Before getting married I knew that weddings were expensive but holy hell I did no know just how expensive. That being said, there are ways you can save money on your wedding day so that you aren’t experiencing a money hangover worse than your alcohol-infused one!
I’m at that age now where I’ve had a number of friends get married, as well as myself and I’ve seen how they’ve used creative ways to save themselves money on the big day.
The most important thing I took away from my experience is that there were some things we just weren’t willing to sacrifice on that some of our friends have. It was extremely important to us to have a venue that was centrally located in the city because we had so many people joining us from WAY out of town. The other thing we weren’t willing to sacrifice on was having an open bar. I have been to cash bar weddings and I’ll tell you first hand, it’s not the same experience or kind of party. But, if that’s where you’d rather save your money then all the power to you!
So what are some of the ways we saved money on our wedding day?
1 | Wedding website + digital RSVPs
If there’s one thing I would suggest it would be having a wedding website so people can go online to RSVP. Not only are people too lazy to mail things back (present company included), but it will cost you a fortune in stamps putting those on envelopes for people to mail back.
Having a website is a really simple way to have all of your information in one place that people can constantly refer back to. Make sure to have the most important information like time, date, place, RSVP date and registry information. If you have people coming from out of town, it’s also a good idea to list hotel recommendations or even things to do in the area when they aren’t at the wedding.
2 | Be creative with your wedding dress
I absolutely adored my wedding dress but there was no way in hell I was going to pay the full price tag. I went to a bunch of retail stores to try dresses on in person so that I could figure out what it was that I actually wanted.
Once I found ‘the dress’ I sat my butt down and researched the hell out of it online. I was fortunate to have a bunch of time before our wedding which allowed me to really scour the internet. I ended up finding the exact dress I wanted being sold secondhand by someone in the States. She had bought two for her wedding and never ended up needing the second one (like honestly though imagine having that much money?).
I ended up saving myself over a grand just from doing the research and having a little bit of patience
3 | Lean on the skills of your friends
I am very fortunate to have some very talented friends and I sought their help for the wedding. The good thing is they were all too willing to help and it helped to save them money on wedding gifts!
One of my great friends happens to be an unbelievable baker and she volunteered herself for the role of wedding cake maker. I also wanted something that blended together our backgrounds: Canadian and British. She came up with the amazing idea of handing out macarons as the wedding favours – one infused with maple syrup and one infused with tea. Not only were they delicious but I only had to pay for the ingredients and packaging, it saved us a ton!
I also have a friend who’s a pretty badass DJ and musician. While he refused to actually DJ our wedding (can’t say I blame him) he did help out by supplying the equipment. We were then able to negotiate a better rate with the DJ we did hire because all he had to do was show up.
4 | Do everything at the same venue
One of the best things we did was have everything take place in the same location. We found a beautiful hotel right in the middle of Toronto for our wedding so we were able to get ready there, take all of our pictures there, have our wedding and reception there and we even stayed overnight!
This saved us a lot of time and effort in logistics but most importantly transportation. I know people who spend hundreds of dollars just to get them from A to B on their big day. If you can help it, being able to do as many things in the same place as possible will serve you well!
5 | Trade your skills for services
This was probably one of the smartest things I did. One of the vendors for our wedding wanted some consulting done for their website and social media. I managed to negotiate my consultation services for their product for my wedding.
Sure, it may have cost me quite a bit of time doing this in and around planning my wedding but not having that dollar figure added to our bill kept us in the green! If you have a practical skill, try this with some of your vendors, you never know who might be in need of your services.
*Images from this post are from our amazing wedding photographers The Love Studio
