How I Had An Elegant Wedding for Under $3,000.00

Weddings are the most wonderful time in a woman's life right? That is until you start planning, budgeting, and realizing just how expensive a wedding really is. Unfortunately my parent's weren't financially able to dish out tens of thousands of dollars, which is really unnecessary any how. In this post I will give you the exact break down of every cost we had. I will also show you pictures of our wedding/reception so you can see how amazing it looked for just paying $3,000.00!

I apologize in advance for the gazillion photos, but I sometimes am visualizer so I figured my photos would spark your creativity!

First I would like to BRAG yes BRAG that I got my wedding dress for $100.00! I can't for the life of me find the website I got it on anymore, but the night we got engaged, W's mom and I googled wedding dresses. We mainly looked at images, and went to the site when we fould one we liked. I stumbled upon this dress, and thought it was seeing things when I saw the price was only $100.00. I couldn't believe it. We ordered it right then and there because I knew it was the one. Now I know that takes away from the traditional value of trying dresses on, but lately I've noticed I am anything but tradtional!



Isn't it gorg?! Elegant Empire Waist with beaded belt, that flowed away from the body to give it a beachy feel.

We planned our wedding in 10 weeks, crazy right? Some would think so, but ladies, it can be done!
The next order of business was the church. We went to several places all over town, but none of them felt quite right. Not to mention some places wanted $300 AN HOUR to rent their space. Hello?! I don't think so. I remembered there being a cute white church in the country so we decided to drive out there and give it a look. I fell in love with the outside, and once we went it, I was sold. No decorating was needed, just a few plants in the front to make it more lush. We paid $200.00 for the DAY!


As for the brides maids, they got their dresses at David's Bridal. Since I am not made of money, they had to purchase their own dresses. However, I found really cute dresses and they happened to be on sale for $88.00, so they were happy with me! My Maid of Honor wore the wedding color while the bridesmaids wore solid black. For their gifts, I bought them jewelry to go with their dresses. I got them bracelets in the blue color of our wedding at Michael's Craft Store. How random right? I saw them by the checkout lanes. They were my wedding color, $3.99 a piece, and so sparkly! I was thrilled.

The groomsmen all wore black suits that they already had. I wasn't too keen on the tuxedo look, My wedding wasn't super elegant-formal like the President's Ball or anything, so they all rented bow ties in the blue color we used for the wedding. W didn't have a suit that fit so we had to buy that. It was around $100.00 on sale at Macy's. I wanted him to obviously look different than his groomsmen, so he had a normal necktie in the blue. He also wore a white button down, while the groomsmen all wore black. He and the Best Man had the same pattern on their tie and bow tie, while the rest of the bow ties were solid.

I got my hair done by a professional, obviously I couldn't do my own hair. I'm not much into veils, plus they cost as much as my dress! I bought a white and black flower from Hobby Lobby for about $10.00 and had my hair dresser pin them in my hair. Simple and elegant.

Our invitations came from www.walmart.com. I ordered 175 for $90.00. I also made rehearsal breakfast invitations. We did most of our reception decorating ourselves, so we did a rehearsal breakfast, drove to the church for rehearsal, and then got to work on finishing the barn for our reception.

The key is to network through family and friends. Without their help, it would have cost way more. We had some family friends make all of our food. Only a very few things were pre-made. This is the most expensive part of any wedding really. The food cost us about $820.00, but that fed about 200 people, and there were still leftovers! Our menu consisted of: Ham Biscuits, Chicken Salad Tarts, Cup Cakes, Pies, BBQ, cheese trays, potato salad, pasta salad, beans, etc. We had fondue fountains with fruit, pretzels, marshmallows, this was cheap and the kids all LOVED it.

The only downside to having pies and cupcakes, we spent about $200 on our wedding cake and grooms cake. No one at it. I am pretty sure we brought it home and ate on it for a week, froze the top layer of our cake like you're supposed to, but really we wasted a lot of money on cake that no one ate. My advice is either don't do other desserts, or do a very small cake. I thought ours was small being a 3 tiered 10'' round cake, but I was wrong!

 

I am very thrifty in my purchases. I do a lot of shopping at Hobby Lobby, Michael's, Wal-Mart, Big Lots, Dollar Tree, etc. Those are the places I found my guest book ($4.00), table decorations ($205.00 which included table cloths, candles, mason jars, votives, bride and groom's table décor, etc.) bouquet accessories ($5.00 for tiny picture frames to put grandparents photo in since they were all deceased),  picture frames for isle decorations ($14.00 for 14 frames), garter ($8.50), unity candles and holder ($22.00), frame for outdoor tree to take photos in ($15.00), and much more that I cannot blab on about.



A view of the Bride and Groom's Table



My shoes...got them for $14 at a discounted shoe store!

Dollar Store and TJ Maxx Plates written on with sharpie and baked at 350 for 20 minutes!



Our centerpieces came from Hobby Lobby



Wedding Favors. Found idea on Pinterest and made our own version.

I love this photo. It was edited on Instagram, but it captures the beauty of the barn.

Our reception was in a barn as I stated before. Lucky for us, it belonged to a family friend so we got to use it for free. We also called everyone we knew and borrowed all of the Christmas lights we could get from them! We strung that entire barn with twinkle lights. We made 4 hula hoop chandeliers (as you can see in the above picture) that we saw on Pinterest  which cost about $10.00 max. 

Our card box that a family member made from a picture we found on Pinterest

A friend had these made for us as a pre-wedding gift and surprised us with them!

Painted pieces of scrap wood

Had a family friend make this sign

More pieces of painted scrap wood nailed together

This photo is so simple yet speaks volumes. The church has gorgeous doors that are from floor to ceiling. We got black "M"s from Hobby Lobby and tied blue ribbon in our wedding color to them and hung them on the doors. We used them for photo props after the ceremony.

All of our flowers came ready, drum roll please......Kroger!!!
They were a fourth of the cost of any competing florist.
We even lucked out and got them on a day they were buy one
get one half off! We got enough flower for my bouquet (pictured
above), all the bridesmaids, groomsmen, and tables in the barn for $140.00!

 

There are so many little things here and there that can add up quickly. My best suggestion is to make a status on Face Book, Twitter, email, etc and ask people if they have A,B,C. We borrowed A LOT of things, which not only saved us money, but saved us from having a storage room full of clutter when all was said and done!