How are you affording this?

I don't know what it's like there but where I stay at in Ohio, they have halls you can rent and some places let you bring your own food. Is there anything like that there? It's a cheaper route and you could actually just have a buffet type set up. I've thought about that option but since I pushed my wedding back a year...2021 now, I can actually save for either or. Good luck!

We saved and still ending up financing a lot. We figured out how to have it all paid off by January and no later than March. Do what’s right for you and then come up with a payment plan you’ll stick to!

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I'll send you a message

We made a budget first on how much we thought was reasonable to spend. Then we decided what was most important for us. We are having a smaller wedding with 70 of our closest people present because its what we can afford. I dont care about thibgs like flowers or having 1000 photos so we opted for less flowers and a shorter photo package. Consider buying things second hand. Cobsider cutting your guest list (which cuts food costs and opens opportunity for a unique venue). Think state parks or a resturant venue instea of a professional wedding venue. Hopefully this helps!

We knew we couldn't afford a more local wedding where all of our friends and family would be able to make it so we did a DW in Vegas. We knew we wanted at least our parents and his mom lives an hour from Vegas and doesn't fly but my parents do so it worked out the best to have it there. It was so much cheaper than a local wedding would have been because I have a very large family that we would have been obligated to invite. We mostly used our tax return and other money we'd saved up for it.

You can It will just take a lot of time for saving or you'll need to have a small guest list. There are many ways to save on your wedding! Don't loose hope, you'll find something We moved back in with parents to pay half the rent to save, we both and 2-2.5 jobs but those extra jobs are for saving to rent a home with a security fund, deposits and furniture but if we want that money we could. And I have done lots of research to try to get deals, low guest count, bring down my venue cost, etc! Now I don't have the smallest budget but I as well waited a while and had our honeymoon gifted

Girl I know all about this. Nashville is outrageous right now. But I have family in jersey and weddings there are majorly expensive.... Venetian hour, cocktail hour with 15 food stations.... it's insane.

Have you considered a mini destination wedding. Someplace a couple hours away. Quaint little town with water access maybe. It would accomplish a couple things... one, it's more affordable... and two, less people will likely attend. Although you would still invite your 200, you could expect more than usual to not attend due to having to travel to get there.

A friend of mine did this here in Nashville, opted for a small town about 2.5 hours outside of the city. She found a boat dock, campground that allowed her to access the property for the whole weekend... so some family rented cabins, others stayed in town, others showed up on their boats... she invited 230 and 140 showed. And it was perfect.

You can get creative and find a way to fit your dream ideas into your budget. But it has to start with location location location

Getting married in NY suburbs, close to jersey. We moved our wedding to a Sunday and got a venue normally $150pp for $100pp. Friday or Sunday weddings are typically more affordable. Or if you even wanted to, a week day.

Originally we wanted this beautiful museum with all the bells and whistles but had to walk away because is just wasn't in our budget. We ended up finding a beautiful country club which is all inclusive and was within our budget. While it's not my absolute dream location, it is beautiful, affordable and in the end I get to marry my best friend.

I live in NJ and we are getting married here and it's super expensive. We are paying for it ourselves too so I definitely get the struggles. If you can push it back to save that is always the best way, long engagements are totally fine. If that isn't an option, getting married on a Thursday or Friday is always cheaper than a Saturday. Some vendors give you discounts when you pay them in full. (Our DJ took off 10% since we paid in full and saved us almost $400 which when you're on a strict budget really helps.) Also DIY as much as you can. Look around and wait for deals for paper goods. Again, these are secondary to postponing til you have more saved.

We both are having a longer engagement (around 2 years) and we also live in an area that isn't super expensive for weddings as well. We picked a Friday which has been saving us crazy money with a lot of vendors! A lot of our decorations will be DIY and a friend will be doing photography for us which will save us lots.

We went with a non-traditional venue (Our local County Zoo) that is beautiful and requires not much decorating. Picking this venue allowed us to pick from a list of caterers which we were able to find one of the most affordable and go from there. This was nice because we then had better control over picking our caterer which is adding up to be nearly half of our budget, vs being stuck with a number amount that we could no control (aka all inclusive venues).

I'd say plan for a longer engagement if possible so that you can save up more for the wedding, or just keep doing more research to find alternative venues that are more affordable for the both of you. Think outside the box to find some great ways to save money! Usually whatever is a more popular pick will also be pricey.

Not always ideal because I can tell you are trying to accommodate the 95% of your guest list BUT if they want to be there they will make it happen whether its in NJ or somewhere else. FH and I live in FL, all of his family is in FL and GA. All my family is in NY (where I'm from), VT and NH. We opted for a DW in Gatlinburg TN because it served for the proper season and photos I was looking for (wanted an outdoor wedding with amazing views and not too hot, plus changing leaves). My siblings aren't bringing my nieces and nephews but they are coming. All the important people will be there and in my books thats what matters! Explore all your options, don't settle because you can't find a venue you love there. There are a lot of weddings that can be done on tight budgets. Heck... you'd be surprised what you can save in a short amount of time if you properly budget.

FH and I have a 17+k wedding (about $4000 paid by our parents) the remaining 13k+ was paid by us. We paid our deposits pretty early (about a year in) but didn't actually start saving or paying until our 8 month mark because some family tragedies that happened. We are 19 days out and owe about 800 still but it can't be paid till night of our wedding and its almost all in savings. We each budgeted and put away $700 a piece away each month for expenses (and this is extreme, would have been less if we got on it immediately). A lot of vendors only require minimum deposits then you can pay as you can till their due date, its super helpful!

Just a suggestion to cut down wedding attendance. Have it on a weekday afternoon during the school year. People who don't really want to be there won't attend. Also will cut down on venue costs and is a less rude way of just not inviting people.

What we did was picked a local community center and they allow you to cater yourself. This way, the venue was its own cost and we paid probably less than $10pp

We have had a two year engagement so I can have my dream wedding. Not sure if pushing your wedding back would be an option or not though

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Totally agree with this. Give yourself an extra year to have what you want!!!

I live in NY so i can imagine but a friend of my FH got married at the Blue Heron Pines it was beautiful. he had his wife send the the link where you can find inexpensive places.

Hope this helps!

https://meyerphotovideo.com/2017/04/20/10-affordable-wedding-venues-in-nj/

We paid out of pocket for everything. Unfortunately, we knew we couldn't afford a big wedding, or even small one with just our closest friends and family. We tried to make it happen, twice. But things came up where we were set back financially and I just wanted to be married already. We decided to go off the White Mountains and elope. Thankfully, our family and friends are so wonderful they all understand and were all soooo happy for us regardless. My mom even told me shes happy with the way we decided to do things. It's not for everyone, but it really helped up save a lot of money as we came out spending under 2k when everything was said and done.

I understand your position. My fiancé is in college(ex military) and I’m the only one with the full time job so he can focus on school. We live in NC but the wedding will be in MO. I didn’t realize how stressful it would be to plan a wedding from far away! At first I was looking in the bigger cities for Venus but actually found a place in a smaller town. So that probably cut down on pricing and then luckily they offer a room with decorations if you borrow something you must then leave something behind for others. Which works out for us so we don’t have to travel back home with stuff. But I plan on only decorating minimally for our outdoor ceremony area, and then just making my own centerpieces and decorating the food/dessert table. The rest I will borrow from the venue!

The first thing we did was sit and figure out our comfortable budget. everything else branched out from that. the best way to save money is to cut down on the guest list. we looked at some traditional wedding venues but we also looked at some other options as well.