Budget crisis! Has anyone successfully planned their wedding for around $10,000?

Yeah, our budget is 10k with the honeymoon. However we aren’t having a lot of people at our wedding. Our guest list is around 53. But like everyone said I think I depends on where you live.

Since you are in CA, everything is going to be more expensive but I second the option of having your reception at a local Knights of Columbus Hall (KoC), American Legion (Post 604??), Moose Lodge, VFW (Post 8762??, Post 67??), Community Center, etc. - whatever you have local to you. We had ours at a KoC Hall and it was very affordable. They typically also already have a food/liquor license which eases that process.

For your ceremony, are there any local parks you could use? Or do any of the places I mentioned above maybe have a beautiful backyard? We got married in a church but several people got married outside the KoC because they had tons of green space (soccer fields) surrounding them.

Just doing a quick search, are any of these a nearby option? Mitchell Grove, The Gardens at Sutter Creek, Del Rio Vista

View Quoted Comment Umm I need to know how you guys made your own wedding invitations, wedding sign, seating chart. Please share that with I want to cut back on all those things.

I taught myself hand lettering, so I bought some blank Kraft paper cards. I've been a professional and hobbyist artist since I was a child, so I had paint lying around the house so I hand painted/hand wrote all 90 of my invitations (looking back now, I could've saved myself the headache and hand ache from doing this).
Lucky for me, my husband is also very crafty so we bought some cheap wood from Home Depot and we made a very simple seating chart and some twill string and some cheap mini clothespins (from Michael's craft store).
As for our name sign, we bought a slab of wood again from Home Depot and with my husband also being crafty, he already had some wood carving tools so with my newfound calligraphy skills, I wrote our names and dates on the slab of wood and he carved it out. We also already had wood stain (he made my ring box for proposing and the ring box for our ceremony) so we used that too for all of our wooden crafts. (We kept our name sign pretty small)For our cake toppers, I had some sculpting experience in high school so I bought some clay and sculpted our cake toppers.For our table centerpieces, we got super super lucky and saw some cheap lanterns at Ralph's so we bought 10 of them after Christmas time since they were Christmas themed lanterns that went on clearance for $2? each, took them apart at home taking out the candle and Christmassy deco, painted them white (messily for a rustic feel), and styled them up. I bought some mossy numbers from Etsy, cheap fairy lights from Amazon, I saved some old yogurt cups and painted them for the table numbers to sit on, I bought some cheap moss and flowers from a floral market here in LA. (We got some help from my mom, my husband's sister and cousin).I'll attach a photo of a before and after of our table centerpiece mockup, signs, and "cake topper" (we just had cupcakes so we placed it in the center of the cupcake display stands). I know none of this looks super clean and polished as a professional would have done.... But I shrugged it off as going for a 'rustic' handmade feel :p