*Frugal Brides*

Instead of having a Saturday night wedding, we're doing a daytime brunch wedding on Saturday. Saved us $1200.

I am DIYing a LOT of things. Also saved on the venue though splurged for two days so I have a cleanup day, venue is only $310 for one day but at my sisters wedding my stepmom started to clean up right after dinner so it forced a lot of people out. I was NOT doing that!

Also looking into unconventional meals like a taco bar for dinner. It's much cheaper, and keeping the guest list small.

We kept the guest list minimum, less than 50. And I've hunted and hunted for the best possible deal on EVERYTHING from decorations (scored 90 paper lanterns in different sizes/colors for $85 including the shipping at lunabazaar.com) Found transportation for all of our guests for the day $450 (using a local school bus company got a packaged deal for my DJ/MC/uplighting (getting it all for $800)...none of these deals just fell in my lap, I spent hours and hours researching and calling and emailing to get the best deals possible while still getting quality as well.

Everyone has given some really great options. We are saving money with the cake. We are having a small wedding cake and then serving all of our guest sheet cake and saving a FORTUNE!

My guest list is at a minimum 71 people.. Its reached 77 or 84 (sorry I'm not to so which number it was) We both are only inviting people that we can literally pick up the phone and call just to talk. I have a huge family. Most of my half is family (very few close friends) I have a rather big bridal party (6 girls altogether) this is where my close friends come in.. And the bridal party is included in the guest count. Even though our wedding isn't for another 18months we have booked our venue which is inclusive (minus a few vendors) but it takes care of cocktail hour and full course dinner and bar. So we put a deposit and are going to start making monthly payments in August ($125 we can put more if we like). I want my dream wedding and am sticking to a budget of 20,000. Its really do able with my guest list at a minimum, but I just got a better job and started training today. My pay is allowing us to save much more money than planned so we may (I'm not hoping to much, you never know!)

Be able to have more guests and be very comfortable with the budget going higher. We have a long time to save and a lot of things can change within that time.

So I'm saying our guest list was the first thing I choose to keep at a minimum. I rather have the closest people to us there to celebrate.

I would say what has saved us the most money was for fiancé and I to each make a list of what is MOST important to us, We decided on our budget knowing what was the most important. This way you don't spend more money on something that isn't even in your top 10. I did not want alcohol because, in our case people either don't drink, or get stupid drunk. I don't want that happening, so I told fiancé that while we both drink we can drink plenty on the honeymoon and save the cash