Brides Who've Been There: 10 Ways to Stretch Your Wedding Budget

I'm taking a blogging break to soak up our sweet Lily Grace (and, let's be honest, to keep my head above water through this beautiful newborn chaos), so I asked some of my married friends to contribute in my absence.  Over the next few weeks, they'll be taking over to chat about wedding planning, bridal beauty and style, and sharing stories about their newlywed days. 

For today, I asked them to share their best money-saving tips when it comes to wedding planning:

This is all my husband's amazing efforts: I was still in medical school when we got married. He was already working. He saved his money--our future money--and paid for everything. Our parents helped some, but most expenses were paid for by my husband. We do not have any debt from our wedding day. I am so proud of him. - Sarah

Sarah and her husband Derrick

We had our wedding during the day instead of in the evening.  Venues charge a lot less for daytime receptions!  And don't listen to anyone who tells you people won't have as much fun during the day.  Everyone danced and had a fantastic time at our reception, and it was even more joyful because all the children could participate!  Also, choose a DJ instead of a band and wine and beer instead of cocktails. - Sylvia

Our whole wedding cost about $2500, including the dress.  We only bought a couple of arrangements for the altar and bouquets.  We didn't hire anyone at all for anything--one friend took pictures, another sang for us, and the organist was included in the church stipend.  A few friends and I made the cake, and our families made the food!  We had about 25 guests for lunch.  The reception Hall was free, thanks to my husband's involvement with the Knights of Columbus, and we didn't decorate much.  Now.  Some of those things we chose because we needed to budget, and some for other personal reasons, and I wouldn't recommend all of them.  But I do think it's good to keep it simple; I don't think the style of a wedding reception should be way beyond the means that your family otherwise lives and entertains. - Rachel

The two biggest expenses we saved on were the wedding party's attire and the catering and alcohol bills.  Instead of looking for bridesmaids dresses at wedding stores, I searched online and bought dresses from Shabby Apple.  Because we bulk-ordered for 6 bridesmaids, they gave us a discount, free shipping, returns, and exchanges, and the cost of each dress was way less that it would have been at a place like David's Bridal.  So I definitely recommend looking around for options besides wedding stores--they mark up the price because they know that's where you'll look!  We bought the groomsman suits at J.C. Penney instead of renting tuxes. We also chose a reception venue where we could provide our own catering or alcohol, so we bought our own alcohol, had some friends run the bar, and chose a catering package from a local grocery store--still amazing without shelling out a lot for a fancy package! - Hannah

Hannah and her hubs, David

We made the invitations, programs, centerpieces, table numbers, and name cards ourselves.  Instead of hiring a DJ, we brought a laptop with a dance playlist and had a good friend play DJ.  And I got my dress at a wedding consignment shop for $300! - Anna

We both come from huge families, so there was really no getting around an expensive wedding. The best way (by far) to cut down on wedding expenses is to cut down on guests. And we just weren't willing to do that.  So we saved money where we could -- we ordered our invitations online, we went with the most affordable florist we could find, we chose family friends for our photographer and DJ. We used honey from my husband's beehives for our wedding favors. But we just sucked it up regarding catering costs, and went with a caterer who provided everything, down to the table linens, so we wouldn't have to worry about getting hit with a million little surprises. - Julie 

We didn't have flowers.  It was late December, so anything real would have been not native (aka more expensive), and I really just don't think "flowers" when I think "winter."  Instead of flower bouquets, we had bead bouquets that my mom made by hand.  It was quite time consuming for her, but I'm glad we went that route, and (I think) they looked great.  - Lauren

First, shipping in bulk and looking for wholesale deals saved us tons of money on the little vases we used as escort cards for each guest and on the favor frames we gave each family. Second, I worked at a bridal store at the time, so I got an amazing discount on my dress. Third, print things yourself. I love graphic design and stationary so I had a great time designing programs, table numbers, escort cards, and menus. Some things I had printed at my trusted neighborhood print shop (like the programs because they were able to add the cardstock cover and staple them for me- timesaver!), and the rest I printed at home. Don't skimp on a paper cutter if you go this route because a bad one will make the job miserable. Fourth, I used Nashville Wraps to get bulk pricing on all the wrapping for the two favors we had. I STILL use the black and white polka dot wrapping paper we used for our favors because the roll I got was humongous. And last!  I ordered 50 less slices of cake than we thought we needed, but had the baker turn two small layers of the cake into fake layers. Yay styrofoam! It was still too much cake. I have never seen a shortage of cake at weddings. - Andi

Andi's wedding cake, with fake foam layers!

