I got engaged in January 2015 while in Hawaii. My fiance and I love to travel, and are very careful about saving "date night" money for trips. We are not extravagant people by any means, but we definitely wanted a "big, dream" wedding. In February of this year, we reserved our venue. Absolutely gorgeous setting. It was $3000. We planned our wedding for March 2016. Then the problems started.
We didn't even think about the cost when we found out that we could only use their caterer and alcohol. We were so excited about the idea of getting married in such a beautiful setting that we booked it without a second thought.
We have large families and since we both work at the same place, lots of friends and coworkers that we couldn't imagine not inviting. The food was $40 a person. Bar was around $20 a person. Then add in the fact that we had to rent linens. Place settings. Chairs. Hire a DJ. (We LOVE to dance, so that was a necessity). Get a cake (again, we are cake lovers). Pay for hair, makeup, suits... I could do my own makeup and hair. We were willing to settle. But after doing the math, we were looking at a wedding that cost about $80-100 a person. Even with help from some family members, there was literally no way at ALL that we could make this wedding happen without going into extreme debt. I am about to start nursing school and won't be able to work as much as I used to, so I won't be able to help pay off the debt much.
Also us being travel lovers, we are DYING to take a honeymoon. If we had kept our day in March 2016, we would not have been able to go on a honeymoon due to our school schedules.
So we canceled our wedding! Talked to our venue and explained the money situation. They couldn't give us back out $2,000 deposit, but they were incredibly kind and broke our contract so that we wouldn't have to pay anything extra. We changed our date to December 2015 in order to go on a honeymoon.
Miraculously, all of our vendors (DJ, photographer, cake, etc) were available for the date we chose.
We chose a delicious food vendor for less than $10 a person as opposed to the original $40 a person (enchiladas, mmm) and we chose a lovely church and their church hall for our reception area.
This was the hardest part for me. The church hall is plain. Very plain and very, well, church-hall ish. Nowhere near the glamour of our original venue. However, my MOH and I realized this leaves way more room for decorations! Got tons of candleholders and candleholders for $50 total, fixed them up with a diy project. Flowers will be from a wonderful local vendor who charges crazy reasonable rates. And best of all, the people at the church are WONDERFUL. They have the best colored linens at a good quality for a great, cheap price. The linens go perfectly with our theme and look so classy while still being cheap. Also, they provide the bartenders, who work for tips only! So we are able to bring in our own alcohol which is literally saving us thousands of more dollars.
We are also going on a honeymoon to Disneyworld, which is in no way cheap, BUT we were able to fit that into our budget based on the money we saved from canceling the original wedding. And yes, it really is all happening for less than $12,000!
I am aware that is in no way a cheap figure, trust me. But the fact of the matter is, it is less than HALF of what we were originally going to spend. It took me hours and hours of digging, reading reviews, and making phone calls to find such affordable vendors. But I made it happen by some miracle.
And think about it - without the honeymoon, my wedding would be a $7,000 wedding. It is doable! Just remember - pinterest isn't real! Do not let pinterest and the weddings you see in magazines make you think you have to have it ALL and that it has to be expensive.
I have been dying to get all of this out of my system for ages, so thank you knotties for letting me rant!