Five Money-Saving Moves from Our Wedding
As wedding season 2012 has been heating up, I’ve seen more and more PF-blogger-brides (yet to see a groom) discuss their wedding budgets or various aspects of planning. It’s caused me to reflect on our wedding from 2010, which was not at all an inexpensive undertaking. To this day I don’t know how much money was spent on our wedding because some costs have not been disclosed to us by our parents and some small items may have slipped through the cracks of our tracking. The total cost was in “average American wedding” territory for 120 guests at each of two receptions. We had a ceremony and reception in Durham, NC and a second reception two weeks later in Brea, CA.
I’m not trying to showcase our wedding as especially frugal or DIY by any means, but some choices we made were quite cost-saving. We didn’t choose any of these options because they were cheaper but they did end up saving us a lot of money over the more conventional choices. I’ve created this list just to give a few ideas about how things might be done. I’m not saying these are the least expensive alternatives, but they worked well in our situation.
1) Receptions at a Public Building and Home
Our North Carolina reception was held in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. This wasn’t the lowest-cost venue we looked at, but it was the most fun (dinosaurs!). For two floors and security guard for four evening hours we paid about $1,800. We were also able to book a pretty low-cost caterer from their list of approved caterers, unlike the other venues we looked at that would have locked us in to higher-cost caterers. I encourage brides and grooms to look into public spaces and buildings that don’t normally host wedding receptions when searching for venues. The museum we booked hosts business receptions often but not as many weddings, so I think the price was protected somewhat from the wedding industry inflation. Also, we like that we can visit the site of our reception at any time! Because it’s a public building with free admission we can physically revisit the space where we created our memories whenever we want.
clockwise from top left: overlooking the dance area, a table set for dinner, Kyle vs. the Dinosaur, during our maid of honor’s toast
We shopped around for reception venues in California, but ultimately we couldn’t find anything we really liked. Kyle’s parents had just moved to a new house in Brea that had a wonderful layout for entertaining and I convinced them to let us hold our second reception there. The cost was essentially nothing to hold the reception there as we just had to rent tables and get it catered the same as anywhere else (except we had total freedom in our choice of caterer). The house and yard were not large by any means but we carefully mapped the space to fit everyone and it worked out very well! I definitely encourage those hosting receptions in locations with family to consider having a reception at a home. It’s gives a wonderfully warm and personal touch to the occasion. We were even able to set up a kids’ room inside with a Wii and other games so that the little children could keep themselves entertained (supervised by a babysitter).
clockwise from top left: everyone seated at backyard tables, close-up of backyard tables, outdoor appetizer serving stations, indoor entrée serving stations
2) DIY Entertainment – No DJ or Band Needed
Music and dancing were not a big area of emphasis for our wedding. While we really enjoy dancing at other people’s receptions, it’s not a major pastime and Kyle’s family’s rather “traditional” religious beliefs preclude unmarried opposite-sex dancing. So we had a small dance floor available for our NC reception and none for our CA reception. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on a DJ or band, we arranged for a few other types of entertainment.
NC venue: Did I mention the reception was in a museum? About half the museum was available to our guests to explore. We got tons of compliments on our choice of venue. Many of our friends are scientists so they though it was fun and our parents’ friends were amused. One of my older relatives told me he often gets bored at wedding receptions but this time he was able to explore some exhibits and learn something new. That was the whole idea!
NC music: Totally DIY. We borrowed a sound system from a friend who had a band and created a playlist of our favorite music. We asked a friend to get to the reception early to do a soundcheck. The music was left to play in that area of the museum and people could go on the laptop there to change to whatever other song available that they liked.
our friend DJing for a dance for just us
CA shoe game: The highlight of our CA reception was a round of The Shoe Game. We collected questions from our guests during the first part of the reception, the answer of which had to be either “Kyle” or “Emily.” Then we were placed back-to-back and had to independently answer the question by holding up one of Kyle’s shoes or one of my shoes. Everyone got a big kick out of it and again we received compliments for weeks afterwards on how enjoyable that was for our guests.
Some of the questions we were asked:
- Who has the wackier family?
- Who knows pi out to more digits?
- Who is going to change the diapers?
- Who is secretly a [basketball rival] fan?
one of the answers to the game that we agreed on
3) Dry As a Bone
We did not serve any alcohol at either of our receptions. We had five reasons for that choice, the primary one being that we don’t typically socialize with alcohol, so why should our wedding be any different? An awesome side effect was that our food and beverage expenditures were far less than they would have been even if we had only served beer and wine. It took a lot of convincing to get my family on board with a dry reception, but in the end they were happy with how it turned out. We included an FAQ page on our website that clearly stated there would not be alcohol served or allowed at either reception, so hopefully it didn’t shock anyone. A quick estimate of how much and open bar would have run us (from here) is $1,800 for each reception.
