The Lovely Lance

   How many girls (and guys!) grew up with their dream wedding in mind? You likely dreamed of a big ball gown, in a fancy venue, with a very handsome groom or bride waiting for you at the other end of the aisle. However, I don’t know many children who consider the cost of their dream wedding. The average cost of a wedding in the United States costs roughly $34,000. This cost, which includes the ring, ceremony, and reception, can be mind boggling if you’re like me and don’t make a ton of money (Or have a family who can provide thousands of dollars of donations!)

   My now husband and I set out to plan our wedding in 2019 after getting engaged in November of 2018. We quickly realized just how much this wedding would cost out of our own pockets upon visiting venues. $10,500 for a venue that does NOT include anything but the space?! Bonkers! My husband and I ending up spending roughly $24,000 total on our wedding, excluding donations from our families. The list below provides exactly how we did this and how surprisingly easy it was!

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1. Make your own bouquets & boutonnieres

   Floral for an average size wedding costs around $2,500. Can you believe that?! Floral arrangements, although beautiful and created by very talented florists, die so quickly. Rudd and I made the decision to make our own bouquets when I ran across a company called the Nashville Flower Market at a bridal expo. I’m not going to pretend and tell you that making bouquets and boutonnieres came easy to me. I had zero experience and knew absolutely nothing about flowers. This business absolutely saved us over $1,000! This company allows you to come in with photos of your ideal bouquets & boutonnieres and they assist you in picking out flowers that match your ideal look. Any floral that doesn’t make it into a bouquet can be saved- We used scraps for table décor and on the wedding cake. On top of that, they estimate the order you’ll need, include ribbons and pins, and store the flowers for you the weekend of your wedding.

   Making our own bouquets ended up being a very special moment between my family, his family, and my bridesmaids. We went to the Nashville Flower Market 2 days before my wedding and a lovely florist assisted us in how to create all these lovely pieces. We even made a display piece for our arbor, which we also rented from the NFM! Another helpful tip: Use your bridesmaids’ bouquets as centerpieces! After the ceremony, the bridesmaids placed their handmade bouquets in vases on guest tables!

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2. Grocery store wedding cake: Absolutely!

    Okay, I know this sounds so corny. Have you ever had a Publix cake? They are absolutely bakery-worthy cakes that you’d never know came from a refrigerated grocery store! The average cost of a wedding cake for 100 guests is around $700. Rudd and I got ours for around $250.

    We went to Publix and ordered a few samples of what we thought we’d like: strawberry filling, buttercream frosting, cream cheese frosting, vanilla cake, and strawberry cake. Not only did we get these the day we requested, we got a half size cake for each sample we wanted! We ended up deciding on vanilla cake, filled with fresh strawberries, and cream cheese frosting. Here’s the real money saver: We ordered a darling wedding cake that served about 15 people total. We had 125 guests…Order sheet cakes to match the wedding cake! Our venue had a kitchen where we kept the sheet cakes that were passed out by servers after we cut our actual wedding cake. Each sheet cake was around $35 and feeds around 75 people per cake. Not a single guest had a clue, and we got to keep a large portion of our wedding cake to freeze for our upcoming one year anniversary!

3. Have a Friday or Sunday wedding

   There’s a reason Saturday weddings are sought after: Most people don’t have to take off work. Hear me out, it sucks to forego a Saturday wedding, especially if you have family coming from out of town. The good news is that most families come in early and stay longer past the wedding, regardless of the day.

    Rudd and I toured over 12 venues before we found one that matched the criteria we had in mind. We ended up going with a charming Victorian home venue called The Cordelle. It had both indoor and outdoor spaces, a bridal suite, and easy upgrades for mics, lighting, and music access. A Saturday rate was $11,000 whereas a Friday was $8,000 and a Sunday was $6,000. We picked a Sunday for 2 reasons: My family lives in Knoxville, only 2 hours from Nashville, which is not a big deal of a drive if they did decide to leave that evening. Rudd’s family had intended on staying 5 days in Nashville as they are from Ohio, Illinois, and California. Had we chosen a Saturday wedding, both my family and his would’ve stayed post Sunday to help organize our gifts and take care of ending wedding tasks after we left for the honeymoon.

    Most of our guests were not inconvenienced by our Sunday wedding, and those that were offered apologies for not being able to make it! It was not an issue with our guests- or for us!

4. Book a photographer & videographer duo

    As mentioned before, I went to a bridal expo a couple months after I got engaged. It was mostly silly stuff, trying foods, meeting other brides, and watching bridal fashion shows. At this particular bridal expo, I met our photographer, Frozen Exposure! Tanya and Bobby Macks did such a wonderful job, we could not be more grateful or pleased with our choice! The best part of this dynamic duo (other than the wonderful talent they both possess) they provided photography, videography, AND a photo booth for our wedding!

   The average cost of photography for wedding: $2,500. The average cost of videography for a wedding: $1,800. The average cost of a photo booth for a wedding: $500. My one recommendation when planning your wedding: Spend the money on a good photographer & videographer. We went in with the expectation to spend the most on our venue, photography, and catering. Because of our bridal expo deal, we spent around $4,000 on all three of these services which included 8 hours of wedding day footage (both photo & video), unlimited access to our photos through their website, engagement photos, and a USB loaded with all photos post wedding.