Friends shared their talents and offered them as wedding gifts.  For example, my maid-of-honor's mother is an incredible seamstress, so she made all the bridesmaid dresses, the ring pillow, and the flower girl's dress.  That was my wedding gift from her.  A family friend was an excellent decorator, so she made all the flower arrangements and corsages as our wedding gift.  In high school, I worked for a sandwich shop and my old boss catered the whole wedding as my gift.  All the musicians were family friends or church members.  This really made our wedding feel very personal and special, because everyone gifted us by using their amazing talents.  - Amy 

We'd planned to do a wedding slideshow, and I got it done a couple days before the wedding and sent it to the DJ. He emailed me back to ask if we'd rented a projector for the slideshow. A projector? No, I hadn't even thought of that/ The church wouldn't let us use theirs, and on the Friday before a wedding, none of the rental places in town had a projector available. So my husband-to-be bought a projector at BestBuy. After the honeymoon, he took it back to BestBuy and honestly told the returns agent, "My wife said I spent too much money on this." - Bonnie

Your turn!  Leave your best wedding moneysaving tip in the comments!

Rite Resources: My Favorite Free Design Resources for Wedding Invitations

Natalie Franke Photography

Ever given any thought to designing your own wedding invites? Andrew's and my wedding plans were blessed with considerable financial help from our parents.  I felt so thankful, yet vaguely guilty, so I tried to express our thanks by finding ways to cut costs wherever we could.  I love design and can fake my way through Microsoft Publisher pretty well, so I wanted to try my hand at creating our own invitations, programs, and stationary, but I knew I wanted something with a little more flair than your standard ivory paper and black script.

Side note: this was about 6 months before Pinterest was around--much to my benefit, I think, if only for the reason that I probably would've gone full-on wedding cray cray if I'd had access to that much inspiration and that amount of bridal stuff at that time in my life.  Good for other peeps, and I love looking at wedding things online still, but I know myself too well…it would've complicated, rather than simplified things for me; I'm sure of it!

Anyway, with just archaic Google to help me, it took a little time to scour the internet for pretty design resources I could use for our stationary, and after finding some I truly love, I want to share them with you.  Here are some of the sites I used before my wedding, as well as a few others I've stumbled onto since then:

For fonts:
DaFont.com: This site is great as a collection of varied, free, simple to download fonts that are divided by categories, like handwritten styles, brush scripts, and calligraphy.  Definitely check out the Dingbats and Holiday sections for "fonts" that read as images, like decorative flourishes, hearts, and flowers--truthfully, there are some pretty cheesy ones to wade through, but you can find some sophisticated designs, too, if you're willing to click around.  Even four years after my initial invitation project, I use this site all the time to help me create blog graphics.  A few faves:

Lost Type Co-Op: Seriously gorgeous type, created by independent designers, that has a wonderfully professional look.  Free downloads are permitted, or you can make a donation when you download a font, and 100% of your donation goes to the designer.  If you're nerdy about this stuff like me, Lost Type sends out a fascinating e-newsletter you can subscribe to when you download.  Everything really does look beautiful, but I'm particularly partial to these:

For images, borders, and other design elements:
We Lived Happily Ever After: Elegant wreaths, Parisian flowers, rustic antlers…whatever theme you're going for, I feel like there's a good chance you'll find something to fit from Hannah's amazing collection of images, most of them hand-drawn.  It's simple to download her collections, and she even offers this handy tutorial on how to change the graphics' colors.  Some inspiration:

For backgrounds:
Design Love Fest: While I'm betting you don't want your wedding invitations to say something like "Get It Girl," this site does have a huge collection of backgrounds you can download for your phone or desktop, ones I'm betting would also look mighty fine as a backdrop for your invitations.  There are plenty of florals, geometric shapes, and watercolors like these to browse through (images are linked to the download pages):

Pattern Cooler: I'm ready to admit that some of the designs here are straight-up gaudy.  But the concept of customizing practically any design you can imagine (stripes, circles, Greek keys…) with any colors you like is unbeatable.  A sampling:

If you like the idea of free, print-your-own invites but would rather leave the design up to someone else:
Wedding Chicks: Type in a search for "free printable wedding invitations" and a lot of clunky designs with few customization options pop up.  These are different; I think they're truly pretty, and what's more, the site offers a great collection of design-your-own monograms you can use as a starting point for your own designs, as well as signs and other printables to use at your ceremony and reception.

I just recently learned about this beautiful couple who did ministry together with St. Paul!

