My friend Shannon over at Rocks in My Dryer has a wednesday theme every week called “Works for me Wednesday”. Usually it is a tip or helpful hint. This week she is doing it backwards and instead of having us offer a tip she suggested we offer a question. Sounds good to me, since I have a biggy. For those of you who don’t know much about what we do, you can read a post I put on my other blog in rebuttal to a nasty anonymous comment, see it here . We are currently having a online FireSale to raise the needed finances to give our daughter a beautiful traditional wedding. My question is, how would y’all pay for a big wedding? Even cutting all the corners it still cost something. Would you take out a loan? Sell your car? Put it on credit cards? Sell raffle tickets, have a bake sale, or what?
Britni says
Solicit help from everyone you know… not for the money portion but to save money on things like catering, decorating, etc. It’s much cheaper to just call in favors than pay someone to decorate the church or whatnot. Good luck. Weddings are outrageously expensive!
kelly says
My husband and I got married for less than 1000 dollars. We had a beautiful wedding, and recieved more in gifts than we spent! I rented my dress… which doesn’t sound so great but it allowed me to get the dress of my dreams instead of settling for something cheaper that would’ve been sitting in a closet ever since anyways. We asked a friend to bake the cake and she did a beautiful job. Our families catered it and cleaned up. My husbands best friend wrote and performed our first dance song… which was so special and saved us the cost of hiring a musician. I made the invitations myself: hubby and i spent hours and hours hand tying organza ribbons to the cards. We held the reception in a church hall that was offered to us for free. We borrowed the table linens from another local church. My brother was the photographer. It was a wonderful wedding and a magical day and i wouldn’t have changed a thing. Why spend a fortune on one day, they have their whole lives ahead of them? The money is better spent as a down payment on their new home together or put into a retirement fund. But the important thing is not to get stressed out over the money… a wedding is such a blessed event, enjoy!
Makeshift Mama says
My husband and I had our wedding in 2004 for around 3,000. Most of it went on the credit card, which we then paid back quickly. There are a lot of corners to cut that people don’t necessarily think of, like buying a used wedding gown (there is a group that puts on used gown sales to fund breast cancer stuff), buying from wholesalers, etc. Check out http://www.save-on-crafts.com for very inexpensive ribbon, toile, dried lavender and sachets (great for throwing at the bride), vases, and even a couple wedding-specific items. Try Craigslist. This stuff only gets used once and then it has to be resold for pennies on the dollar.
Anywho, good luck! Don’t break the bank!
Amy from SD says
My husband and I mostly paid for our own wedding. We were just graduating college so weren’t exactly wealthy but my parents were in a tough job situation. They gave us $1000 to help out and the rest was up to us. Perhaps you could set a reasonable amount to contribute and if your daughter wants a bigger wedding than you can afford, it makes sense that she and her fiance should pay the rest. It would be totally unreasonable for her to expect you to go into debt for her one (albeit special) day. I don’t resent my parents at all and I think it was a good bonding exercise for my then-fiance and I to decide what was truly important to us in a wedding as we were budgeting OUR money!
Amy says
We cut corners a few ways and I don’t think many knew how inexpensive our wedding was. One thing that helped us save money was friends giving stuff for the wedding rather than gifts or money. For example, a friend was a hairdresser so she did my hair and make up. Also, some friends got together and paid for our balloons. These were great gifts and my happy memory of them actually has lasted longer than some of the actual gifts we received. Also, our florist was an independent who worked out of her home. We worked with her about the budget and asked that she get flowers that were in season so we got tons of flowers for a great price. We purchased our cake through someone who works out of her home also. My bridesmaids’ gifts were the dresses which my mother (who is an amazing seamstress) made. The only cost there was fabric (which we got at on a store sale) and patterns. They all seemed to be pretty glad to not have to pay for the dress and were just fine not getting another vase or candle as a gift. Hope this offers some food for thought.
Jane says
My parents had saved up a fund, so I didn’t have to finance much. But, I did learn some tricks along the way. For one thing – negotiate with all your wedding companies. We were able to talk the florist down to what she said would be ugly, but of course she delivered beautiful flowers for the ugly price. Then I went to an old lady salon to get my hair done. I paid only $25! It was worth it not to stress over doing it myself! MY future sil just negotiated big time with the place where she is getting married. We cut out all favors and gave a donation to charity instead. Nobody needs a small chotchke but the charity could use a donation. I also saved money by having my wedding on a weekday. It was the day before the 4th of July so most people had the next day off anyways.
Abbi says
When my husband and I got married (which was a little while ago in 98) we paid for our own wedding and only spent $1000 for the wedding and honeymoon.
If you have many friends or a church family it is likely that there is a lot of talent out there that people would be more than happy to share.
We did most of the work on our wedding ourselves. We bought nice paper and an uncle designed and printed invitations, My Mother and I sew so we sewed all of the gowns as well as vests for the groomsmen and ringbearer and groom. My sister is a very good baker and I had a friend who had wedding cake equipment and had done some decorating. They worked together and did a wonderful job. I worked as a floral designer so I and some helpers did the flowers. I was in a different state from where I worked so I ordered flowers through a grocery store for a lot cheaper than I could have gotten them anywhere else. (Now there are also some fairly inexpensive online sites that you can buy from). My Dad likes to blacksmith so he ended up making us some neat candelabras. I had a December wedding so we used lots of pine greens and pine cones which we got free from the woods and then candles which are pretty cheap. We had lots of music but all performed free by friends. We planned our wedding for 7 pm on Friday so that there was no need for a supper. Cake, etc was all that was needed for the simple reception. For photography a friend with good equipment took the pictures. We did pay her $50 and provided all of the film and did the developing ourselves. With digital cameras now you can have lots of people taking pictures and ask them all to send them to you so you can find the best ones. Do have a plan of what pictures you want formally though and have someone in charge of setting them up and only a couple of cameras going at that time so that you don’t have everybody looking a different direction.
If doing things yourself doesn’t work I would check around for people that work out of there home. For instance I now have a wedding floral business out of my home and I can offer much better prices than the shops. Also I know of many others that do cakes out of there homes and do a much nicer job and have much better tasting cakes and I believe are cheaper than the bigger stores.
There are tons of ideas for weddings on the internet. I hope you have a lot of fun planning the wedding!
Abbi
katmaxx says
Check the library for books on cake decorating, floral arrangement, wedding decorations, and sewwing wedding clothes.