12 Money Saving Wedding Tips

You Can Have Your Cake + Eat It Too

Weddings can be expensive if you allow them to be. Even if you go into the wedding planning process expecting to stay within a certain budget, overspending or forgetting about things leaves couples over budget anyway. Whether you are just beginning to plan your wedding or are beginning to realize how much it’s going to cost, this blog is for you.

Check out these 12 ways to cut costs for your wedding

Budget Appropriately From The Start

If you are just beginning to plan, you have to decide on a price point. What is your maximum budget? Do you have any wiggle room or is that the absolute cap? Most couples are going to come to the table with two different numbers in mind. It’s okay if you aren’t in agreement to begin with. By the end of the conversation though, you have to be on the same page. This is a MUST. This is the beginning of the compromises you will have to make throughout the wedding planning process.

Once you have the overall number, you have to allocate amounts to vendors and other miscellaneous items. Before you can start assigning amounts, you have to figure out which vendors are most important to you. Once you’ve decided which vendors are most important, you are going to start to assign approximate values to each vendor/category.

Review Your Budget Often

Once you email vendors and get an idea of costs, you should review your budget. Once you book vendors and solidify contracts, you should review your budget. Once you order save the dates and buy your dress, you should review the budget. See the trend here? The easiest way to get off track from the budget is to not know what you still have left to book and how much money you’ve spent. This will give you the information you need to make decisions. If you spent a little bit more than you wanted for your photographer but your dress cost also included alterations so it evened out, you need to know that. This will allow you to pivot during the planning process if you need to. If you need to spend a little bit less on invitations because you overspent on the flowers, then you can decide if you want to skip the wax seal or have an electronic RSVP card instead of a paper one. You can’t make informed decisions if you don’t have the information you need to do so.

Trim the Guest List

A quick and simple way to trim down spending is to trim down the guest list. Just because this is simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. This type of cost cutting means that you have to get really clear about who you want at your special day. Where are you drawing the line? Are you cutting it off at aunts and uncles? No plus ones? This can only be done with an honest conversation. The two of you need to decide how many people you want there and decide if it’s worth spending extra money on the people you would like to have there but don’t necessarily have to have at your wedding.

Choose An Off Season, Day of the Week or Time of Day

This is a great money saving way to decide on a date. It’s becoming more and more popular and for good reason. The spring and fall are very popular wedding seasons but that doesn’t mean a summer or winter wedding isn’t beautiful too. Saturday weddings are great but so are Fridays and even Sundays. Night weddings are the norm but honestly, who doesn’t love a good brunch? There are so many ways to save some money here but choosing a different season, day of the week or time of day.

Honestly, Mike and I were between a Saturday night or a late Sunday morning wedding. We are morning people and get up super early which means we also go to sleep really early. A Saturday night wedding didn’t seem super appealing to us because the reception would essentially be starting at the time we would usually be getting ready for bed. Because of the venue we chose, we ended up opting for a Saturday night wedding to give our guests time for travel. But when we do our vow renewal one day, it’s probably going to be a brunch. It’s more our speed and it’s the opportunity to keep things more causal which is also the vibe we were going for.

Rent or Buy Secondhand?

In some cases, it’s going to be cheaper to rent items and in other cases it’s going to be cheaper to buy secondhand with the option to resell them. This is going to be specific to you and your wedding. For our aisle, we had vintage rugs that we rented from our florist. For us, that was significantly cheaper than if we bought all of those rugs ourselves. It was cheaper for us to buy candle holders and make our seating chart instead of renting it or hiring someone to make it so we did do that. Once you decide what wedding décor and signage you want, you can talk to a rental company or your florist to decide if it’s cheaper to rent it from them or buy it yourself. The bonus if you buy it yourself, is you can then resell it if you want. Or, you can keep it and use it in your home post wedding as a keepsake.