One thing!  Be sure, when you're getting ready to print your invites and other materials, that you've saved them as a PDF.  If you try and print straight from a Microsoft program like Word or Publisher, it will usually try to convert downloaded fonts into a Windows-friendly version, and any pretty calligraphy or block type will show up on the screen but not on the final, printed version.  PDFs also just simplify things if you're taking your documents to a print shop or a place like Staples, because the formatting can't change depending on what operating system you're using.

What do you think?  Have you thought about going DIY for your wedding paper?  Is there a free design resource you've used and loved that I left off of the list?  Share away.

More design, DIY, and template stuff from this here blog:

Mass Program Templates  |  Design-Your-Own Puzzles for guests  |  A post from the early days on the more technical aspects of invitation design  |  Erika's pretty DIY invitations  |  Printable Calling Cards to share your new married address  |  Printable Prayer Cards

How We Budget, or, Money For the Non-Mathematical

For most of our first year of marriage, Andrew was in grad school and I was unemployed.  Panicky, we asked Andrew's brother Anthony, a lover of budgeting who'd been married for a while, to sit down with us and show us how he and his wife broke down their spending and stuck to the limits they set.

Anthony's an accountant.  With him, "sitting down" meant opening an Excel document, entering a bunch of formulas, and peering at his estimated gas costs per month based on the exact mileage he drove each week.  I so admire that man's precision, love of detail, and willingness to live a little Spartanly in certain areas during months he overspent in another area.  But Andrew and I knew the sort of fastidiousness that worked for him wasn't as well-suited to our personalities.  After learning Anthony's ways, thanking him but having a mild freakout, coming up with a more moderate version that felt like our own way, and changing our methods through trial and error over the past four years, here I am sharing with you how we set up a monthly budget.  So far, each of our 4 years of marriage has brought either a move, a job change for one of us, or both (we had that first year of sort-of poverty, followed by one year of what felt like total riches when we both worked full-time, followed by the past two years of more school for Andrew while I work part-time), yet these steps are flexible and have continued to work each month, as long as we've adjusted them for our changing financial situations.

Let me say that I'm fully aware we are basically cave people when it comes to money.  Aside from a calculator and the deposit app for our bank, we like to track all our spending on paper, not digitally, and prefer to crunch the numbers without any shmancy formulas.  You probably spend a lot less time carrying the one and writing on legal pads than I do.  But if, like me, you aren't terribly mathematically inclined, or if you like a lot of visuals to see what's going on, maybe this will help you like it's helped us.  Here's how we did it:

1. Figure out exactly how much you have coming in each month.  For us, that basically just means adding up our paychecks.  We decided to leave out windfalls like birthday or Christmas money because we wanted to set up our spending guidelines based on the least amount of income per month we might be bringing in and have the freedom to use the surplus how we wanted or needed (sad but true: we once had no choice but to blow half of a $500 gift on a locksmith when we got locked out of our apartment on Christmas night).

2.  Identify your monthly fixed costs, like rent, internet, utilities, and loan payments, and subtract the sum from your total income.

3.  Categorize your other expenses.  We have categories for groceries, dates, gas, and miscellaneous needs like gifts, toiletries, Andrew's schoolbooks, Aaron's dipes, and things for our home--this month, for instance, we inherited a printer and needed to buy new ink and a table for it.  For a while we also set aside personal spending money for each of us to use on fun stuff, which usually translated to clothes for me and snacks for Andrew, but, well, we just aren't raking in the Benjamins right now and had to shelve that for a while.

4. Decide how much is realistic for you two to spend in each category.  Our personal goal is to strike a balance between comfortable and overly strident, while not losing any money each month, i.e. have more money going out than coming in.  As a ballpark if you've never tracked your spending before, we designate $250 for groceries and $250 for miscellaneous, which works well for our little family of three  if we are frugal.  I recommend talking about areas in which you're willing to be flexible about spending a little more or a little less--for us, we decided not to worry much about gas since visiting our families at least once a month, even though we lived about 3 hours away, was a priority.  Since we tried to set up our categories in a way that would allow for money left over at the end of the month, we just used it as a cushion for months with extra gas expenses.

5. Subtract the sum of each spending category from your total income.  What's left over will hopefully be a positive number, and is yours to save or spend how you want.  When we're saving for a big purchase (at one point it was some storage furniture; right now it's a new camera lens), we roll any leftover miscellaneous money towards it at the end of the month.

