My very special roommate and I eloped recently. As thrilled as I am to share my happy news, I also wanted to brag about how we had a fabulous wedding for less than $1,500!! The trick? Simple and small.
Flowers - I paid $45 for my bouquet of white hydrangas and roses and a matching boutineer. I also bought two small pots of daffodils at the grocery store on sale for $3 each to decorate the appetizer table.
His suit – My roomie wore his sharp charcoal gray pin-stripped suit that he had tailormade years ago during a work trip to Bahrain. It’s impossible to resist him when he is wearing this suit. Dry cleaning was $6.
My dress – I found a cute white number at TJ Maxx but had doubts. My friend Mary provided a second opinion: “Let’s go shopping.” I found the perfect dress
DavidsBridal.com
The one-shoulder gown is modern, eye-catching, and a hot trend in bridal fashion. David’s Bridal has capitalized on it by offering the one-shoulder style in bridesmaid dresses, which start at $79. Every bridesmaid dress comes in size 2-26. The black and red ones are super cute and – I know it sounds impossible – wearable to other parties. Especially holiday parties and cocktail parties.
Mother of the bride dresses start at $99. I saw many tasteful dresses with shoulder coverings, skirt suits, and one pants and jacket combo. The dresses came in varying lengths and colors. Many were quite stunning. The wedding dresses at David’s Bridal seem very reasonably priced with many options in the $500-$600 range.
At DavidsBridal.com, you can shop by style, silhouette, size, theme, or go straight to the sales and outlet dresses. The site sells shoes, accessories, and even invitations so it’s one stop shopping.
David’s Bridal is currently hosting a giveaway to win a wedding gown or five bridesmaids dresses – your choice. You don’t have to be the bride to enter. Just share your name, email, address, and the wedding date on the site. Each month there is one winner.
One benefit to buying your bridesmaid dress, wedding dress, or mother of the bride dress online is that you can return the merchandise. In store purchases are final (presumably because you can try it on).
epSos.de/Flickr
Why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an 8-hour dress? Your wedding is your day, but blowing $1,000 on a schmancy white gown is not going to make it more yours. You can own your wedding on a budget! Here are 8 places to look for a cheap dress. Tip: make sure to budget at least $50 for alterations.
- Perhaps your mom, aunt, sister, cousin or in-law has a dress that fits your body and style? If not, is salvaging the material to make a new dress an option?
- HereComesTheGuide.com lists sample sales and designer wedding trunk shows in CA, D.C., Chicago, and New York City.
- J.Crew has white affordable wedding gowns starting at $225. Some go as high as $2,995! (That is the less-affordable range.) Wait until you get a coupon code for extra savings.
- eBay has many auctions for cheap wedding dresses in the $100 range when I last checked. With any used clothing, but especially white dresses, make sure to ask if the dress has been cleaned, or else budget $50 and up to have it dry cleaned.
- Find high-end consignment shops that specialize in dresses by Googling “consignment wedding dresses + your zip code”
- JC Penney has wedding dresses starting at $100.
- PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com has wedding dresses for $100-$300.
- You might have a super special dress in your own closet. Who says wedding dresses have to be white?!
What did you wear on your wedding day – and how much did you spend on your outfit?
Related blog posts:
Planning an affordable wedding in 10 weeks or less
Ideas for frugal wedding favors and centerpieces
Recession wedding: road trip!
4 cheap wedding tips from a first-time groomsman
Fyre Fly Weddings
This is a guest post by Carmen Sechrist of Life Blessons, a personal blog with a religious and frugal bent.
From the day I got engaged until I walked down the aisle last July was 10 weeks–two and a half months. We had little time and an even littler budget – less than $5,000, a quarter of the national average – for the whole dress-rings-flowers-food-honeymoon she-bang. At the end of those 10 weeks I had the wedding of my dreams: an outdoor affair brimming with beautiful wildflowers, a long strapless gown, all my loved ones together and a weeklong honeymoon in the woods.
Limited guest list
This one you’ll read on every wedding website. If you want to save money, cut your guestlist. The site that we found had a capacity of 150, so that became our guest list. We only invited family and our best friends. As we started adding other church friends or coworkers, the size swelled out of control. Rather than pick and choose, I sent an email to friends that I had to cut to explain the situation and let them know how much their friendship means to me. People (particularly those who had been married before) really seemed to understand.
