Anyway, as promised I'm going to blog ALL about our wedding budget. Did you know that the average cost of a wedding in the La Crosse area is in between $17,369 and $28,948? (found that bit of information here) That's INSANE! We're on a $10,000 budget MAX. The only way we've been able to make it $10,000 is thanks to our tax refund in all honesty.
As I mentioned a few days ago, I found a secret weapon. Etsy.com. Lots of amazing, handmade items from all over the world and many times you can find these items for a fair price. However, there are other tricks to having a decent priced wedding. Let's break it down...
Reception Hall
If you rent out your reception hall on a Friday or a Sunday (instead of doing the typical Saturday wedding) most times they will give you the reception hall for FREE! The Best Western definitely does this. You have to put down a $1,500 deposit within 6 months, but that all goes towards your final food bill. So far we have $2,100 in our Best Western account. So basically, if 20 people don't show up to our wedding, we wont have to pay anything more. If you have your wedding on a Saturday, you have to pay a rental fee ranging anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500 depending on the time of the year - Spring time is more expensive. Which means we're saving $3,500 just by having our wedding on a Friday! Plus we get a free bartender, a free honeymoon suite and free tea light candles. :)
DJ
If you know ANYONE who is a DJ, even if they're just an occasional downtown bar DJ, ask them what they would charge you. I know a guy who DJ's and we're saving almost $1,000 by having a friend do it rather than some jerk who upcharges by a ton just because it's a wedding. So we'll only be paying about $450!
Ceremony Site
We ended up going with a slightly more expensive route on this one to make it easier on our guests, but our original plan was to have the ceremony at Riverside Park on the band stand. Why? It's only $50 to rent out the entire thing for a whole hour. It includes seating, a beautiful view and you don't have to do much work to it if you don't want to. To make everything easier on our guests, we're having our ceremony at the Best Western as well. They have an outdoor area for ceremonies for $200 that includes 120 chairs. So we didn't save money in this aspect, we lost $150. However, we saved enough money in other areas to make up for it!
Wedding Dress
If you don't mind shopping the clearance section of the bridal shop, do it! You can save SO much money. My dress was only $600 because I looked in the clearance section instead of checking out the brand new dresses. And guess what? NO ONE would ever be able to tell that's where I got it - except for the fact that I just told everyone. :) Because I did that, I saved $600!
Centerpieces
This is where etsy.com comes in. Once you pick your theme/colors, check this website out! We were going to spend $40 on each centerpiece before we found this website. Instead, we're spending $15 on each center piece! So we saved $350!! That's amazing! And honestly the average cost of centerpieces is $1,272! So we technically saved $1,062!!
Decorations
So far we've only purchased a few decorations from craigslist.com and etsy.com totaling to about $70. Other than that, we've just asked a few friends and family if we can borrow things from them to save money! Instead of buying brand new white christmas lights, BORROW them! You'll save at least $50. We're also borrowing jam cars (to put candles in) from our family members and that saves us around $40 and we're borrowing some other random stuff that if we just went out and bought it, I can guarentee you it would cost us around $400 to get it all. Just by asking to borrow things, we're saving $490!
Cake
According to the Bridal Association of America, the average cost of a wedding cake is $543. CRAZY to pay that much for a flippin' cake. We decided to get a Dairy Queen cake! I know this isn't for everyone, but we figured why not! We'll be paying about $200 for a cake that feeds all 140ish people that may (or may not) attend our wedding. PLUS our buffet style menu we have is giving everyone cheesecake on top of it all! So by doing that, we're saving $343!
Invitations
Know anyone who's good with photoshop? Ask them to make you a simple invite, 2 sides on a regular press printed card. We only spent $62.25 on our invites because I designed them myself and printed them through an affordable company - and that included 75 invites WITH envelopes! The average cost of wedding invitations is $659!!! We saved $596.75!! Incredible!
Cocktail Hour
Instead of serving a ton of mini sausages, deviled eggs and other random crap, create your own candy station! If we decided to get 10 dozen sausage bites, 10 dozen chicken wings, 10 dozen deviled eggs, 6 pounds of pretzels and a cheese display for cocktail hour, that would cost us $434.20. That's barely enough food to last everyone for that hour. Getting a bunch of candy and borrowing decorative bowls shouldn't cost us more than $200. So we're saving $234.20 just by giving our guests sweet treats with their drinks!
Bouquets and Boutonnieres
Thank you etsy.com for helping me get ALL my bouquets and boutonnieres for only $450! Yes, they're fake flowers, but they're actually satin flowers, handmade, with "bling." Average cost? $698 for real flowers. So we're saving $248!
Things you shouldn't try to get cheap are your wedding bands and your photography. Those are two things you'll have FOREVER after you get married and you want them to be amazing. So SPLURGE on those if you must! Our wedding bands, together, cost $1,947.96. Our photography package (from Vibrance Photography in Madison, WI) is $2,216.56. Sure, those were spendy, but they are 100% WORTH IT!
I know there are several things I didn't mention, but I think my point has been made clear at this point. Don't settle for the first thing you find, BARGAIN HUNT! If you do, you'll save SOOOO much money. Just off the things I mentioned here, we're saving a grand total of $8,073.95!!!!
I hope you all enjoyed my breakdown of our wedding budget and how YOU can save money on your big day too. Remember, just because it's a big day, doesn't mean you have to spend big money!
Until tomorrow :)
♥ Taber
This is from the tea party shoot I did last week :)
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