Thursday weddings are an abomination. Even worse than Sunday weddings. Just say no.

1) Flowers and Limos are the biggest wastes of money when it comes to a wedding. The Flowers die and the limos you use for all of 30 mins, between reception and church.

2) Save money - have ceremony and reception on same site.

I agree with saving money on invites. Also, learn to use Excel. Excel is one of the best tools you can use for a wedding.

You can keep your guest list, present record, wedding expenses AND honeymoon expenses all in one place.

3) Reward Points - with all the money you are spending, make sure you get as many points as possible.

Weddings are the biggest waste of money. I'm down with signing a piece of paper and calling it a day.

i spent my money on the honeymoon. My actual wedding was in a simple, very old chapel on a mountaintop. The reception was at my house and everyone had a great time. We knew we'd rather have cash for the honeymoon in Disney.

You want to spend your money on the following things:

1) Entertainment
2) Food
3) Photography.

Those are the three most important things. Those are what make the memories of the day. The photography is incredibly important because you want to document your event. Make sure you get a photographer that IS NOT A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY. You want a professional. (If the professional is a friend of the family, that's ok, but you don't want Uncle Dick with a point-and-shoot documenting the day)

Also, make sure that the photographer will give you a CD copy of all pictures taken. Not proofs; the raw digital images. Sometimes they'll charge you 50-200 bucks to get it, THAT'S OK. But if they don't release the pics to you, LOOK ELSEWHERE.

DJ's - Don't spend money on smoke machines and light shows and inflatable props. What you want is someone who can have fun without resorting to hacky crap. Do you want grandma on the dance floor having a good time, or a dumb pic of her wearing oversized sunglasses and an inflatable guitar with a "WTF" look on her face?

Bands - Attend a showcase and watch them play live. DO not rely on just a promotional DVD. If fthey don't do showcases, ask if you can see them at a wedding.

BTW, I love how the author says "the little wedding details your guests won't notice" but then advocates a Thursday wedding.

At a wedding, you want to drink and have a good time. If you're getting married on a Thursday, you're either restricting your guests' good time OR you're making them take a day off tomorrow. No. Absolutely not.

DJ's - Don't spend money on smoke machines and light shows and inflatable props. What you want is someone who can have fun without resorting to hacky crap. Do you want grandma on the dance floor having a good time, or a dumb pic of her wearing oversized sunglasses and an inflatable guitar with a "WTF" look on her face?

Music is key. Ive been to a quarter million dollar wedding with a crappy (not cheesy) wedding that was no fun. No one was dancing and it was a giant bore. Meanwhile Ive been to lots of wedding at the Legion Hall/local Party hall that have been a blast. A DJ who can keep people dancing, a decent meal (forget the fancy shit) and people you like and the wedding is a blast.

@Tracy Ham and Eggs: Absolutely. Music is the vibe that runs a wedding. Too many DJ companies are trying to make this like player intros to an NBA game or something.

If DJs advertise audience participation crap like chicken dance and macarena as a HIGHLIGHT of their services, get out. Get out immediately. Nobody likes doing those anymore.

You need to have communication with your entertainment about what kind of music you know your family and friends like. You have to also realize that YOUR music tastes may not be the stuff that will get people on the dance floor.

My guaranteed go to song for weddings: The Bee Gees "You Should Be Dancing". It's not as well known as other Bee Gees songs, but it's got that vibe that gets people on the floor.

Another Money Saving Tip:

If you're having the reception at the hotel, see if the Hotel will allow you to use the shuttle vans to get you and the wedding party and parents to and from the church.

Spent a lot less than $10,000 on our wedding for 100 guests: Luckily no alcohol tab due to my wifes families religious beliefs, just had a night out at a local bar a couple days before for those of us who wanted a booze up. Had it on a Sunday lunch-time at a Wedding chapel where the place is pre-decorated, minister provided and catering on-site. No DJ (which I half regret) - we just burned mix CDs to be played for various things - one with first dance songs etc, one with general background music. The easiest money-saver: Printed programs and invitations ourselves. With MS Publisher, a little bit of patience and some good quality paper you can easily get near the quality of professional printing. Had friends do the photos and video - Both were serious hobbyists with pro equipment so came out looking great and saved us $100s if not $1000s. Only things we spent real money on were: Cake, Gown, Suits, Flowers for Bridal party.