4) Homemade Cake
The sole decision I made about our wedding before actually entering the planning stage was that I wanted to serve my aunt’s famous carrot cake. I grew up eating this delectable carrot cake with cream cheese icing; it was my absolute favorite and I wanted all my friends and relatives to be able to taste it at our wedding. We calculated we’d need about seven sheet cakes to serve all our NC guests. My aunt, my mother, and Kyle’s mother each made a couple and another friend or two made one. They all donated their time and the cost of the ingredients (obviously quite minimal). End result: way more delicious than any professionally baked cake, both objectively and because it was “made with love.”
We wanted to have a tiered wedding cake for our NC reception as well though, to have something to cut. One of our friends who actually was interested in getting into the wedding cake business offered to bake and assemble one as a gift for us. We asked another friend who we knew was a decorating enthusiast to work together with the baker to create a small, lovely tiered cake. We went through a couple rounds of testing so it took some legwork from all of us to get a great result, but that’s no difficult task when you get to eat the test product! We paid them for the ingredients only so it only cost us a few tens of dollars for an amazing, personal, and fun result! Between the display cake (totally edible) and the sheet cakes, if we had gone the professional route it would have cost us about $840 (from these estimates).
Kyle’s cousin is actually a professional cake baker/decorator, so it was an easy choice to use her for our CA reception cake. Another delicious and gorgeous result! I think this was also quite a bit less expensive than a typical wedding industry cake because his cousin works out of her home. This was quite an easy process since we just looked through her portfolio of work and told her the aspects of various cakes that we wanted to combine into ours.
5) Keeping the Party Going
I’m not sure how many weddings have after-parties, but it seemed like we were able to arrange for several more hours spent with our friends for a tiny fraction of the cost of the overall wedding.
We had a Sunday lunch for our out-of-town guests after our NC wedding. We ordered take-out from our favorite Thai restaurant and had a bunch of people over to our apartment complex’s pool and grill area. We played some games and hung out. It was much more relaxed than the day before and really felt like quality time with our friends. The only negative part was that we ordered way too much food and we had to throw a lot of it away because we left for our honeymoon the next morning.
During our CA lunch reception we asked all of our college friends to hang around after the reception wound down so we could spend more focused time with them. They were all able to stay, some for about six more hours! We played games and looked at photos of the ceremony and again had great quality time. For dinner we ate the leftover food from the reception so there was absolutely no additional cost incurred. This was a great bonus of having the reception at Kyle’s parents’ house.
So there you have it! Five aspects of our wedding that provided great value at a (comparatively) low cost. We didn’t do everything perfectly and overall it was quite an expensive affair but we were very glad to celebrate the start of our marriage with so many family and friends. I would love to hear your great ideas as well!
What frugal and creative ideas did you employ for your wedding?
the majority of the photos were taken by our lovely and talented wedding photographer, Amy Goodrich
Filed under: budgeting, choices, featured, luxuries, marriage, spending, values · Tags: DIY DJ, dry wedding, museum, the shoe game, wedding reception
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Aaaah wedding budgeting. Infuriating because you assume before you do it that people are wasting money on frilly stupid things, and then you find out what it costs to feed 150 people, rent 150 chairs, etc. It’s not always the frilly stupid things!
Love the museum setting you guys had, and homemade cake was one of the best things we did, too! It was me and one of my friends, we tested out several recipes and had friends coming to the wedding eat them and help us choose flavors, which was a great excuse for a wedding pre-party. Then we made the cakes (one large but still not “wedding size,” four small to medium) ahead and my friend decorated them and took them to the reception site. It was SO FUN, and they turned out really tasty and pretty – I think even if professional cake weren’t hundreds of dollars more, I would still do our own. Making our own playlist instead of hiring a DJ also turned out awesome, because we knew what to play to keep a dorky crowd like us on the dance floor.
Other than that, we basically tried not to spend too much on everything outside of our top 3 priorities (a unique location that was big enough to fit everyone indoors in the winter, food, and alcohol), and everything else was DIY or skipped, which worked out pretty wonderfully. I sort of wish we’d taken photos more seriously though, my husband and our families didn’t care about them at all so we compromised by finding a photographer on Craigslist and squeezing photos into about 20 minutes between ceremony and reception. Due to unforeseen circumstances we still haven’t seen them, and it makes me kind of sad.
