16 Ways to Successfully Throw a Wedding That Fits Your Budget

There’s a world of difference between throwing a frugal wedding and just being cheap. Our mission in planning a wedding on a budget is to avoid paper bells and lanterns and instead, showcase love and inspire happy memories with great design and an unbroken bank. A wedding is a celebration, and yours should shine just as brightly with a small budget as with a big one.

Ready to roll up your sleeves for a DIY wedding? Your guests will come looking for your event planner after you try out a few of the following:

1) Want All the Trimmings? Trim the Guest List

Everyone wants an invite, but sometimes the right answer is no. No, you can’t bring a plus one that you met at the bar last Saturday. No, mom, you can’t invite your boss. Establish a guest list and stick to it. Think about how much it costs per person every time you add one more guest to the list, and you’ll stick to your guns.

2) Craft Night the Invites

Maybe you know someone who spent $10k just on the save-the-date cards because they were designed with raw silk. For those of us living with a more realistic budget, though, homemade invitations are a far cry from a faux pas.

All you need is a few good friends — or even host a party for your bridesmaids — with a printer. Simple, creative and inexpensive wedding invitations can be produced by your fingertips with a little ingenuity. Don’t feel overwhelmed; just check out how elegant a simple invitation can be.

3) Rent the Tux

For some reason, everyone insists on buying tuxes. Most people won’t wear a tux more than once or twice in a lifetime. Save a few hundred dollars per person and just rent one.

4) Set a Date a Year+ Out

If you’ve gotten engaged and are looking at getting married as soon as possible, your date of choice may be plenty of time to get the in-laws together. But you could be missing out on major savings for other components of your special day. Season decor goes on mad clearance post-holiday. If you want a fall wedding, buy up fall decor on sale and start planning for a wedding the following year. That goes for all major holidays, as well.

Plus, most venues are booked about a year in advance. Want to splurge on a nice place or get the perfect gazebo at the park? Wait a year. When wedding venue hosts smell desperation, the price will go up.

5) Water-Based Centerpieces

The most elegant centerpieces are often the simplest. Pick up clear containers or vases and fill them with something colorful — think flowers, fruit or even twigs. Add a floating candle to the top or around the base to reflect additional light in the water.

6) Stay in Season

Whether it’s flowers or food, staying in season will help keep costs down. If you don’t want to drop all your cash on flowers and it’s the middle of winter, talk to your florist about what’s actually in season.

7) Set a Budget and Stick to It

You can tell yourself all you want that the wedding has a budget, but you won’t be successful at sticking to that budget if you don’t establish some ground rules. How much can you actually afford to spend? Make a spreadsheet of what you need, how much you can spend on each item and where you’re willing to make some sacrifices. Keep this spreadsheet up-to-date with your purchases.

8) Think Outside the Banquet Hall

Non-traditional weddings are getting increasingly popular for a reason. You don’t have to plan your wedding to be held in a space designed specifically to host a wedding. Choose a venue that describes you and your partner’s personality well. After all, it’s all your big day.

Some popular alternative venues to consider:

Generally, you’ll be able to book these venues at a lower cost than a place that’s jam-packed with weddings all season long. Plus, who doesn’t want unique wedding photos?

9) Color the Venue

Don’t arbitrarily pick your wedding colors. Contrasting colors can create dramatic flair or enhance a simple space into something posh and elegant. Think white and silver for elegance or even red and white.

Use the darker of your color choices to enhance larger spaces and the lighter shade to make things pop. Think tablecloths and linen napkins. This will also help keep your other decor to a minimum. Remember, sometimes less really is more, and it’s ok to embrace empty spaces.

10) The Photographer

This part gets rough. You only have one shot at this, so if the photographer messes up, you could be in trouble. Shop around and ask for recommendations on photographers. Just because they’re expensive and have been in the area for 20 years doesn’t make them the best.

The best photographers I’ve come across also offer a less expensive option of digital prints on a CD or thumb drive, which is generally plenty.

As a backup, ask your guests to take photos and upload them to a shared social media account. If you’re into branding (and hey, who isn’t?), brand your wedding. Ask everyone to tweet their photos with your names, for instance #bradandjanet, so you can gather them all up later.

11) Wedding Favors

Rule number one with wedding favors is to first decide if they’re worth any cost at all. They’re a cute thing to do, but don’t bother wasting a few hundred dollars if you don’t think anyone will really care. If they do matter to you, buy in bulk and on sale.

If you want to DIY, there are hundreds of options. All you have to do is host another bridesmaid party. Normally, if you keep a steady supply of wine, they’ll keep showing up.

12) The Dress of Your Dreams

Some of us have been dreaming of our wedding dress since we were in our princess phase, but others would rather not think about it. If you want “The Dress” but can’t afford the 4-digit plus price tags, you have several options:

Shop consignment shops. Somewhere out there is a lady who opted to resell her dress or didn’t actually get married. Do yourself — and her — a favor and buy an almost new dress.

Borrow your mom’s/grandmother’s/sister’s. There’s a story about a set of sisters who wore the same wedding dress, which happened to belong to their grandmother. It was a little Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but they all looked lovely. An added bonus of wearing a relative’s dress is that you share one of your biggest moments with that person in a special way.

Hit the sale rack. Don’t be shy. If you’re giving yourself a year+, you will have ample opportunity to sort through David’s Bridal sale racks. Go early, be serious and get the best deals.

13) Skip the Cake, Cupcake!

As a bride, the only cake you’ll see will be the piece your husband feeds you. You’ll be too busy having fun. So is it worth the often $1,000+ price tag on a tiered cake?

Rather than pay this huge amount, consider making trays of cupcakes. Cake freezes extremely well. Run a test batch and see for yourself. There’s no reason you can’t make these in advance.

14) Tulle is Cheap

If you really need a filler, tulle is almost always on sale at fabric stores. Tissue paper products always look cheap — not frugal — plus, paper gets expensive.

15) Show Vets Some Love

The great thing about a VFW or a community center is that they’ll often throw in tables and chairs for free. So instead of booking a ballroom for $1,500 without anything in it, you could get a decked out hall for $300.

Realistically, guests don’t care about the venue. They’re there to see you and celebrate. Plus, you can dress up any community center to look like a grand ballroom for substantially less than what a hotel ballroom would have cost anyway.

16) Dazzle with Lighting

There was a Disney crab that once said something about setting the mood, and if we all remember our Little Mermaid trivia correctly, that involves low lighting and singing seagulls. Maybe skip the seagulls, but definitely go for low lighting.

String white lights around an indoor venue. Or if white isn’t your thing, collect festive outdoor lights on clearance from stores like Target during end of season sales. Just plan out your theme and make sure you set the right mood. You don’t want Chinese lanterns in an English rose garden.