A Budget Friendly Wedding: How I Got Married For Less Than $1000
19. Aug, 2009 
7 Comments
This is a guest post from Eric Poulin, the CEO and Co-founder of CalendarBudget, an online personal finance management solution. You can read or listen to more of his words and ideas on living within your means at his blog Budget Musings.
Marriage, debt and moving your home are ranked among the top most stressful life events. A wedding often combines all three into a well-planned panic attack. Budget trends for weddings have been steadily going up, despite the economic downturn. In fact, the average wedding in the US can cost up to $27,000. There is no short supply of suggestions to make a wedding more budget-friendly, and rightfully so! Imagine what other things can be done with $27,000 to support your new married life. Since disagreements over money is still the number one reason for divorce, a couple approaching matrimony would do well to consider using a lot of that money for their life after the wedding day. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m all for marriage and weddings – its just the spend-all-your-money-in-one-day, super-extravagance that bothers me. My wedding day was everything I wanted it to be for less than $1000. Yes that’s right – under a $1000, and yes, after 8.5 years, I’m still happily married, in love with my wife and share that love with 5 daughters. We were not so fortunate as to have wealthy parents who covered our costs. In fact, we covered all of our costs. How was I able to pull that off? I’m glad you asked. I’d like to share it with you.
Budget
The first thing we did was understand all of the potential costs and set a budget for ourselves. We got a bridal book which outlined all of the items we’d have to pay for. In the end we only used it as a guide, because we discarded many of the (insane) suggestions. But running any major event with a budget is key to doing it right.
Church and Hall
Our first major consideration, the rental of a church, minister (Bishop), and dance hall all cost $0. The church I belong to doesn’t charge anything for building rental (it has a chapel and a large gym), and the marriage itself is a religious service, and thus clergy doesn’t charge for their time. Having since served as a Bishop (for 5 years ending 1.5 years ago) I’ve had the opportunity to pay-it-forward some by marrying several couples and renting out our building – all for $0. Friends and family provided the necessary clean-up crew after our reception.
Music
We hired a DJ through a friend who got a great deal. Total cost, $300, but our friend paid for $150 of it as a wedding gift.
Guests
I think we paired down the invitee list to about 130 or so with just over 110 that actually came.
Limo
We skipped the limo service. It just seemed a waste and we both agreed this added nothing to the day except cost.
Food
Food at the reception was probably the most costly item. We know a friend who was really good in the kitchen for large gatherings and had some informal catering experience. We met with her and she agreed to help out – also at no charge. She enlisted her daughter to assist in the kitchen and we had a crew of about 6-8 youth friends who came along as servers. I’ve seen a lot of self-serve buffet meals lately which can also cut costs. We just paid for the food itself, which we got at a discount because we bought so much at once at stores that offered discounts for bulk buying. We opted for an inexpensive, but elegant chicken, roast potatoes and vegetables meal. We had leftovers for months which also helped our grocery bill as a new couple – even though we were very sick of eating that same meal almost every day for months 
We also did not serve any alcohol. We bought sparkling grape juice for toasts, and various flavors of soda and water otherwise. This not only reduced the budget, it meant no drunk relatives making scenes!
Cake
We have another friend who was looking to get into the wedding industry and was looking for an opportunity to build a portfolio. We had her do our cake, which was very beautiful, and she charged only a fraction of what she could have.
Decorations
We delegated most of this to another friend (one of the Bride’s Maids). She made that gym look gorgeous with a rental archway, white decor, table centerpieces (which we gave away at the end of the night), and small white Christmas tree lights on touling. I was impressed.
Pictures
We rented some time at a nearby floral greenhouse which made for beautiful pictures with some nature (despite it being February 3 and snow was everywhere outside). We had an artsy friend be our official photographer and another friend be the videographer (all $0). We ended up with some great pictures that we were quite happy with. For more candid shots, we bought disposable cameras and put one on each table and had our MC announce that people should take pictures throughout the night.
Dress
My mother happens to be a seamstress – so she made my bride’s dress and did so for under $100 material cost. A friend made an accompanying cape for about $30. When all was done, the dress could easily have sold for many hundreds of dollars in a store. We asked each brides maid and grooms man to cover the cost of their own dress and tuxedo respectively. My rental came to just over $120.
Invitations
My family and I spent about 20+ hours hand-making invitations from a kit a friend had. They turned out really nice – textured with raised surfaces and inked with some special ink. We paid only for materials and postage. I also created a web site for RSVPs, although not many used it. All in all, we ended up paying almost only for raw materials. Luckily we have a large social network and were able to find high quality service/labour provided by friends for free.
