Budgeting problems

Our budget is 10k and we have invited 80 people. Things that are saving us money:

Fake flowers from Ling's Moment

Ceremony is a public park ($20 an hour to rent)

Reception in an Elk's Lodge (ish) type of hall

Buying/serving our own alcohol

Buying cake from Sam's Club

I hope this helps!

Prioritize what aspects are most important to you (food, DJ, photography, dress, etc) and budget accordingly for that. I know a lot of people only do a small cake for display/cutting and have sheet cake that gets served to guests. Also amazon, hobby lobby, Etsy and some other online stores have good deals on decor. Zazzle or other similar places for save the dates/invites have frequent sales so look out for those.


Also important is to make sure you have a vision for your decor, etc before you start buying things. It all adds up quickly and you don’t want to be buying all of this stuff if you don’t know exactly what you’re going to do with it. There are some Facebook groups where people sell their decor after their weddings for a little cheaper price!

It's tough. I thought I could have a wedding with 200 guests for $15k and we're rolling in around $25k. This is for a modest wedding too! Some things that saved off the cost were:

1. Cutting in the small areas: Postcard STD's, DIYing my invitations, doing homemade cookies for the favors, etc.

2. Finding vendors that aren't necessarily known for weddings. Our venue has done many but it's also rented out for other events regularly. They don't advertise for weddings like other venues do. Our baker isn't primarily a wedding cake baker so we were able to get cupcakes and a small cake for 200 under $400.

3. DIY as much as possible. I'm doing my own flowers to cut costs there. It will be around $1000 instead of $3000.

4. Cut your guest list as much as possible. Each person tacks on a very sizable amount of money.

I originally wanted something for 10k but ended up spending around 16k after realizing the true costs of things. i love what pp said about prioritizing what is important to you. i upped my budget purely because i wanted better food and what was going to be cheap wasn't going to cut it for me. and i am glad i did that because i got a ton of compliments for our food.

also to iterate what pp has mentioned, cut out things that are not necessary such as limiting decor, no favors, thinking outside the box. e.g. for attire, i think it's absurd to spend so much on a wedding dress so i looked for something in the evening or prom section

Cupcakes instead of tiered cake helps, making your own decorations, finding things on eBay/amazon/Facebook marketplace that other people are trying to get rid of helps. Honestly we’re going over budget but we seem to be agreeing on the areas where we are with paying a little more. I got my Dream dress on sale but it was at the top of my budget for a dress

We were hoping to spend about that amount as well, but our wedding will be closer to double.

My suggestion for budgeting is to figure out what is most important to you, along with what is absolutely necessary, and prioritize spending in those areas and then find ways to save in others. For us, the venue, food, and photography were really important, so those ended up being the areas where we spent the most. I didn't want to spend a lot on a dress, so I go mine pre-owned and spent about $400 instead of $2000. For our paper materials, we did emailed Save the Dates and are doing a simple paper invitations and having guests RSVP on our website. Those small changes will probably save us at least $100-$200 in paper goods and postage. I don't even like cake, so we are doing individual desserts and a small cutting cake, which is far less expensive than a multi-tiered traditional wedding cake. Figuring out what is important to you and what doesn't matter as much is so helpful in keeping your budget and time managed well. Don't get stuck in the hype of having to have certain trends or needing to spend money on things you don't care about at all.

Also smaller weddings are generally less expensive than large ones. One of the easiest ways to save is to not let your guest list get out of control. Our initial invite list is 80 people and we are expecting anywhere from 60-80 people, so it will be costing us much less than if we were to have a 100 or 200 person affair with a similar standard of detail.

70 guests
$2500 Restaurant reception w/wedding cake
$1800 photographer w/engagements$1500 dress$200 officiant$700 chapel$500 fresh flowers$300 invitations$300 ceremony musician$800 tuxedos$400 alterations/accessories- $1k misc.
$10,000 totalThis should keep you in the ballpark.
The reception is the primary difference; restaurants rent private rooms that are stunning.
1k cushion in case you go over on anything or want to do gifts, hair, makeup, etc.
Lesser expensive veils, shoes, wedding jewelry from Amazon or Etsy.
Do edible favors if you do them and get them in bulk.

Cut everything that doesn’t directly affect your experience or your guest experience. Here’s some ways we saved:


-literally 0 decor, other than a few signs. We didn’t even have real centerpieces... the venue just put a few candles and a table number in the center of the table. -DIY bridesmaid flowers ($30 for 4 bouquets). Spent $70 on my bouquet. Those were the only flowers at the wedding. -Used a Spotify playlist instead of a DJ for the reception, and had a friend play the flute for our ceremony-had my brother officiate-limited the bar to wine only (would’ve liked to do wine and beer but the venue gave us a hard time about that, long story 🙄)-no extras... like, no welcome bags, no favors, no photo booth, etc -got my dress on clearance... still spent $550 on it, which is a significant amount of money of course, but much less than what I see most wedding dresses going for!-got my veil for $40 on Etsy -had a lunch wedding
Things we weren’t cheap about:-our guest list... we invited 145 people (only 98 attended). We didn’t want to have any regrets about leaving anyone out. -GOOD FOOD. We paid $50 per head for hors douvres, a salad, and a main course. However we did cut back on the quantity of food... since it was a lunch wedding, I didn’t think the $150 per head, 5 course meal that came with the standard wedding package was necessary (and it wasn’t... everyone was plenty full, and all the food was delicious)-spent $600 on our cake. I have gluten and dairy allergies and I wanted to be able to eat my own wedding cake, so we paid a decent amount to have an allergy-friendly bakery do our cake-photography/videography... spent $2k on photo and close to $1k on video. The photos and video last forever!-rings—they also will need to last forever! We wanted to make sure we got durable rings that we loved enough to never take off lol.


