Weddings can be expensive. While planning our wedding I noticed as soon as the word “wedding” was mentioned, the price of things seemed to double. We had never wanted to spend a lot of money on our wedding, we just didn’t see the sense in it for one day. However, the costs soon add up. We have received a lot of comments about how wonderful our wedding looked on a budget so I thought I’d share my tips with others in the same boat.
- Use Pinterest for inspiration to choose your theme
and colours. It was an excellent resource which I used a lot during planning. We had decided on a country/vintage theme, which seemed to work well for our budget. By using Pinterest, we were sure of the look we wanted and what we would need to purchase to achieve it. Make sure you love your theme and colours before you start buying anything. Changing your mind with themes and colours can end up costing you a lot of money! Someone I know changed their colour scheme mid-planning and spent a lot more money than they had budgeted for.
- Make your own Save the Date cards and invitations. I spent many hours designing ours on Photoshop, then we printed them ourselves. We hand delivered as many invitations as we could to save on the cost of postage (apart from the interstate ones, of course!). The cost of our invitations worked out to be about $3.50 each. If you aren’t any good with Photoshop or designing, Vista Print also have a great range of invitations ready to personalise and order.
- Book everything and pay early. This will help with your budget. We booked everything in the beginning of our planning phase. Make sure you have the money for any deposits businesses need before booking as they usually only give two weeks to pay a deposit. By doing this we knew how much money we needed to put away every week to pay for the necessities. Things were paid off early which left more money in the final week leading up to the wedding – you just never know when an extra expense is going to pop up!
- Enter competitions. You have nothing to lose and every little bit of help you can get will save you money! I entered a lot of competitions and was lucky enough to win one! It was a $100 voucher to get personalised glasses for our bridal party. Instead of costing us a fortune, we paid $6.50 for five personalised glasses.
- Hire a community hall. Just as long as it suits your theme. We hired our local community hall, costing us $150. We had the hall for the entire week leading up to the wedding which meant we had ample time to set everything up ourselves. The hall had tables and glassware that we used which meant we didn’t have to hire. We saved a lot of money by hiring the hall and it suited our theme perfectly.
- Ask guests to pay for their own meals. We have lived together for a long time and had everything we needed so we asked guests to pay for their own meals in lieu of gifts. We supplied the alcohol, soft drink and punch so our guests were not up for an expensive weekend to celebrate our special day with us. By asking the guests to pay for their meals we saved ourselves $1500 and guests didn’t need to stress about what they were going to get us as a gift!
- Use recycled goods. Our centrepieces consisted of old books and glass jars. The great thing about doing the vintage/country theme is that most of what you need can be purchased from a tip shop, as some of our old books were. The glass jars we used were recycled jam and sauce jars which were decorated with hessian, twine, lace curtain material and ribbon. Other purchases from the tip shop included apple crates and doors as extra decorative pieces.
- Hire the extras. We hired table cloths for every table for $6.50 each, chairs for every guest for $5.50 each and a wine barrel as a cake stand for $55. It works out to be a lot cheaper than having to buy it all yourself. And the added bonus at the end is that you don’t need to store it or sell it!
- Have a lolly buffet. Our lolly buffet was our thank you gift to our guests. We purchased glass jars and utensils for serving from discount stores and Kmart and the paper bags and lollies were bought in bulk. It ended up costing under $10 per guest with the cost of everything included.
- Get others involved. We are very blessed to have the friends and family that we do. They were all willing to help out in whatever way they could. A few family members grew roses for us for our centrepieces and other decorations. I can’t even imagine how much money this saved us as my bridal bouquet, the maid of honour’s bouquet and four roses for my hair cost $250 from a florist! We also done a lot of crafting of decorations with family so not only did we save time with more hands, it turned a job into fun!
We achieved the look we wanted and my expectations for how I envisioned our wedding day were exceeded. Our day could not have been more perfect and it was all done on a budget!
______________________
No comments:
Post a Comment