My Wedding on a Fixed Budget
Wedding Dress -Reformation | Veil – TheBeheaded
This year my husband and I will be married for four years, four years! The time sure has flown by and a lot of people are surprised that I am actually married. A lot of the time I assume it is because I look younger than I am BUT I never really spoke too much on my wedding when it was happening. Mainly because it was literally my first experience with weddings. The only wedding aside from my own that I had attended was my dads a few years earlier. I think a lot of my online community as well as friends just weren’t there yet so I didn’t have a lot to go off of nor did I think anyone really cared haha.
With that being said I am really proud that my husband and I managed to have a wonderful wedding that was 100% US that was also on a fixed budget. In total our wedding cost around $9,000 in total. We had some financial assistance from both of our parents and we only had to throw in about 2k ourselves along with our honeymoon but in retrospect my main goal was to not be in debt after our wedding. We accomplished everything we wanted, from a good backdrop to minimal efforts in the DIY department (also thank goodness my family and friends are more crafty than myself.) Just wanted to share a few tips in our process of building out this wedding which I pretty much planned a month before (aside from finding the location around 4-5 months prior haha.
The Venue – Howl Adventures
So for us the main expenditure was going to be on, of course, the venue. Luckily both of our families are located in Southern California so it didn’t make it overly difficult to choose a location. I wanted to find a spot that had the following checked off:
- Beautiful natural backdrops for photos (no ballrooms)
- Easy way of parking / getting there for guests
- Reasonable price point
- Ability to bring in our own vendors (which goes along with #3)
Let me tell you that there are not a lot of places with this criteria. If so, they are all usually booked a year in advance. A lot of people will book a location in Huntington Beach that is SUPER reasonable in pricing but they only open the location once a week and booking has to be at least a minimum of a year in advance. For me, I wanted something more unique. I searched high and low through all of the wedding websites and literally found NOTHING. Either the price was right but we had to commit to using their food and drink vendors, or the price was SO HIGH that it we basically could only afford the venue itself. I went to visit one of my friends who was helping at a little pop up shop in Long Beach and to my surprise it was in the cutest little loft space. As I walked around I really saw the potential for how this could be a perfect backdrop for a wedding. I located the name of the space and immediately contacted them when I got home. To my surprise they had been considering renting the space out for weddings and were open to the idea of doing a ceremony and reception there! We got the space for $2,000, we could bring in all of our own vendors, we had no time limits when it came to when we had to be there or leave (we had the space ALL day) and we were able to “rent” spaces in a parking lot across the street for a small fee so our guests could park comfortably. Moral of this story is to look for locations that you wouldn’t normally expect to hold something like a wedding.
The one downside was that the space was pretty small so we only were able to fit around 90 people upstairs. We also had to move around things like the first dance etc since the dance floor was downstairs and outside from where the dinner was being held. Other than that it was completely unique to us!
Food & Beverage
The nice thing about getting a space where you can bring your own vendors in is that you have control of the food, beverage, seating, etc. We aren’t super fancy eaters so we really wanted to have tacos, chips, and spanish rice for our wedding meal. Simple but effective. We tasted at a local Mexican restaurant that my mom catered from and that was that. We could have fed at least 20 more guests with the amount of food they provided! It also was really inexpensive in comparison to plated meals. Doing buffet style might take a little longer but ultimately it makes everyone able to get the food they really want to eat and that’s what we wanted at the end of the day.
When it came to drinks we were also lucky to not have to use anyone through the venue. Drinks are one of the more expensive parts of a wedding and I personally didn’t want to go overboard with the drinks provided. One of my husbands groomsmen (well groomswoman) is a bartender so we asked her to help us configure our 3 signature drinks. We chose a Dirty Shirley Temple, Moscow Mule, and a Whisky Drink. We limited our hard alcohol to Vodka and Whisky and also purchased wine and beer. Aside from that, sodas, and water rounded out our options and we walked out of there for VERY cheap. Now purchasing the drinks is one thing, actually serving it is another. Luckily since we weren’t charging for the alcohol we didn’t need a licensed bartender and called upon more friends to see if they’d like to work for tips serving our drinks. At the end of the night all of the alcohol was consumed and we were able to walk out of there without any excess. That’s a win to me.
Photography / Decor – Meilani Cottrell Photos
Photographers are another HUGE expenditure and something that is also extremely important. Especially for someone in this kind of industry. I reached out to a friend of mine who was working on growing her freelance business and asked if she would be interested in shooting my wedding. While I do regret not having a second photographer to capture additional moments, my photographer did an excellent job. She knew my taste and style and gave me a TON of edited images at the end of it. She was quick and professional when it came to sending edits. I will say however that this was her first run at a wedding and it really does take a certain type of photographer to capture a wedding. While she is incredible at what she does, there were definitely parts missing when it came to knowing poses, knowing what shots to FOR SURE capture and things that basically just come with experience. We did however stay within budget and got amazing photos so I absolutely can’t complain! The great thing is that nowadays so many people are dabbling into photography, and while they might not be the exact “wedding photographer” if you aren’t looking for the traditional wedding type photography going with an outside photographer or someone just starting out can definitely help with your budget.
Decor was another huge item for me. I wanted to make sure I didn’t have to overdo it with decor items and let the venue speak for itself. Luckily the refurbished 1920s loft was enough of a backdrop to make this part easy. We went with a family friend who did our flowers. She is so creative and I just sent her some inspiration of colors and the kind of vibe I liked (eucalyptus, dark reds, romantic flowers/colors) and she ran with it. I’ve had a ton of friends who will basically just do their flowers through friends who are crafty and will drive up to the flower district in LA the day before to get everything situated. While this isn’t the case for everyone flowers are flowers (at least to me) and are beautiful no matter what. If you have someone who has the vision of what you are looking for you can’t really go wrong. Now I’m also not so picky when it comes to specific flowers so this made the process a lot easier. We just went off color and look for the bouquets and other floral decorations. I also really wanted to have each table look unique so my dad built me little wood boxes for each table which is what we placed each floral arrangement on. I went to TJ Maxx and purchased mix matched vases for every table. Each vase varied in size and look but it made for every table to have it’s own unique look to it. Another piece I was so happy to have was my backdrop for the ceremony. My dad had some old palettes from his office that he took, stained, and then drilled together to create a really cool and rustic backdrop. All in all, I think our decor probably cost no more than $200-$300 and flowers were about $1000.