Spent as much, if not more on the honeymoon - Vegas then the Grand Canyon, and glad of it. As others said, unless you are some bigshot whose guests will be snobs, most people's friends/family are there to see you be happy and socialize, not to say "ooh, look at that $5,000 ice sculpture." Provide a nice looking place with some half-decent food/dessert and people could care less about what color napkins you have...

Unless your under about 23 or highly religious the traditional wedding is kind of an outdated practice. It all smacks of giving away a girl into religious indentured servitude.

I wish more people would buck the marketing that professionally accomplished adults need an old style fairytale wedding. More of the sedate ceremony or going to the courthouse with some sort of party afterwords might be more appropriate.

Elope to someplace beautiful in Europe like Italy (e.g., the marriage paperwork in Italy can be completed in only a couple of days even for non-residents). Then you can tell people you got married at a castle in Florence -- because the town hall in Florence is pretty much a castle. Then travel around Tuscany and Chianti for the next few weeks and make a honeymoon out of it. All this for a fraction of the cost of a marriage.

If your friends and family get their noses too out of joint you can invite a few of them out with you or just throw a big party when you get back.

@bohemian: The party is half of the fun. Or for those in their late 20s its a great chance to "get the gang back together". Look, I dont advocate the big expensive wedding, but a nice reception with an open bar and music is key. (Ive been to cash bar weddings, can still be fun)

I got married on a Thursday. It was completely fine, and literally cut my costs in half!

@bohemian: If anything, a "relgious" wedding ceremony has nothing to do with the amount of money you spend on a wedding.

I've seen hardcore catholics dump huge amounts of money into a wedding, and I saw a Jew and an agnostic dump huge amounts of money into a wedding. This is about the "party" aspects, not so much religion.

@BuddyGuyMontag: The wedding I was at last night had the chicken dance, and a lot of people still seemed to have liked it. Ugh.

@rachaeljean: It was fine FOR YOU. But like it or not, you did inconvenience a few of your guests, unless you had like 10 people there.

@MonkeyMonk: I had actually floated the idea of having a small sunset wedding in the mountains in Arizona, but my wife protested; grandfather is confined to a wheelchair and she wanted him there.

My wife and I (mostly my wife) planned our wedding a couple of years ago. We ended up spending about $8000. We had a total of about 80 people at the wedding and reception.

First main thing, it was a June wedding, it was a Chinese style wedding, and it was in a major metropolitan area.

To help cut costs:
1) We bargained with a recent photography school graduate
[i.e. requested no prints but instead wanted the raw camera files (all digital so no haggling with filme). Other may or may not be comfortable about this option. Plus, we gave him ability to really be creative to help build his profile.] This should also work for recent film school grads as well :)

2) We opted to purchase the gown and tux. Gown was second hand, tux we went to many different clothing stores to find the right style.

3) We kept it casual and wedding party was small (one each). I realize it may be "Wow .. that's sooo small".. but in the end you choose the groom's eldest sister and the bride's eldest brother and that's it.

4) Have a friend officiate. Had a close friend of both of us act as officiant for the wedding.

5) Cut the limo. We decided.. since it was a June wedding, it's nice weather, we hired bicycle cabs. Just one actually, and told the guy tell his friends since there are 80 people who'd like to site see. So there were a bunch of bikes for all the guests

6) If outdoor wedding, hold it at a public park. Because public parks are owned by tax payers, you can get a really good discount on a very scenic outdoor area. They do have restrictions, but quite reasonable, usually. Our license to do this cost us $25 for the entire afternoon. Then, if it rains, and you need to move, you don't lost piles of money. All you have to do is contact city hall or parks and rec for the area.

7) Buy own alcohol and bring to reception. We purchased our own champagne and other alcohol so we wouldn't pay the restaurant prices.

8) Ask friends to volunteer. Ideally, you should get a little gift for them, but you'll find people are more then willing to help out. Have your friends use their strengths that would be well suited to the tasks at hand.

In the end, the wedding was ours and ours alone. Our parents were there, yes, but the wedding is our memory so we wouldn't let them take over (hehehe).

