Where are my fellow low budget brides ($10k or under)?

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It's awesome that you have talented family that is offering to help! Our venue provides us with a jacuzzi room for our wedding night too.

Our budget was between $1500-$2000. It was somewhat flexible in general, although we knew we didn't want to spend $500/night on a hotel for example. I am almost done with a degree and we just moved from his country to where we live now to work. So we need to be mindful of money. We are pretty simple people too and don't need so many fancy things to feel fulfilled.

I found my dress on Marketplace for approx $200 brand new.. would have cost more to buy it from the company. We opted to rent an apartment instead of a hotel.. that way we could have a private place, cook most of our meals and save money. Of course we budgeted to go out for a nice dinner on our wedding day. We also passed up the "traditional" stuff (atleast for me because I am from Canada originally). We got married at a city hall on the Faroe Islands, which can be an expensive place if you don't live close to it. I took our own wedding photos there as I am a photog. Now with Spotify and recording, no need in our case to hire a DJ and Videographer. We bought tax free booze to bring so we wouldn't spend so much money on alcohol at the restaurant.

You don't need to blow a possible down payment on a home to have a great wedding. Here is a photo from our day.. so many stress out and go through a lot of money to do the same thing that cost us like 1/10 of the price

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That is awesome that you came in that far under budget.

We didn't have a budget total, we budgeted per thing. So venue, no more than $4000 (we spent 3k) food, $1200 (dad got this for 1k), dj we're looking around 5-600, photography, didn't really choose a budget for this, we're spending $1600 for 2 shooters all day. Bar, no more than $1000, we'll end up spending around $8-900 (dad is also getting this). Cake isn't decided yet, but my mom will get that.
Dress, dad is giving me $1000 and whatever else is my expense (so no more than $2000).

And decorations are mostly diy, amazon, walmart, hobby lobby, michaels! No budget total for this, just small spending here and there, and askimg for some items as my christmas gifts!

So, we'll be around 7-9k, but with help!!!!
We chose to do individual budgets rather than total because an initial total budget would give me too much anxiety on how to break it down 🤦🤷 I'm weird.

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Thank you!

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I agree. This is not my first marriage and I remember being young and thinking I had to have everything that all weddings had. I was such a different person back then. Now, I'm quite happy to only have what is important to us and then get the best deal possible on that.

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I get you. I unofficially broke things down into categories too, but then added up the total budget.

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Yes, it is very easy to fall into that mindset. Have you both thought about where you will have the wedding and what areas are important/not important? I gathered from your post that a photographer is not important nor is having a fancy cake or a big wedding. Your budget sounds really doable so far.

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Yes! We feel very lucky because we are probably having a much more expensive wedding for what we are paying, for which we are VERY grateful. I'm a teacher and fiance is a hair stylist, so it's not exactly like we're rolling in it. lol. I'm literally teaching summer school this year (I mean, I teach it *every* year) because that is where 1/3 of our wedding money is coming from, for sure.

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We broke up things into categories to decide what was reasonable for each area as well!
Before we found our venue, I researched around to see what we could do a reasonable indoor venue for, since ours is a winter wedding, so that helped us set that budget and then some of the others are more like, "yeah I'm not willing to devote that much for this thing", so that budget area lower. I have multiple spreadsheets. haha.

The absolute max we want to spend is $5000, which a good portion of that was offered by my father to help and the rest we’ll save as we can over the next year. We settled on $5k after researching venues, catering, and other vendor costs in the area and realizing how expensive everything can be, and knowing we couldn’t afford and didn’t want to spend that much on a single day. We both knew we wanted to get married in the mountains, and looking at venues was really overwhelming because they all wanted SO much money. To save money we are getting married at a group campground off a reservoir ($250/night), keeping the guest list under 60, and getting creative with DIYs. My best friend and I bake and decorate cakes, so we’ll be doing my cake. I also worked in a flower shop for a couple years (and there are hundreds of online tutorials too), so we’ll be doing our own flowers. FH is handy and owns every tool we could possibly need, so I designed centerpieces and he’ll help me execute them. My mom offered to cook for us, but that really stresses me out and I don’t want her worrying about that leading up to and especially day of. My FH’s best friend suggested we look into Qdoba or Chipotle catering since it’s pretty inexpensive. I’ve also been talking to a caterer in the area about pasta as an inexpensive option. We also got really lucky and won a free DJ at a bridal show, though if that doesn’t work out my mom’s stepson will act as DJ and manage our playlist for us. Photography is going to be one of our bigger costs, but I’ve had very little luck finding good quality in the price range we need. I finally found a great photographer who was willing to bring his price down by cutting the engagement session and two hours of wedding coverage (still giving us 6 hours which sounds like plenty to me) from his package. We also have a friend officiating and kept our WP small- our two kids as flower girl and ring bearer, and we each have one or maybe two attendants, we’ll see if FH’s best man can make it from South Korea. So far, I think it’s been fun trying to think outside the box and get creative, we’ll see how I’m handling stress as it gets closer! Happy planning!

