Recession-Proof Weddings for 5k (or Less)
April 18, 2009 by Tracy Hopkins
Filed under Cool Website, Real World Hot Mamas!
I wrote about how I spent less than $5,000 on my wedding last summer for the New York Daily News. Since then I’ve received an overwhelmingly positive response to my budget wedding story and have advised like-minded brides-to-be on how to plan and execute the wedding of their dreams for far less than the national average of $20,000.
My motto is, “Don’t believe the wedding industry hype.” You don’t have to spend a fortune, especially on your dress (see a photo of mine below), to look like you did.
Me in my Saks Off the Rack wedding dress; only $27 on Ebay!
Sonja Romnus also planned her wedding on a shoestring budget and started a website, 5K Weddings: Affordable Alternatives for Brides, to serve as a resource for other thrifty brides. Romnus interviewed me for her site, and you can read the Q&A here.
Image courtesy of Tracy E. Hopkins/ Photo by Adam Pantozzi
You looked so beautiful on your wedding day!
Thanks so much for the compliment : )
Wow, you’re STUNNING, and the ivory color does wonders to bring out the color of your skin! Your whole look was perfect. I thought that spending $350 for my gown was a bargain, but after seeing yours, I’m not as proud of myself haha. Now, I DID have a 20k wedding, BUT I live in an extremely expensive area…NJ (lol), and east-coast weddings near Philly (I live 15 minutes outside of Philly) or NYC are always pricier than other places in the country. In my neck-o-the-woods, average weddings are more than 30k. I had help from our families, which is why I could do it, but was able to cut costs by being creative. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Stefanie. I’m glad you enjoyed my post and thanks so much for the compliments : ) I’m actually working on a book on how to pull off a budget wedding and want other women to share their wedding stories. So I will keep your email address and reach out to you when I start working on the project. By the way, I live in New York City and didn’t think it was possible to do an inexpensive wedding there either, but it depends on your personal style and what you’re willing to sacrifice. We didn’t mind having an early morning ceremony at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and an afternoon reception at a restaurant near our Brooklyn neighborhood, and only invited 70 guests. So for us it worked out perfectly : ) Here’s a link to my article on my budget wedding that ran in the NY Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/weddings/2008/09/21/2008-09-21_the_4722_wedding_one_brooklyn_bride_prov.html
Thanks, definitely keep my email. Even though my wedding cost 20k, if we didn’t get creative and save a lot of money in some places, it definitely would have been more than 30k. My favorite unexpected tip is not to count out your local supermarket for flowers! My mother was really friendly with our local market’s head florist, who is absolutely amazing. She did beautiful flowers of calla lilies and stephanotis for a friend of mine, and they blew me away. I went to the typical florists in the area (pricey but great) when it came time to plan, and most wanted $150-175 for my bridal bouquet of just roses (ivory, tea-rose, hot pink)! The florist at the supermarket only charged $80 for my gorgeous bouquet using the same exact roses! Being on a budget, I was originally going to get hot pink carnations really tightly packed together for my bridesmaids, and even those cost nearly $50 at the expensive florists and those flowers cost pennies on the dollar! Nevertheless, the supermarket florist charged $40 and gave me GORGEOUS, lush bouquets of hot pink roses. Nobody seems to think of these florists and they often will do a fabulous job and don’t charge you overhead. It would have cost me over $2,000 to have what I ordered from a traditional florist, and with the supermarket florist, I paid less than $800. For the dress, my mother spent $1700 on an Eve of Milady gown 25 years ago (God only knows how much that would amount to now!) so to her, an expensive gown didn’t bother her for me, because she was paying. We came up with a preliminary budget of $1200 for a dress (which was cheap to her after her dress!) but as time went on I couldn’t see spending SO much on a dress to wear once. Rather than go to the local couture boutique in my hometown, I went to David’s Bridal, as there was always this one dress I sort of fell hard for when I saw it online. I made sure to try it on first…not only was it on sale ($350) but it was so ME and perfect. We came in $850 under budget. Which was good because I at first didn’t want a veil, but the consultant placed this one on me while I had my dress on, and I fell in love. It was $180 which was really pricey for a veil but the crystals and beading were a perfect match for my gown. My shoes were $10 on clearance(which is great because I will never wear them again). I found a FABULOUS white beaded clutch on sale for $12, that I have since used again. I didn’t spend a dime on new jewelry. I wore my favorite necklace, a multicolor strand of pearls that were a 5th anniversary gift from my now-husband, drop pearl earrings with diamond accents, and my favorite bracelet of pink and white pearls strung onto a white gold chain. My headpiece was $70 at a local wedding accessory boutique owned by a friend, and it was stunning. Compared to many I saw when shopping around, mine seemed a relative bargain. I bought my Spanx on Ebay for $22 bucks rather than $36 (brand new in the box). For the reception, I found a pair of pale pink satin slippers that looked like ballet shoes on sale for $7 at Boscovs, and my look was complete! My wedding took place on late-afternoon on a Sunday with an evening reception and we saved $10 a person for not using Saturday night (which we couldn’t anyway due to his Jewish family), and another $10 for going with a buffet and not a sit-down. But honestly, my family is mostly Italian, and his family are Jewish. You can’t give an Italian or Jew (both who LOVE to eat) one plate of dinner and expect them to be happy. The food was to-die-for and our venue included a full sweet table of homemade desserts for us in addition to our beautiful wedding cake (also included in our venue price). The price included a top-shelf open bar for FIVE hours. I loved that everyone got to drink the best alcohol money could buy, get whatever they wanted, and it didn’t cost me extra. That’s a lot of liquor but everyone was responsible
It cost us just $55 a head at our AMAZING venue, with the kindest people we could have worked with. They were wonderful. That price was unbeatable to me, for 3 hours-worth of dinner (which included prime rib and Italian pork cutting stations, plus 3 other meats), top shelf open-bar for the whole reception, full dessert table, and wedding cake! Sorry to write you a novel, but it’s fun to share cost-cutting tips with like-minded brides.