Planning my wedding on a budget!

Keep the guest list small and keep the reception affordable. Set a budget and decide which items you want to spend more on. This app can help. Good luck and congrats.

Whether or not your budget is reasonable depends on your guest list. $15k should be very doable. As far as catering, Italian, Mexican, and BBQ are typically the least expensive. I would wait until last to pick decor since there’s no decor that is actually a necessity. Book your major vendors and make other necessary purchases and then see what you have left in your budget. Check out Facebook Marketplace for secondhand items for great prices.

First, congrats! Second, I say pick your battles. My FH and I were strong on the opinion that we wanted a florist, so we're paying a good amount for exactly what we want. But when it came to the cake, we picked something that tasted good but saved us a few bucks. Talk with your future spouse and decide what are the must haves and what you can trim. They might surprise you and say the photographer has to be a specific person, or they might say what's most important is the cake. Other things you can compromise a bit to keep your costs down.

What state do you live in? I live in Maryland and my wedding will be about $12k (including EVERYTHING but the rings). I've really been using the budget planner on here. We got most of our cost down by picking a venue that can do ceremony and reception and allows us to bring in outside food and alcohol. We're getting Mission BBQ to cater and will buy bull alcohol from totalwineandmore.com and will let guests serve the alcohol themselves. Our flowers are fake from hobby lobby (they look pretty real). I got my dress from a charity for $500 (shops donate their unsold gowns to it, so o got it for a fraction of the price and helped a good cause). I'm printing my invitations and thank you cards at work (my boss said it was okay, I'm just supplying the paper). I got save the dates from Shutterfly (I just added some words on one of our engagement photos and printed as a 4x6 for like 9 cents each plus shipping.


I'm a very savvy shopper and very artsy, feel free to message me if you have questions or just need to bounce ideas off someone.

Smaller guest list and if needed, choose brunch or a non Saturday night to bring down venue costs.

I'd skip decor. You can diy centerpieces but I don't feel like decor is the huge focus of a wedding. Focus on having good food and entertainment.

You and your fiance should each write a list of 3-5 things that are the most important to you for your wedding (photography, music, florals, catering, dress, etc). Then those things are where you should focus your budget and everything else can be compromised on. Another tip other posters have mentioned is to keep your guest list small, have a Friday wedding, check your local Facebook marketplace for decor/vendor suggestions. You can totally make it work on 15k!

I think it depends on where you live and how many people you plan on inviting. The more people you invite the more it is going to cost. One thing that saved us a bunch of money was having buffet rather than a plated meal. We also had an adults only reception except for the flower girls and ring bearer. I would start by making a guest list because food is going to be your biggest expense.

I have been diy-ing a bunch stuff for my wedding. They're things that will look beautiful at our wedding, but also things we can put in our house after the wedding so it's not a waste.

As far as catering goes, it depends on what you want to do. My FH and I are not formal at all and we decided to do a buffet style instead of a formal sit-down dinner (so that actually lowered our catering costs).

Our decorations are coming from a local company that rents wedding decorations (my FSIL used them and loved her experience and her decorations at her wedding last month were beautiful). I'm able to go and pick out everything I want and then I just have to return them a couple of days after the wedding.

There are several ways to save money when planning a wedding, you just have to do a lot of research and compare lots of prices for things you want and, if you see something you want but feel like you can make it, try making it. It's usually cheaper to make things instead of outright buying them. I'm not going to say that I'm diy-ing everything, because I'm not and I have purchased things from places like Etsy, but certain things I have done myself and it has saved us money.

My two suggestions would be try to find a venue that is all inclusive, that saved me and my FH a few thousand dollars. Only other costs we encountered was photography, which was our splurge, and flowers other than the included centerpieces. Second try to be open with types of flowers you use. Because I choose flowers in season and lesser known we only spent about $700 for everything minus centerpieces. Which in Southern California I think is unheard of for wedding flowers. Hopefully this helps!

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Awesome! What things are you DIYing?

Keep your guest list small, skip favors and programs. Keep the decor more minimal.

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The bouquets (b/c my FH has really bad allergies and real flowers would be terrible for him on the day of), our centerpieces, additional wedding favors, our place cards for the reception, the seating board outside of the reception hall, letters for our sweetheart table that spell out our last name (bought the letters at AC Moore and are making them a champagne color to match part of our theme), and the arch we're getting married under (my FH is making it. They had one at our venue but it's really old and they said we can bring one in if we want). We're also making everything for the dessert bar and we are setting up the hot chocolate bar on our own.

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Yes! I love that. This sounds amazing. What favors are you using?

I’m doing the same colors and around the same budget!!! We found a caterer who also does decor which was a great help

Def look for an all inclusive venue that provides tables, linens, catering, alcohol, etc. They set up and break it down like clockwork, I had my wedding at an all inclusive venue, had my ceremony on an outdoor terrace and reception in a ballroom, the venue was mountain top over looking the valley, it was beautiful they had a bridal suite included in the package and because we picked a Sunday we were able to wow our guests with delicious 3 course surf and turf dinner and hot butler passed appetizers, drinks (3 hr open bar included), our cake and DJ. The event manager that night and the DJ basically ran the entire event and made it super easy, I had the best time knowing everything was taken care of.

My husband and I got married at out church and than had our reception at our local fire hall. Check out your local fire halls and VFW's a lot of these halls are beautiful and affordable.

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We're doing hockey pucks with our names and wedding date on them. My FH is a HUGE New York Ranger fan so we bought a bunch of pucks with their logo on them and are customizing them ourselves. We are also treating the dessert and hot chocolate bar as a wedding favor b/c we will have boxes available for guests to take things home.

View Quoted Comment Super cute!!