i struggle with budget and my dream wedding

I would look into all inclusive venues in your area. It helps a lot budget wise

I am using a blank slate venue myself. We are allowed to BYOB will make things much cheaper, and we can get budget catering.

I'm not sure what you're budget is, but when we were planning and booking and getting quotes, we quickly realized how expensive everything was.

While it would have been great have a wedding where we had originally planned with friends and family, we ultimately decided to to do a destination elopement instead.

Eloping now a days means different things for different people, including those who offer elopement packages. Most packages allow up to a certain number of guests (from what I've seen 20-30). They typically include everything you need for a price ranging from 1k-3k depending on location. That could be an idea?

Photography is the most expensive thing we're doing for our wedding, for a lot of brides (like myself) it's priority number one. I'm paying more for photography than for my venue (super affordable venue, plus we have our photographer the entire day along with an engagement shoot, a custom canvas of our favorite photo, $100 print credit and all of our images digitally released to us afterwards).

I did find that a blank slate venue was cheaper for us because we're stocking our own bar and the caterers that other venues required started at like $28 a head, while ours is about $14. Don't be discouraged by what others spend, especially since prices vary by city and state! I think my budget is relatively low considering I've seen some spend half of what my total budget is on just their dress, it all varies

I'm not married yet but FH and I are working to stay in a 2k or less budget which so far we've managed. We are doing a more relaxed day. I don't have an actual wedding dress just a dress I like and would wear again. I have a bouquet of paper flowers. Invites of Vistaprint. Max of 35ish people. Venue allows food delivery planning to do that. I found a photographer on thumbtack who I hit it off with and has a reasonable price ($350 for 3hrs). Also found a videographer willing to shoot just ceremony for $200. We also aren't doing dancing instead we're having board games that people can play. We planned a shorter event. And we have a friend who's ordained marrying us.

You got this girl! As far as regret, I don't think I will regret not spending more on wedding.

Don’t feel bad hun! My budget was so low for photography even Craigslist didn’t want my money. 😂 I ended up getting a pro wedding photographer by simply cutting how many hours I need.
I know smaller budgets are hard, there were a lot of vendors or things we couldn’t have because it was out of the budget but a beautiful wedding can be had for any budget! It just takes more work.

Our budget is very modest and at times the whole planning process has felt completely overwhelming and impossible. The biggest thing that worked for us was finding an "out of the box venue" and it came out way cheaper then your typical wedding banquet room. Also skip all the silly stuff that no one really cares about. No one is going to remember if you have over the top centerpieces or if you had a monogrammed aisle runner. Keep it simple! A wedding is about love and togetherness as long as you have that everything else is just the cherry on top. Hang in there!

It's definitely intimidating when looking at the costs of everything. Wedding things are just so expensive.

We also have a smaller budget. I know it doesn't seem like it on these forms but those with bottom basement budgets do exist here. I remember seeing how much it was for photography and just about crapped my pants because either it was more than what we wanted to spend total or pretty close to. I found though if you just want coverage for, say, the ceremony and none of the bells and whistles included in those photography packages it gets a lot more affordable. We found someone who would do an hourly rate. What has helped is prioritizing and realizing we can't do everything we want to do. So what's important to us and what overall vibe do we want? That's what we're focusing on.

I would recommend sitting down and deciding what’s most important to you guys and what’s not . Photography was important to me, but I couldn’t foot the bill as our budget is only $4k. I compromised and got only 4 hours of photography, which was still more expensive than our venue- but I’ll get the most important stuff on photo ( Ceremony, Couples photos, family photos, bridal party photos, first dance, and a good 1.5 of reception). Before I booked anything I sat down and priced every single thing, and made sure my plan could fit our budget. So far it is working! You can do it 😀

I'm still having sticker shock after putting together the pricing for my dream wedding. FH and I had to make a lot of tough decisions to stay in our budget, but rest assured, it can be done. Don't get discouraged at all, there are lots of ways to save money! And I know all the WW guys and gals will be willing to help you out!

I felt the same but we lucked out and a friend of a friend is doing our photography for a steal, we got a friends and family discount from our caterer, and we took a risk on buying our attire completely online. There's a lot of DIY going into our wedding which is nerve wracking, but it is still coming together the way we wanted it.