5. Book a wedding planner: For the month of

    A wedding planner will literally save your sanity. There is nothing more stressful than approaching the big day and having a million unread emails about contracts, down payments, and important decisions to be made on a strict timeline. A full service wedding planner can cost anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not hating on any bride or groom that chooses this option, it is a great way to do wedding planning with no stress. However, the point of this listicle is to save you money SO book a wedding planner for the month of!

   As I’ve said before, I am not a planner. I am not organized. I am not good at making phone calls (Social anxiety much!?) Rudd and I were able to get absolutely everything accomplished on our own up until the month of! Our wedding planner, Alex Kournetas from Vision in White Events, took care of all the stuff we were confused about. Providing tips, arranging rental drop offs, day of schedule etc. is what she was born to do, so we let her! We spent around $3,000 for Alex’s services and we were extremely grateful for her!

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6. Use websites like Etsy to find décor at a cheaper price

    If you’re lucky, your venue will have a great deal of décor and you won’t need to buy a thing to prepare! Our venue was bare bones, which is what we wanted, but it can be stressful if you have no idea what you’re looking to do with the space. The average cost of wedding décor (excluding floral) is around $2,000. Imagine spending $2,000 on décor….when you don’t have to!

   For the majority of our décor, we used websites like Etsy to get handmade items. We used a few different vendors to create our save the dates, invitations, a welcome sign, cake topper, all of our wedding signage and even my earrings! For these items, we only spent around $500, excluding stamps for our invitations! Not only do you save money, but you support local artists who create handmade pieces just for you. Other ways to save décor money, ask family and family friends what they have that could be used. We borrowed 15 lanterns from Rudd’s sister and used them as aisle décor and center pieces on tables that didn’t have the bridesmaids’ bouquets!

7. Do a mini-moon instead

    Rudd works in the music industry and has a very busy schedule. We were unable to do a big honeymoon, but we ended up saving money as a result. There are a lot of different statistics on the cost of the average honeymoon so I won’t boggle your mind with that nonsense, but we took 2 mini-moons at the cost of 1 long honeymoon! Anywhere from $4,000-$10,000 is the prediction on many wedding websites.

   Our first mini-moon we went to Denver, Colorado for 3 days. We both enjoy hiking and had always dreamed of being able to go to Pike’s Peak. We only spent about $1,000 on this trip, including flights because the activities we chose to do were free! Our second mini-moon, we did a longer trip to Mexico to enjoy the sun and sand during a bleary Tennessee winter. This trip was a little more expensive due to the distance and cost us around $2,000 total. In order to save money, I’d recommend looking at all-inclusive resorts, flight deals, and car rental deals. Also, ask for referrals from friends! We ended up renting a car for a free in Colorado because of a connection Rudd had!

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8. Find a caterer that will work to help you cut costs

   Rudd and I are big foodies! We consider one of our hobbies to be trying new restaurants around town and then trying to remake the recipes at home. One of the biggest costs of a wedding is the food and alcohol cost. The average cost of food and beverages (not including alcohol) for a mid-size wedding is around $4,000. The average cost of alcohol for a wedding is around $2,300, depending on how and what you choose to supply.

   Rudd and I chose a wonderful vendor called Two Fat Men Catering here in Nashville. We had 2 hors d’oeuvres passed around during cocktail hour, 2 entrée options, 3 sides, and 3 beverage options- water, lemonade, and tea. For our bar option, we used Two Fat Men Catering but bought our alcohol whole sale. Typically, going through your caterer will cost you more money to supply alcohol- our caterer actually told us this!

   In order to save money on food cost, we chose to use plastic utensils which were metallic colored, plastic cups for non-alcoholic beverages, and plastic plates which appeared to look like glass. These items saved us over $600, and photographed well. If you’re worried that someone in your family or friend group is going to be picky over utensils, maybe request that they spend the money for you! I’m just kidding, but plastic cutlery is NOT the end of the world and is indistinguishable in all photos.

   There are many different ways to go about providing alcohol to guests. We used our catering company’s bar service- they provided 2 bar tenders at no additional cost (excluding tip). The lovely manager, Leslie, informed us that if we ordered alcohol through them, there was an additional 15% surcharge for pickup and delivery to the site. She graciously explained to us how we could use a liquor whole sale store and an alcohol calculator to calculate exactly how much we wanted to supply. Many couples choose to do open bar (estimated around $50 per guest, or $7,000) or give out drink tickets. We chose to do open bar for our guests with the liquor and beer we supplied, while only spending around $1,000. We supplied 3 brands of beer, champagne, white and red wine, and 2 cocktail options. By the end of the night, we ran out of only one type of beer and white wine. Extra exciting news: Our liquor whole sale store let us return any alcohol that wasn’t opened! Win, win!

   We were blessed to have a family that paid for our rehearsal dinner and help pay for my dress and alterations. Other than that, we saved up the money to pay for our entire wedding in about a year out of our pockets alone. It is doable! If you’ve read my articles before, you know that I’m a teacher so I have next to no extra cash. If you do the research and stick to the money saving tips, you can have your dream wedding for much cheaper than the average US cost! Have you used any of these tips or have other recommendations that I forgot about? Let me know in the comments!

Darian