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Thank you! My husband and I paid for everything ourselves and did not want to be in debt.

1. What is your budget? Is it strict or flexible? We have a strict $9000 budget

2. Why did you choose that budget? My parents offered to pay it and that's what they gave us

3. What are you doing to save money on wedding expenses? No alcohol, serving pizza, 250 guests but no seating chart, small cake for just wedding party and then Costco sheet cakes for everyone, dress was $500 from David's Bridal, venue we got 1/2 off due to booking within 90 days of wedding and being in August. No DJ, just using Spotify. Flowers from Trader Joe's and just for BP

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I'm a teacher too (Middle School Emotional/Autistm Support). I teach ESY every year for $$ and because I don't trust anyone else with my kids.

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Good idea. Yeah...I have a few myself.

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We thought about going the Spotify Route too...and if it comes down to it and we need the money elsewhere, still may. However, FH wanted an interactive DJ.

1. What is your budget? Is it strict or flexible?

My fiance and I are all about avoiding what we see as ridiculous extras and up charges. We sat down and priced out everything we wanted and how much we were willing to pay for everything at a maximum and used wedding wire's budget tool to put it all in. I think the tool currently says we're at $6,500 or around there but it hasn't recalculated for us getting several deals coming in hundreds under budget and my parents gifting us several things. So our investment is looking to be closer to $4,500 at the end of the day. We're having about 80 guests at the wedding as we have a lot of friends we wanted to invite and we each come from large families. We are very good savers as we both grew up in poverty. We think the standard $20.000 wedding average budget is unrealistic for us as you could basically finance our lives for more than a year on that kind of money.

We thrifted my dress and his suit, I'm having a friend altar my dress. We budgeted probably $675 for both of us and so far we're in only $100 for both. We opted not to get a DJ and bought a used sound system for $5 instead. We're doing paper lantern center pieces which makes each table's decor cost about $3. I'm using my mom's bouquet as she had a silk flower bouquet and her glass cake topper. I'm not doing bridesmaid's bouquets or anything silly like that. I have several friends who are officiants so that is free to us. We found a newer photographer that agreed to do 3 hours of coverage for $200. Those deals we found alone have saved us over a grand. My parents and family friends are gifting us the cake and cake cutting tools, a bartender, and champagne and glasses for the toast.

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You have some great ideas! I find the average wedding budget in the US absolutely way too extravagant for us. Even with my first wedding that my parents paid for when I was 22, I STILL spent under $8K. When I think back, it disgusts me that I paid $800 for an dress that now sits in my attic way.

I should start out saying that I am from Saskatoon in Canada. Our budget is a pretty strict $4,000. We chose that because we're both in university and neither of us want to spend a lot for a 1 day event. To save money, we aren't using a DJ (not many people are dancers), we're inviting 50 people, we have been doing a lot of DIY to make our Harry Potter theme come to life, we're doing flowers from a florist for just the wedding party (I found a great deal of $250 for bridal, bridesmaids and boutonnieres because we've chosen a pretty simple design), we found a cheap caterer of $13 per person, we found a venue where we can bring in our own alcohol with no corkage fee, and I'm looking at bridesmaid dresses for my dress! So far, we are estimating to spend about $3700 for the wedding so we're coming under budget a lot! We wanted to save as much as we could from the wedding so we can travel to London and Paris on our honeymoon!

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What style of dress are you looking for? Maybe if I look for good deals for someone else, I'll stop looking at dresses for myself when I already have a gorgeous one!