Wedding budget at $5000

After reading all these comments, you must be thoroughly confused. Lots of different opinions here. It's probably doable but as many have said, you'll need to scale back whether its time of day, guest list, venue, etc. Other ideas to consider, getting married off-peak season, doing a Fri or Sun wedding, brunch or strictly cake & punch wedding? Or for $5k, why don't you elope and treat yourself to a nice vacation rather than stressing over a wedding?

Jacky your photographer better have experience for 300$

Odd are not. But it's okay. She'll get married and be lovely the day of and realize when she's a done how awful they are considering she put time and effort to look nice. Shrug. Its always really painfully obvious when people skimp on a photographer. Their choice. But let's not pretend we can't all see it. We can.

We know. We don't forget and we silently judge.

If it's an evening wedding, people will rightfully expect a meal and at least beer and wine and I don't see how that will fit in your budget. Can you move it to 2 pm and do finger foods or 11 am and do brunch? Do you already have a venue? If you tell us more about where you are so far with planning, we can help you more with how to accomplish this while still hosting properly.

That is not true ... Diy ideas are really good ... Found a venue ... Of hard looking .. And found it on groupon and got it with a $ 200 dollars off. My sisters law is making my center pieces and favors for guest which are wine bottles with our name and date we are getting married and she is paying for it. Plus fiance' aunt is making wedding cake, cousin doing all flowers. I made my on save the date cards sending them out next week. Doing cocktail hour then 5 station bars, with DJ, with decorating, lighting venue providing tea, coffee, soda, for over 100 people for under $3000

My pictures are gonna be fucking incredible thank you very much

If you say so.

Tonya: 1) you shouldn't be having your friends and family work your wedding. They're guests, not hired help. 2) If you are being gifted something or someone is paying for a portion, that should still be included as an overall cost of the wedding. It's not a $3000 wedding if that doesn't include the flowers, cake, etc that people are giving you. That's like someone whose parents paid for their wedding saying that the cost was $0.

So my wedding details are this ... Budget is 5000.

Located in Dayton Ohio.

Found & venue and ceremony site for less than 1000. Having a night weddings so it'll be after dinner around 7 or 8 so people would have already eaten. With the venue we can make and bring our own food or higher any given caterer. Photography we have a friend who is a professional that is going to do it for about 800, we've already booked our pastor and he's not charging anything, doing all the paper goods myself beings that I am a interior designer and know the works of all the design software, flowers I was hoping to stay simple and use baby breathe, we have a friend doing the cake for a low cost, our honeymoon is already paid for by a family member. Our goal is to have a simple wedding without having to start our marriage off in debt. We want something to remember but not something to remember for being so expensive ... But for being a beautiful evening. We have to remember the wedding is to celebrate the love between the couple joining as one and not how mad your guests will be that they didn't get a perfect 5 course meal. Most of my list is family, we are trying to maybe get it down to 80 but that's as low as we can go without having to cut off immediate family. Some of your comments are very helpful thank you. While others are very hurtful to others. Try and encourage each other and not offend each other. Remember we are all in this together thanks ladies!

Your wedding is going to be amazing and i can't wait to see your bam ! congratulations and goodluck

No.

Lol, Mrs. Faith! Shelby, it sounds like you have everything mapped out. Congrats and good luck to you.

From personal experience, I'm pretty sure you can do it but for 75-80 rather than 100. Sure, you will have to do extra research and be very selective and be extra careful with your costs, but it can be done. Some people just like being snooty about weddings but if you don't find it necessary or possible to spend more than 5k for a wedding, that's ok. No one who truly is your friend on that day will be judging. I managed to do a pretty low budget wedding a little over the 5K mark, but we made careful choices along the way and accepted recommendations. We saved ourselves money by trying out an really nice and delicious Italian restaurant for our catering. For 80 people, two different plates will be $700 total. So I'm pretty sure it's possible. We didn't go major on the decor because that's where we felt we could cut back without it looking bad. So it will be pretty minimal but the decor we DO have is going to be really nice.

$5k is barely enough to cover food and alcohol for 100. You might need to up your budget to pay for all the things your forgetting about.

Shelby, the main thing you still need to cover then is food. Have you gotten quotes from local caterers? 7 pm is still too close to dinnertime I think, when you factor in that people usually arrive early at weddings too. But for an 8 pm wedding you could maybe find a small catering company to do desserts, cheeses, wine, etc.

Definitely don't make your own food. Self catering is a bad idea. Based on the additional info, I'd recommend you do a dessert reception. Have the wedding start at 8pm. Have a dessert bar with cookies, brownies, fruit and either cake or cupcakes. Or you could do a candy bar, fruit and cake. Or a trail mix bar, fruit, and cake. Also provide drinks. You could do coffee, tea, lemonade, soda and 2-3 signature cocktails. You could do a sangria, Irish coffee, or other dessert type cocktails. You could easily do food for this type of reception for you budget.

Instead of a big venue (which I couldn't find for under 4500, and that was only 50 people)...we are renting a house that overlooks lake winnipesaukee, it's less than 1500 for 4 days and it sleeps 12 so all of our kids can sleep there without worrying about hotel costs....and doing everything right there is costing us less than 3000 because we are doing a barbecue.

Make your flowers instead of buying them! That'll save you at least a thousand dollars! I'm making burlap flowers and they look great!!

My bil food budget with 60 guests was 4k. You will need to cut back on your guest list. We are only having 65 guests. Food and drinks are running us 8700 including tax and tip.

If I was invited to a wedding at 7pm, I would think that dinner would be served and would not eat before then. Most weddings I've attended have cocktail hour at 6 and dinner at 7. I don't see how 7 is not a meal time.

Also, from reading several of these responses, apparently the way to have a cheap wedding is to expect free labor from your family and friends - how kind of you to expect them to work rather than saving money so they can actually enjoy the day!