OMG the chairs. We were completely shocked to find out how much the rentals were and the chairs were the worst! We had very basic catering and rental costs – BBQ buffet, not the chairs I really wanted – and it still was the largest by far segment of the budget.
I think we would have done the sheet cakes and skipped the display cake if our friend hadn’t offered. It just seems ridiculous to spend so much money on something a layperson can easily do (the baking, not the assembling/decorating). But thankfully we actually got two offers to make our display cake for free – I didn’t realize how many aspiring baker friends we had! I know exactly what you mean about the homemade playlists – we included several Jonathan Coulton songs on our list and made sure to skip to one of them when we were in that room!
Photos were one of my top priorities – probably second to the top, right after doing the two receptions so we could include more people. So we paid a professional who was also a friend, which worked out really well because she was able to relax me on the day of the wedding. She gave us a deal on flying to shoot the second reception so we saved a lot of money overall by not having to hire a second photographer for the second reception. I agree with you that it’s important to identify what you really care about and not spend much time/money on the rest. (Things I don’t care about: music, invitations, flowers).
Haha, we did BBQ buffet too. It was excellent. And catering (including rentals, not including alcohol) was by far our biggest cost too. But hey, feeding people is important.
I agree on the cake front – not a necessity, but a bonus. I decided to make them because a) I thought it would be fun and b) we cared about taste, not looks. But my friend who took care of assembly and transport the day of surprised me by doing an amazing job decorating – they still looked like cakes, not crazy sculptures, but really pretty ones. (Two of them had candy dinosaur skeletons on top!) I guess people get excited about wedding cakes, right? 🙂
We had our reception at the city park. It meant no alcohol, but, hey, that’s usually a pretty big expense anyway!
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We looked at parks too, but we would have had to rent a tent because of the uncertain weather in our area at that time of year, so it became just as expensive as everything else. Good thing we didn’t chance it, because it ended up pouring that day right after we finished our post-ceremony pictures!
Your wedding looks amazing! I love everything you did.
Michelle recently posted..Spending, Life, Income and Food Updates… 4/9/2012
Thanks! It definitely wasn’t perfect but hey, we ended up married. Sort of.
Both receptions look really awesome!! Does your cake decorating cousin have a website? Would love to see her work!
American Debt Project recently posted..Wading into the Frugal Deep End
You can see her cakes in her public Facebook album.
I love the game at the CA reception. What a clever idea! How did you discover that game?
The museum must have been just an awesome setting. I paid for college by DJing weddings and parties, so I’ve been to maybe 250 wedding. I’ve never seen a wedding reception at such a cool facility.
My sister had a tent in the back yard. The reception was held the day after Halloween, so they decided to have a Halloween dress-up party. Rather than having everyone formal at the reception, we saw some creative costumes. Fun stuff.
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I found The Shoe Game by Googling wedding games – it’s described in several places. I think most people create a list of questions in advance but we thought it would be fun to get our guests more involved. My husband and I love games (as you can see in the pictures, we played more at our “after-paries”) so I had gone hunting for a game to include at one or both receptions. We also saw The Shoe Game played a couple months before our wedding at another reception so we knew it would work out well.
Thanks! There were some definite drawbacks to having the reception at the museum that I haven’t discussed, such as sound restrictions and an awkward layout. But we thought they were overbalanced by the unique setting. I grew up in the DC area and the natural history museum there is my absolute absolute favorite (dinosaurs!!!) so it was fun to look at what museums would be available to us in NC and CA. We also considered a science museum (more hands-on) and probably would have booked that if the dates we were considering had been available.
A Halloween reception sounds so creative and fun! I hope everyone was still able to dance and sit in the costumes. I’m pretty lazy on Halloween but if I had a wedding to attend I would have put a lot of effort in.
Like your wedding, there wasn’t dancing at her wedding. Instead they had some Halloween-style games. They also had a part where (I actually think this was spontaneous) people stood and told funny stories about my sister and her new husband.
I don’t do much for Halloween either, but BOY! people went all out….including us. Our family of four went as Alice in Wonderland. Cheryl was the Queen of Hearts, I was a Card Guard, Nick (my son) was the Mad Hatter and my daughter was Alice. Another family of 3 went as Grandma (mom), Red Riding Hood (daughter) and the Big Bad Wolf (dad). Definitely a creative night.
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Awww! Adorable! And spontaneous storytelling is awesome! My favorite part of our NC reception were the toasts our MOH and BM gave.
The shoe game sounded like fun. We played something at the bridal shower except the guests had to guess how the bride and groom answered the questions.
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We’re just starting on wedding planning ourselves (aiming for a $5k budget!)
