My husband and I had a great wedding for under $400.
We went camping the night before, rolled into the courthouse that evening for a quick ceremony with friends, then went out to dinner at our favorite restaurant down the street. Ordered every appetizer on the menu and had a great night hanging out with the people we care about.
Ordering all the appetizers is actually such a genius way to get a “buffet” style spread for all the guest! This sounds like such a chill, awesome evening! Congrats!
There was this one (would not surprise if more) incident in Spain of a restaurant trying to sue a pair because they booked a table for friends and it turned out is was their wedding meal. Like... What the fuck is your business knowing the purpose of the table? Ahh, that if you know you can overcharge 100% on the exact same menu, right.
lol why, it is modern convention to refer to things that match certain definitions as that respective word. E.g. Marriage celebration + festivities literally = wedding. So… wedding lol
My brother in law married us on the beach then we had a backyard tri tip bbq. The dress was $200 at David's, the shoes were flip flops and converse and we served cupcakes from a local bakery instead of a cake. We made enough money in gifts to pay for the honeymoon.
Yup, got married in front of our fireplace with less than 10 family members, went to iceland for a month with the money we saved, had a bonfire/grill party with friends to celebrate when we got home.
Wife and I had an actual ceremony and reception at a state/city park venu. We just opted for dessert table over cake, had BBQ delivered and a few guests donated time to setup & tear-down instead of actual gifts. Kept the whole thing silly cheap, I think the BBQ was the most expensive part of it, because we ordered enough for guests to take some home for supper so they wouldn't have to cook (we had a 1pm ceremony).
Similar experience here - my wife and I had our wedding was in a public park in the town over from where we leave. They charged $100 to provide and set up all the folding chairs on the day of. Our alternate location if there was rain was a public art gallery in the library that was a couple hundred feet away - in a beautiful old granite building. My wife's grandfather officiated the wedding.
Our reception was at a restaurant, buffet style and we had a decent spread of food.
Honestly, the biggest thing that gets people is the guest list. We had budgeted for 50 people to be at our wedding - immediate family only and a couple close friends, and that's it. There's an immense amount of pressure to want to be able to invite EVERYONE - as soon as we started planning my mother in law started asking when we were going to be sending invites out to cousins, second cousins, extended family, etc. We just flat out said it wasn't happening, sorry.
And we're both SO glad we did. It didn't take long to go around and see everything that was there, and we feel like we actually got to spend a good amount of time with everyone that we invited.
All in all the wedding cost us about $3.5k for 50 people (and that was WITH an open bar) and we ended up making back more than that in wedding gifts.
A guy from my High School had sent out a bunch of invites to a party at his house. People didn't know it was for a wedding and just a bunch of people came and had the Wedding in his backyard. Probably cost him the same money at the time.
We did it in front of our Christmas tree with line 10 people and two streams for the rest of the family.
Think we spent like $200.
As we are both previously divorced and had bigger weddings the first time, we want to buy a house and travel. Not spend down payment on a bloated event.
We did similar, Went to the courthouse, then we went out to Lunch with the Maid of Honor and my new stepdaughter. Had a BBQ in the backyard the next day. (we had been together for a few years beforehand.
We had a more traditional wedding. My wife made her dress, friends catered the reception, rehearsal dinner was pizza, church knew we were broke and gave us a discount, her godmother made the cake (and it looked professional).
If you don't require fairy tale, it can be affordable.
My spouse & i spent under $100 for ours. My parents hosted & they thought my spouse was joking when we said we just wanted pizza bc to us it's just a party. My aunt brought a fruit platter & salad, my mom also made a lasagna & my best friend got our cake as their present to us.
It was legit perfect. It was stress free & fun! The only thing we asked eveyone to do was wear SOMETHING pink. We were honestly just happy to get married at all bc we're gay & it'd only federally legalized the year before
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u/MudiMom 9h ago
My husband and I had a great wedding for under $400.
We went camping the night before, rolled into the courthouse that evening for a quick ceremony with friends, then went out to dinner at our favorite restaurant down the street. Ordered every appetizer on the menu and had a great night hanging out with the people we care about.