This is my absolute favorite wedding picture.Yankee Bill and I have been married 9 years, as I mentioned yesterday!
We were married here (although we were stationed in Alabama at the time) in a lovely Episcopal Church service. Yankee Bill wore his dress uniform, and I wore a dress (purchased at Davids Bridal for $369). My veil was borrowed from a girlfriend.
My sisters and YB’s sister were our Bridesmaids-I chose a green fabric and sent them each about 6 yards, and they had whatever dress they wanted made up from it. My only request was that they all be long dresses. My sister Manda was my maid of honor-I purchased her a velvet that coordinated with the green that everone else wore so that she could have a different top on hers. The groomsmen were mostly Army friends in Uniform-my brother and one of YB’s buddies rented a tux.
One of my husband’s best friend’s mother used to be a florist. I purchased silk flowers in the colors I wanted an she made my bouquets. I was prepared to pay her for the work, but she gave that to us as our wedding gift. This included the boutineers for the men, corsages for mothers and grandmothers etc. I was able to rent white floral arrangements from the local florist (silk) and she spruce them up a bit with some of the leftover silk flowers to make it more coordinated.
The church itself is beautiful, so I didn’t do much decorating. I bought several rolls of wide white satin ribbon (wire edged) and I made some big pew bows. I only had enough ribbon to make 8, so I did every other row for the first 8 rows and called it good.
I made the programs myself, using regular microsoft programs. The Episcopal service has a lot of standing, sitting, and saying things in unison (we like to say it is aerobic worship)-although the entire thing is in our Book of Common Prayer, I wanted to make it easier for the non-Episcopals to keep up-so the entire thing was printed out in a program. I used a color photograph of flowers on the front, sort of blurred, with our names in white over it. Since that entire sheet had to be color I created a collage of pictures of YB and I on the back cover. Then I took the entire thing to kinkos-the single page that folded made up the front an back was photocopied in (one sided) color, then the other side of that sheet and the rest of the internal pages for the program were photocopied in black and white.
Other Army buddies (male and female) formed a nice saber arch for us when we exited the church. That’s a long standing military tradition. I got the customary swat on the backside, but I had secretly coordinated with one of my friends who was the only female member of the arch to swat Yankee Bill on the backside as well. That’s why we are laughing in the photo-it’s immediately after he’s been swatted 🙂 . Our transportation was one of my FIL’s antique cars.
We had the reception at a local restaurant. Sit down, only one menu choice (chicken cordon bleu). Open bar for 2 hours of beer, wine and soda (mixed drinks were cash bar). I made the centerpieces for the tables-terracotta pots painted either white or green and then dry brushed with gold. The flowers were silk “dried” roses sticking straight up and tied round with a ribbon. “favors” were a few of those jordan almonds tied in tulle (bought, cut and tied up by me and family). We did purchase disposable cameras for each table.
The cake topper was one of the large white bows like I placed on the pews. Honestly, I couldn’t find a topper that I liked ANYWHERE. We cut the cake with one of the sabers-another military tradition-and there was none of that shoving cake up each other’s noses business. Yankee Bill had been forewarned that if any such thing happened he’d be spending his wedding night sleeping on the couch.
Other obvious purchases/costs: Honorarium for priest and organist, DJ, Photographer (local “professional” amateur) , cake, and catering costs.
Total spent was approximately $7,000. It was a great party and everyone had a wonderful time.
Coming on Monday-a review and giveaway of the book “Tie the Knot on a Shoestring” by Leah Ingram (who now posts on The Lean Green Family). Be thinking of your best wedding cost savings tip to enter.
NOTE: Apparently all my wedding photos are ON DISK somewhere. How archaic is that? I totally searched both of our hard-drives and only came up with a couple of shots. I’ll update this post with some more picture when I get a chance. . .
These are great tips to lead to savings, and they are not outdated at all… I think that people tend to think that they have to spend-spend-spend in order to have a beautiful wedding. Not true. Creativity is the name of the game! In fact, a creative mind gives you some insurance that you’ll be able to maximize the effect of the day while keeping prices to a minimum. It beats the heck out of blowing tens of thousands of dollars, anyway!
Jerry
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That flower centerpiece from your wedding decorated my apartments for YEARS. I loved the colors…
And might I say that I still remember how yummy the Cordon Bleu was? I’ve been to lots of VERY EXPENSIVE weddings since, and no other entree has come close. There’s something to be said for limited choice!
Love you, and contgrats on 9 years!!
