![]() ![]() While trimming the guest list saves quite a bit on catering, you can save more by finding a low-cost catering option. Savings: $6,500 Do the catering yourself or hire a family-owned restaurant Strategy: Have the wedding and reception at a park While there will still be a notable cost involved for this, it’s often significantly lower than paying for a full-service venue. Contacting local parks services in my area found that such venues were available with a range of $1,000 to $4,000, though there would be some additional costs to help set up some services. Many such departments have nice older houses near parks that can be used for events like this. Strategy: Have the wedding and reception at a friend or family member’s propertyĪnother approach is to see if you can use a public park for the wedding and utilize any structures the parks and recreation department may have for a reception. If your guest list is small, that’s much more feasible. You might consider hosting the wedding at someone’s home, particularly if they have a nice yard or plenty of space. While trimming the guest list can certainly help reduce this cost, another approach is to think outside the box with your venue. Get Started Hold the ceremony at home or outdoorsĪccording to The Knot, the average wedding venue costs $10,500, adding up to around a third of the total cost of the big day. With all that money you’ve saved on your big day, turn to your next big step in life: Buy the home you’ll love as much as each other. Strategy: Ask family and friends for assistance at the ceremony in lieu of gifts Getting even a little help can easily shave 5% off of the total cost of the wedding. Some of them provided supplies as their wedding gift, while others provided discounts. From our perspective, we felt that everything would be much more meaningful if people we loved were actually involved with the ceremony in some way, and many of them jumped at the chance. Many of the roles at our own wedding were provided by family and friends. While some guests may prefer not to do this, others will relish the chance. Guests for your wedding might be able to help with photography, provide emcee services, tend the bar at the reception, or perform any of the other endless tasks that a wedding entails. This is particularly true if you have someone on the guest list with a particular talent. Talk to some of the friends and family you’re inviting to the wedding and ask them if they would be willing to provide help at the wedding in lieu of a gift. Savings: $0 directly, but it enables some of the strategies below Ask for wedding help instead of wedding gifts Strategy: Choose a location that’s very convenient for most of the guests While this won’t directly save you money, it will make the next tip much more likely to succeed. ![]() Savings: $0 directly, but it gives you time to implement the strategies below Choose a location near your guestsĬhoose a location for your wedding that’s close to the largest number of your guests. Strategy: Give yourself an extra few months between the start of planning and the event Since so many wedding features are expensive, investing more time yourself can cut those costs down quickly. The more time you give yourself to plan, the easier it becomes to identify bargains and help make them into a reality. (The Knot Real Study says the typical wedding has 131 guests.) If you follow all of our ideas, you’ll reach under $4k in your final tally.ĭifferent people look for different things in their wedding, so go through the list below and choose the ideas that work for you.ġ7 steps for a frugal (not cheap) wedding on a budget Start planning early By paring down here and there, we got it down to $3,950, if you go with a guest list of 50. The strategies below can collectively shave away 10s of thousands of dollars from the budget of an average wedding.Īccording to our calculations, a typical American wedding comes to about $28.5k, which we detail below. The best solution is to take a serious look at all of the expenses involved with a wedding and find realistic, frugal ways to cut back on the expense without tinkering with the magic or the memories. Many people dream of a beautiful, unforgettable wedding, but not many long for the financial aftermath. Given that the median American household income charts in around $69,000, (according to the Census Bureau), that means the average wedding devours nearly half a year’s worth of income. The average wedding and reception in 2019 (the most recent pre-COVID year for which data is available) was $28,000, according to The Knot Real Weddings Study. ![]()
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