Under $1,000 wedding, what's your advice?

I find a lot of misleading numbers being thrown around, giving future brides a VERY unrealistic expectation of what can be done.

When someone says I only spent $xxx on my wedding - you can't simply choose to ignore all the other costs that are there but you may not have personally paid for.

For example a guest list of 100 on $800. There are certain hard costs in that figure sure, but assuming they all ate something, even a hotdog - money came form somewhere. If the answer is - guests brought it - well, guests had to spend money and that counts towards the wedding budget.

Let's take another example, say DIY centerpieces. I see this a lot...say you got a quote for these 10 fabulous centerpieces at $1,000. Some people will say, I did them DIY for $50.

When in reality, sure one trip to the store you might have spent $50 on some plastic flowers. But there's also the three other trips where you had to get glue, vases, colored stones, etc. Each trip took an hour, and say $5 in gas. Sometimes it's quite a bit more depending on where you live. Then let's say you spent 4 hours (a conservative number) making them all, and oh yeah you had 4 of your BM helping you. Each of them took an hour getting ready and traveling to and from your house, plus the 4 hours spent helping. So just in this example you are out $100 in cash for supplies and fuel for you shopping and your helpers, plus the 25 hours everything really took.

It might be much more useful to say "I spent $1000 and 450 hours on my DIY wedding"

Catering, whether someone's parents do it themselves or not, is still expensive; I'd be very surprised if your parents spend less than 1000.00 buying the food for 100 guests; probably more.

It all adds up, and 1000.00 for a hundred people won't really get you much of anywhere.

You haven't mentioned where you are doing your reception? Is that cost covered by your parents also? I would make sure that is secure. I have not spent too much money on things outside of reception hall, food, drinks, and invitations. We went cheap on the rest of the stuff.

Vistaprint is amazing!!! Im doind all my wedding stationery through them, also if you sign up as a member (which is free) they are consstantly sending you out deals for free stationery, you only need to pay postage and handling!!!

I'm Creating my invites as their "postcard" as they are cheaper and you get more than making and buying invites from them...

The business Cards i am using for Place cards and just writing each persons name on them with a nice silver pen.

Again using postcards for the "thank you" cards!!!

I am also thinking of wedding sign for our nephew to carry up in front of me, saying "here comes the bride" as our son will be our ring boy, and our niece (nephews sister) is the flower girl and we dont want him to feel left out and would love him to be involved!

Also return address labels too...

And the best thing is that everything is matching and to theme too!!!

However, with the budget you are on, the last two aren't at all necessary!

Continued from last message...

We too have a low wedding budget, and are also blessed to have a lot of help from friends and family.

Cake: Made by Mums Friend

Ceremony Celebrant: My uncle

Wedding Location: Free - Local but secluded beach/bay

Marquee for Reception: FH's brother in-laws family own an event company and have this, so are getting most of the reception stuff through them at a hugely discounted price...

Food: Taken Care of by family

Stationery: As stated in the previous message - VISTAPRINT! woohoo... They are amazing!!!

Dress: Will be buying 2nd hand or off one of those China sites for like $200 then budgeting another $150 for alterations!!! (I know and have seen people who have done this with dresses that have turned out to be immaculate after the alterations!!!)

Message me for more ideas and we can talk about what we are doing to stay under budget

Aneta

Hi Alondra!

Congratulations on the engagement!

My wife and I kept our wedding low budget as well. Not for any other reason then we didn't want to have a huge wedding. My wife and I designed our invitations, decor, and bouquet. Our catering hall was a country club restaurant. We had 23 people. The cost for the venue and food was $2400. The caterer said he had a DJ that he works with and I foolishly trusted him. A seasoned entertainer can cost anywhere between $1000 and $3500 in my area. Having the experience that I had, I would never tell anyone to do DIY entertainment or let someone pick it for me.

As with all of your vendors, the most important factor is making sure they are a good fit. Hope this helps.

-a

Hi Alondra!

Congratulations on the engagement!

My wife and I kept our wedding low budget as well. Not for any other reason then we didn't want to have a huge wedding. My wife and I designed our invitations, decor, and bouquet. Our catering hall was a country club restaurant. We had 23 people. The cost for the venue and food was $2400. The caterer said he had a DJ that he works with and I foolishly trusted him. A seasoned entertainer can cost anywhere between $1000 and $3500 in my area. Having the experience that I had, I would never tell anyone to do DIY entertainment or let someone pick it for me.

As with all of your vendors, the most important factor is making sure they are a good fit. Hope this helps.

-a

Hi does anyone on here knows Olivias's secrets for 100 people only $800 spent?