Even this is spending way too much on a wedding. If you truly want to do it right, just go to city hall and get married then have all your friends over for hot dogs and burgers on the grill. Its very inexpensive and you can save all the money that you wouldve blown on a big extravagant event that accomplishes the same thing anyway and use it for a down payment on a house or something

Great, now I just someone to marry.

@linbey: Not everyone is like you. Some people want a nice wedding.

My family lives 1300 miles away from me and my boyfriend, so if we do get married, there is probably no way in hell we can pay for a traditional wedding if we're paying for plane tickets or whatever. I think we're both comfortable with the idea of signing off on a sheet of paper and exchanging rings.

Although... @MonkeyMonk, the boyfriend loves Italy, so your idea sounds PERFECT. Our families might be bummed, but we could always have a (cheap) wedding reception after the fact!

I originally wanted the backyard BBQ for a wedding. But the wife wanted something different, and the parents, who are status-seekers, wanted to have a "nice" (mom's words) wedding.

So we bowed to their wishes, but did it their way. My bride is one of the few who walked down the aisle to music from "Battlestar Galactica".

No wedding favors. We gave away small magnets which we lovingly made by hand, but 15 years down the line I look back and think "who cared?" Worse yet are sending small portraits of the bride and groom out with the thank-you notes. Your co-worker likes you and hopes you have a long and happy life together, but she doesn't need a 2x3 print of the two of you.

@BuddyGuyMontag: but isn't the whole point that it's their day? If they want to get married at 2:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, it's their thing. The people that truly want to be there will figure out a way.

@Kaj: Maybe people should get married at a secret location leaving only a series of clues, after all if people want to be there they will figure it out right.

/sarcasm off

Venue, flowers, food, decorations, DJs, all that stuff eats through a budget in no time. My wedding was just over $3000, including engagement ring and wedding bands. Venue was at a bed and breakfast (Battle Island Inn in Oswego NY) which had a wedding package including a two night stay at the B-n-B. The wedding was an early afternoon/evening affair on a Wedensday (the Mother-In-Law's birthday, so everyone already had the day off anyway.) Venue, about $750 for both ceremony and reception. Food was $14 a person for heavy finger foods (can't spell the french word for it) totalling about $260 plus tax. Alcohol was BYOB. We went with homemade silk flowers for the bouquets and boutiners, about $60. Wedding dress was ordered from David's Bridal online (went into the store, got sized, ended up finding the exact same dress online for about 60% less and wasn't required to buy all the extras at inflated prices.) Dress, $210. I wore my mess dress uniform, so no money on my side for that. Her engagement ring was custom made for $400 (she chose a garnet solitare instead of a diamond.) Wedding bands were about $500, $420 for hers in gold and about $60 for mine (tungsten carbide.) We left a few dozen cameras laying about (all digital) for the guests to use and ended up cherry picking about 100 outstanding pics (out of about a thousand) for our album. Photos, about $100 in printing costs. The remainder was taxes, fees, travel expenses etc. Lovely wedding, great fun.

With the bigger weddings ($50k or more) it's less about the wedding, and more about showing off. Screw that. If you've got the money to throw a 1000 guest party, then spend it. If not, do like Rando says and have a small ceremony or have a judge do it.

I agree, if you want a big fancy wedding have one. If I was just at a big wedding that probably cost 100k+. I was also at one the next week that probably cost 10k. Both were nice and fun.

After my own wedding which was more than 10k but still closer to the low end of the scale.

It sounds bad but my proiorites are:

1)Some form of open bar(this can be a formal bar or a kegerator with a pretty ribbon on it)

2)Good entertainment(can be a live band, an ipod, or a dumb slideshow, or anything else)

After that it is whatever makes the bride and groom happy.

"Get a life and live it, loser"
-Joe Queer

What me & the wife did:

We bought blank invitations at a craft store for $20 and printed them at home on the ol' inkjet. (They were on clearance.)

No flowers except a simple bridal bouquet.

No DJ or band. My old boss at a music equipment shop gave me a free PA rental ($50) as a wedding gift. Laptop + iTunes FTW.

No tuxes, gowns, limos. No wedding party at all, in fact.

Our "favors" (IMO the coolest part), if you wanna call them that, consisted of Hershey Kisses in small, red plastic Chinese take-out boxes. Less than $150 for everything, and an evening's worth of work.