We spent more on our honeymoon to enjoy a good vacation as we started our life together, but even that was a cruise that was under $4000 all inclusive. No one complained about anything because in the end – everything looked and ran wonderfully. Judging from the average we saved ourselves about $21,000. We had a super-special day, just like anyone else who spent the national average or more, but we had money to start our life, and more especially not start it with the stress of being in debt. We were very very thankful for all the help we had and money saved. I now repay that kindness by helping at other weddings when I can – usually DJing for the ridiculously low price of $150 for the night.
So, anyone who may be holding back getting married because of fears about the associated costs… have a talk with your future spouse and review what costs can and should be avoided and how that money can be better placed as an investment in your future rather than spent on just a one-day extravagant party. If you find your fiancee unwilling to bend at all, unwilling to make concessions, let this be a high-alert warning about your future marriage. It may be time to set some financial ground rules as a couple or perhaps even reconsider if your love is going to take you all the way to the poor house.
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Matt Goulart
I’m just curious about how long the two of you had to plan your wedding. In my experience the more time you have to put it all together, the more time you have to find the most cost effective options that fit with what you are looking for. Our wedding is being planned in under three months (six weeks to go) and we are noticing that this limits the amount of time we have to network and price shop. It also drasticly reduces our venue options, which effect our budget. At the same time it makes decisions easier and our final wedding cost will still be in budget and will be far from the national average, which leaves more for the honeymoon and a house.
[Reply]
It seems like you were able to do it due to the help of your friends and family, which is a great way to cut costs. My approach was to focus on two things: cheap venue (local park) and a relatively small guest list for a wedding (40 people). We were able to have a very nice ceremony and reception at a reasonable cost (under $5,000) by keeping the number of people low. Maybe $5,000 is still too high for some people, but for the SF Bay Area it’s quite inexpensive!
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That is very impressive, I wish you had a picture! I’m curently helping a friend plan a wedding that is working on a limited budget as well. She is getting everything for the reception dinner at Sam’s/Costco, sent her invitiations on Evite, and rented a community hall for the event. She will spend around $2,000 which is by far a much lower cost than many of our other friends have spent (some of which are no longer together).
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Trish, We actually planned our whole wedding in 2.5 months. It definitely helped that we had a network of friends through our church that helped out.
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Yes, it is true that you saved yourself from spending about $21,000. But you got that by having your friends and their children work for free and provide you with "stuff" for free (like the decorations, which can cost about $1000). You did not cut back in labour or material consumption (except the limo and flowers, apparently), you just reduced your labour costs. Essentially what you were saying to those who worked for free on your wedding was – I feel you are close enough to me to want to work free to help me, but not close enough that I want you to be free to enjoy yourself on our wedding day.
A better way to have done this would be to have bartered (e.g. friends would cook for free and you would provide 10 hours of labour for them in the form of whatever it is you do for a living). And even then, if you think your time is money (which it should be unless you are on social assistance), it still "costs" you money (but just a lot less). Or you could have found cheap sources of labour and material, as the kind commenters did.
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I absolutely agree with Christy. You used people who were close to you, expecting them to pick up the slack for your "on the cheap" approach and as she says, not really enjoy the time themselves. Most people don’t have the gall to do what you did. Certainly if you are the bishop or are very close to one you might be able to wangle a free deal or if your mother happens to be a seamstress or if your "friend" happens to be in the cake decorating business or happen to have another "friend" who happens to cook for large groups, or another "friend" who happens to be a photographer or videographer and you con them into working for free. Is the reason nobody complained because they would be made to feel badly because you cried the blues and your didn’t technically ask them to work for free?
Do you honestly believe that collecting "a ridiculously low $150" (over what, 5 hours/$30 an hour?) for future weddings is a way to repay someone else who forked over half the cost of your DJ? Seems more like an opportunity seeker move – capitalize on a way to make money – you’re volunteering your time, just offering them a better deal.
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I’m planning a similarly inexpensive wedding, and where I’m from (rural Alabama), it’s normal to have friends and family pitch in. Neither my parents nor my fiancee’s parents had caterers when they got married years ago…their families came together and cooked! I’m definitely going to use any talents my friends and family are willing to offer, yet at the same time I’m willing to spend hours stuffing envelopes or doing anything else one of them may need when they get married. And so far, the people I’ve asked to help have been honored that I’d include them in my special day. I guess it all just depends on the norms for your community!
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