We’ve found a few reasonably priced places that are all inclusive but still quite expensive, and now looking at more nontraditional places, some which include stuff like chairs and tables (obviously cost is a plus – a minus will be figuring out how to deal with set up, clean up, etc as there won’t be waitstaff).
Also planning on no band and no alcohol – and either a small or no bridal party.
There are some awesome buildings around our city (in town, the museum, the observatory, and some stunning outdoor settings) but none have proved to fit our budget or needs yet.
eemusings recently posted..What we spent: March 2012
I have no advice for a $5k budget as we were not that ambitious! Definitely avoiding doing rentals is key – they are crazy expensive. The least expensive venue we looked into in detail was actually a country club in our city – no membership required. Maybe that’s another type of building you can check out?
Awesome tips emily, since i’m getting married in july I was hoping to find some great ways to save but I’m already doing most of these things!
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I think the “how to save on your wedding” discussion has been done to death around the internet. We weren’t particularly creative – like I said these choices were made for reasons other than cost-saving but they had that bonus. It’s quite rare to find a unique tip you’d actually want to use.
I don’t really know how the DIY DJ thing worked out at our wedding as I wasn’t in that room very much, but it worked really well at another wedding we attended (just one room). One of our friends served as the official DJ so he put together the playlist, set up the equipment, and manned the laptop the whole night. I think it’s good to give the responsibility to a single party.
Wow, I love the museum idea! And the backyard one too 🙂 One of my crazy wedding ideas is to have the entire thing in my parents’ backyard.
I’ve been to a few weddings with after-parties and they’ve all been awesome. Weddings are sort of like mini-reunions, but you don’t often get much time with the bride and groom on the day of, so after (and before) parties make them a better reunion.
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I don’t think it’s a crazy idea unless they have a tiny backyard or they live in a place with bad weather. It definitely does NOT have to be house-transforming like in “Father of the Bride!” It actually was way more relaxed than having to be in someone else’s space and following their rules. I attended another wedding in 2010 where the ceremony and reception were both held in a rather small backyard (with a breathtaking view) and it worked out very well.
Hanging out with our friends aside from in the events themselves made the weekend. It’s exhausting to have to talk to so many people for so little time during the events themselves. Plus, I got to wear normal clothes. 🙂
Getting married was so long ago. But if I was getting married again, I think I would “borrow” some of your ideas. The pictures are really cute by the way!
Thanks! I’m already planning our 25th wedding anniversary/50th birthdays celebration. I think I’d do a lot of things differently than our wedding.
The CA shoe game idea is awesome! My wife is a wedding planner and she definitely said you guys are creative. Way to go!
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Thank you!
Great minds think alike. 😉 I just put up my wedding budget spreadsheet today. We are working on a $7K budget and the biggest money-savers, I’ve found, are to 1. have a small guest list, 2. have a lunch reception, 3. no dancing, and 4. hire a newish photographer. We are having wine at the lunch – if we didn’t we can easily save $300. Though I don’t think anyone will give us the side-eye openly for not having alcohol, even I (not a very big drinker at all), think wine makes an occasion more festive. So we decided to go for it. Besides, we’re having our reception at a French restaurant… so we kind of need wine to go with coq au vin, no?
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I commented on your post. You’ve done a remarkable job making choices that keep your costs down. I think you’ll have a great time with such an intimate party. I sometimes wish we had a smaller wedding.
Oh, and I would’ve LOVED to have my wedding in a museum. But the museums in SoCal cost A LOT more than $2K for rental. I checked into a couple places’ pricing and were scared off fairly quickly.
Well Heeled Blog recently posted..Our $7,000 Wedding Budget… In Color!
Before we even got engaged when we were exploring the idea of doing bicoastal receptions I looked up the price to rent the Natural History museum in L.A. It’s AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE more expensive than the one in NC! We toured a really interesting, reasonably priced art museum in L.A. before deciding on Kyle’s parents’ house but it didn’t work out for some reason I can’t recall. We ended up finding a couple good venues but nothing felt right like their house did.
You’re receptions look wonderful. The bf and I aren’t engaged yet, but I’m bookmarking this post (hopefully) for later use 😉 I love it that you used a non-traditional space. I have a few ideas in mind, but am keeping them quiet until the bf actually proposes (don’t want to freak him out too much).
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Wedding planning recommendation: Plan with your fiance – not your mother/sister/girlfriends. It’s his day, too! Planning our NC wedding together was an awesome bonding experience for me and Kyle. My parents felt left out and we tried to ameliorate that by giving them a few tasks, but the whole experience really aligned me and Kyle together, not me with my parents and he with his. “Present a united front” as they told us in premarital counseling.