A hidden benefit in limiting the guest list was eliminating the need to impress. That was something I worried about in the beginning – what would so-and-so think about this? – but when we cut the list to those who we knew were there for us and for no other reason, that was no longer a concern. (more…)
My favorite wedding planner, Liz Coopersmith of Silver Charm Events, shared these fab bridal discounts with me and I am passing them onto you!
Speaking of invitations, Bella Figura is having their annual sample sale, benefiting the environmental organization American Forests. Regularly priced at $5, samples are $1 each until August 31st, and 100% of that goes to American Forests.
Inspired Bride has a new weekly feature called Dress to Impress for Less – wedding appropriate outfits, dress, shoes and accessories for $150 and less.
Mackenzie Murphy, Examinar.com‘s San Francisco Recession Wedding Reporter, lists inexpensive bachelorette party options within driving distance of the bay area. Like Los Angeles. One night in Hollywood at the Renaissance Hotel, no less (that would be the one connected to the Kodak theater, home of the Oscars), dinner, drinks, dancing and cab fare, for $150 per person, for a party of 10.
Check out Liz’s Recession Bride’s Workshop this Sunday, August 23, 2009. Get $10 off the $20 event with code “KIIS” (as in, KIIS FM is supporting the event) when you register.
My frugal wedding buddy Liz Coopersmith of Silver Charm Events just shared this fab deal. The Bridal Warehouse is letting brides-to-be name their own price on in-stock and sample wedding gowns that are already discounted. If your offer is accepted, they contact you within 24 hours with directions on how to complete the purchase. The deal applies to in-stock and sample gowns only.
If you are getting married or know someone who is, consider going to Liz’s workshop for recession brides. She is going to share what all this wedding stuff really costs, the top three ways you can save money, how to negotiate vendor contracts, DIY v. just hiring someone else to do it, what your guests are really going to pay attention to, and what you can stop worrying about right now, and lists and coupons for the best wedding deals in Los Angeles.
The workshop is Sunday, July 19 from 1-3 p.m. at The Gallery at Market Lofts, 645 W. 9th Street (between Flower and Hope, Entrance on Hope St.) in Los Angeles, CA 90015. It’s $20 a person or $30 a couple.
This is a post from Alex, Bargainbabe.com’s intern!
After attending a small wedding the past weekend, I thought I might share a few of the strategies that one couple used to save money on their wedding.
1. Pick a naturally beautiful location. Find a place that already has flowers blooming so you don’t have to purchase more yourself. The ceremony I attended was at the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. The trees, plants, and flowers created the perfect ambiance for the ceremony and pictures afterward.
2. Get your own Priest. I was ordained as minister in thirty seconds for free through the Universal Life Church so that I could preside over the wedding. I’d never done it before, but I put on my best speaking voice and practiced reading through what the couple had written for me to say. It felt good to give them exactly what they were looking for since they had no reservations about asking me to recite any sort of rhetoric that was important to them. To give you an idea of the range of dialogue they felt comfortable using, I’ve posted a few of the lines below:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of love: “Avoid, if at all possible.” Fortunately, Jerad and Jackie have never read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so let us continue.
This ring, which has no beginning and no end, symbolizes that the love between you will never cease. May its presence on your hands remind you of your love for each other. Please place them on your fingers as a visible sign of the vows which you have shared today.
3. Keep your guest list small. One way to keep your guest list from snowballing is to pick a venue that is designed for small ceremonies. Holding your wedding on a boat or anywhere with pre-set seating gives you a good reason against inviting anyone you might consider extra.
4. Set up your honeymoon as a wedding present. You can make a website at TravelersJoy.com where people can go online and pay for different elements of your honeymoon instead of purchasing gifts. Guests can buy anything for you, from a night in the hotel to a bottle of wine at dinner. This saves expenses on your honeymoon and makes it easy for them to buy whatever fits their budget. Click here for a sample of what your site could look like.
Here’s one way to lower your wedding costs: go on a road trip instead. Jaime Case and Chris Hodges, a 30-something couple from San Francisco, dreamed of a destination wedding in Mexico but they couldn’t stomach asking their guests to spend $3,ooo apiece to celebrate with them. Instead, they are bringing the wedding to their guests. I spoke to Jaime on week three of the six-week pre-marital road trip adventure.
Why are you having a road trip wedding?
It started off as a trip to go visit everyone so they can save money by not coming to the wedding. And it’s become more of an odyssey of learning about marriage. It’s like premarital counseling but more intensive and all encompassing. The idea is to save more money for other people. On the whole we are still spending less than the average wedding, which is about $30,000. That doesn’t include the rehearsal dinner, the dress, and the honeymoon.
