This will sound like "not advice", but lemme just say: do a courthouse wedding with just the two of you and y'all's parents and then invite everyone else to a place to do the more formal things, like a backyard or a park or something.
When my wife and I first started planning our wedding, we estimated it would cost us about $12k to pull off. We did NOT have $12k at the time. We tried doing it at first with our own credit cards, but we maxed out at about $3k. We asked our parents for help, and they didn't have enough money to get us to our goal, so we had to cancel.
Later, we decided to go with a courthouse wedding and had a photographer come with us for pictures (btw - check a photographer's IG before booking with them to see if they're worth the money. We got ours for $500 and my family is still in awe of how good they are! Meanwhile, my sister spent $3k and her photos look like dog shit...).
All in all, the wedding cost us $570 ($10 for the courthouse wedding, $60 to get our marriage license with the state, $500 for photographer) + $240 (my suit rental and her dress from a website where brides post their dresses for re-use or if their own wedding was cancelled). Our parents were there with us and it was simply a magical experience - in spite of being in line at a courthouse and not having the "full wedding" experience.
We then invited everyone we knew to our favorite bar and had an open tab for everyone and brought in food from the restaurant my wife worked at. For 40 people, it ran us a total of $1,247.
Everything together = $2,057. Best money I ever spent and had the time of my life with the love of my life.
2 years later our financial situation was drastically different and we decided to do a "wedding" properly with all of our family and stuff (about 125 guests in total). It ran us $17,500. I had more fun at the bar then I did at the "wedding".
Do yourself a favor - don't make your wedding a fairy tale - just make it the best damned memory that you can.
Submitted August 08, 2021 at 11:16PM by kumakaichou https://ift.tt/2X3ZWX7
