So he asked. You said yes! Don’t forget to get your ring insured….something I still need to do. So now what? You’ve got a TON of things to do. Find a church. Find a venue. Find, find, find. Florists, photographers, dj’s/bands. Take engagement pics. Find a dress! Yowzers Batman it can be super overwhelming and ridiculously expensive. Some of you are fortunate and will have a lot of family support in paying for the expenses for your wedding. But what if you’re not that girl? What if you have to pay for this on your own? How do you do that?
Marc, my fiancé, and I are largely paying for our wedding our selves. Our families are helping, but we’re older so we don’t really expect anyone to help us. If they do that’s great! But we take pride in the fact that we are able to have such a beautiful celebration and do it largely on our own.
So grab a pen and paper, or your wedding planning notebook and take some notes on things that have been helpful for us.
Venue: We are getting married at a beautiful hotel in Coral Gables, FL. The Biltmore hotel is a gorgeous historical landmark and our wedding coordinator there, Christina, is absolutely amazing. To offset the expense of the venue, we’re keeping our headcount low, opting for a Friday wedding and we chose their least expensive space. Because we gave ourselves enough time to plan, we were able to split the cost up into 5 payments. Making it a lot easier for us to pay for it. To boot, we’re paying for it in cash so we won’t have any ugly interest reminders of our beautiful day. We get a lot of services with our venue, ultimately saving money for l-la-cart services. Negotiate with them to get more bang for your buck. Nic Tip: If you need to sacrifice along the way, I would highly suggest it. Maybe you start doing your nails yourself while you’re paying for your wedding expenses. Stop monthly subscription services like Netflix, or Amazon prime. Bring your lunch to work and think about how you spend your money right now. Do you really need it….?
Saving on wedding venues can be tricky. Stay true to your budget and negotiate your costs.
Wedding Planner: We are blessed because our friend who is an event planner will be doing our wedding for us as a gift. In return, we are inviting her and her husband to the wedding and paying for their travel and hotel (it’s still less expensive than the cost of paying for a planner). If you don’t have a friend that is a wedding planner, do you have a friend that loves event planning and is good at it? Do you really need a wedding planner for the type of wedding that you are having?  If you need a planner, try using one that is relatively new or has a smaller event planning business. Their costs are usually a bit lower, and since they’re new on the block, they should go above and beyond to get good reviews. This is a word of mouth business so your referral is gold.
Florists: I have not found a less expensive option for this since flowers are so expensive. We came up with a figure we were comfortable with and won’t budge from that number. It required a few revisions of the proposal that the florists gave to us, but we were finally able to get the cost a few hundred dollars below our budget. I’ll take it. If you’re planning a smaller wedding, try doing the flowers yourself. You can buy flowers in bulk sometimes from places like Costco or BJ’s. IF you are using a florists, choose flowers that are in season for the time of year you’re getting married, and try for flowers that are generally less expensive. Your arrangements will still be beautiful. You can also opt for candles or plants instead of flowers to hedge some of the cost.
Dress: Come up with a budget and stick to it! Be very open with your bridal consultant on what you are comfortable spending. Don’t even look at dresses that cost more, no matter how much you may love it. It’s a dress. For one day. Your marriage is what is important. I was able to find plenty of dresses within my very average dress budget and loved most of the choices I had. I didn’t feel like I was restricted. If your budget is super tight, try opting for sample dresses. You can also try places like Revolve, Antropologie, or any local department store for a beautiful white dress. Time is definitely your friend here if you are on a tight budget. The less time you have, the more expensive it becomes, just because of yow the wedding dress system works.
Find a budget you’re comfortable with for your wedding dress. Stick to it!
Honeymoon: We opened a new credit card for this. Now while we are paying for our wedding cash, hear me out. We found a credit card that offers sky miles and 2x points for purchases. We’ll use the sky miles to pay for our flight for our honeymoon. We’ll use the card to pay for some of the wedding expenses. Since we’re paying cash for these expenses, we’ll use the cash to pay the card back within 30-60 days. Most of the cards will waive the annual fee for the first year and some even offer no interest for the first year. Find one that works for your needs and your current financial situation.
We are just navigating the Band/DJ and Photographer conversation and I still have to work on hair and make-up people. We have a friend that is a professional photog and in all honesty, we will probably have him shoot our wedding for us for a substantial cost savings, it also supports our friends business-which we like. What can I say, we live in New York City and are blessed with a lot of friends that can help us because of what they do. But ask around, you’d be surprised who you know or the skills your friends secretly posses. It is an expense, but it can be manageable with some thinking outside of the box and enlisting the help of friends.
Don’t forget to include wedding accessories into your budget
Like this post? Please help and share it. Also comment below with what helps you on your wedding costs. We could all use the tips 🙂