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Frugal wedding ideas?



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amother


 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 7:26 am
I remember reading quite some time ago a fantastic thread about frugal weddings, when lots of women shared their personal wedding experiences. I've searched and can't find it. Sad

I'd love to hear ideas for frugal weddings - looking for non-traditional ideas, not just cheap halls. How many people did you invite? Where was it held? Where you happy with your wedding or did you feel you compromised to save money?
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little_mage




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 8:01 am
The two big things that we did were using fake flowers and not hiring a band. For the flowers, my Mom went to Michaels and they made us bouquets/corsages/buttioneres. It was under $100. We also paid our hall about $50 to use their A/V hookup. A friend put together a playlist as a wedding gift, but even if we'd had to buy the music, it probably wouldn't have cost that much, certainly not compared to a live band.
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amother


 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 8:26 am
Invite fewer guests (50 to 100), which will result in a smaller hall and less catering. A smaller hall actually looks nicer than a cheap big one and the food, provided they have their own caterer, is usually very good.
You don't need a hall actually. It can be in someone's basement if it's nice.
No real flowers. Make your own decoration, including tablecloths.
No musicians. Create a playlist and have music you enjoy instead of having a cheap band than doesn't know how to play.
Ask all of your friends to take pictures. There will be good ones.
Get the gown in a gemach.
Do not hire a makeup artist or hairstylist. DIY.

This is what we did and it was beautiful.
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watergirl




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 8:52 am
My wedding cost $3,000. Half of that was the band. How did we do it? There are some regrets...

The "hall" was free (if you want to know why, pm me). No flowers except a fake bouquet my MIL made at Michaels (it was a surprise and really ugly). We had a simchas Chassan V Kallah and only served cakes and chips and soft drinks, at the chassons ticsh and bdekin we had fruit and pretzels. For the seuda later, we went to our shul with around 30 people (rabbis, parents, out of town guests) and had Chinese food from a local restaurant. The photographer was someone my husband worked with who said it was her hobby and she would come for free. Dress was borrowed. I did my own hair and makeup.

I have to say, this was a second wedding for both of us. I would never suggest a wedding like this for a cute young couple. In hind sight, I truly regret not having my sheitel done. Even that day, I felt blah and nebach trying to make it look ok myself. Also, the lady taking pictures showed up with an ancient camera and there are NO pictures to speak of. I wish we had paid someone. We have no pictures from that day. Aside from those two things, it was awesome and I am very happy we did it like that.

For a "regular" couple who is trying to cut back, I would recommend less food all around. I was recently at a wedding with a small table of fruit and cake and drinks (not alcoholic) which was set up in between the tisch and kallah room, the meal was simple with salad but no soup, chicken, potatos, green beans, dessert was a brownie and a scoop of ice cream. You know what? No one left hungry!!! No one needs to eat that much at weddings. And as a result, during dancing, there were tons of people up and moving! I had never seen so many people dancing at weddings with tons of food. This wedding was all about the simcha, not about the crepe station. It was the most leibadik wedding I had ever been to.

I have been to many low budget weddings, and I have to say, I think the best way to cut back is cheaper invitations, no flowers other than the kallahs (tables have floating candles), and one man bands, and less food. You can still make it very beautiful but save money where it wont hurt.
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Rutabaga




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 9:23 am
I don't know if this will help, but I think this might be the thread you were looking for:

http://imamother.com/forum/vie.....33481
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amother


 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 10:33 am
is this the thread you are looking for?

http://imamother.com/forum/vie.....48848
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cbg




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 10:38 am
First you must set a realistic budget. Everything else can be worked around it.
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amother


 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 10:47 am
Here's how we planned our wedding for 115 people for at/under $10,000 in a small, OOT community (so no big community amenities, gemachs, etc.), and this included flying in/hotels for roshei yeshiva/rabbonim.

KESUBAH: The OU on their login website for rabbonim has a "wedding kit" that you can order with a standard kesubah. When it arrived, it was actually a lot more beautiful than I had expected! We hold that a kesubah is not something to be displayed, so we just needed it to be halachic, not a priceless work of art. You really can just print one off on nice paper from a stationery store.