No photographer. As part of our wedding budget we bought a nice DV camera and had my wife's teenage brother do most of the filming. All of our friends sent us their digital pictures and DVDs a couple of weeks later. We still have the camera and have used it quite a bit in the last 3 years.

My wife's wedding gown was actually a bridesmaid's dress ($150). (It was available in white, but that's boring, so she got it in RED.) I wore a black double-breasted suit I bought at Men's Wearhouse ($300). Our wedding rings came from TitaniumStyle.com and were not expensive.

The bulk of our total expenditure went to food for 150+ people...and the bar tab ($3000 alone).

We came in just shy of $10,000 for venue, ceremony, dress, suit, music, food, open bar, favors, invitations, hotels for a few family members, parking, and and a couple of hired hands to help us clean up at the end of the day.

PS: Our venue was an art gallery.

I'm all for having a party and celebrating with friends and family that you love someone, but beyond that, weddings are SO irritating and overrated! All the formalities and the ridiculous money spent (buy a house instead!), not to mention all that bridezilla foolishness, is just WAY over the top.

Have a party with your favorite people, keep it simple, and try to let go of all that "is my wedding invitation, dress, flowers etc. perfect? crap." What does having the perfect, big, expensive showing-off wedding really have to do with spending the rest of your lives together anyway?

PPS: I forgot to mention...my wife walked down the aisle to Brian May's wedding march from Flash Gordon.

8) Screw everything else, pay for Round trip travel to vegas for 50 at a real church (which can still do instant weddings). Good, non-cheesy, cheap.

@Rando: Weddings are the biggest waste of money. I'm down with signing a piece of paper and calling it a day.

I'm half with you on that. I'm quite religious so it'd have to be with a minister if in the odd chance I ever get married but if I do I can't see spending more than a few hundred on everything.

Honestly, you don't need the elegance of Versailles at a wedding. I mean, if you want to be Marie Antoinette then expect to have your financial head chopped off with the bills for what amounts to one day where 90% of the people are bored out their minds or getting trashed.

@linbey:
Sounds like a plan to me. My best friend did that and his marriage didn't last that long so he wasn't out all that unnecessary expense.

By the way, the biggest waste of money: the wedding ring!

We said "F--- tradition" to a certain extent. We just got married 2 months ago.

We had our ceremony at a beautiful park in Calabasas, CA for next to nothing. Rented chairs and an archway. Very brief, very nice. No maid of honor or best man, so saved on clothing there. I rented mine and our ringbearer's tuxes, and her dress was a clearance sale piece online ($70), which her mother did minor tailoring on for free.

Our reception was at the Calabasas Community Center. It wasn't dirt cheap, but wasn't ridiculous either, and we had a HUGE room, with tables and chairs arranged, all evening. Dinner was a fully-loaded taco bar, which overfed 100-odd people for about $700. Instead of a cake, we had monogrammed cupcakes for a few hundred from a really good bakery.

Her family bought the liquor, we printed the invites ourselves on her Gocco press, I got the rings at cost since I work in that industry, and my friend did the photography for peanuts since he's a professional.

It's all about finding out what resources you do have available, and allocating money to what you need to buy / rent.

@enriquez the water bottle: "since he's a professional"

Not really how I wanted that to come out. I meant that it was OK to use my friend, since he's a professional. The peanuts thing was a bonus.

We did the Sunday afternoon wedding route, early enough in the afternoon that our friends from New York, Connecticut, Virginia, and DC could come and go home within a day. The same meals on Sunday afternoon cost $13-15 less PER PERSON than Saturday night! Ceremony was at 3:00, cocktail hour at 3:30, reception started at 4:30 and was over almost 9:00 pm. We also got married at a Hyatt, and used the points from the loyalty program to pay for our night in Honolulu before sailing out on our honeymoon.

I've been to a million weddings -- big family -- and I've noticed that buffets that are catered are the best value. People may say they want beef 6 months in advance, but when the time comes and that chicken looks better... You're paying so much for food, and usually with a sit-down dinner, people don't clear their plates. With a buffet, they get what they want and usually enjoy eating it more. Also, you have more options if you cater, which can save you money, and you can probably take the leftovers home or distribute them, so there isn't waste.

