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7 years ago, my husband and I crowded ourselves into our tiny, messy break room at his office. We cleared away anything in front of the white board and hunkered down for a brainstorming session.

We were planning our wedding.

But we didn’t have endless amounts of money to work with since we were paying for most of it out of our pockets, and we had just started a chiropractic business, and moved across the country to California just over a year earlier.

We were going to need to get creative.

Now, this isn’t a list of ways to get glassware for cheaper, finagle a smaller fee for the photographer, or get your salmon deeply discounted.

Nope, this doesn’t necessarily give you any discounts…

Throw a kick-ass wedding on a budget

1. Value based wedding

The bulk of this article will be spent right here, my friend. This is where we saved almost all of our money…and I’m sure made a few people scoff in disgust shrug

That fateful day in the break room, we propped ourselves up next to a white board and listed out all of our deepest values that we held on to for our wedding.

For example, a few things that we had on our list of values was:

• delicious food
• our friends drink for free
• beautiful, natural wedding decor
• beautiful photography
• and of course, for our friends and family to be there…and for, uh, US to be there 

That was it!

Here’s the thing…once you wander down the rabbit hole that is wedding planning…

…and it seems that half a second after you get engaged…

YOU HAVE A MILLION OPINIONS FLYING IN YOUR FACE!

And even the largest wallet doesn’t stand a chance at actually hitting a budget! So girlfriend, you need to KNOW who you are, and what you care about…because it’s about to get bat shit crazy out there.

We spent the money on the things we cared about (even though, we only had beer and wine…but hey! Everyone drank for free!), and we “skimped” on the rest.

Did we care about invitations? Nope. I KNOW there were probably some people who got our printed piece of paper in the mail (that was literally a printed piece of paper that I bought at Office Depot) and felt ashamed for me…

BUT I DIDN’T! Because to me, that is literally only a medium of information so that the people I love knew where and when to show up.

And you know what? People did show up…on time.

Now if that is something that is really important to you, awesome! This post isn’t about what should be important to you…it’s in fact the opposite, only you can know that.

So grab a beer or a glass of wine, clear a chunk of time with your honey, and work it out.

What is the most important…?

Then, anytime an opportunity comes up to spend more money, you can go back to that list and make a decision based on how high up on the list it falls.

Did we have a fancy wedding? Hell naw. But that isn’t us. We are pretty simple. We were able to all in all spend $20-25k for our wedding (which may still be a lot for some…we were SHOCKED how quickly it climbed!).

But it is so much easier to fall within the walls of your budget if you’re not feeling the pressure to pay FULL OUT for each and every little thing on the “wedding requirement checklist”.

Remember…this is YOUR wedding…no one else’s.

2. Beer and wine

Keep it simple if you can’t afford the full monty. Trust me, it is always so much fun to go to weddings where people go full-out. It’s a blast to have that experience! EVERYONE is having a great time!

But I also think that people had a great time at our wedding…in fact I KNOW they did.

3. Eat what you want to eat.

If you love salmon, get salmon. If you love ribs…

get ribs.

Yup, we had ribs…at a wedding (and I ate them in my white dress).

And guess what, 6 years later, people are still talking about those damn ribs.

Eat what you want to eat. Don’t feel the pressure to eat “wedding food”, unless “wedding food” happens to be what you would want to eat anyway!

I just went to the most amazing wedding in New Orleans, and they did it the way they wanted FOR SURE. There was a sushi station, and a Cajun station, etc.

It’s YOUR wedding, what do you want to eat?! Because a lot of the time, if you’re not ordering a classic wedding menu from a venue, it is a lot less expensive.

4. Hire who you know (and love)

One of my sweetest friends on the planet, also happens to be the most gifted artist I have ever met…and he offered to decorate our wedding as a gift to us! It truly was the most unique, artistic, creative, and beautifully natural wedding decor I could ever have asked for.

Another one of my lovely friends is a gifted photographer who has captured me and my husbands love from almost day one. She did an amazing job capturing our special day, and what a beautiful connection to have for the rest of our lives.

One of Nick’s college buddies was our videographer as a gift (and set up a sweet photo booth for us)…and this trailer is seriously a video that once a year I end up binge watching…it’s one of the sweetest gifts we could have received.

Finally, one of Nick’s best friends on the planet (whom we just attended his amazing NOLA wedding), was asked to be our officiate. I would be lying if at first I was a bit skeptical. But, after seeing him absolutely nail his role as our officiate, it does not surprise me that he has done a few more weddings. He was amazing.

…in conclusion…

One of the highest compliments that we heard from our guests after our wedding was that it was so “us”.

So, since everyone in the world is offering you advice on how you should plan your wedding, why not a couple more tips…? But these won’t cost you anything extra…

-Plan your wedding based on your values…we covered that extensively above. This will not cost you extra, it will probably SAVE you tons.

-Sneak away. A few months before we got married we bumped into some friends of ours at an event and got talking about our wedding. They gave us the best tip, ever, that we seriously tell everyone when we hear they are getting married…

After the ceremony, and all is final, take 20 minutes to go away just the two of you before the festivities kick in.

Ahhhh, that still to this day is one of my favorite memories of our whole wedding.

As we said “I do”, it started downpouring (which was the best gift from God EVER…He knows how much I love rain, and how friggin little it rains here in southern california), and everyone ran, squealing.

I didn’t even care one iota that the bottom of my dress was getting muddy, and that my hair was falling flat.

Not one bit.

Nick and I snuck away, with a glass of wine, to the little cottage where I spent the day with my girls getting ready…and just sat and watched the rain. We processed the huge event that had just happened, and had 20 sweet minutes to revel in it…truly absorbing every yummy morsel of it.

Weddings can go by in a blink and a blur…and truly, it moves so quickly from one thing to the next. And before you know it, you’re waking up the morning after your wedding thinking, “what the hell just happened?”

Take that short snippet of time, and breath it all in together as a brand new couple.

It truly will be one of your favorite memories.

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