So, this is that our breakdown looks like (yours might have different or additional categories):

It's up to you how to track your budget.  Like I said, I get that most people are more technologically advanced than I am, but the thing that's worked best for us is just keeping separate lists on the fridge for each of our spending categories and writing down the amount spent each time we make a purchase.  For me it's an easy habit because I constantly see our lists (like, when I'm putting groceries in the freezer, the lists are right there for me to write down what I spent on groceries) and can do the math right there to see how much is left for a given month.

Honestly, PhD life is rough financially: Andrew puts in way more than 40 hours worth of work per week, with very little pay to show for it, and it's not really prudent for us to buy a house right now because we don't know where, God willing, he'll end up teaching one day when he's finished with his degree.  Though I'm sure I'd be quite happy having a little more money to go out to eat on nights when we're tired and would love to have someplace bigger to live than a 2-bedroom apartment, I'm grateful that for most of our marriage, we've been forced to spend less than we might be inclined otherwise.  It's trained us in sacrifice and encouraged us to be creative with our dates and entertainment, and truly made this former spender actually happy to decide certain new stuff isn't as necessary as it once seemed.

Let me be clear; that's not to say I think we've taken a higher road than couples who have a more typical dual-income situation and more settled home.  What I'm thankful for is the way month after month of circumstantial cheapness has helped me wise up about money in a way I might not have otherwise--people learn about and come to appreciate money in different ways, and for me, this was a very welcome opportunity.  If you're in a similar situation, or are just wondering about ways we try to spend as little as possible while still having fun and feeling like we have what we need, here's where we've been able to save the most:

• Grocery shopping based on sales, not our appetites, and not buying packaged foods.  One of our highest priorities is eating healthfully, yet when we're trying to spend moderately on groceries, I've found that it can be easy to go over budget (especially at this time of year, when there's tons of fruits and veggies).  To compromise, I read over the store flyer before a shopping trip so I can make my list and plan our meals based only on the produce, meats, and other ingredients that are on sale that week.  At first I thought this approach would be limiting, but to my surprise, it's much more freeing than just asking each other, "So, what do you want to eat this week?" because we aren't just blankly casting around for ideas.  And, as someone who enjoys cooking, I really like the challenge of coming up with recipes based on what's available to us.  Every few months, we make a huge Costco trip to buy items that have become our staples, like cooking oils, chicken stock, roasting chickens to eat and to make more stock, rice, quinoa, vitamins, and spices.  Rather than blow a whole month's grocery budget on that one trip, we break it down over the next few months into $50-$60 installments, which is about what we spend on one normal grocery trip, subtracted from the $250 total for the month.

• The library!  We're lucky to be able to walk to our library, which is also located next to a kids' play fountain and a farmer's market, and Aaron loves it.  I haven't braved organized story time yet, but he loves picking out books and playing with the toys there.  Andrew's schoolbooks are a big expense every semester, so to offset that cost, we don't really buy books for pleasure reading anymore unless it's one that we've already read and loved.  We bought a Kindle Paperwhite after Aaron was born so I could read one-handed during feedings and while he napped in my arms, and the amount of eBooks we've both borrowed from the library system have more than paid for it by now.
• Truly, just a combination of being creative with our wants and thinking twice before buying non-necessities has gone a long way for us.  For me, I love treating myself to a coffee drink and I love having my nails painted, so rather than spend money at a coffee shop or nail salon, I make iced coffee at home and paint my own nails.  We also decided that our Amazon Prime membership, which we really value, offers a decently comparable selection of movies and TV shows to Netflix (it's not quiiiite as good, but we are fortunate in that Andrew's sibs let us mooch their Netflix account in exchange for using our free 2-day shipping, so we decided to stop shelling out for both Amazon and Netflix services).  For dates, we try to think outside the going-out-to-dinner box, unless we have a coupon or Living Social deal, and just do things like go for walks or to Adoration or play board games and make dessert after Aaron goes to bed.  I promise it's not as old and boring as it sounds.

So there it is, way more than you maybe ever wanted to know about our money and what we do with it.  I just remember the stress of figuring out spending as a couple when we were newlyweds, as well as the feeling of wanting to know where our money was going during times when it felt like we were buying one thing after another, whether for stuff we wanted or for situations that actually called for it, and I hope this is helpful.  But, to Him be the glory.  God blesses us with money as a good, but not as an idol, and I try to be mindful about the fact that worrying too much about too little money is idolatry in the same way that greed and materialism are idolatry.

What do you think?  Questions?  In attempting to uncomplicate things have Andrew and I actually complicated them, living unaware of some simpler method out there?  I'd love to hear about your budgeting experiences and any strategies you've come by in your relationship.  Share away!