How I Planned Our Wedding for Less Than $20,000
Today I’m spilling the tea on how I planned a low budget wedding in one of the most expensive places in the country to get married WITHOUT skimping on our investment in our most important vendors!
Let me start with a disclaimer: I am using the term “low” budget based on research that shows that the MEDIAN cost of a wedding in The DC/Baltimore Metro area is around $40,000. That’s the median. So, I’m considering my budget of under $20,000 to be considered low since it’s less than half the median cost. This does NOT mean that you need to invest the same amount or that you can’t plan a beautiful wedding for even less. I know the word “small” or “low” here is up for interpretation and many may not consider this a small amount of money (which is is not!) but in the context of weddings in this area, it is a lower budget.
And one more disclaimer: Those of you who read the blog know that we haven’t actually had this wedding yet, and we did end up having a small elopement in advance of this one. You can read about our c0v!d rescheduling journey HERE. I am not including the cost of the elopement in this breakdown, but I will do a separate breakdown of what that day cost as well!
Okay, here we go! So when Ryan and I started wedding planning I knew that our budget would be low. Being in the wedding industry, I was very aware of how much it costs to have a wedding and was very unsure of how on earth I would have a wedding that even mildly resembled the wedding I dreamed of. While we originally thought we’d be able to keep our guest list fairly small, it quickly became very apparent that keeping a small guest list would leave out SO many people that really wanted to celebrate with. Our invite list ended up being around 150 people, so I knew we would need to budget for 130-140 guests. Once we turned out all of the pockets available to us and began creating a budget, we knew that we were to expect around $15,000 from our parents total, and I knew that I would be kicking in a fair amount of money myself. At this point I was like K THIS is going to be impossible. But, it’s not.
The MOST important part of this journey and allocating this money well was PRIORITIZING. I cannot stress enough how important it is that the very first thing you do is prioritize. My priorities were these:
Photographer
Overall look and feel of the venue and decor
The Dress
And Ryan’s real only STRONG priority was to celebrate with his friends and family. Something that neither of us particularly felt strongly about was food. Neither of us had ANY desire to spend the vast majority of our budget on food (which if you’ve ever planned a wedding, you know that 140 people with a slightly less than $20,000 budget would leave basically no money for everything else).
The very first thing I purchased was my dress (I really don’t recommend this but it worked out that everyone I needed to be there with me to try on dresses was available on the same day shortly after we got engaged). I truly didn’t think I would find the one on that first day, but I did! However I did not purchase it that day because we had not figured out our budget yet or where the money was coming from. A few weeks later I purchased the dress (and then had to fight with the company to return it because they recommended the wrong size but that’s a different story LOL).
So the first official item on the docket was finding a venue and when I began searching, I was SO disheartened and thought I’d never find the kind of venue I wanted with any prayer of being able to have any of the other things I wanted. I already knew the photographer I wanted to hire, but I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to because the venue would cost too much. Having a venue with a traditional caterer very quickly became clear as NOT being an option.
So this is when I got CREATIVE, and this brings me to the 5 ways we saved a ton of money in planning our wedding.
photo does not do it justice!
a weekday wedding
I realize that you’re going to immediately think of 90 reasons why this ISN’T a good option but let me explain. I personally believe (and no one can really change my mind on this) that in general, those who are most important to you you and those who you are most important to will come to your wedding no. matter. what. day. it. is. Also, mosttttt people love an excuse to talk off of work. Ryan and I saved thousands of dollars (about $4000) by scheduling our wedding for a Monday and this is decision was the biggest catalyst towards having a venue that fit my vision. Not one guest told me “oh well I can’t come because it’s a Monday.” Not one! Now, once we actually have this dang wedding there may be a couple, but that is fully to be expected. This is another way that your guest list can cull itself down, which is NOT a bad thing. Being able to choose this venue made me so so very happy. I cannot wait to get married at Tenth Ward because it totally fit my vision.
2. non-traditional catering
Since food was not a priority for either of us, we began thinking of the most cost effective ways to feed our guests. Let me be clear that I am not really moved by people’s opinions or expectations. Any thoughts of whether people would judge us for not having fully plated steak dinners quickly dissipated because honestly, it doesn’t really matter. This is our wedding, our money, and having a gourmet meal was not important to us. We thought of all kinds of thing (including pizza), and finally landed on breakfast for dinner. We both love breakfast (it’s 100% my favorite meal), it’s easy to do well, and it’s mostly a crowd pleaser. AND IT IS A FRACTION OF THE COST. Would you believe me if I tell you the total bill for our catering was around $3300 for 140 people? Believe it because it’s true.
