HELP! How can we even afford a wedding.

It is expensive, that's for sure. If we didn't have a decent saving account there would be no way we could get married this year. Maybe you should wait a few years and save if you are wanting a big wedding that suits your dreams. You could have a mediocre one for $10k but is it really worth blowing that much when if you waited you could have it all?

How many people are you looking to have? If you keep your guest list to an intimate group of immediate family & best friends, that should save you a lot of money and headaches. A coworker of mine recently got married with a reception for 30 people at a local restaurant. It can be done. Not every wedding has to be an outrageously expensive event.

I'm in the suburbs, so the short answer is no.... My sister's getting married at Noah's and they let you bring your own alcohol, food, etc.. and is a new venue so still has a lot of dates available. It's near Naperville.

A lot depends on your guest list. If you keep your wedding to just immediate family and a few close friends, you can have a quite luxurious wedding for a price that won't break the bank.

It is daunting at first but you have to tackle it financially the same way youd tackle anything else in your marriage... together. Both have to be on board. Sit down together write out what you want and how much it cost. See how much could we save a month. Divide that amount by the overall wedding cost and set a goal date. For example & ease of math lets say you two want a $24k wedding. Meaning you'd need to save $1k per month for 2 years together. You could cut out luxuries (cable, hair salon, eating out, etc). Downsize apartments. Move in together. Get a side job. Whatever gets you to your part of $1k each month. The slowly pay down & off what you want.

I'm getting married on the southside! What type of venue are you looking for? Formal, rustic...?

I live in NJ so can't help you with locations, but I am going through the same thing. It's extremely hard here too, but I'm just trying to be creative and research, research, research. The venue I chose was dumb, it's beautiful, but dumb of me to think bringing everything in ourselves (tables, chairs, silverware, catering, etc.) would be easy, or cheap. Their preferred caterers are WAY out of our budget, but luckily they allow others to come in with approval. I just searched and searched and searched some more Googling my way through caterers around two states. I somehow found a place that we just saw today. The food is great, the event coordinator is FABULOUS and it's in our budget! Like THOUSANDS cheaper than others. They've had a restaurant for many years, but have only in the last few offered off-site catering. I guess they're trying to build business. In any case, I had to dig deep to find them and they're great! Just keep looking and do A LOT of research.

You guys are so helpful! Glad to know im not alone. We actually cut our list almost in half which will hopefully help in the long run. I love places with atriums with high ceilings and lots of windows (yes expensive apparently) and im so scared to book and outdoor venue only because living here, you can never predict the weather. What kind of things are you searching or google to find inexpensive venues? I feel like all I do is google search and have a hard time finding something reasonable. Were going to a few places this week to get actual numbers and hoping thatll give us an idea of what we can (and cant) afford.

My sister got married at the Chateu Bu She. It was pretty well priced. It doesn't have vaulted ceilings but it had a lot of windows and it looked beautiful! Also, I completely get the weather worry here but at my venue they have a backup plan. The ceremony will be outside and the reception will be indoors but in the case of bad weather they can switch me to an indoor ceremony. You may see if wherever you go is able to accommodate. Sorry I can't give you more venues but I mainly looked into rustic ones. Also, cutting the guest list definately helps. Also, buffet style dinner is much cheaper than plated. Family style is a nice in between. Try to figure out if you can turn anything into DIY projects to help keep the cost down as well! We invited 145 people and for the save the dates and invitations (with fancy paper, belly band, and addressed envelopes) we spent less than 400. You can definately get them cheaper if you omit some of the upgrades. I went through pretty things on paper and the lady who owns the business is awesome! She does it out of her house so she is pretty flexible and if you give her your budget and ideas of what you want she will make it happen. I hope at least some of that helped. Haha

If your venue is too expensive, remember that they usually charge the highest prices for weekend nights during certain times of the year. You might consider having your wedding during the week, during an "off-season" or earlier in the day. Morning/afternoon weddings are also usually cheaper since you don't have to serve a huge dinner and alcohol, if you have any, won't be consumed in nearly the amount as an evening wedding. My biggest advice is to do something you have already started, cut that guest list!

