The easiest way to look at wedding expenses is that, legally, all you need for a wedding is 2 witnesses, a marriage license, and someone qualified to marry you. Everything else is a detail that you can opt into or out of. We had a full wedding and reception with 130 guests, catered meal and alcohol, so ours was probably not very mustachian, but I think that we did a good job of keeping it reasonable. It was less than half of what people who had similar weddings spent in my area, and we didn't go into any debt for it.
We cut costs in the following ways:
- Sold my dress on consignment after the wedding. Would have been smarter to have bought on consignment and then resold on consignment afterwards, but I did not have that foresight. If this is something that your bride is interested in, she should make sure that the dress that she chooses is less than 1 or 2 years old. Most bridal consignment shops will not accept a dress that is more than a couple of years old to re-sell. In the end, my out of pocket costs for wedding dress and accessories was about $500, and if I had been smarter I could have done much better than that.
- We bought flowers at the grocery store and assembled our bouquets ourselves. Boutonnieres were not floral (there are many ideas online for non-floral bouts if you want one). Centerpieces were mainly floating candles in glass jars with a few flowers.
- Found a photographer who was still fairly new at the time, but who was super talented. The photography industry is totally saturated now, so you can find a photographer for any budget. But it depends on how important it is to you - if it's not super important, you could hire a student or "new" photographer for a few hundred dollars. I photographed my first wedding for $500!
- We provided alcohol, but only 2 brands of beer and 3 types of wine that we made at a facility. We were able to return unopened beer cases after the wedding, and we had TONS of wine left over. An obvious cost cutter here would be not to provide free alcohol.
- Look at non-traditional venues. We chose a venue that had virtually no restrictions and no additional fees - no corking fee, no cake cutting fee, nothing. It was a summer music camp. Our venue wasn't particularly cheap, but I loved it so much. A very cheap option would have been a Legion or similar.
- We bought very inexpensive rings, both engagement rings and wedding bands. I think my engagement ring is what is often called a "promise ring". The three rings combined cost less than $500. Jewelry is not important to us, so it was an obvious place to cut costs. DH has already lost his wedding band, so good thing it was cheap!
- We didn't have a honeymoon.
- An obvious way to cut costs is in catering. Our meal was by far the most expensive aspect of our wedding. We provided a full catered meal, but you could easily cut costs here by having an afternoon wedding with no meal, or opting for a cheaper meal. My sister in law had an afternoon wedding and provided light sandwiches and snacks that her family made (no alcohol), which I'm sure saved her thousands!
- We had a friend make a cake for us as a gift. It was delicious! You could forego the cake altogether if you wanted.
- We shopped around for a DJ on online classifieds. It paid off well; he did an awesome job.
- Officiant was a friend of my father's and gave us a deal.
- Made our own edible favours. You can skip these entirely, no one really cares about favours.
- Our location did not really require much in the way of decor, and we kept it pretty simple.
