Yeah, and spending $500 IS normal. It is really stupid to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a normal wedding (because that is how much normal weddings cost) when you don't even want a normal wedding just because you deem weddings a good time to be normal.

Really? There are three things you get to keep after the wedding, your spouse, your ring, and the pictures. Did you have a photographer at all??

yeah, photographer is v. important

yeah we had several friends who are working photogs taking photos as a wedding present. same way we had bands and a DJ playing cheap or free ... probably the only way my liberal arts education has ever paid off for me

we got a lot of great photos. honestly i always look like a huge toolbox in staged or formal photos anyway (actually i look like a huge toolbox about 90% of the time) so it was better to have a lot of people wandering around partying and taking a lot of candid photos.

The photo booth thing is a great idea, I've been to a wedding with that, and they had a cool scrapbook you could put a picture in and sign and stuff. Was a great idea.

but who was there to tell you to take a bunch of shots where your groomsmen are holding your or pretending to hold you back from running away?

LOL. HoR, you are lucky that you have friends that could take all those pictures for you. If you don't have photog friends though, surely it isn't a waste of money to get a pro to take pictures. Hiring a pro doesn't mean you have to take an endless parade of boring staged family photos. We only took a few.

same with us. We picked a photographer who did more candid photo-journalism style shots. We had the obligatory posed photos for an hour or two but our best shots are all the candids.

Just got married in may. We had 150 people and our wedding cost about 8-9K total, including the rehearsal + dinner. It was still awesome and we got a ton of compliments about how cool it was.

Some things we did.
Hired a friend who has done photo work for the AP to do the photos. We only wanted the digitals and did not want to order overpriced wedding photography. We got hundreds and hundreds of high quality shots for $250.

Forget the DJ. We loaded up an Ipod to the sound system and I told one of my groomsmen it was his job to hit play/pause on our playlist at the appropriate moments. Save hundreds/thousands of dollars and lose zero atmosphere if you do it right.

Forget the wedding cake. We got 10 awesome gourmet cakes from a local mom and pop shop that more than fed everyone for about half the price of the least expensive wedding cake we looked at. And I guarantee it tasted better.

No flowers other than bouquets for the bride and her bridesmaids. Because really, why are you spending hundreds/thousands on flowers of all things?

Had the wedding at our parents church, and the reception as well in a just built expansion. Because my dad used to be a deacon there, total of zero dollars in location costs.

We had a morning wedding (11 AM ceremony) and a lunch reception. No need for a bar at lunch, instead we bought lots of wine on our own and had three/four different bottles opened on every table. I would highly recommend this. For the cost per head of getting an open bar, you could easily order 3 bottles of wine per person. Everybody drank as much as they wanted and we had a ton of wine leftover and saved a ton of money.

My wife didn't force all of her bridesmaids into some hideous dress. She gave them a general color range and told them to do whatever. She had four bridesmaids, wearing four different dresses and it looked awesome. I also didn't require my groomsmen to wear the same thing. We all wore black suits and I bought us all nice matching ties. Looked fine and nobody had to waste money renting anything.

Thanks for your posts. They are really very cool, very wonderful
wholesalewholesale sourcewholesale supply

Congrats

But it still cost 9k? On what?

150 people at what $30 for food + 15 tables * $80 for wine + 250 for photos + however much hiring a minister costs (<500?)

Ok so that only leaves like 3k for the tux + wedding dress. Wow I'm glad I don't want to get married.

My sister had a chocolate fountain instead of a cake. I liked it

a good photog is probably worth it, but I would pay money to not have a video camera guy there. those guys are just awkward wet blankets

Had we paid for our Wedding we would have done something like this or a Destination Wedding. But with her Parents footing the bill, we didn't really cut any corners.

food was cheaper than that. But there's a ton of small costs that add up. Rehearsal dinner was a decently sized cost, for around 50 people imo. Paid the minister, organist, etc. Some small flower cost. Cost of 4 nice ties. I didn't wear a tux, but there's still the cost of bride's dress (which was remarkably cheap, lol), hair, mani/pedi for her, invitations, bridesmaids gifts, etc. There's just lots of small things that add up.


More ideas i forgot to mention

We made our own invitations. Honestly, this was another huge money saver. Bought our own blank cards or invitation paper or whatever you want to call it, and I made us a very nice looking invitation using just an italic script in word and a little fancy image manipulation.

Also, it helped that my wife wore a dress that cost under 300 bucks. LOL at spending anywhere near a thousand bucks on a dress that you will wear once in your life. I guess if it's really super important to you, i dunno. And she actually got a dress that she is going to get cut up and altered into a sexy white cocktail dress number that she wants to wear on our anniversary. Smart thinking says I.

You are the exception to the rule here. I would venture a guess and say the majority of woman would never be happy with a wedding where there were basically no flowers. You are right though, when planning a wedding you should sit down with your fiance and figure out what is most important to you and what you can cut corners to save money on. Different strokes...

DannyOcean,

Congrats on spending so little on your wedding since it seems to make you happy. But laughing at others or thinking less of them because they spent a ton on their wedding is a bit odd. Like TS said, different strokes.

I think he was just laughing at the idea of a thousand dollar +, wear once dress

frankly most rational people agree, just like with huge diamond rings whose prices are controlled by cartels but society says you need to buy. lots of people buy both anyways, but realize it's silly and just go ahead and do it anyways b/c it's a nice thing to do. I guess.

If they are awkward wet blankets Id endure it for something of this quality




I loveeeeeee this one...I never thought id even consider doing this but this makes me 100% want to