5,000 wedding?!?!?

Thanks this gives me hope! 5000 is about our budget!! although we dont have a place yet and its stressing me out.. they are all so expensive!!

I don't understand how anyone can have a $5000 wedding that seems like waayyy to much.

Mainly N.Fair, it comes down to how much you want to do yourself and how much you don't. Plus what market you live in. Where my parents live, if you have a smaller wedding (less than 300), $5000 is easily attainable. Where I live right now, we spent that just on food for 130 people. And if I had wanted to do a lot of the DIY projects, then I could have spent a lot less, but since we were buying a house and everything at the same time, and most of my party lived out of town, I didn't really want to stress myself with that (and it was a good thing I didn't since I ended up having surgery 2 weeks before the wedding!). Plus I am not always the most creative person But if you have that creative side and love doing DIY projects, then, yes, you could easily have that budget!

Geesh. How do you do it? =( The deposit for my venue alone was $5k. I'm only having 175 guests. I tried to find a DJ in Houston and my best quote so far is $850. I haven't even started on the flowers or the cake yet. I'm afraid of the quotes I'm going to get back.

Well if I can help any, if you do your own flowers, you can save a bundle. You can order a box of 100 stems, that would give you for 25roses for the brides bouquet, and about 15 roses of 5 bridesmaids, it's a great way to do it, you can mix the roses with something so beautiful such as babys breath, ruscous, or berries, and they will look real nice, also there are some great ideas to put studs, or jewelery on the rose bouquet, it gives it a real classy and elegant touch to them, The good thing about roses is that you can pretty much get them in any color. Check out www.flowerexplosion.com, there is a Mixed bunches product, where you can mix the colors of your flowers. Hope that helps, and you can def. pull off a beautiful wedding for that much. My lil sisters was 2,000$ and she had 100 guests, It was pretty much all do it yourself, I helped her with the same for the flowers. Good Luck

What city are you in... If you live in San Diego and your having a wedding with less then 100 guests

You have to call Ranch Events... They are giving us an unbeatable deal including ( open bar, cake, venue for both reception and ceremony, rentals, china, full menu with coffee bar and chocolate fountain and more. ) all for under $5000 - If you need help ( and you live in SD) let me know. I am an upcoming planner and would be happy to help you out.

I should add.. even if your having more then 100 guests.. I will bet you still won't get a better deal then you would w/ Ranch Events...

I am in no way affiliated, but i have used them before and know several others who have and they do an awesome job....

We are doing a wedding for 145 (not including us) for less than $5000. Here is our budget breakdown:

Dress (custom made organic from etsy) $360

Flowers (all bouquets, bouts, corsages, and potted centerpieces) $600

Invitations (seeded planteable paper/ 75 invites/ DIY) $114

Printing and Stamps for Invitations $100

Photographer $750

Location (park/not picked out yet but budgeted) $400

Tables, chairs, and tablecloths $1023.50

Cake (traditional and cheesecake/being made my MOH's dad) FREE

Wicker baskets (for potted flower centerpieces) $32.50

Dinnerware (biodegradeable disposable dinnerware) $193

Favor boxes (for left over cake/seeded/plantable) $230.55

Guest book (doing a signed photo mat) $30

Honeymoon (for a few days) $400

Tents (don't need them because of the park/lake shade) $0

Shoes (payless) $20

No veil $0

That puts us at just under $4300 right now.

Oh I should add, I'm not getting a manicure or pedicure since I don't really care for those and my work would just destroy them. Also, I have a friend who is doing my hair.

Lol one more thing, since the wedding is casual, my BMs will be in summer dresses and the guys will be in nice shirts and linen pants.

Absolutely, you can have a lovely wedding for under $5k! I heard Suzi Orme sniff on Oprah that you can't...well, all of these posts prove her wrong! I think the main thing is, when you are working with your vendors, is that you need to be realistic about what you will get for your budget. You probably won't get Martha flowers or Emeril catering, you know? And you need to be upfront with your vendors as to what you have budgeted for them. I can make a lovely $700 wedding, but tell me first so I'm not quoting you $5k for just the flowers, you know?! Best wishes and I'm sure it will be lovely...

Man, these are some great ideas.. I just started planning but I feel like a nice wedding for an affordable price is unrealistic!!! I am constantly searching for bargins when it comes to favors and such, but am having no luck. I am a student, and the more I can save on invitations, the more I can spend on next semesters tuition Any ideas on cheap save the dates and invitations??

If you notice, most of the under $5K weddings are weddings at home, or at a public place with low fees. It means you have to do all the work. And, it's a lot of work. If you have a full time job and any kind of life, it can wear you out. There are lots of things that just can't be done until the last minute, and most people can't take a week off before the wedding and a week off after the wedding for the honeymoon. Like I've said, I think it's a lot harder to pull this off in the Northeast, unless you're having a really small house wedding. You have to adjust your expectations if you want to keep it under that amount. Don't feel guilty because you're not able to pull this off. It's pretty hard and you have to make sacrifices and rely on non-professionals who may not do the kind of job you want or expect. Happy Planning!

I think it really depends on region. I would like someone from the Washington DC, VA, MD area to show me there breakdown please. I can imagine being about to do this in the south or midwest but not here lol everything is so exspensive here.

I live in MD, about an hour and a half south of DC. My wedding was over $5000 but I could have cut things down to get it to $5000 easy. I had about 180 guests and a lot of DIY stuff. We got our cake from a local shop and because we kept it simple and "floating tiers" it was WAY less money. With delivery it cost us $260, without it would have been about $200. Flowers were just over $500 but I could have scaled back a bit and gotten them for about $300 from another local shop. Dress was an ebay steal for $100. Food was done by a BBQ guy for $1250 and everyone loved the food, kept asking us for his info. All in all I think we spent right about $7000 but I could have cut out the alcohol, used different floweres, no linins, different invites....lots of little things.

Oh, DJ was free (friend did it as a gift) and photographer was a friend who had only done model work for a while and was trying to build up his portfolio so he gave me a very good discount. Venue was a barn at a local park.

Oh I definitely agree with MJ Decorations. If I didn't have a huge family that was willing to pitch in where needed, there is no way we would be getting this done for less than $5000, even here in Mississippi (the average wedding here costs about $18,000 I believe). I'm saving a lot by getting my cake done free (MOH's father), not having a DJ, not doing favors, and having a weekend honeymoon (we will have a longer one about a year later). Also, my FH will be finished with graduate school then and I will have one more semester. With it being during the summer, I won't have classes, so I will have much more free time. There is no way we could do this during a school semester!

Does anyone know of any reasonable venues south subs of Chicago, IL? We are trying to plan a wedding from Texas. Please help

Ok people im so so stressing we are planning our domestic partnership ceremony an we have 150 to 200 people coming an we are stressing we havent even found a venue yet we were suppose to get married in july but we had to bush it back til either august or sept dos anyone have any ideas our budget is 6500. please help thank you

It is completely doable! My wedding this past February was for under $5,000 and we had the most amazing time. I wrote about how to have a wedding and save a lot of money in an article here:

http://www.investinged.com/how-to-spend-less-than-5000-on-a-wedding/#axzz2QeVjCUyi

My experience was great and I tell everyone it's easy to get married on the cheap but not to have a cheap wedding