3. disposable dinnerware
One of the downsides to not having a traditional caterer is that ours did not come with formal dinnerware. While at first while researching dinnerware rental costs I thought this meant that actually I wasn’t saving as much money as I thought on our food as I thought, I started to wonder what it would be like to have disposable dinnerware. My first concern here was the waste and the very not environmentally friendly nature of this choice. My second concern was that one of my top priorities was the overall look of the decor, and I just thought that disposable plates, cutlery, and cups would look super tacky on the tables. I began doing some research to see what our options were and found that there is actually a good deal of biodegradable dinnerware, so that solved one of my problems! I was able to purchase the biodegradable options for not very much more money than the alternatives. But that still didn’t make me feel better about having it on the tables, because the biodegradable option is even less lovely than the alternatives (BUSINESS IDEA HERE HELLO). It then occurred to me though that there was actually no reason to have the dinnerware preset on the tables. Our guests would be getting up to get food and drinks buffet style anyway, so there was no reason I couldn’t put the dinnerware on the buffet tables. I had already purchased chargers on a big sale, so that helps add to the tablescapes and enhance the look and feel of the decor.
4. a spreadsheet
This may seem obvious but I can’t stress enough how helpful it was to begin with a spreadsheet at our best guesses at what we would be spending and then adjusting it every time something changed, but generally sticking to our overall number. Because I work in the wedding industry I was able to make fairly good guesses at what everything would cost, but if you don’t work in the wedding industry, this is an area where a wedding planner can really really help you! I can’t stress enough (and will never stop trying) how helpful wedding planners are. You may think that it’s another thing you have to spend money on, when truly they can help you SAVE money by helping you find the best vendors and or products within your price range. Shout out to my planner the otherside creatives! The best of the best. Anyway, I digress. Make a spreadsheet, and stick to it within the bounds of reality. Something that we found very helpful was using different colors to denote WHO was paying for that line item (we have money coming from several sources), and then what had already been paid or what needed to be paid, as well as how much money was left in each “pool” from our different sources.
5. sales, sales, sales.
Y’ALL. This may be the most important tip here, KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE SALES. Set google alerts, enroll in email lists, whatever it takes. I saved hundreds and hundreds (probably thousands) of dollars by buying items that were important to me on sale. I waited till Black Friday and went HARD. And then I waited again till those January post-Christmas sales and went HARDDDD. If those time periods don’t match up well with your planning, you can also look out for Memorial and Labor day sales, as well as that random time in July when literally everyone puts everything on sale because Amazon started doing Prime Day and everyone followed suit. Now that I think about it, the same thing happens in October as well. So that is multiple times per year that basically every retailer hosts site-wide sales. The best two items that I scored on sale were literally a lifetime supply of candles (I bought like 350 tea lights/votives and 4 dozen small pillars for, I don’t know, like $100. Insane. I then purchased glass vases from the dollar store for said small pillars, bringing that candle total to $150 and if you know how expensive candles are, you know that that is all a steal.
In addition to buying things new, there are a lot of great ways to buy used things for your wedding. The most options lie in the decor realm, and my best advice is to join Wedding Consignment groups on Facebook! If you’re in Maryland, there’s a giant group called Maryland Wedding Consignment where there are several posts per day selling decor in all different styles. The prices are often negotiable, and sometimes you can even haggle with someone to buy all of their decor if it matches your style. You can always sort through and re-sell what you don’t want, because sometimes doing it this way is easier and cheaper than buying things individually. You do have to be careful in these groups as there are scams and more frequently a lot of flaky people, but it’s fairly simple to decipher who is legit and who isn’t after a little practice.
BONUS TIP THAT I FORGOT ABOUT:
Let’s talk about alcohol! We knew we wanted alcohol at our wedding but felt in no way responsible for getting all of our guests drunk on good liquor. I’m 100% down for a good time but am 100% NOT down for my guests being super drunk at my wedding. Just my personal preference! So we opted for just beer and wine purchased from a local liquor store, Mount Airy liquors. We also decided to splurge on a custom cocktail JUST for cocktail hour, essentially one per person, from our venue since it is a distillery after all! Do note that not all venues allow outside liquor, but this was a deciding factor in our venue. We knew we would only choose a venue that allowed us to provide our own.
Hopefully some of these tips are helpful for you! If you want any more money saving tips (like florals and alterations!) Feel free to reach out to me on Insta- @captured.by.alyssa
To read our engagement story, you can click HERE.
xoxo