VENUE: Shul's social hall. It cost a few hundred dollars to rent. It was not beautiful, but it worked. It's not like people pay so much attention to what the walls look like. The shul also had flatware, plates, etc. that we could use as part of our rental fee.

CATERING: There were only very limited kosher catering options, but we were able to negotiate a very simple package for $25pp. There was not a shmorg, just some fruit/veggie/cracker platters at the tisch/kabbalas panim. Dinner was just chicken, no other meats, salad, green beans, roasted potatoes. Dessert was not a full spread, just a few fruit, cookie, cake options. We did not have an open bar, just water and lemonade and a bottle each of red and white wine on each table. Maybe there was coffee and tea, too, I don't remember. Another way we saved was by having everything buffet, not plated and served. That saved a lot on wait staff.

DECORATIONS: We did rent tablecloths/napkins (those that the shul had were in pretty bad shape) and prettier wooden folding chairs because I didn't want to use the shul's ugly metal ones. Though truthfully, I don't think people would have cared about the chairs the next day, so it probably wasn't necessary. The other decorations were about $300 total. My wonderful coworkers brought vases from their homes and did a lot of ideas off of Pinterest and then I paid them for the about $300 of flowers they bought from a local wholesaler.

HAIR/MAKE UP: Again, my wonderful coworkers stepped in to save the day. They did my hair and make up for free. We found a style we liked on Pinterest that showed step by step instructions, and it worked out really well.

DRESS: This is where I could have saved even more if I had lived in a bigger community and been able to get a dress from a gemach or rent one. Buying and altering the dress ended up being one of my biggest expenses -- you could easily cut this in half or in third by borrowing from a friend, gemach, or renting. My veil was very simple from David's Bridal, though you could do that even cheaper by getting one that craft stores like JoAnn or Michael's sell for people to embellish on their own. I didn't want embellishment, just a comb and gauzy material. My shoes were less than $15 on sale from Payless (plain white high heels - they usually have something like this in stock for people to buy and dye).

STATIONERY: I love stationery, so this is where I splurged a little, "splurge" being a very relative term here. We got our invitations from invitations123.com. They were very simple: flat card (not folding), no personalized logo, simple response card, not lined envelopes, etc. You could save even more by printing your own and using postcards not cards that require their own envelope for the responses. I had always dreamed of having benchers at my wedding, so this was another "splurge" for me but probably only ended up costing $300ish (and I ordered way more than I needed -- we still have lots left over). A way to save on this would be to get the folding kind (not booklets), and don't pay for engraving. Most have blank spaces on the front, so design your own labels and stick them on. I used a die-cut machine to make shaped cut outs from scrapbook paper to put on the tables for decorations and use as place cards.

MUSIC: We had a two-man band (singer and keyboard), and they were great. Once everyone was up and dancing and having fun, it could have been two men or twelve in the band, it wouldn't have mattered.

PHOTOGRAPHY: One of my friends studied photography and has a very nice camera. Even though it's not her full time job, she took such incredible photos for us! We paid her $350 I think, just for time and travel expenses. She gave us a jump drive of photos after the event, and we printed them off of snapfish. I knew we could never afford a professional photographer and a professionally done album, but it was important to me to preserve the memories, so I put in a lot of time (and some money for supplies), and made a scrapbook of my own. It's a treasure to me now! If you don't have time or aren't the creative/crafty type, you can always have snapfish print a book or put them in a plastic sleeve album.

SET UP/CLEAN UP: We did a lot of this ourselves. It wasn't fun to be disassembling and returning the chuppah the day after the wedding (we borrowed it from someone in the community), or setting up ourselves, or doing all of the coordination without help, but it saved us a lot of money, and I was really proud of what we accomplished together during a very stressful time.

