Vanessa's Wedding Diaries: Staying on Budget

By: Tahnya Kristina on September 23, 2015

Vanessa's Wedding Diaries: Staying on BudgetI’d always heard people say that you never know how expensive wedding are until you actually plan one. I had dismissed this as hogwash – it’s a 15 minute ceremony and a dinner, how expensive could it possibly be??

The answer is, holy cow, weddings are pricey! Thankfully, I have my best friend – the internet – at my beck and call and I have used it like crazy to cut costs.

The Dress

I won’t share too many details of my dress because, despite the Vegas wedding, I’m still a traditional girl at heart and don’t want my future husband to see the dress before I walk down the aisle! Browsing wedding websites and flipping through magazines made me realize that I was not only too cheap to buy a gown but I was also much too poor – some wedding dresses cost months of salary!

One visit to a bridal boutique made up my mind about buying my dress online. I sat down in front of the TV one night, clicked through hundreds of pages and, a week later, my dress arrived from China. It needs a lot of altering but by only spending $160 on a gown, I had more than enough left over to pay a local seamstress.

The Invitations

Next on my ever-expanding to-do list were the invitations. Even though we have a family friend who owns a print shop, when we looked at his invitation samples, they were just too boring for us. There was no way we were getting cream-coloured, lace invitations with matching RSVP cards and paying upwards of $5, per card.

One day while researching Etsy stock I remembered that, duh, Etsy sells invitations. I quickly searched for our wedding theme, found only five choices (it’s an obscure theme) and asked my fiancé which one he preferred. $50 a few weeks later I had enough handmade invitations to give out to all my local guests. Email will suffice for future updates or out-of-town guests.

The Reception

Personally, since our reception back in Canada won’t be until after our wedding, I was hoping to have a Halloween themed event. Unfortunately, my fiancé didn’t agree and, since I promised to let him plan the reception, I wasn’t in a position to argue. For our venue we ended up at a hall that his friend owns and we’ve ordered balloons and fun decorations online.

To save costs, we won’t be serving a meal. The idea of having vegetable platters on tables got bounced around but that was too cheap, even for me. “Welcome to our wedding, here’s a carrot stick!” No thanks. We ended up planning a cocktail hour – late enough that everyone knows to eat beforehand but early enough for the grandparents in their 90s.

Getting married doesn’t need to be expensive if you ignore the things that make it so. By wearing an inexpensive dress from China, buying simple invitations on Etsy and not feeding 100 of your closest friends and family, weddings can be pulled off on a tight budget!

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