You stand at the altar and pledge the rest of your life to one imperfect man whom you think you love. You don’t really know what love is yet–you’ve just dipped your toes in the river. You will love him so much more after you’ve suffered together and forgiven each other and continue to honor your commitment of “till death do us part.”
That’s what a wedding is about–love and commitment before God and man. What a wedding should not be about is putting yourself into debt for the next ten years. A budget wedding doesn’t mean an ugly or sad event. It’s a realistic and less stressful event, because very few people can afford the now “average” American wedding–which, apparently, costs $35,329.00. (Now, that’s calculated from 13,000 weddings that were reported. And that’s an average. So most people’s weddings probably cost way less than that, but a few over-the-top ones can bring the average up.) A budget wedding = more money for a down payment on a house someday. A budget wedding also = much lower stress.
Our budget wedding wasn’t a perfect event by bridal magazine standards, but it was perfect for us. I hope the breakdown of our budget is helpful to you as you consider prioritizing your future financial peace over the magazine cover hype.
Our Budget Wedding: approx. $1500 Cost Breakdown (includes flowers, marriage license, and invitations)
Invitations & Announcements – $261.90 
Because we were having a small wedding with just under 100 people attending, we also printed wedding announcements for friends we loved but for whom we didn’t have space in the tiny church. I addressed, sealed, and stamped them ahead of time to be mailed the week following our wedding.
Design – my best friend is a graphic designer, and her wedding gift to us was designing our invitations exactly the way I wanted them! So this part was free for us. You could try your hand at designing your own using the print companies’ templates or Canva. We went with a flat, high quality cardstock invitation with a picture on the front (for people’s refrigerators) and all the details on the back. (The Bible verse on the front is the one David used when he proposed to me!)
Printing – 100 5×7 invitations $62.95
250 announcements $51.95
(We didn’t send all of them, but the price break and having extras on hand made getting 250 worth it.)
Stamps @ 49 cents apiece for about 300 invitations or announcements we ended up sending. Don’t forget about this expense! $147
Advice Cards – $34.95
I ordered 250 of these cards, which means we still hand them out to people to fill out. Haha! (Not every one of our 100 guests filled one out, partly because some were children!) We actually did pass these out at our housewarming party when we bought our first house!
Wedding Dress + $156.
Read about how I made money on a wedding dress HERE.
DIY Bride’s Shoes – $35
I saw some sandals I loved at David’s Bridal that would have cost me about $110. I was pretty sure I could make something similar, so I bought silver sandals, some cheap simulation pearl bracelets, jewelry glue, and used scraps of the chiffon from my homemade sash to make flowers. (Pinterest has tons of ideas for DIY fabric flowers.)
Bride’s Earrings – $39
I just went with simple but elegant freshwater pearl earrings I found online. My single-pearl necklace was a birthday present from David, and I chose the earrings to coordinate.
Attachment for Veil – $2
Speaking of hair, my sweet roommate Tiffany had an amazing talent with hair and offered to fix mine for free. She arranged my hair and the bridesmaid’s hair. I think ours was just one of three friends’ weddings that she did hair for that summer.
3 Bridesmaid’s Dresses – $65
At first, my goal was to have 3 different pastel colors for the dresses: soft yellow, spring green, and peachy coral. But one of my bridesmaids didn’t like yellow and another didn’t like green. (Also, the spring we were searching for dresses, mint green was all the rage, and that’s not what I wanted.) The third had specific guidelines for what she felt comfortable wearing. My maid of honor and I ended up finding 3 of the same coral chiffon dress that the other girls said they were okay with at Burlington Coat Factory! I paid $65 for the three dresses. (Need ideas for less formal and inexpensive bridesmaid’s dresses? Follow this board on Pinterest.)
Groom’s & Groomsmen’s Outfits – ?
David’s family generously bought his outfit (pants, a shirt, and vest) as well as those of his brothers. (His 3 brothers were his groomsmen.) Our wedding was simple, so no tuxedos!