So, who knows pi better? 😉
It sounds like your wedding was very special…great job! You looked beautiful and I’m sure the guests really enjoyed the games and how much thought you put into making sure everyone was comfortable and no one felt awkward. Very nice of you to do that–and it saved you a bit of money too! Great job!
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I think we both answered “Kyle” but we never actually tested… I only know it to the common stopping point of the fifth digit post-decimal. Thanks!
I LOVE the NC Museum of Natural History! That has to be the best venue I have ever heard of. Looks like both the receptions were amazing! Congrats on getting under 200,000. 🙂
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Thanks and thanks!
That looks really fun and magical. Way to go spending as much time with people who came to see you! I just love weddings and yours looked like a bunch of fun.
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Thanks! It went by fast but it was very fun. I liked having the two receptions so I didn’t have the big let-down that many brides do after the wedding is over.
What an awesome wedding! This is a very fun and helpful post. Glad you could do it how you wanted without feeling pressured to have a reception that wasn’t you.
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Thanks! We did feel pressure but the things that were important to us went our way. We made some concessions on less important things. My parents wanted to exert rather a lot of influence, which we had to take into consideration since they paid for a big chunk of the wedding.
Your wedding looks so fun! I never thought about having a wedding in a museum but I LOVE the idea now. I definitely would want to look into places like that for mine.
The games and the hours spent with family and friends after all are great ideas. And is that wits and wagers I spot? 🙂
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Thanks! We attended a wedding in an art museum the year before we got married so that’s where we got the idea. Important to note though that just the reception was in the museum and our wedding ceremony was in our church – public buildings, at least in NC, can’t host religious ceremonies.
Yes, Wits and Wagers and Cranium are the games in the pictures – good eye! Those after-times were a hugely valuable part of the celebrations and I’m so glad we put in the tiny bit of extra effort to arrange for them.
When my parents realized that money and time/energy were interchangeable when it comes to planning a “nice” wedding, my wedding budget went up…. 40%. The most important thing to me was to support local and/or independent artists/shops/farms/etc the best I could. Probably the biggest saver was that I found my $2500 dress for $800 on a preowned dress site. The gal was my same height, weight, measurements – and the dress ended up being perfect! It was nearly impossible to find a reception venue in downtown Seattle that was affordable and could fit our 100 guests. The local/organic breakfast/lunch restaurant in Seattle had just opened a venue-worthy cafe and hosted events in the evenings. It was by no means “elegant” – but it had a Seattle charm and lots of large windows. The venue cost $1000 – linens, tables, plates, silverware, service, and decorating all included. This meant that I could go bananas on picking out lots of yummy, organic food for my guests!!! Plus the food didn’t have to be transported to a site, so it was nice and fresh. Other money-savers: used wildflowers from Pike Place Market, skipped the DJ (own playlist), and had my very amateur friend decorate our cake. It had… “charm”. 🙂 (We had individual cakes from a to-die-for cake shop at each table.) If I did something differently, I would have spent more money on a more professional photographer and would have cut the favors altogether.
It’s so wonderful that you got your priorities in order early on and were able to carry them out. That seems like a VERY reasonable price for a venue including all that stuff – sounds like you got a good deal! Photography was one of my priorities so I’m glad I spent the money there. If I could have done anything differently I would have spent more time getting the final details pinned down earlier than right before the wedding.
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Your weddings looks like it was a blast!
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Oh my! I wish that I could have attended your reception at the museum. That is a great idea. How unique and memorable.
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Thank you so much! We enjoyed it immensely. We got the idea from attending another wedding reception in an art museum the year before.
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[…] Our top priorities were maximizing the number of people with whom we could celebrate, quality photographs of the entire experience, and lots of buffet-style food. Our non-priorities included music/dancing, invitations/thank-you cards/programs, and attire. We were able to find creative solutions to accommodate these priorities (http://evolvingpf.com/2012/04/five-money-saving-moves-from-our-wedding/). […]
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Sounds like a blast! I love the idea of hosting at someone’s home. This wasn’t really an option for our large guest list mid-winter. I also agree that my goal wasn’t to be supremely thrifty, but to spend on those items we (or my family, in the case of a couple expenses) really wanted. This meant that our day felt extravagantly festive in the best way, even while spending less than average.
You definitely have to take the location and season into account with outdoor events. It POURED on our wedding day in NC – a common occurrence in May – so hosting any part of the wedding outdoors wasn’t an option. My friends held an outdoor wedding and reception in Seattle, but they picked the date on the calendar that historically had the lowest chance of rain – and their gamble paid off well!
It’s difficult to be thoughtful with just a short period for wedding planning but it sounds like you did a great job!
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