According to the wedding planning website The Knot, the average wedding in the United States costs more than $31,000. Just because that’s the average cost of a wedding, though, it doesn’t mean that you have to spend that much. Sandy Smith, the writer behind Yes, I Am Cheap, recently married and she made it her goal to keep the wedding costs to no more than $5,000.
“I spent exactly $4,973.25,” Smith says. “That doesn’t include the cost of the rings, just the wedding ceremony and the reception.” Even with that caveat, Smith, who lives in New York City, managed to spend much less than $31,000.
That’s pretty impressive. My wedding cost $3,000 in 2001 (in today’s dollars, my wedding cost $4,009.45), and I lived in Idaho, not an expensive urban area.
Tips for saving money on your wedding
Smith’s experience proves that even when you live in an expensive urban area, it’s possible to create an affordable wedding day. “Surprisingly, it was pretty easy,” she says. “My husband thought I was nuts. He thought there was no way that we could pull off a decent wedding for $5,000.”
The first thing Smith did was plan for an “off-peak” wedding. Weddings, like travel, often take place during the weekends in certain months of the year. Smith married in early May, on a Tuesday afternoon. She says choosing an off-beat day and time provided her biggest savings, along with combining the ceremony and the reception into one location.
Managing the venue costs can be the biggest money-saver. Smith negotiated with a venue owner and agreed to have the wedding and reception in one place in order to avoid paying for two different locations. I was fortunate in terms of venue as well. Even though there was a ceremony, reception and open house in three different locations, all of the venues were free.
Her next move was to negotiate the price on everything she bought for the wedding. “I negotiated heavily to reduce the prices on things like a toast, decorations and the cake.” You can also negotiate the cost of flowers, musicians and other items — especially if you are providing someone with business at a time when they normally wouldn’t have it.
Not only did she negotiate prices for a number of wedding-related items, but she also went online to find rock-bottom prices on what she didn’t negotiate for in person. “I used the Internet to source items for as cheap as I could get them,” she says. “That meant buying my dress from China through Etsy, hiring a photographer through Groupon and an officiant through Thumbtack.”
Smith also made it a point to do some of the work herself, including arranging flowers for her table centerpieces and creating a sash for her wedding dress. Another possibility is to tap into your network for help with your wedding. My uncle is an amateur photographer, and took pictures and made a video as his gift to us. Likewise, my old band teacher volunteered his jazz trio to provide music for my open house. You can make your wedding an affair that others participate in as well as attend, depending on your situation.
By combining all of these strategies, she was able to keep the cost of the wedding to less than $5,000 — and still have a great time with her friends and family.
Smith says that her husband wanted to elope at first, because he didn’t think they could have a good wedding on the cheap. “He was finally sort-of on board about five weeks before the wedding when we booked the venue,” she says. “He fell in love with the venue and the menu. In the end, he had a better time than I did.”
Part of the success of Smith’s wedding is due, in part, to her family and friends. “We had a wonderful time and it ended on a high note,” she says. “Our guests weren’t ready to leave because they were having a great time.”
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to have a good time at your wedding, or to make memories with your closest loved ones.
Bonus: wedding planning with a credit card
Smith was careful to create a budget and track all of her spending in order to ensure that she didn’t overspend. “I had a spreadsheet where I tracked everything,” she says. Not only that, but she put all of her wedding-related purchases on her credit card in order to earn reward points.
Using a credit card can be a smart move when planning a wedding, as long as you already have the money saved up and you pay off the balance before you start accruing interest. As Smith watched her credit card swiped to pay for the venue, she realized that she had reached the spending requirement to receive her 50,000 bonus miles.
It’s never a bad day when your inexpensive wedding not only results in a savings of more than $25,000, but also results in free airfare.
The post How to save more than $25,000 on your wedding appeared first on Quizzle Wire.