESALE STORE.
We bought greenery from Sam's Club which was significantly cheaper then purchasing them from a florist. I would highly recommend doing this if you need greenery in bulk. Both Sam's & Costco deliver!
8. USE GREENERY THAT IS NOT A TOP SELLER Eucalyptus is a hot seller and in high demand, so naturally the price is higher for it. We opted for Italian Ruscus & Baby's Breath for the reception.
9. DOUBLE UP ON DECORATIONS.
Use as many decorations as you can for both the ceremony and the reception. We used the bridesmaids bouquets as centerpieces for the head table, the ferns were used for the cake table, and the lanterns we had in the ceremony were also used for reception decor. It really cut some cost to use our decorations twice in two different places.
10. BUY YOUR WEDDING CAKE FROM A GROCERY STORE.
We ordered our cake from a grocery store. Buying it there was significantly cheaper then getting it from a cake store. I just wanted it to be a really simple white cake. The greenery we added to it ourselves rather then using what the cake decorator had to offer which also cut cost!
11. OPT FOR A DIFFERENT DESSERT.
We served cupcakes instead of traditional wedding cake that we also purchased from a grocery store and saved us some money.
12. DON'T BE AFRAID TO ASK FAMILY & FRIENDS FOR HELP. At first, I was really afraid to ask for help, but I quickly realized that people actually do want to help out with weddings. It was defiantly appreciated!
Photography Credit - Kara Smith Photography
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