Wedding Loan?! Help

I think you can do a combination of things! Find somewhere with low-cost cakes. For example, my friend had a yummy wedding cake from Walmart for like $20! Party favors don’t really matter either. I’m not gonna lie, I’m that person that always forgets mine lol! You can also put anything else on a 0% interest card that has the best points. So you at least get some money back. Then any wedding money you get can go to paying the credit card off! You deff have options though girl 😊 You got this! ❤️ Good luck!! 👍🏼

You can definitely cut favors - no one will notice or care!!! I think one of the easiest things to cut back on is flowers. For example, a typical bridal bouquet with roses has 2 dozen - cut it down to one, it will still be gorgeous but half the price. Or, give the florist more lee-way to be creative - give them a budget, your list (x number bouquets, bouts, centerpieces, etc), and a budget and see what they come up with. Maybe only put floral centerpieces on half the tables, and simple clear vases with floating candles on the others.

What were your plans on flowers/décor? You can easily cut a ton of that. I'm DIYing my flowers for a VERY low cost.

I like what all the PPs said in losing what isn't a necessity and trying to find ways to make what you've already paid for even lower in pricing. I don't think putting it on credit cards at this point is a terrible idea if you think you can pay them off relatively quickly and easily.

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I understand you have a large family, but they are not paying for this you are!! They need to leave their kids at home and anyone who is not married needs to come solo!!! That will cut down costs quite a bit. I am having a destination 20th-anniversary vow renewal because I knew it would be a fiasco if I had it locally. Everyone who wants to bring their kids and people I have not spoken too in years wanting to come??? NO!!! The people who are really wanting to come to my destination wedding will be paying to be there so they won't be lookie-loos or people who really are annoying. Good luck!!

View Quoted Comment You can absolutely skip favors. I have been to weddings that didn't do them and nobody cared. I won't be doing them. Cut on decor also. And I love the zero interest cc idea...

Here’s how we cut costs:
-no DJ (Spotify playlist controlled by the best man)
-literally no decor—other than a couple signs in picture frames. Our centerpieces were literally just a few votive candles and a table number (provided by the venue). This kind of thing seems so important when you’re planning but honestly, it wasn’t missed!
-the only flowers were my bouquet ($70 from a florist) and my bridesmaids bouquets that we made with grocery store flowers. They looked gorgeous and cost $30 total for all 4 of their bouquets.
-no favors
-no extras (photo booth, etc)
-had my brother officiate

It sounds like we cut a lot (which we did) didn’t have a “cheap” wedding by any means. We had a 100 person wedding in the ballroom of a historic inn. We had 3 photographers for 5 hours. We had a videographer for 4 hours. We had amazing food, drinks, and cake. We ended up spending probably around $17k. And we got more than half of that money “back” in the form of cash gifts (and that’s not including all the other gifts we got...)

Make some cuts on things that aren’t important! Get rid of anything that doesn’t directly affect your experience or your guests’ experience. Good food, good drinks, a nice venue, and a photographer to document it. Everything else is expendable in my opinion 🤷🏻‍♀️ And while it’s best not to count on other people... remember you will get a lot of money back in the form of gifts. I bet of that $5k you need, you can cut back on at least $2k or so worth of expenses and then I’d be shocked if you don’t get the other $3k back in gifts.

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Definitely give up the favors girl! We aren't even having them at our wedding

View Quoted Comment Thankfully I decided to rent everything including faux florals so I’ll definitely cut back. I bought all 11 bridesmaids off AliExpress for $48 dollars. Girl I am sooo nervous. Lol

View Quoted Comment Lol thank you for you’re advice. I’m now trying to figure the best wording to uninvite people who received save the dates. My grandma and his mom went invite happy. Lol they are gonna start calling me bridezilla in a sec lol jk

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Don't let the happiest day in your life become a nightmare. It is your day and if anyone does not like it they can pay!!! LOL I am sure the save the dates did not have children only or only the person invited you can be honest and say for budget purposes we are limiting the number of children to those in the wedding party and if you are not married you can't bring a guest. If they are not happy with that they can stay home and view the photos on Instagram!! You can also blame the venue and say that you are limited on space so you have to cut the invite list.

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much! This was very helpful and realistic. I’m gonna take a hard look at my budget and cut things down. I’m having a dry wedding bc his family is majority against drinking around the elders of the family. So I’m thinking of other ways to entertain besides telling people to sneak stuff in their purse lol jk

View Quoted Comment Haha got it! Well not having alcohol will certainly save you a lot of money too.

What you can do honestly if you’re not sure if something is worth the expense, is picture your wedding day without it and see how upset you are/if you even care at all lol. Honestly, I was initially so beyond stressed about centerpieces so eventually I just let it go and was like “the venue will just do whatever they’re going to do” and I had no idea what they planned to do 😂 It wasn’t actually until the morning after the wedding where I was like “wait..... what were our centerpieces.....?” I literally had to check a photo to see what they had looked like hahaha. That’s how little all that stuff matters... I did not even notice my own centerpieces :p