I love thinking about our wedding and looking at our photos. We got married about nine months ago, after a brief three month engagement. It was a fun, beautiful, special, joy-filled day. It also went by SO fast, was extremely stressful leading up to it, and I would NEVER want to do it again. Never. Ever. While I love weddings, and wedding dresses, and food, and parties, and looking at Pinterest boards– I am not a detail girl. At all. Like a dutiful millennial, I had a secret wedding board that I started around the time I met my husband. It was filled with hundreds of stunning pictures, but contained little actually useful information. What I really needed was a focused vision and an outline of steps to get started planning a budget wedding.
In high school, I loved the Disney wedding dress collection (and also wanted to get married at Disneyland of course) and loved the idea of a giant, formal, fancy wedding. I still love that concept, to attend as a guest! (Especially if you’re getting married at Disneyland, please invite me and let me cross an item off my bucket list). For us, we had two primary considerations to keep in mind. A. We were on a serious budget, and B. we wanted a small wedding with the people who truly mattered most to us in attendance. It took a lot of work to pull off a wedding in just a few months, and requires a high level of organization.
Personally, I found that a lot of the wedding resources presume that you have a much longer amount of time to plan than just three months. The shorter your engagement, the more on top of things you need to be. This was difficult for me because I’m a professional procrastinator, but it also helped because I had to be on top of things. So here’s my list of the first steps to take when planning a budget wedding in less than three months:
- Narrow down your guest list. Realistically, the more people you have in attendance the higher your costs are going to be. Or you’re going to have to simplify other aspects, like doing drinks and hors d’ oeuvres . You just really can’t feed 300 people dinner on a small budget (or maybe you can! Let me know). Of course, determining your guest list is easier said than done, especially if you have large families and lot’s of family friends. Thankfully it wasn’t too difficult for us to keep our guest list small. I think we invited about 75 people and around 50 ended up attending. It was the perfect number for us.
- Set a date. Our engagement was a little over three months long which was challenging, but it was a doable amount of time. We got married on a Friday night because we really wanted a specific date. Days other then Saturday are often recommended as cheaper since they are less popular, so you may want to keep that in mind. The shorter your engagement, the more on top of things you need to be. Full disclosure: I procrastinated way too long on reserving our reception venue and by the time I tried to finalize things it was no longer available. This was disappointing, but it actually worked out really well because the original venue was outdoors on a rooftop and there ended up being crazy Santa Ana winds on our wedding night! It was a relief to be indoors and not have to worry about tablecloths and guests flying away. So keep in mind that any initial disappointments might actually be a blessing in disguise.
- Find a venue. Depending on your location, this can be the most challenging and expensive part. We were so blessed to have a simple chapel available to use for free. For our reception, we used a church banquet room that was not picturesque, but with some simple decorations it looked decent. If you want an indoor wedding, I highly recommend checking into your church’s options or other churches in your area. Actual wedding venues are typically expensive and often have restrictions on catering which can get costly. For outdoor weddings, look into public parks or nature reserves. Often they can be free or very inexpensive.
- Identify what is most important to you. For me, I wanted excellent photography, a meaningful ceremony, and a full meal for everyone to enjoy. Reflecting this, the photographer and food were the two highest costs for our wedding. Of course, I also wanted a beautiful dress, cute & comfortable shoes, a happy bridal party, yummy dessert, and pretty flowers. But there was a lot more room for compromise in those areas then in the main things.
- This is the point in the list where I should probably say something about creating a budget. But honestly I never created a budget. Sure, I did some rough calculations a few times to make sure I could afford purchases, but I never had a solid budget. My parents gave me a figure for the things they were paying for which was very helpful. If anyone else is helping you pay for parts of your wedding, have a frank conversation as early on as possible to determine exact numbers. I definitely think having a budget is useful, but I can’t offer personal advice on how to do that.
- Find your dress early. Before we got engaged, one of my bridesmaids sent me a Buzz Feed article of dresses that are available on Amazon. Before that I literally had no idea you could buy wedding dresses on Amazon! I started researching and found out that they were so cheap because they are made in and shipped directly from China. I decided it was worth risking $100 and ordered the dress a few days after we got engaged. It took about a month to get here, which was cutting it close, but it worked out! I wrote a whole post about my dress that you can find here.
- Determine your bride tribe and let them know what you’re working with. You’re going to be talking about the wedding a TON with these girls, and it’s helpful to have your expectations on the same page. It’s not going to be helpful if they’re sending you posts on bachelorette cruises and you’re thinking of a bachelorette hike. All of my bridesmaids were super helpful and supportive which made the process 100 x better.
I hope that these steps can be of some help to you as you plan your own wedding on a budget! While everyone has different circumstances and not everything I did is relevant to you, I hope that just one idea resonates and can help you as you plan. Above all, remember to fix your eyes upon what is most important.
