- I've been a wedding planner since 2016, and I've learned a few tricks for saving couples money.
- Invite fewer guests or book a weekday wedding if you're really trying to bring costs down.
- Buying used decor, opting for à-la-carte flowers, and setting a cap on an open bar can help save.
The thing that annoys me most about my job as a wedding planner is that nobody talks about how much weddings cost. Or, if we do, we shame people — making them feel like how much they spend on their wedding is an indicator of how successful their marriage will be.
Of course, if it was that simple, rich people would never get divorced.
Here are my best money-saving tips for couples planning weddings.
Make a list at the start of your budgeting process
"Traditional" wedding-planning advice tells couples something along the lines of, "Here are 15 services that cost an average of $2,000 each. Buy them all." That's how we get to a national average of $30,000 a wedding.
I don't know about you, but I don't have a cool $30,000 hanging around. And even if I did, I wouldn't want to spend it on a single party.
I tell any newly engaged couple to do this budgeting exercise: Take those 15 services and rank them. Then based on the ranking, group them into three buckets: top five, middle five, and bottom five.
Each bucket gets a certain portion of your budget. The top five get 50%, the middle five get 30%, and the bottom five get 10%. The remaining 10% goes to non-vendor items such as the marriage license and favors.
Invite fewer people
The average cost to feed a guest at a wedding is at least $70 — and that's before any alcohol or other guest-related items like favors.
With that in mind, the most efficient way to lower the cost of your wedding is to invite fewer people.
Often, the response to this advice is something like, "But we can't do that. We have big families/lots of friends/want to have everyone we love in person at our wedding." I hear that, and I respect it.
If you're stuck, make another list: Who needs to be at our wedding in person for it to feel like our wedding?
I started using this exercise during the coronavirus pandemic, and it remains very effective. We're quite good at knowing how people make us feel and if we want to feel those feelings on our wedding day.
Consider choosing a different time of year/ day of the week
The next most efficient way to save money is to consider a morning, winter, and/or weekday wedding.
People tend to avoid these because they think they're inconvenient to their guests. But your guests nearly always have to take one day off to travel anyway, so having your wedding on a Tuesday is rarely as much of a pain to them as we think it is.
Buy used when you can
There are a lot of quality resale sites available for wedding items, particularly wedding decor.
One I often point people to is Bridechilla Buy & Sell. But a search for "wedding resale group near me" will likely get you a bounty of options.
There are also many wedding-dress resale sites, but there are very few wedding-dress rental options (quality suits, meanwhile, remain easy to rent).
Sites I recommend include Nearly Newlywed, PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com, Stillwhite (where I sold my wedding dress), or, if you're in the Pacific Northwest, Brides for a Cause (where I got my wedding dress).
Note: Many of the sites above continue to use images that are not representative of the world and often promote harmful expectations about how women should look or dress. I recommend these sites despite this imagery because they are the most widely available option.
Consider opting for custom wedding attire (yes, really)
One of the things I've learned in the last six years of being a wedding planner is that ordering custom clothes isn't actually as prohibitive as it sounds.
It's no small fee, but when compared to what wedding attire (particularly wedding dresses) costs anyway, custom often presents an equally priced option.
Plus you get the huge benefit of it being made for and celebrating your unique body.
If you don't want a lot of flowers, consider buying them à la carte
There are two types of flowers used at weddings: personals and decorative. "Personals" refer to any flowers a person wears or carries. "Decorative" refers to any flowers used to decorate.
If you and your partner have minimal flower needs — for example, you each want a bouquet and some greenery for the tables — ask florists if they offer à-la-carte options. This is where you buy a very limited number of flowers and don't buy any setup or cleanup labor from the florist.
It's not a good fit for people who want flowers on every table or have wedding parties and want each member to have personals. In those cases, if you're hiring a florist, the package it offers will be more cost-effective.
Hire a friend (with certain parameters)
Many wedding vendors will tell you it's a terrible idea to hire a friend. I don't disagree, but I also think assuming everyone can afford to hire professional vendors is, at best, unrealistic and, at worst, classist.
Hiring a friend can work with certain parameters, the most important one being that you have to compensate them in some way.
Yes, I know you're arranging this so you can save money. But as soon as you ask a friend to do something at your wedding, you're asking them to work instead of attending. As such, pay them for that service, be it a $15 gift card and an online review or $50 and a nice thank-you card.
Another important parameter: Get it in writing. This can be as simple as a long email or a one-page document, but meet with your friend and work together to establish the expectations you have for each other.
It sounds tedious, and maybe even a little rude. But trust me, it's the best way to make sure you're still friends after the wedding.
Ask your loved ones for financial help
In an ideal world, we'd all have enough money to pay for our weddings ourselves. But many couples receive funding from people they love.
I call these people "The Board" because no matter who they are, they've now invested in your wedding and thus have some power over the decisions being made.
Respect The Board. You don't have to make choices that aren't in line with your values, but depending on the situation, you need to be clear about your boundaries.
One way to do this is to ask the members of The Board what brings them value in relation to your wedding. Is there something they really, really want to buy you, and if so, why that thing? Have these conversations before anyone's sent anyone any cash.
Consider DIY options — with caution
Are there three more contentious letters in all of wedding planning than DIY?
Many wedding vendors will tell you to avoid DIY at all costs. Often, this is because they're selling you something. But sometimes it's because the vendor has witnessed (as I have) grown people break down into tears the night before their wedding because they realized they don't actually know how to make a bouquet.
If you're considering DIY, be honest with yourself about what is more valuable in this situation: your time or your money. Whatever the answer, please don't assign yourself homework the week of your wedding — particularly the night before.
Serve a different meal
For reasons that I'm not sure anyone knows, dinner is often the default meal at weddings. But it doesn't have to be this way.
I've seen some truly excellent weddings serve breakfast or, one time, all dessert. The trick is to communicate this expectation to your guests ahead of the wedding so they can plan accordingly.
If tips for vendors aren't in the budget, at least write a nice review
Your wedding vendors work in the service industry, which means that tips are a significant part of our income. Wherever possible, please budget for tips.
If tips really aren't in your budget, there's an option that costs your time instead of your money: Review your vendors online.
Ideally, you'd copy and paste the same review to every review platform they use, and you'd be specific as to how this particular person or business helped you and your partner.
Set a cap on the bar
I personally love when other people buy me a drink, but open bars can easily cost thousands of dollars.
Instead, consider "hosting" or paying for limited types of alcohol, such as wine and beer. People who want hard alcohol can have the option of buying it themselves.
Another little-used but tasteful option is to set a cap on an open bar.
When my clients do this, they tell the bar staff the number they want to hit (say $1,000). As we approach that number, the bar either tells me or tells the couple so they can assess if they want to increase the limit before turning over to a cash bar.
The only downside is that depending on when you hit that limit, you can be pulled out of the flow of your day. If this is a concern, I recommend trusting someone else with the authority to make the call on your behalf.
Ask for money as a wedding gift
I like to joke that the best gift any wedding guest can give a couple is to pay for something.
Somehow this isn't trending yet, so instead, just ask for money as a gift. Many online registry options now even allow for tactful, easy ways to do this.
One technique my husband and I used was asking for money for specific things. For example, money for a date-night fund or a spa day on our honeymoon.
This has the benefit of making the gift-giver feel like they bought you "A Thing" without them actually getting you something you don't want.