Where to Save

I DIY-ed smaller decor and bought on sale when I could.

STDs & Invitations: $180 with shipping for 70 matching sets. Vista print has amazing sales!

Centerpieces, sweetheart table, altar decor, welcome table, and signage: $400 for everything. I shopped a lot on Amazon, Etsy, Michaels, and Dollar Tree.

Flowers: $600 for just the wedding party (my bouquet, 4 bridesmaids bouquets, 9 boutonnieres, 3 wrist corsages, and cake flowers). I let my florist step in to make suggestions on where on safe money.

Cake: $500 for a smaller cutting cake and supplemental sheet cakes. This decision saved us at least $200 instead of going with a much larger cake.

Dress & Accessories: $800 for my dress, shoes, belt, and hair comb. Again, sales came into play here.

Chair rentals: $800, about $300 cheaper compared to competitors, we used a referral from our venue.

But to save even more we cut frivolous items such as photo booths, favors, programs, extra decor, dessert tables, send offs, etc.

My biggest advice would be to save on the decorations. You can still have a pretty wedding, but guests don't really remember the decor afterward. Hosting your guests well is most important

View Quoted Comment Totally agree! I’ve never heard anyone complain about the centerpieces, but if they had bad food that’s all anyone will remember

We had a similar situation. Venue, food, and photography were top priorities. Here's where I cut costs:
Invitations and save the dates: we used vistaprint and walgreens. Spent less than $200 on everything, including postage. Vistaprint constantly has 50% off sales. Just design your invitations and save them until another sale pops up. We also did online RSVP to cut down on extra postage....it also eliminated the chance of RSVPs getting lost in the mail.

Dress: I bought my dream dress, did not set a budget for it but it ended up being about 2500. I saved a ton of money by getting my veil from Amazon and hairpiece from etsy. $20 veil, $35 hairpiece

Cake: get a small fancy cutting cake for pictures, display, and cutting. Use a regular sheet cake for the guests. I have allergies so we had a small allergy friendly cutting cake ($233) then 3 sheet cakes from costcp $20 each. Seriously, been told over and over how delicious that Costco cake was.

Flowers: not something I cared about, but my florist was amazing. Choose cheaper flowers that are in season. You also dont need a ton of flowers. We had mainly babys breath and a lavender substitute...I'm not sure what the other flowers were. We spent $1500 total.

Table runners: dont rent these, you can buy them for $2.50 each at cvlinens.com. but you'll have to iron each one. You can buy tablecloths too, but we didn't go that route, figured it was worth the extra cost for someone else to iron the tablecloths....but the table runners turned out great!

Remember that sometimes simple is better. Try not to get caught up in all the little details.
Use amazon and etsy as much as possible. I found some great deals on both.

Also, do your research. We were able to have all the extras I wanted because I found them at a great price. Photobooth was the toughest for me. I really wanted one but it took months to find a great deal on one....it was perfect.