That is an incredible picture! You are so cute!!!
And, while I’m uncharacteristically gushing, the idea of sending each of your bridesmaids fabric to be made up into the style of your choice is THE best bridesmaid idea I think I’ve ever heard. I’m definitely going to pass that one on (tell my daughters)!
I wish I had kept better track of all of the costs of our wedding for posterity purposes. We got married 12 years ago. We had a 150+ wedding guest party, and I know we definitely spent under $5,000. Let me see —
The church was free, because we were members at the time (we have since converted to another denomination) — we did give the (Episcopal) priest a gift though.
We paid $75 for the organist who was on staff at our church. Except, then he had to be out of town, so we ended up for the same price to have a very well known local organist fill in for him.
Photography: $250 for all the proofs, services, etc. She was just starting out, but we liked her work. She did my brother’s wedding eight years later — for $1200!
Dress: $550 at a bridal outlet store
Reception Hall: A beautiful hall across the street from our church. We got it for $200. The price went up just after we booked our wedding.
Flowers: I think this was only about $100 or maybe $150.
Wedding Party Gifts: All personalized at Things Remembered by my sister who worked there at the time and got a big discount. Under $100.
Cake: Around $200, because we went with a small wedding cake but then had a full sheet groom’s cake. This was actually paid for by an aunt and uncle as a gift.
Food for Reception: Gorgeous buffet by a local small restaurant — $1,000.
Hmmm…I think that’s most of our expenses. We didn’t do music at the reception, opting instead to have lots of time to visit with guests.
Wow — looks like it was probably actually around $3,000. Not bad considering it was actually a pretty big wedding. We just looked for ways to cut costs at every turn. That’s what happens when your parents will only pay for $1,000 of it, and the bride and groom are just 19 & 20. LOL
Thanks for letting me stroll down memory lane. 😉
Great photos. We were so poor our wedding was free except for the cost of our wedding license and certificate. It cost us zero dollars. See things could have been worse and I have no photos. Congratulations again. That was a dream come true. YOu just do not know how lucky you are.
A beautiful photo indeed!
thanks guys-I do think it is such a great photo!
I think it’s interesting that my wedding occurred BEFORE I really “converted” to being frugal. That was just my fairly unfrugal frugality. Now I’d probably shave off even a bit more 🙂
Thanks to Anon and Angie for sharing your stories too. There are so many different ways to do this whole “wedding” thing.
Hi Jenn,
Your wedding was indeed great AND finacially sane. That church was gorgeous (and you were too!)
At my wedding I don’t think we had time to reminisce about costs. 🙂 But we did pretty good too — not as cheap as anonymous, but in line with Angie above.
We had it catered by a local Italian restuarant and that was probably the biggest cost. My wife bought huge rolls of lacy material (tafia? Something like that!) and we used that for decorating. The ceremony was at a lake in our HOA and the reception was in our backyard. That night while everyone was drinking we all just played charades, instruments, and sang (I married into a VERY musical family *grin*)
Regards,
Trond
I was married 24 years ago in April. Hubby bought me an inexpensive engagement ring (i dont like diamonds but he got one anyway)…my wedding gown was a 60 dollar white prom gown i got at the mall, shoes were white undyed lace pumps at the mall for 20 dollars…flowers were silk done by a local florist (under 100), pics were free (mother in law worked for the photog), reception was Italian family style at a distant family members restaurant (700.00) Church was 75.00, and limo was 125.00. We didnt have a band, we kept the guest list minimal, then we spent two weeks in Hawaii. I have never regretted not having a big wedding (even after working as a concierge in a wedding hall for years with brides) If I had to do it all over again, I think I would just do a justice of the peace and a huge bbq. oh yeah, didnt have brides maids, just a maid of honor who wore a beautiful gown that she had worn in a friends wedding…hubby wore a nice pinstripe suit instead of a tux, as did his best man!!!!
Hi Jenn –
As we come on 8 years married, it’s fun to think about our wedding planning process. Like you, it was before I was committed to frugality, but while it was just a natural tendency. As we don’t “come from money” and were both working two low paying jobs each at the time, it was also necessity.
The basic idea was the we didn’t set out with a perfect day in mind. We realized early on that while the marriage was for us alone, the wedding should include everyone’s talents and ideas. We got engaged and started looking at who would be happy to be a part of it. We were set we wouldn’t take advantage of anyone, but found that many times people would rather help with a service than give some trinket from the mall as a gift. We stayed flexible through the planning.