Overall, I think a lot of people would have thought our wedding was pretty pathetic. It didn't have most of the amenities that seem to be standard from other weddings I've been to or see pictures of or read about on here. But we were so overwhelmed by the generosity of friends and all of the people who pulled together to make the wedding happen and to be mesameach us on that day. It meant more than any amount of fancy scenery or food or flowers ever could. It was more about the marriage than the wedding, and I have such wonderful memories of the day, despite all the challenges.

Mazel tov on your simcha, and you should have many more!
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chani8




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 11:25 am
Frugal? I bought a second hand wedding dress and had it altered and dry cleaned. My mom made the veil. The actual chuppah was outside the shul. The reception inside the shul. We catered it ourselves with spreads of cold cuts and salads, using beautiful paperware. A friend baked the challah. Friends brought desserts.

A young friend of mine had her wedding on a (moshav) farm, with colorful chicken crates as the back drop, and the reception was right there at a big barn-turned-into-a-hall. Lovely and affordable.

My DD wants something affordable, too. The main thing she's learned from her attending others' weddings, is to make it easy and affordable for guests to travel to the wedding.
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suzyq




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 11 2014, 12:08 pm
What you spend is very dependent on how many people you are planning to invite. We had a VERY frugal wedding, but we also only had about 40 people for the meal (we invited others for dancing and dessert).

Some of the ways we cut costs:

- We had our wedding in someone's house - no hall rental. It was SUCH a nice thing for them to do, and we did give them a very nice gift in thanks.

- I got my gown from a real gemach where they don't charge you an arm and a leg.

- A friend did the photography and didn't charge us and we made albums on snapfish.

- A friend did my make up.

- For music, we hired a teenager who had done some bar mitzvahs previously. He had a keyboard and all the speakers and did a great job. I think we paid him $50.

Our biggest expense was the catering, but they really did a beautiful job. They brought tablecloths and dishes and everything to make it a really nice meal.
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amother


 

Post Sun, Sep 14 2014, 3:18 pm
Thank you for all these wonderful ideas and links! They're just what I was looking for; you've given me a lot to think about.

If there are others with more experiences to share, I love reading about them! It's like a breath of sanity in the crazy overpriced world of frum weddings to hear about your simchos, thank you!
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amother


 

Post Sun, Sep 14 2014, 4:51 pm
I'm sure you know this already, but a wine bottle on each of the men's tables is cheaper than a bar. For many frugal weddings only the men's tables have wine bottles, and only the women's tables have flowers.

For my wedding we had two gorgeous bouquets of flowers that we used for the Chuppah, then for the photographs and then were put next to us where we ate. The rest of the tables had candles and lots of rose petals sprinkled around. They looked beautiful.
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finallyamommy




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Sep 14 2014, 4:59 pm
We spent under $1,000 for our wedding, but part of that was getting the hall and food free. If we hadn't got that, we were considering just having it in a friend's backyard. I'm not sure how many people we had--DH says "probably a couple hundred."

Music was our biggest expense, I think, and we only had a one-man band. We considered forgoing live music altogether and just going for CDs.

Fake flowers, a wedding dress borrowed from a gemach, having my sister do my hair and makeup... I'm trying to remember what else.

I do recommend you splurge for photography. I'm married over three years and still look through my albums at least every couple of weeks.
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queenert




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Sep 14 2014, 6:09 pm
This isn't for the actual wedding but for setting up your house after.

A LOT of registries give you free gifts JUST FOR REGISTERING. If someone buys it for you, you get another present.
We got 21 free gifts - some really really good stuff - all just for registering!

Check out Bed Bath & Beyond, Sur La Table, JCP, William's Sonoma etc.

Here's a quick link or try googling "registry incentives:" http://forums.theknot.com/disc.....links
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Imogen




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Sep 14 2014, 6:47 pm
Went to a wedding recently where the bride looked absolutely stunning in a most original unique dress, absolutely gorgeous, it looked like a one off designer custom-made bridal gown. When I complimented her on it she told me she got it from a store specialising in modest Mormon dresses online for less than $200!! ( pure white cotton) she had it altered to fit her perfectly and then customised it with tiny pearls,silk sash and lace detail.
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