Top 6 Cost-Cutting Decisions

I feel bad that I haven't posted in a while. I really want to write a wedding and honeymoon recap, but every time I think about it, I get this feeling of dread. It seems so daunting! I'll see if I can write a little at a time at work, so I'll eventually get part of it posted.

Anyway, I posted this on IndieBride, and I thought this would be something good to post here too. I hope this is helpful to someone! (Or at least interesting...)


From thread titled: Your Top 5 (or more) Cost Cutting Decisions

Our end total (not including honeymoon) was $6300. For Southern California, I think we did really well! Here are our top 5 (okay, 6):

1) Having the reception at a restaurant - We only had around 50 people at the reception, so the back room of a local restaurant worked really well. I liked that I didn't have to go hunting for both a caterer and a location, but it wasn't a "wedding factory". The cost was only $18 per person, and there was no site fee! So including cake-cutting fees, taxes, gratuity, and $700 bar tab, the entire reception cost us just over $2200. (The manager wasn't as on top of things as I would've liked, but it all turned out okay)

2) Costco/DIY flowers - Since I didn't need gobs and gobs of flowers, I couldn't take advantage of some of the free shipping offers. I also wanted rose petals, so I either needed more roses (and then deal with their minimum quantities) or a package of petals. So I bought 14 dozen roses at Costco for $120 the day before the wedding, pulled off the petals of some, and arranged the rest into bouquets and bouts the morning of the wedding. I even had leftover flowers too!

3) No DJ/iPod - We don't like a lot of contemporary music, and don't like cheesy DJs, so we did the iPod thing. Since we received some wedding present money early, we used some of it to buy a refurbished Klipsch iGroove dock off of eBay. It cost just under $180, but it didn't actually cost us anything, since we used the gift money. Incredible sound, comes with a remote control, and we absolutely LOVE that we now have a cool iPod stereo for our own personal use.

4) eBay - I got the best deals on eBay. My dress, modeled after a $900 Maggie Sottero, cost only $264, including shipping. I received so many compliments! I got the iGroove, my crinoline, and lanterns for centerpieces (10 for $50) there too.

5) Having the wedding near Easter - My wedding was May 6, so our church was still decorated for the Easter season. There were tons of flowers and swags of white cloth draped from the rafters. I actually meant to make pew decorations, but I ran out of time. I don't think any of the guests felt anything was lacking, and the church looked gorgeous. And most of my guests thought that I had put up all those decorations myself, so I got lots of compliments!

6) Photographer through Craigslist - The most basic packages in our area are well over $1000, but we found a fantastic photographer who charged $750 for 6 hours of unlimited pics, a DVD of all pics, touch-ups and artistic things (black/white, sepia, etc.), a wedding album, and I think 500+ prints. We negotiated out the wedding album, so it only cost us $650.

Things that upped my costs:
~ Church fees - I ended up paying $805 in church fees. Because I wasn't a parishioner at my church, the "suggested" donation for using the church was $500. (But they wouldn't make you give that much if you didn't have much money) The church-provided ceremony coordinator and altar servers cost $155, and the pianist charged $150 for coordinating the music and playing at the wedding. Other musicians (instruments or vocalists) would've been an extra $100 or so, but I had my brother sing, so that was free. Our officiant doesn't accept monetary gifts, so we'll be giving him a gift basket and a thank-you card. And our ceremony was beautiful and perfect, so I think the $805 was well deserved.

~ Rings - DH's ring was purchased from a Zales outlet store here in town for about half the price ($430 instead of $800+), but that's still a lot of money. Mine was even more - $590 from Linda Clifford Celtic Jewelry online, including shipping from Ireland (Mine's the two-tone one with the sapphires). But they kinda match, they're gorgeous, and we absolutely love them, so we felt it was worth the splurge.