Our wedding rings came from Weddingringsonline.com. In this one case, we knew exactly what we wanted and splurged on two very thick,wide,engraved (on the insides), gold bands for just over $300. Ryan found my diamond at a pawn shop. It was new, someone had bought it and chickened out on his proposal. We had it remounted. Total cost for a 1C, nearly flawless stone – $800. It was all the money we had allocated to the ring and never imagined we’d get this one, but we made the offer and got an immediate “No”. We walked out and they called us the next day to agree to our price. We designed our invites with some software we found onine. It was a contest of sorts; If we agreed to let them use our design they would give us a discount on the printing. They were about $300 for 250 invites, RSVP’s, directions, tissue paper and all the useless junk on the inside. My cousin addressed them with calligraphy as a gift to us. We got married in a tiny,pretty chapel. I think the fee with organist was $100. Decorated with wired, ivory bows and a white runner – cost $30. A few pretty vases of local wildflowers on either side – compliments of bored tiny cousins prior to the ceremony. We found a local man who was thrilled to show off his 1940’s era car and honked the bridal party the 1/2 mile from wedding to reception, laughing like a hyena the whole way (free). Our reception was in a huge (40’X100′), recently built barn that my family owned – free. Everything still smelled of pine and cedar. We had 175 guests. My uncle owns a lobster boat and gave us 500 lobsters for $500. We had a caterer come with a giant steamer – he steamed them all at once! The caterer also brought bluberry crumble, corn on the cob, a cold salad and a few chicken breasts for those that didn’t like lobster. Catering cost including the $500 for lobster, set up, serving, cleanup and tip were about $1000. We spent the largest amount on rentals: 8′ round tables, dishes, glassware, flatware, delivery were about $1200. For centerpieces we chose to use large bowls on each table (found at Marden’s discount store for $2/each) and float blossoms in each. Floating oil candles in some ($10/5). People sat at the “tulip table” or whatever. I had 17 round tables, and I let the florist choose whatever broken stems (but intact blossoms) they wanted to use assuming their were 17 kinds. A good deal for blossoms I needed, but she couldn’t sell. The four tiered cake was made by a local teacher I found online ($75). Plain vanilla cake, buttercream icing with blueberry jam between layers (our colors were navy and white). Extra blossoms and petals from the centerpieces arranged around the layers and as a “topper”. Our bouquets and corsages were flowering herbs. They were pretty, cheap and smelled AMAZING. Total flower cost $400. Bridesmaids wore dresses from Chapman’s catalog. They guaranteed that the navy from different styles would match, so I let the bridal party choose their own. They were $69-$89 each. The guys’ tuxes I found by asking local high school students (my cousins) where the cheapest tuxes could be rented. They were cheap and were rent 4 get one free. The bridal party picked up their own dress/tux rental costs, but I think the tuxes were around $300 for the five we needed. The photographs were $700. I found a photographer just starting that was very talented. Like the previous poster, my sister wanted to use her for her wedding two years ago, but that photgrapher now charged 3X – 4X what she charged us! That cost included hundreds of beautiful professional pictures, hundreds of disposables on table shots, albums for several in-laws, all proofs, and/or the ability to purchase later as needed. We used a 50% off coupon to Joanne Fabric and bought two bolts of ivory tulle. We rounded up all the white Christmas lights we could find from family and friends and spent a whole day wrapping all the barn rafters. Cost about $100. My dress was half price (from last season) at Davids Bridal – about $350. My “tiara” I made from buying a bag of broken rhinestone earrings at a accessory shop at the mall and gluing them to an inexpensive headband. Cost under $10. Got lots of compliments on our wedding day, but now in the kids dress-up box. My jewelry was clearanced at a JCPenney after prom sale – it was $50 (orig $150), but I decided it was worth the splurge. Our honeymoon tickets were a gift from family – they pitched in to help us go to Key West, Florida where we were blessed to have a free place to stay. We spent lots of time on the beach (free), enjoying sunsets (free) and feeding fish on the shorlines/piers (free). Vacation tip – find a local fisherman/sunset cruise/snorkel cruise etc at night, they will often give you half price tickets to board just to fill remaining spots in his boat. We did that and got two great sunset/snorkel trips for half price. Total honeymoon cost for ten days – less than $500 and that mostly for food.
Hope that gives some of you some suggestions! It was a beautful day and I couldn’t have wished for more.
Thank you everyone for sharing your stories!
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