Really you just have to figure out what your priorities are, splurge on those things, and be super stingy about everything else.

We saved a lot of money by keeping our guest count reasonable and by having silk flowers for our centerpieces and real flowers for bouquets/boutonnieres. It's really the guest list that makes it super expensive for us, so by cutting it down we were able to splurge a little on other things. I've also heard other brides say that got a small 2 or 3 tier cake for presentation, then just had large sheet cakes to serve to guests.

We have about 300 guests and our budget was $12K, but so far I have us budgeted to be right around $10K.

We saved a ton of money by:

1. doing wood flowers from Sola. They have great sales.

2. We didn't do Save the Dates and found invites from Anns Bridal Bargain for $.99 (RSVP card included)!

3. Our catering was cheap -- only $9.50 a plate

4. Doing DIY for programs, accom cards, and all decorations.

5. Cake from Hyvee

6. Reception hall from Elks Lodge hall

Try to list out things that you don't want to go cheap on and see where you can keep things low. Remember things don't need to be super fancy. At the end of the day, it's all about who you share the day with. Hope this helps

IMO, the things you want to spend money on are food and entertainment.

the things to cut, besides your guest list, to save money are: favors, traditional wedding cake, open bar or signature cocktails, flowers, fancy centerpieces, photo booths, save the date cards...

we are getting or flowers and greenery from either Sam's Club online or fiftyflowers.com

no favors, but we are having a photo booth which provides ever guest with a photo strip as a favor and they also man the booth and will have everyone sign the book, which will be our guestbook.

we are serving buffet dinner and a dessert table instead of a traditional wedding cake.

we had planned on spending about 15-17K, but we are already over... he's the spender and wants everything, whereas I am the one putting the brakes on everything lol

I am trying to do the same but I have 250 guest. Very hard but with time you can gather quotes and figure out whats best/cheaper??

I found my venue for $500 and can get married on site so we are doing that. Thinking of not doing a cocktail hour and just go right into dinner to save money.

Flowers: babys breath and light pink roses from Costco

photographer is my dads friend whose in the business but still $2k.

Havent fount my cater but trying to get it under 5k with BBQ

Cake thinking Sams club or costco.

You just gotta look around and be creative.

Our budget is 11K and it's been difficult but we have found a few ways to cut cost down!

We went through the guest list and lower it to 100 people which will cut food price down.

No real flowers! I'm buying fake and making all the centerpieces myself.

We decided to do a fake wedding cake and then sheet cakes. same look but wayyy cheaper!

We have about 90 people coming. We cut out a DJ and we're using a spotify list. Our venue is restaurant, so food and all the tables, linens, and silverware are included. We booked early on the photographer and videographer. We used a friend to design out invites and paper products.

10,000 is my budget as well. Our plan is to have the wedding at our church (they are letting us have it there for free), just cake and punch at the reception (and I'm making the cake myself), the dress I got was on sale, I got the invitations at Hobby Lobby when they were on sale and just printed them at home, I am doing my own makeup/hair, I don't exactly love flowers so we are just doing greenery from Costco and amazon(which cut cost),and we aren't having any bridal party/flower girl/ring barrier.

Just ways I cut costs. hope this helps!

I'm in the same boat! Our budget is 10K, and we decided on a destination wedding, so that budget includes our flight and hotel for 1 week, and rings.

The resort we chose has a wedding package for up to 30 people for a set price that includes everything for less expensive than any of the venues in our area. Then you pay for each additional guest if you have more than 30. It includes everything basic--chairs, round tables with white linens, food, open bar, flowers, DJ, officiant, etc. You can always upgrade from there. We found that we could invite everyone we REALLY wanted to this way, but we know not everyone will be willing to make that commitment, this way we don't feel bad for not inviting anyone, and we understand if they can't make it work. Cutting your guestlist cuts costs quickly.

We are using a discount travel agency for our flight +hotel package.

We used Shutterfly for our save the dates/invitations. we went with a simple design that did not say "Save the Date" or "You're invited" so it could be used for both all in one shot. It directs our guests to our website to RSVP so we saved money on RSVP cards too!

We bought the materials for our rings wholesale and are having a friend make them inexpensively, and I got to design and hand pick all the stones this way.

I'm looking at dresses in sections you don't normally look. Pre-owned and consignment stores, apps like Poshmark & Mercari, Prom sections, and special occasion. Especially if you're okay with champagne or blush colored, it really opens up possibilities.

I found my shoes (worn once) on Mercari for $17!

I wish we could do more decor, and I would buy from Amazon if we weren't flying so far. They have great deals but I just don't want to lug a whole extra suitcase full of decorations. (and pay for luggage fees!)

Hope this helps!

Keeping the guest list small. That’s what helps the budget.

Well… It depends on how much you’re willing to budge. I would suggest looking into weekday weddings as you can save a huge significant amount of money with the venue I simply having your wedding on a Thursday instead of a Saturday. Sometimes when you want to have a dream wedding on a budget it may also be good to push the wedding out to the next year. For example I got engaged in November but I’m having my wedding in June 2021. This gave us enough time to have our dream wedding and enough time to save and budget for it.It would have literally been impossible to have a wedding at the venue we are having it at this year as it’s one of the more expensive venues in our state. Hope this helps