When my fiance and I got engaged, we knew that the wedding was going to be a giant undertaking. We both have very large families and very small pocketbooks. Fortunately, we were able to balance her desire for a big, elegant wedding and my desire to save a lot of money by going the DIY route in a lot of areas. Here are a few:
The planning
First, ditch the wedding planner. We use a combination of a beastly binder, Evernote, and The Knot for our planning purposes. Amanda keeps important documents in her binder, I keep important documents in Evernote, and The Knot provides a very useful checklist to keep us on schedule throughout the planning process. The binder also keeps the guest list handy, as well as any brochures or things that vendors provide us with. We carry a small notebook with us when out visiting vendors and the hall to grab any extra notes. Yes, doing it without a wedding planner is a little more work, but it can save you a bundle!
Decorations
This is a very common one that couples use to save a little scratch. Buy some tulle fabric on Amazon and some cheap Christmas lights (you can get them in any color!). Take some time to visit the hall and take some measurements. Plan it accordingly, and make sure you have help. Do it the night before the wedding with your bridesmaids and groomsmen. If enough people help, you will be able to knock it out rather quickly. The same goes for the centerpieces.
Plus, ditch the favors. Nobody cares about them. The little bells and goofy trinkets with your name on them? Nobody will remember that stuff. We found some great placeholders that we can put people’s names on that hold candy. People appreciate candy much more!
The Invitations
Still fairly common – print your own invitations. I discovered a great kit at Target that matched our color scheme and was very elegant and simple. We bought an extra ink cartridge and went to work. This is one of the more involved projects, but with a little teamwork, can save a ton. We bought a box of 50 invitations for around $30 apiece. That’s a huge savings!
Music
There’s a big debate online about the music – hire a DJ or do it yourself? We went to a wedding a little over a year ago that ran their own music. I’ve been to two of these weddings, and both times, nobody noticed a difference. The only difference, if done well, is there’s no obnoxious DJ. Here are a few tips to book your own music without sacrificing quality:
- Rent some good sound equipment from a local music store. Make sure you let them know you are going to run music from your laptop. Also, make sure you get a microphone for speeches.
- In that same vein, run the music from your laptop, not your iPod. This allows you a little more control over the lineups.
- Have a backup plan. Whether it’s another laptop or an iPod (in extreme situations), you never know when your hard drive is going to fail. We plan on having everything on my laptop, my Sansa Clip Plus, and on CDs.
- Put together playlists. You don’t want to just run music on random all night. Have specific playlists for certain times of the night (dinner, cake cutting, early part of the night, garter toss, etc.).
- Ask for request ahead of time. Part of the fun of wedding music is that people can input their favorite songs. In our invitations, we ask that everybody who has requests email them to me by a few weeks before the wedding so that we can put together the playlists.
- Hire a friend to DJ. You don’t need somebody to man it all night. With the playlists, it will run itself. But still, you’ll want somebody there to switch playlists, or move ahead a song if nobody’s dancing. And if you are the bride or the groom, you don’t want to have to pay attention to that. Have a friend that you trust keep an eye on it, and throw them a few bucks for the trouble.
Photo booth
This is a fun idea that I just had today. I’m in talks with my photographer to piece together a place for people to take fun pictures throughout the reception. Photo booths cost upwards of $750 for a couple hours in my area. We’re going to hang a sheet, set up a DSLR camera with a remote and tripod (thanks to a friend), rent some flash equipment, and let people take their own goofy pictures. We’ll leave a sheet for people to sign their email addresses and we can send them a link to the gallery once it’s loaded into Picasa. It’ll be great, and won’t cost a whole lot either! Photo booths are a fun trend in weddings right now.
Photography (to a point)
If you know a friend that takes great pictures, you may consider hiring them to do the photos. However, you will want to make sure this person will be on the ball (my future brother-in-law hired a friend to do his pictures, and it took almost a year to get their copies!). We are hiring a photographer, but we negotiated the price down by requesting that we just get a DVD with all the pictures on it after he’s done touching them up. Then we can order photo books for much cheaper through many different sites. It’ll save a few hundred bucks.
These are just a few ways to save money on a wedding while keeping it fun and elegant. If any of these blow up in our faces in 3 months, I’ll let you know. 
What’s your favorite wedding-related tip? Share it in the comments for all of us!
Tom is an entrepreneur and freelance writer, working out of his apartment full-time, or wherever he feels like taking his laptop. He doesn't take long European vacations or blogs on the beach. He's an Average Joe that took control of his life. He wants you to do the same.
