From the archives: This older post is full of so many great tips that it was time to refresh and reshare it!

I recently read that the average wedding in the United States now costs over $30,000. That is insane to me!  Whether you spend $1,000 or $10,000, at the end of the day, you are still married.  Your marriage isn’t any more sacred or real because of the amount you spend.  It is possibly more stressful, though.  I want to encourage you to save as much as you can on your wedding day; you will need the extra pennies in the years to come.

I’m not here to tell you who to marry, but I can definitely help you save!  Before we branch into specific posts on flowers and photographers, I thought it would be best for us to start with a general overview on my perspectives.  I am hoping that if you are reading a post about planning a frugal wedding that we would mostly agree on things, but it is best to at least lay out opinions from the start.

Planning a Frugal Wedding: Getting Perspective

First, my story. My husband and I got married two decades ago the weekend before Christmas.  I didn’t want a Christmas wedding, we were just told that we couldn’t get married until he was out of school and that was the the first weekend he was officially done!  I’m pretty sure if finals ended on Christmas Eve we would have taken Christmas Day…  in other words we didn’t plan for a frugal time of the year and normally timing isn’t always perfect to pick the cheapest date.

One would think a Christmas wedding would be cheap because the church is already decorated.  Well I really didn’t want a Christmas wedding, so we hid all the decorations and brought in spring.  We didn’t do anything big or super fancy, and thankfully this was a decade before Pinterest so I wasn’t guilted into going bigger.  Our total budget was $3,000, including everything (the dress, food, photographer, etc.), and we did it just fine. There were frustrating moments when we would interview a caterer and they would treat us like we were crazy for trying to feed 150 people on so little, but in the end everything worked out.

Honestly, two decades later, there is very little that I remember about the details. All that remains are what was captured in pictures and my memories of certain parts. I doubt that anyone attending would even remember what our colors were.  Try to think back to a wedding you went to over 10 years ago and see how many details you remember! Keep reading for my tips for planning a frugal wedding.

Experts are Expensive

The more famous someone is, the more they make. So if you want to pick the top florist in the state that has pictures in Martha Stewart magazines, you are going to pay for that notoriety.  It doesn’t mean that the flowers or pictures they take are always worth the money. You do get what you pay for, but you may be surprised how great the small guys are too!  For our wedding, we called around to professional photography printers and asked if they knew any freelancers that would shoot a wedding for a flat price.  We paid $300 for 2 hours with a photographer that took pictures and then we owned all the pictures.

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