Small Gifts for Bridesmaids and Wedding Helpers – about $70
We had people who volunteered to make desserts for the wedding, do a beautiful job decorating (thank you, Mrs. Meadows!), and arrange flowers. I made small gift bags for each of them.
Photography -$500
We asked a lovely young woman who was just getting started as a photographer to photograph our wedding. Because our wedding was an indoor event in a place that didn’t have beautiful lighting, and it was too hot to be outside much after the wedding, we don’t have many great photos of just the two of us. At first we were a little disappointed by that, but now I think, How many wonderful pictures do I need? Now that we have a child, we will be putting up fewer pictures of us and more of him. Just a few great pictures are perfect. And Clare took some gorgeous photos we will always treasure.
You should expect an established professional wedding photographer to charge significantly more than $500. But if you don’t already know a great photographer you’d love to have document your day, consider asking budding photographers in your family/friends circle. (Unless you want to have a thousand stunning gallery-worthy photos, of course!) 🙂 Photography from your wedding is something you will enjoy for years to come, so it is worth a splurge. But, as you can see, for our budget wedding, $500 was a splurge! 🙂 It was 1/3 of our total cost.
Food Ingredients & Plastic Plates, Napkins, etc. – approx. $300
Someone else bought a lot of the stuff for us so we wouldn’t have to go shopping and then just gave me the receipts so I could pay her back. (And some dear friends who thought of me as one of their daughters had given me exactly this amount for the wedding.)
I’m still not sure about this number, because some people volunteered to bring desserts and others paid for the Chick fil A nuggets we served as part of our late, light lunch. (Don’t laugh at this cheapie sign of a budget wedding. My husband LOVES CFA, and so did most of our guests!) A couple days before the wedding, I made several pans of fudgy brownies. My mom-in-law made blond brownies and buckeye balls. David’s cousin made a pasta salad, and we also had fruit and veggie trays.
I hate wedding cake, so I’d elected to go with a simple and absolutely delicious chocolate torte. A friend made the torte since I was horrible at getting it out of the pan without everything breaking! She had the brilliant idea of decorating it by putting a paper doily on top and shaking powdered sugar over the top.
I adore the light, airy, romantic look of baby’s breath, and I knew I wanted a lot of it in our wedding. We went with it alone as centerpieces and bridesmaid’s bouquets–$100 worth. And then we got a few light peach roses for my bouquet and one for David’s corsage.
Marriage License in our State – $81
That license is more important than the flowers, y’all. Don’t forget it. 🙂 Also, soon after the wedding, you’ll be paying to update your driver’s license, your passport, your Social Security card, etc. (Unless you decided not to change your name.)
Venue & Most of the Decorations – free or gifts
We had our wedding at the church where David grew up since my family didn’t have a home church. David’s mom bought a couple ferns to dress up the church, and the lady who volunteered to decorate brought a lot of materials. (She also had some beautiful things made especially for our wedding, such as our initials.) Friends pitched in with random items for serving the food and drink/decorations. (Ask your friends if they know people with lots of decorating items stored in closets, and you may find out that their moms or they themselves have exactly what you need!)
The church gave us wedding bulletins with the order of the service and lyrics of the song we chose as a congregational hymn printed on them, which was a wonderful gift.
The Grand Total
So far, we’re up to $1,528.85. Minus the money I made on the wedding dress. ($156) That brings it down to $1372.85. However, I’m sure we spent money on other odds and ends that I simply don’t remember anymore. So I’m going to round it up to $1500. (And, if we had paid for the groomsmen’s clothing and a few other odds and ends, I think the total would have come close to $2000.) Still, if the average wedding costs $35,000 (and even in the most inexpensive state to get married, Arkansas, it costs $19,522), we saved thousands of dollars for a down payment on our first house!
Could we have had a less expensive wedding? I’m sure we could have–especially if we’d chosen to go to the courthouse and say our vows in our normal clothes! And yes, some of it was sheer blessing. (Like that David’s mom was friends with a decorating queen.) But we were happy with the result of our budget wedding and thought it was beautiful. Looking back, we wouldn’t change anything!