My Original idea for this post was to include pictures! However, all of my wedding stuff is at my mom and dads house, and I have not been able to make it over there in the last week or so!   So I apologize in advance for no pictures! Maybe I can edit this up sometime or make a part 2 with the pics at some point!

As you know over at my other site Be-Society we are having a month long series on weddings this month, and we are having a giveaway as well!  You can stop by and check out the original post with links to everyone who is participating! BE Society Wedding(Giveaway & Monthly Series)

Now, I present to you my addition to the monthly series!

 

So I promised you all that there would be a compelling wedding post coming up, and here it is. Basically this is how David & I had the cheapest and nicest wedding ever! I hope maybe I can inspire you to take some of my advice and implement it into your own wedding!

First of all we worked on a VERY short timeline. We Met in January, got Engaged in Feb, and Married in JUNE…All in the same year! It has worked out awesome and we have been married over 6 years! We were also both working at the Salvation Army family store and never had a free moment, and when we did we basically slept! If it wasn’t for my family, especially my mom, we would have never been able to pull it off!

With everything donated and said and done we probably including marriage license had less than $250 in the wedding! If you have any questions on anything else related to saving money at the wedding just ask me and I will do my best to answer you. I tried to include everything  I could think of but I am sure I left something out!

The Dress:

First up my dress. I had it BEFORE we ever met. I found it at a thrift shop, and it fit perfectly and I brought it home! It costed right around 17 bucks. So my first piece of advice is to check out thrift shops and even yardsales for your dress. There are other items that I got at the thrift shop as well, that I will mention later on!

Theme:

As far as a theme, we got engaged right around valentines day, and I like pink and red and hearts, so when all that stuff went on clearance we wracked up on plates, cups, napkins, and such. So My advice here is to think about different seasons/holidays that might have colors and themes you might want to use and try to find them on deep discount!

Other Thrifty Finds:

A few other things I picked up at thrift shops included my veil ($3 bucks) Cake topper(I think it was $5) our toasting glasses($5) and our cake knife set($5) I am sure there were more things but that is off the top of my head! So as I mentioned before, def. check out your local thrift shops and even yardsales for goodies you can use!

Invitations:

As far as invitations, we made those our self from a set at walmart that had double hearts! I think we had to have about 2 boxes of them (My family is huge!) and it might have cost $50 bucks including ink for my printer! we also printed our own programs. I got tons of compliments on both, and they didn’t cost a fortune, and we sent out well over 150 invites if I had to guess!

Flowers:

My mom made all of our flower arrangements, my garter,all the wedding favors for around $100 bucks that we spent at a store called Garden Ridge! If you don’t know my mom is very crafty! So if you yourself are craft and creative inclined or have a friend or family member who is, you should be able to make a lot of your items

Favors:

We also used my mom to help make all of our wedding favors as well! I can’t even remember what and all we had for favors! I know they were simple like plastic spoons with hershey kisses, little wedding bells,birdseed,etc. Just keep the favors simple…I know that we had mine on a table on the opposite side where we had our food set up and they were covered and we didn’t even think about them till people had already LEFT! I was running around grabbing them and making up sets and handing them out to everyone that was still there!

Photos:

For Photos, we just used my family and esp. my mom. My mom used to take photos at weddings years ago! I mean yes, it was a special day and everything and my pictures totally reflect that even though they are not professional and didn’t cost a fortune! We didn’t really have that kind of money to spend, and the day was still captured just as it was..I mean I had a dress and a wedding on a deep deep budget, I think my pictures show it as it was: Amazing.Casual.ETC. I don’t knock getting a REAL PRO to take pics, but it just wasn’t for me! Most of my pictures are in an album we never even get out any more, so I guess I see it a little different …would have been a lot of money for pictures that are hardly ever out anymore!

The only thing I wish was that we would have had someone to video the dagone event! One of my cousins supposedly did and I have not saw this video to this day! 🙁

Food & Cake(Reception)

Moving on to food & the cake. We picked the weekend of fathers day which is also a major family reunion for my family! There is always plenty of food and everyone is already together! My cake was donated by a distant relative that actually has her own bakery type business. I was the FIRST and only wedding cake she ever made! It was really pretty 3 layers and unfortunately had started to lean from being in the heat! We used the family reunion to tie in with our actual reception!

MUSIC:

Use your IPOD or a Mix Cd and just have someone play the songs at the appropriate time! that is what we did…I didn’t even pick songs till the morning of the wedding, and my aunt had made me a mix cd of wedding songs so I just went from there! I seriously can’t see the need for a DJ at all, but that is my opinion!

Splurge (A Little)

The only 2 things I really splurged on was my tiara (and it came from walmart) as well as my bouquet. I guess what I am telling you is it is o.k. to splurge on a couple of things. Even though these really didn’t cost all that much! I just say if there are few things you want that cost a little bit more than what you are normally spending on things, it is o.k!

Summing it all up:

It is your day, and you should enjoy it! I have to say my wedding day was not perfect , but close to it! I don’t think anyone has a “Perfect” wedding! Things that went wrong on my day? My maid of honor didn’t get to show up because her dad wouldn’t let her (my cousin), When I walked down the aisle everyone was out of order…none of David’s family came..I forgot “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue and a penny for your shoe”! It still turned out really well though 🙂 Maybe some time another in the future we will have a cheap renewal ceremony!