How much did the recession play a role in your decision to have a road trip wedding?
If we got married in 2008, we would have done what our friends did: a week-long destination wedding. We absolutely would have done that. But in my heart I could not stomach asking people to pay to go to Mexico.
How much is your road trip wedding costing?
Everything we’re doing…will be less than the average cost of a wedding, about $27,000 dollars. The road trip is only costing us about $2,000. The gas itself is $1,100-1,200, plus a few nights at hotels. We’re not adding food because we would eat anyway and a lot of people are buying us dinner! We are staying with family and friends and eating cheaply. Ford donated a Fusion and is covering car insurance. We pay for the gas.
How much are you saving?
A traditional wedding would have cost us about $27,000. The trip is saving us $25,000, some of which we are using to throw a dinner at a restaurant for family and close friends when we return. That’ll cost about $12,000. But our guests are also saving a lot of money, which is more of our point.
How much are you saving your guests?
It would cost our 200 friends in other states about $20,000 to come visit us. Plus, we get to spend a lot more time with them than we normally would at a standard wedding.
Are you having a ceremony?
We are having a ceremony and small dinner in Ventura, Calif. It’s going to be about as non-traditional as you can get. No flowers, no wedding party, no wedding cake. Just dinner at a restaurant. You can call it a wedding or whatever you want, but that’s more for my parents. We didn’t mind spending money on serving people dinner. But we wanted to spend money on spending time with people.
Did you get a dress?
I got a sample dress at Saks bridal, which was closing. I’m probably going to sell it afterward. My Mom bought it. If you have any debt at all, there’s no need to spend $2,000 on a dress. But I wouldn’t position us as the cheapest wedding around.
Where have you gone so far?
We have been to 19 states, including CA, OR, WA, ID, CO, WY, UT, NM, LA, MI, AL, FL, GA, SC, NC, TN, KY, W.VA, IN, OH, PA, MD and D.C.
Has anything unexpected happened?
Some of the people we spent time with we’re going to become even better friends with, like a guy who I was on the swim team with in junior high school. We would not have invited him to the wedding, but he heard about our road trip on Facebook and invited us to stay in their guest house in Salt Lake City. We stayed with them and had an amazing time. I feel we’ll actually go back and go skiing sometime. If they had come to the wedding I would have shook their hands and that would be it.
They say planning a wedding is the first test of a marriage. How is going being on the road together?
We’ve only been doing this for 20 days, and we have thought about breaking up. Imagine talking about your marriage and what it’s going to be for 45 days straight. Fundamentally I know Chris is a good person. He is a gem amongst men in that he can talk about anything. I don’t have to deal with, what are you thinking? I don’t have to wonder. I know because I can ask. That makes him very attractive.
I’m more driven. Chris likes to enjoy life a little more. It’s my personality to wake up and have a to do list. During an interview, there was a question about Chris not being as passionate as me. It hit me at the wrong time and I shared more info than I should have. Later, Chris brought it up. He said, This seems like an issue. This keeps coming up. We need to solve this, he said. When we talked it through we just have different way of looking at it. We both want the same things but we have a different approach.
For more check out the Wedding Road Trip blog. Thanks, Monica!
Are you planning a spring or summer wedding? Or do you know someone who is? Here are a few of my favorite wedding money-saver$:
Ex-boyfriend Jewelery – just like it sounds, the site sells baubles and gifts from former beaus. The ring section currently has 495 items, from $11 to $7,000.
I do now I don’t – this site sells rings and gowns from relationships that ended before the couple made it to the altar. A gemologist checks that each piece of jewelry is as the seller described it before the transaction goes through.
Location Weddings – for ideas on where to tie the knot in the U.S. or abroad, this site has many suggestions. If you are checking out places to get married, you can often get in free. Call ahead to confirm or try talking to the ticket seller.
Cheap Chic Weddings - this site has tons of great ideas, from how to save money on flowers, the reception, favors, and pretty much every aspect of your wedding.
Isaac Mizrahi for Target – the designer’s wedding dresses start at $45, including a strapless sheath dress with a pink ribbon across the waist. All the dresses are on clearance, and I’m not sure if that is because they are from last season or perhaps the line is being discontinued.
JCPenney sells bridal growns and bridesmaid dresses. So does Bridal Sassique and J.Crew. And of course, there is always eBay.
What other sites and resources have you found helpful? Help a bride out and leave a comment.
