Budget

Honestly the most effective way to preserve your budget and save money is decrease your guest list if possible. Buffet food is usually cheaper than plated meals etc.

I am in the same boat as you and that we don't have a very large budget. I live in Florida and even things here can be a little pricey so I know New York is just much more expensive. Like the pp said whether you like it or not you're going to have to cut your guest list. We were thinking to have a post intimate ceremony reception and invite more people and honestly I'm looking at just how much it is per head even for a lunch or a brunch reception and there are a couple people who invited me to their weddings but I'm starting to take the rule into account that I read somewhere in article, would I invite these people for an intimate dinner at our house? Have I really spoken to these people and hung out with them in the past year? I always want to invite people who have invited me to their wedding but I'm starting to take that into account because even just try to keep it at like $25 a head that adds up and that's not even including liquor. Your only other option if you really want to have that amount of guests is try to look for a Rec Center that'll let you bring it outside catering and then go to your local Sam's Club, Costco or grocery store and just do a lot of party trays during the day.

The best thing to do is cut your guest list. 150-200 people in NYC will put you up over 20k without even really trying and I can’t see that being possible for you two while living paycheck to paycheck. I would invite your immediate family (parents and siblings and their SOs) and a couple friends and take everyone out for a meal after the ceremony.

I agree...cut your list and save where you can. We got all of our décor on sale from Hobby Lobby and some boutique. We shopped around for a cheaper cake option and we're using Sam's Club for flowers.

Also DIY a lot! We are DIY the flower bouquets and boutinerres. You can do fresh or fake flowers. Cutting the guest list would help, are any friends or family certifed to be an officiant ? That would help. Even doing a small courthouse wedding and a small reception.VFW hall or community center. Maybe not do favors or do something small like dessert. Cake: shoprite. Walmart, Sam's clubs, or even do cupcakes. It's a lot of work but itll be worth it.

I saw this post on another wedding site that showed how to save for the wedding. Take the budget for the wedding divided by amount of months till wedding and that shows what you need to stash away each month. But I agree with pp, cut down on the guests list or see how many DIY projects you can do. I have a 41 person guest list but it’s still costing me an arm and a leg bc it’s a destination.

If you know anyone who can be your DJ, photographer, and officiant that would be great help. Like an aunt, uncle, cousin etc. Don't do favors, or a huge cake if you can help it. Cutting the guest list is very important. The more people you have on your list, the more food & drink you'll have to have, which will be more money. Try looking into fire halls or community centers. Usually these places are very reasonable in price but these will cause you to have to do a lot of DIY. I'm getting married at a community center and while it's saving me thousands of dollars, we have to pretty much provide everything ourselves except the tables and chairs. We're having Chinese food (a bunch of trays-lots of savings) a single tier rosette cake with a full slab grocery store cake for guests. Lots of saving there. My mom is taking care of the cakes and all the food. My godfather is our DJ and my auntie is our photographer. They are refusing money so we'll be getting them gifts. Huge savings there. My dress was 158 dollars (completely nontraditional). Got all of our bouquets from a dollar store. Yes, the dollar store. They will literally be used for a small amount of time. No real flowers here. My FMIL is in charge of the alcohol. One thing off of our backs. Just rum, vodka, beer and a small amount of time. Very limited. No glassware for us. All plastic (but the nice kind) That goes for plates, utensils, etc. Sure, may not be best for the environment, but it's best for our wallets. My MOH has offered to buy the favors (Mason jars for guests to take home. If she hadn't offered, we would have left them out) Our rings combined were 60 dollars from Amazon. Talk about good. We had no choice but to do it this way. We have two young daughters, a decent sized guest lit (130 people) so we had to budget our wedding without compromising being proper hosts. Everyone will be fed, will have drinks, and favors. Desserts, what more can they ask for? Sure we may not have a bunch of fancy foods (stuffed chicken breast, steaks, salmon, etc) but at the end of the day, it is what it is. My fiance and I weren't about to put ourselves in debt for a one day event. Our marriage for a life time is what matters most. Saving for a house for our family matters. Spending 20,000 or more for a one day event would just not be feasible. We're happy, less stressed, and feeling fine with our choices, and I hope you do too! All the best

You could save a lot of money by doing a brunch or an afternoon tea or something a little out of the box! Also, doing it on not a Saturday usually saves money!

But yes, the best way to save $$ is to cut your guest list down, because hosting and feeding your guests is your biggest expense.

Look at anything that you can rent instead of purchasing! We are renting our centerpieces (gold terrariums), and 15 of them are costing us less than $100, and then I don't have to worry about them after!

View Quoted Comment Wow your wedding sounds pretty much planned lol! That's great. I love all the DIY. And the cost saving methods!

100% I'd say DIY as much as your can for your wedding. By doing things yourself, as far as decorations go and other aspects, you will save yourself hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. For our wedding, my FH and I decided to DIY as much as we could - well, I DIYed a lot, he just agreed to the idea, haha. I DIYed the bouquets by using fake flowers that look crazy real, our save the dates, our RSVP cards, place cards for the reception, our wedding favors and so on.

We also made choices to have a buffet (b/c that option is cheaper), and to decorate our venue ourselves and not have our venue do it. The buffet idea saved us $1,000 on our food and choosing to decorate ourselves saved us close to $1,500. I got our table cloths from table cloth factory (online) for $151 for 19, got our stuff for our centerpieces from Esty and we're doing heavy duty plastic for our dinner that we're ordering off of Amazon a month before the wedding.

For the bar, we're stocking it ourselves through Total Wine and are getting a huge discount since we're buying in bulk.

There are ways to save money when planning as wedding. You just have to do a lot of research for deals and find places with the best prices. I'd say make a budget and stick to it. If it doesn't fall into your budget and you want it, try to make it on your own! You've got this!

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Thank you so much!!!

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Valuable information. I love it

View Quoted Comment Thank you this was very helpful! I’m going to try and cut this guys list, we won’t be serving alcohol at the wedding though so that will cut back a lot of money for us!

View Quoted Comment Thank you!!! Definitely going to be doing fake flowers!

View Quoted Comment Thank you for this information! And yes I will de DIYing a lot. I just had the idea of grabbing all of my bridesmaids and making a party out of it. That should help me with the workload.

View Quoted Comment Wow if only you can be my wedding planner 😩😩

View Quoted Comment Cutting alcohol is going to save a lot of money. I would suggest that pending on the venue that you have your reception at why don't you ask if you are allowed to bring outside beer and wine. Then you can go to your local grocery store or a place like Total Wine and just been maybe a hundred bucks getting some bottles of wine and some cans of beer. If you are not going to have alcohol I would definitely let the guest know in advance but you may want to consider having an afternoon wedding as usually people are not going to drink as much and if you choose to do no alcohol all together then it's a little bit more understandable because when you have a reception at night usually people come to really enjoy themselves and that involves alcohol.

View Quoted Comment You're welcome!

We just planned our wedding in NYC in under 8 months, and we had a guest list around that... cut costs where we could, and spent $30k. Which is *cheap* for NYC. (And our final RSVP was a little over 80.)

So.

Cut guest list.

Push back date. (Or be willing to drastically change your view of the wedding to take advantage of this year's pricing.)

Fake flowers (we used Budget Bride).

Be willing to compromise on the date.

Keep it SIMPLE.

Hire students/new vendors.

Good luck.

I think doing of diy will help save you money... maybe cutting the list a little bit. Do you know what your budget is yet? I would suggest looking at more cost effective places like Chateau La Mer or Verdi of Westbury and Lenards but June is a pricy month