Out of the Box Florals

If you don’t want a lot of flowers from your day, you might not even have to hire a florist. If you want bouquets, you can go to your local grocery store and place an order for however many bouquets you want. I would recommend asking for pictures of past work first just to make sure that they are familiar with the type of bouquet you’re looking for. If you don’t want bouquets or are okay with making them yourself, you can buy bulk flowers and make the bouquets, centerpieces and any other flower decor yourself. When I planned my sister’s bridal shower, I bought flowers in bulk online and assembled everything on site and it looked great!

Associate Vendors- Hire the #2

If you love a vendor but they are just out of your price range, consider hiring one of their associates. When we found the photographer we wanted, she was already booked for our date but her associate was available. She was going to do all of the editing behind the scenes but her associate would be the one who would photograph our wedding. She emailed us over the associate’s portfolio and we loved her work. We booked her right away. We got the benefit of the photographer’s editing style and still saved money! So, if you love a vendors work, find out if they have a team and if they have an associate you could hire. The associates represent the vendor so the associates are going to be trained by the vendor to perform the same kind of work the vendor would themselves.

Confidently DIY

If you are DIYing something that is going to be many rounds of trial and errors, you’re going to spend more money in the long one. Only DIY something that you feel confident in. If you’ve never made a bouquet before, don’t wait until the night before your wedding to try. Try it BEFORE you spend the money to buy bulk flowers and attempt to make your own floral décor. If you are an excellent baker, absolutely DIY your wedding cake. This is a great way to save money if you are confident in the thing you are going to DIY!

Electronic RSVP Cards

Between the paper, the printing, the labels, and the stamps, paper RSVPs can be expensive. An easy way to save money here is to do electronic RSVPs. This cost cutting option is not for everyone. Before you decide to go this route, evaluate your guest list. If you have lots of people who aren’t great with the computer, this is going to be more work than it’s worth and you should just go the paper route. If it’s mostly people who are in Instagram every day, an electronic RSVP is going to be a great cost cutting choice.

Skip the Champagne Toast

You just don’t need it. If your venue includes it with the price per person then keep it. If it’s an additional cost for everyone to have a flute of champagne at their table setting, skip it. Your guests are going to choose their drink of choice during cocktail hour so by the time the champagne toast comes, they are either going to be polite, toast with the champagne flute and never touch it again, or they are going to skip that altogether and cheers with the drink that was already in their hand. It’s an unnecessary extra cost that can easily save you money to use somewhere else.

Ditch the Favors

Even if you choose the greatest favors ever, your guests are going to forget them or leave them behind. People don’t want more stuff and if they wanted the cool thing you’re giving out, they are going to forget it at the end of the night anyway. Every couple at the end of the wedding night is left with lots of leftover favors. Save the money and skip it altogether. If you feel like you really want to have a favor, make a donation in lieu of favors. This means you’ve benefited a good cause, your guests don’t have to worry about bringing home a trinket at the end of the night and you aren’t stuck with dozens of leftover favors. Everyone wins here.

No Wax Seal

If you include a wax seal on the outside of your envelope, the post office cannot run it through the mail machine which means that the addresses need to be taken by hand which mean that this is going to cost you a boatload of extra money. It’s not worth it. Mailing invitations are already expensive because of the size and weight so skip the wax seal on the outside. If you cannot imagine your invitations going out without a wax seal, include it inside the envelope. That’s what Mike and I did. We wrapped our invitation suite with twine and glued it together with a wax seal. Our invitations were absolutely a labor of love and it was so rewarding getting pictures from our guests when the invites arrived in their mailboxes. Save the money on the postage and include the wax seal inside the envelope or skip it altogether!

It's amazing how all of these little choices can add up, right?! Depending on how much you are looking to save, you can use one or two of all of these tips.  What matters is that you are going to marry the love of your life.  The bonus is that you aren’t going to be paying off your wedding five years later.  Use these cost cutting tips to plan the wedding of your dreams without the expensive price tag.

xoxo

Alicia