The Budget Just Won't Budge!

Even though I've been working for nearly a year and a half, I haven't been able to save up much money until recently. It's the bills that sucked me dry, really. Things got better after I got promoted in May, cuz now I'm making a lot more money. But we had to use a lot of our money on our security deposit and rent for our new apartment, so my saving actually started around August or September. Bleah.

Anyway, I think I'll be able to save about $3000 more between now and our wedding day, if I'm good. That doesn't include what Sam will contribute, and he says that his mom wants to give us some money for the wedding too. So, I think we'll probably have a cash budget of around $5000 or more (credit will enter into it, but I'll explain that later). $5000 is a lot of money, but it's actually a really small budget. Weddings cost around $20,000 or more on average.

In order to save money, Sam and I will be having what my cousin called an "arts and crafts wedding." I'll be doing a lot of do-it-yourself (DIY) projects, which is fine by me, cuz I like doing craftsy stuff. Here's a list of projects I'm thinking of doing:

• Flower-shaped lanterns to hang up - made from tissue paper, wire, small jars, and light sticks
• DIY bouquets and boutonnieres - order flowers online and assemble the night before the wedding
• Frosted lanterns, paper flowers, and rose petals for centerpieces - lanterns made using etching cream on small glass vases; paper flowers made following a Paper Flower Kit from Paper-Source.com; rose petals orders from online flower place
• Paper/tissue paper butterflies and paper flowers for church decorations - butterflies made from either wire and tissue paper or using a kit from Paper-Source.com; see above for paper flowers
• DIY Save-The-Date cards - I haven't decided about what I'd like to do with this. Magnets? Plain ol' card? Hrm...
• DIY Invitations - cardstock, vellum, and paper. I have ideas for this, but I can't find the example anywhere... I'll post it later, I guess.
• DIY veil - bridal tulle from Jo-Anns, plastic comb, fake pearls or crystals. If this costs me more than 5 bucks to make, I'd be really surprised. People pay $50+ for these things??
• Small homemade soaps for favors - I've been really interested in soapmaking lately, and I think these will be cute, simple, and useful.
• DIY Unity candle - There are candlemaking kits in crafts stores that I can use. (I'm not really sure if I want to have this little "ceremony" in the wedding. I like the symbolism, but it seems unnecessary.)

I think that's it for now. I'll post projects as I work on them, which I should really get started on. 5 and a half months sounds like a long time, but most people plan their weddings in at least twice as much time. There's so many other things I had thought about doing (making trees from scratch was one of the crazier ones...), but since a lot of them are really time consuming, I thought I'd stick to ones that would take me a day to complete at most. I also have some other ideas for saving money that aren't so craftsy, but I'll post those later.

Any ideas for other DIY projects?