Family Finance Blog

I’ve seen a lot of things in the past week about weddings and how much they cost. (The funniest one was a devil’s advocate post at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity titled Don’t Get Married.) So I thought I’d talk a bit about how my wife and I saved on our wedding last year (and a little bit on how we didn’t.)

The first thing we did was to decide what things were most important to us. For us, this was a very easy step. Food and photography. We were OK with spending the bulk of our money on those things, and try to save as much as possible on everything else. So here’s how we saved money on some of those other things:

Have the wedding at a park

For us, this was an easy decision as well. We love being outdoors and we go for picnics all the time. The fact that it saved us money was a bonus. A lot of people think that the park near them isn’t the right place for a wedding. That could be quite true. We spent as much time looking at parks as most people spend looking at other venues. We drove all over town, looking at every green space on the map. We found out which ones had buildings we could use in case of bad weather, what their policies on games and glassware were. We asked whether we could reserve the space or had to rely on luck. The park we settled on was beautiful, had a private, fenced of hilly grassy area for us (perfect for games and such), and cost $150 for the day. This is a savings of $1,000 - $6,000 compared to some of the other locations we looked at.

Make your own invitations

This one can be argued both ways. Making your own invitations will save you some money, but not a whole lot, and will take a lot of time. I’m not talking about those off-white invitations you buy at the Office Supply Store with the standard frilly borders and six envelopes. Those are cheap and fast. And also pretty boring. For our invitations, the first thing we did was talk to several people who make invitations for a living. We got ideas for colors and styles that we liked. Then we headed to our local Arts and Crafts store. We bought fancy papers that matched the colors of our wedding. We folded everything in a unique way, and put it all in a vellum envelope arranged so that a quote we really loved showed through the front of the envelope. People loved our invitations (as did we!), and the total cost with postage for about 90 of them was ~$150. This was a savings of $300 - $600 compared to quotes we got for similar invitations.

Make a creative guest book

We cut up pieces of paper, put out colored pencils, and asked people to draw, whether it be stick figures or classical paintings. The results were fantastic. We love looking through to see what people drew and wrote for us. And the whole thing was free. We pasted the pieces into a scrapbook we already had, and we used leftover paper from the invitations. This was a small savings of $25 - $50, but wonderful in terms of memories.

Be creative with your wedding favors

No one wants a laser engraved glass paperweight with your name and wedding date on it. (Actual wedding favor I’ve gotten!) These things are expensive and people just throw them away. For our picnic wedding, we gave away a few blankets ($4/ea, and extremely popular) and when it looked like it might rain a bit, we went to a 99 cent store and bought 150 umbrellas, one for each guest. Even a year later people still tell us how much they love the umbrellas, and it was great to see the guests twirling them around at the reception (and it didn’t end up raining … it was actually a sunny day.) Being creative you can save a little, or up to hundreds of dollars.

Someone in your family has a really nice car

Skip the limo or the classic car. Someone somewhere in your family has a really nice car. And people with really nice cars like to show off their really nice cars. Our uncle had a great, shiny, giant Mercedes that was perfect and free. And he was happy to take us around to spend time with us on our wedding day. Compared to limos or other cars, this is a savings of $200 - $800.

Buy your dress in Chinatown

If you live near a big city, you might want to go there and check out Chinatown or the equivalent in your area. My wife bought her very beautiful, brand new wedding dress for $150 in Chinatown. At David’s Bridal, the same thing would have easily cost $800. Cha-ching! You’ve saved another $300 - $1,000.

There are thousands of sites and magazines telling you how to spend your money on your wedding. My advice is simply to figure out the one to three most important things to you. Spend your money on those. Everything else you should be able to save at least 50% of what most people spend.

Where we spent our money

Our food was gorgeous and tasty. My co-worker, when I asked her how the food was, said “I have to kiss you.” That memory alone (not to mention the memory of how good I thought the food was) was worth the exorbitant price we paid for our food.

Our photographs look, well, professional. We love them. We love looking at them. We spent about 40% more on a really good photographer instead of just an average photographer, and it made a huge difference.

I’d love to hear creative ways other people saved money on their wedding, and also what you were willing to spend money on and whether it was worth it. Leave a comment with your story!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 9:38 am and is filed under Wedding, Money Saving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.