It is possible! So far I've only spent $2,000 on my wedding and I'm practically ready. Will probably end up somewhere around 3k. I got lucky and got a lot of things free which I know not everyone can do.. You could check out some public parks to use as a venue where I'm from all you need is a $50 permit to use it (and if you don't get a permit I've NEVER seen anyone come up and stop the wedding) You could wear a family member's dress to save money. DIY will be your best friend

Fly to Florida and have a destination wedding! My wedding for 60 people on a cruise ship was only $3500. It included the ceremony and reception. You also have NYC for ships.

I totally know how you feel! When we first started to plan the wedding, we wanted to invite about 120 people but to stay within budget, we only invited about 50. Have you considered having a restaurant reception? I found that to be the most cost effective; even more than a park, b/c you don't have to rent anything.

I learned something fun to do from the movie 'The Vow'. Do the wedding where you want, but make it like a flash wedding where everyone is with you and it gets done and then ...RUN! It looked fun in the movie.

It is a terrifying concept... We have no savings so in order to have the wedding we really want, we need to be putting back £350 a month each into a savings account, which we are doing, and we put the wedding back a year too. Sounds shallow but both of us wanted a little extravagence for once, so it was a no brainer to wait a little longer to have the perfect day.

I shake the feeling by staying grounded. We are having a wedding with 104 invites, us 2 will make 106. We did our research too, and there are so many beautiful places I would have dreamed to get married at, but faced reality, and found a place that I could live with getting married at, not my dream place, but will be good enough, that fit into our budget. We had a savings and knew our limits. The same goes for everything stinkin' thing else in this wedding planning process. FH and I had a discussion about staying grounded last night. We didn't hire the expensive $2,500+ creative photographer, but instead went with the old fashioned (in my opinion) but years of experience, $1,200 photographer. I am not having live musicians like I always dreamed, instead our dj will pump out instrumental over his speaker system and I am grateful his total price of $1250.00 will include ceremony and reception music. My dress was under a thousand but I feel like Cinderella in it. We did splurge on areas that we think are important like food and open bar. We aren't having transportation or limos. We are cutting corners anywhere we can. We aren't having floral centerpieces. Several hundred dollar savings here and there adds up. But I know everyone's budget is different. Some people might think we are having a lot. I call it a modest wedding. In fact, a study was just released last week that the cost of a wedding today has skyrocketed and the average wedding costs $31,000, we are at about $20,000, which is enough! Keep researching and you will find. Our venue is through the historical society so they were really cheap to rent. The food is what is costing us the most!

I'm putting X amount of dollars aside every paycheque, so the money doesn't seem so bad since it's just a little bit spent every two weeks on the wedding (in theory). FH and I planned out how much the day will cost us, and how much we can each put aside every two weeks, and chose our wedding date (for the most part) based on that.

Keep saving, most places allow you to pay as you can, and the rest will be due 2 weeks before your event. Have you checked Double Tree by Hilton in Alsip, The Hilton in Oak Lawn, Dinolfo's, Orland Chatue, Homewood Suites in Orland Park...Chatue Be Shue is nice, but can be pricey dependin on what you need. Start saving anything and everything now, if family offers to help...say yes-have them help by paying for maybe your flowers, or cake as their gift.

ThHe Cheney mansion in Oak Park is gorgeous and affordable, even if you don't live in Oak Park.

The way I got through it was by focusing on the goal-- being married. All you 'need' for that is two people who want to get married, an officiant, and a license. Go get married in a park, serve your guests Costco pizza and soda-- you're just as married as the couple that drops $50k on a five course, sit down meal. It also helps to realize that almost no one can afford exactly what she wants (unless her name is Kate Middleton). Most people have to make compromises and cuts along the way, and no one notices but them-- certainly the guests don't look around and say, "Hey, why didn't they have their reception at that other place?!"

I know this isn't the kind of advice you were looking for, but I hope it helps!