Thank you I'll check it out.

Do lunch!!!
 

We saved money by doing lunch instead of dinner. We also booked like 6 months out when the venue was booking 2+ years out for Saturday night! We had a 10:30 wedding at the Country Club and then a 12:00 reception in the same room. We wanted to do it outside, but it was 85 degrees by 10AM, in MAY, so we did it inside and it was fine. Then we all went into the other room for drinks and pictures while they took the chairs down and set up tables. We still had the amazing view and awesome food of the country club that had like a $10,000 Saturday night minimum for like half that. I opted for beer & wine only (gosh, I mean it was *lunch* :)) rather than an open bar. We just had to be out by 4pm. People who came from 1-2 hours away appreciated it because they did not have to get a hotel. People with kids were happy because their kids were not up all night. We were in and out in 6 hours! Then my parents grilled some hot dogs and burgers in their backyard for anyone who wanted to hang out for a while.

We did a lot of DIY, used theknot.com for ideas, splurged on the photographer, saved on the dress (new but no train, real designer not even David's Bridal, but it was $400 because of the simple style I chose) we made the veil for like $4... made the favors, made the centerpieces, paid for the bouquets but chose very simple designs....

If you need more advice just ask - I have pics of a lot of what we did :)

Good luck!!!

You can do it nicely for under $5000 if you have folks that are willing to help and you are in a lower cost area. Both of my boys had recent weddings and we had very nice weddings and receptions while keeping it sensible. The new couples did not start off in debt and moms and dads all still have their retirement accounts.

Biggest savings can come in the wedding dress and flowers department! You can spend several thousand on a wedding dress or you can buy one from David's Bridal $99 sale. The pictures will all look just as nice. Flowers can tip the scale. Try one of the places that rent out floral arrangements and wedding props. They are artificial but you can augment with some fresh flowers here and there instead of having all fresh -- which again can tally in the thousands if you allow it. One of my DIL actually did her own fresh flower arrangements, even the bridal and bridesmaid flowers! Very creative! Try an early wedding where you can do hor d'oeuvres, fruit & veggies, and cake instead of a full meal. That can cut the catering in half.

I think the magazines are paid off by all of their advertisers to convince young people their weddings have to cost a fortune. There is no correlation between the success rate of a marriage and how much you spend on the wedding.

Cheaper flowers at the Farmers Market downtown. My daughter in law had friends run to mpls in the am pick out fresh flowers and then they just tied ribbon around them! Everyone commented on them! She also made all her own invites and ceremony programs. More cost savings! Weddings on a budget can be done. More money in the lovely couples pockets for their future!

I love the idea of doing lunch!!! That is fabulous it even gives the couple more time to actually enjoy their wedding day! If I wasn't already married I would have to use that idea!!!

The grooms mother is doing the flowers and it looks like she's checking out silk on e-Bay. I think our daughter wanted hers to be real and the others silk so they could take them home. When Hubby and I got married we drove to the foot of South Mountain in Phx and bought flowers right out of the fields. They did their own engagement announcements and plan to do their own invites, and we hope the place will let our friend do the photography.

Since we have no family here and have already drafted as many people as we know we can rely on at this point we don't have alot of "free" help available. So we are going to have to go with a place with a package deal so they can do alot of the work for us. This will put us at about $8,000.00, we started out with a $5,000.00 budget. $1,000.00 of that was just to be married on a Saturday, it's the most popular/expensive day but the day when most the guests could be there. The bride works in a bakery that does "limited" wedding cakes. Since she is an employee they said they may break the rules for her. I don't know what the rules are but the cake she wants is very basic three tier, so I can't imagine what rules they'd break. But I'm sure she'd get a discount. So far the dress she wants is about $800.00 including alterations. We had a terrible experiance with David's Bridal a year ago and refuse to do business with them again. We talked to several people who had similar or worse things happen when trying to do business with them. Hubby looked them up online and they have pages of complaints. Maybe the David's Bridal shops where you live are better. One could only hope!
We have said it since before they were engaged....the wedding does not make the marriage.

Wedding budgets can get out of hand quickly!!! If you are set on having it in one place and want to save money have you thought about having it all at a church? Like one with a banquet hall or something that can be dressed up? I'm pretty sure that is a budget friendly environment!

lots of luck!!!.......ny is super expensive i did a destination wedding in hawaii(which was part of my honeymoon we did hawaii and tahiti) and the ceramony ALONE(there was only 6 people there) and they paid their way to hawaii was almost 7k not including the honeymoon all in all that cost about 13k just for us 2...we just had my sons baptism in jan on a sunday for 75 people sitdown dinner it was 9000!!!! not inc. dj favors pictures the 500$"donation" church requested.....if you need favors www.fashioncraft.com they r cheap...i have a seller id if you want the info ill give you it.......they ship right to your door and its a cod

We were going to have it at the church to start with but they don't allow any alcohol at the reception and everyone wanted a keg of beer. So that nicked that in the butt.

Thanks I will check this out. Part of the reason we are trying to keep costs down is hubby was just put on work reduction so less income for awhile. Also over a year ago my best friend asked me to be her Maid of Honor at her destination wedding and we said yes. Hubby worked full time and our kids weren't even engaged. Well,now hubby is making less money and we have a wedding of our own to pay for. The destination wedding is 7 months before our daughter's.

these are a few things I've seen: How To Lose A Guy In One Post
2000 Dollar Budget Wedding

There are some really creative things on there :)

Some churches allow beer and wine, most wont allow hard alcohol. I think most Episcopal churches allow booze :)

Baptist's certainly do not!

In this part of the country the most popular churches are Catholic and Lutheran (we are neither). We planned to have the wedding at a Lutheran church our daughter attended in high school for awhile. She and her fiance' took the marital classes there before he was deployed. But between no alcohol and church members getting prioity on wedding dates we decided to do the wedding & reception in the same place. Also the original plan was to have an outdoor wedding but the pastor said he no longer does outdoor weddings.

Oh my goodness what a headache!