How to Plan Your Dream Wedding on a Budget! – #IfICould[IDo!]ItAgain Series

Part 1: Setting a Budget

My Story

I still have nightmares about my wedding. I had one just last night as I’m writing this. I’m typically running late for the reception – or I forgot about the reception, and all the guests have already left, disappointed and angry. Or I’m planning my wedding again for no real reason and there isn’t enough money to buy decorations or time to set them up. Or, the worst one yet, I don’t have a dress and thus, I have to make my own and it looks like a I just put on a pink tutu over a slip and I look like a child who couldn’t dress herself walking down the aisle. Maybe it’s just like one of those things that you dream about – like forgetting the answers to a test or missing your connection for a plane. Or maybe I’m just a little traumatized because these were my greatest fears for my wedding day and they still haunt me. (In reality, there is some truth to these nightmares, but I’ll save those stories for another post.)

What’s funny is that I have these nightmares even despite having a beautiful wedding in the end. But just because planning my wedding left me crying constantly, pulling my hair out and staying up hours into the night figuring out how to do something I’ve never done before, does not mean it has to be like that for you.

I don’t have any illusions that I am an expert in wedding planning, but I can say that I stayed within our budget and am ultimately happy with the result, and my regrets were things that could’ve easily been remediated had I had more guidance. I’m hoping to help spare you the nightmares and make your dream wedding into a reality, even if you are on a tight budget or a tight time-span. Even if I was able to have a successful, beautiful wedding that I will remember for the rest of my life – I would’ve wanted a helping hand along the way.

Hopefully this series will be your helping hand.

Setting a Budget

This is one of the most complicated, but most important of discussions to have, so it is best done first – or at the very least, very early on in the engagement/pre-engagement talks). (Unless you’ve hit it big in your career or have parents that are well-off, then this discussions isn’t as important. But if that is the case, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog.)

Time to bite the bullet and grab your spouse-to-be and bring up the following items:

Make your budget realistic and prioritize what is important to you
- First, determine what your dream wedding looks like. Is it a beautiful venue? Or could you care less about a venue and have always imagined partying it up with everyone you can think of (including family, friends, co-workers, your pets, second and third cousins)? Do you want to elope in Indonesia? Do you want a fancy dress? Unfortunately, with a budget, you will have to make sacrifices somewhere – but where you do make sacrifices, you can make do. But you first have to determine what it is that you cannot absolutely go without. This decision is also something that has to be negotiated with your fiancé (or fiancé-to-be).
  - I came up with a few options to present to my fiance: one with a focus on a nice reception venue in Austin, Texas, and another with getting married in my dream temple in San Diego, California with a cheaper reception venue. When we did the calculations, we determined that getting married in the San Diego Temple was actually a cheaper way to go if we were going to honeymoon in Hawaii. Although it meant that we would have to fly there (and wherever our family was would also have to travel there if they wanted to go), it was still a very exciting and budget-friendly option. So in a way, we kind of eloped. However, since we also wanted to have a reception close to home, that is where we ended up cutting the most costs. I and my mother-in-law made most of the decorations, my mother made the flower arrangements for my bridesmaids, and my mother-in-law made the food. We had a family friend take the photographs for my reception and had a professional photographer take our photos in San Diego.
- Get an idea of how much things cost (maybe make a preliminary spreadsheet with averages)
- The largest expenses include the venue, the food, the dress and photography. If you can cut down on these, they’ll have the biggest impact. But be careful on what you’re willing to cut and if the cut in price is worth the cut in quality (although that may not always be the case).
Determine your sources of resources
- Do you have savings?
  - I had savings that I had planned to use for my wedding, but I also had crippling student debt, so realistically looking at it, I was in the red. So the goal was to spend as little from my savings as possible, if I was thinking long-term financial stability.
  - My fiancé had saved $3k for a ring/honeymoon, so we added that to the budget.
- Ask your parents (and your partner’s parents)
  - My parents stated that they didn’t have anything extra to help me, so for me, that was a bust.
  - As my husband’s parents were in a better situation than my parents, they offered to give us $3k to help with reception costs.
- Ask your grandparents
  - If you have a good relationship with them, it wouldn’t hurt to bring it up. In the end, although I hadn’t asked, my grandmother offered to cover my bouquet for my wedding and my bridal veil.
- Do you have a travel budget?
  - If you’ve saved money to travel, you could use some of it to use towards your honeymoon (since you’re technically traveling). This is what my fiancé did for extra additions to our honeymoon, like tours/eating out.
- Add cash gifts (or gift cards) in your registry
  - While I wouldn’t add this to your budget, we used the money that we received and counted it against our honeymoon budget. In the end, it helped significantly, and allowed us some freedom in what we allowed ourselves to do on our honeymoon.
  - See my later post on Registries for my thoughts on this topic.
Don’t go in debt for your wedding
- I can’t stress this enough. While it is one of the most important days of your life, and I wholly believe it should be something you feel good about and not feel like you have to settle for less, it is highly not recommended to get a loan out in order to fund your wedding (the same goes for credit cards, unless you have the funds to pay off those credit cards). This will only affect the future of your life and your lives together negatively (money is the number one thing couples fight about). If spending a lot on your wedding is truly what you want, then I would recommend looking into pushing off the big day in order to save.
While the goal is to stick to the budget, don’t completely exclude something just because it is over it, as long as you discuss it with your spouse-to-be and you can come to an agreement.
- For example, if it is $200 extra to get a better photographer, and you have some leeway in your own personal resources, then go for it.
- I regret not paying for a better photographer at my reception. We had already hit our budget and I was working with nothing. The pictures didn’t come out very well, although I know the girl who did it really tried – and there were things I wished I could’ve gotten recorded that I will never have again. Looking back on it, a few hundred dollars was something I could’ve paid out of pocket, even if it meant eating ramen for a week, and it would’ve been worth it.
Be flexible
- Once you agree on a budget, realize that things will not always play out as you want. We originally planned on catering and later realized we had already spent all of our budget so catering was now out of the question. Sometimes you’ll have to get creative and sometimes you have to let go of certain expectations.

With our combined resources, we decided on the following basic budget:

Total: $5,000
Ring: $1,500
Honeymoon: $1,500
Reception: $2k (everything that was left over)

I’m here to tell you that what you have, is enough. We were blessed to have the resources we did. If you use your resources wisely, and don’t spend beyond your means, you can do it. And you can be happy about it. All you need is some creativity, flexibility, and help.