Also, don't get any place setting favors that have your names on them. No one wants a shot glass or champagne flute with "Katie and Jason [date]" on it. People will leave them behind and you'll be stuck with these ugly things you don't want and can't unload. Get something creative and functional. Good things I've seen are coasters with the Love statue in philly on, pretty maracas for a Mexico destination wedding, playing cards with the sports team the couple was passionate about, and the always welcome tulle bag of mints.

It's somewhat sad to read the comments under this post. A few of my relatives recently got married and chose to spend much greater sums than $10,000 for the wedding and ceremony of their choice. However, don't get confused - the ceremony itself was simple and cheap. Rent a church, find a priest, get a tux and gown, flowers, photos, etc. It can come far under the $10,000 mark. The real cost is in the reception. The reception is much more about celebrating the occasion with friends and family than in serving any real puspose. Wedding where the reception is skimped on the save money tend to become less than memorable. If you want to think with your wallet and not your heart, then cut out the reception and simply get it done and over with. But then again, people tend to enjoy having memories of one of the landmark moments of their lives. Unless you plan on divorcing and remarrying every few years, in which case feel free to make each wedding as cheap a possible, I don't think it's necessary to try to cut the cost down under $10,000. It really depends on where you live, but I know from experience that trying to cut wedding costs down below $30,000 is a nightmare in the Greater New York region. However, a fair amount of the cost can easily be recovered in gifts.

Two more things:

1) My cousin's December wedding had ornaments as the favors. So many people left theirs behind. I decided to do Lindt truffles in red & gold foil (wedding colors) as my favors. Sure enough, NO ONE left theirs behind, and they weren't that expensive!

2) Spend money on flowers. They show up in all the pictures (your guests too). We had two big floral arrangements for our "altar" space during the ceremony, then they were moved behind our sweetheart table during the reception. Ask what can be done with seasonal flowers whenever you're getting married. That will bring down expenses. My cousin's wedding had TONS of red roses, in December, in the Northeast. I shudder to think what that cost!

"Even this is spending way too much on a wedding. If you truly want to do it right, just go to city hall and get married then have all your friends over for hot dogs and burgers on the grill. Its very inexpensive and you can save all the money that you wouldve blown on a big extravagant event that accomplishes the same thing anyway and use it for a down payment on a house or something"

Yeah, you try floating that idea by a woman. If she's in the least bit romantic, it ain't happening.

My finacee is graduating in August, her family is gonna be here, so I suggested that once she get out of the graduation gown and into a wedding gown the same day, then we could take the honeymoon before her job started, but that idea wasn't flying.

She wanted a big fancy wedding, at Disney actually. But when we did a price check it came in at a minimum of 16k for a Thursday, weekend would have been a minimum of 25k. We ended up compromising, and as of right now it's coming it at around 11k. A smidgen more than I'd have like to spend, but it hard to do something for cheaper in Atlanta. We've got the reception site reserved, a photographer (a pro local guy who is awesome), the wedding site (our church), and she picked out a gown yesterday.

We're looking into doing invitations and such ourselves. Her mom said she'd pay for that (we're paying for around 80% of it ourselves) but I'd rather do everything I can solo and put that money toward reception costs.

Our main argument now is over a limo. I'm against having one for the 12 miles drive from the church to the reception site. She argues I'll be too tired to drive, but honestly this is a case where being cheap wins out over being tired.

Tell all this to my future mother-in-law... guh.

@Woofer00: I don't think the point is to say "Never spend more than $10k," it's more about looking at what you're spending it on before feeling you have to commit to it.

I see these comments about spending less, and they mostly seem like they still had a good time.

Watch any of those wedding shows on TLC or Style, and tell me you don't feel like gouging out your eyes in frustration at all the needless crap you see on there.

Some important things to make sure to do.

Set aside time to shop around. Word of mouth can produce better deals and rates than any wedding website of catalog ever can.

Do what you can on your own. This includes: invitations, programs, favors, and a few other necessities. Each can save thousands.

Sample everything! Food, photos, video, music, everything! No reason to hire a videographer who can't do high resolution, photographer who can't compose a picture, a DJ with bad taste, or especially food that is of subpar quality. I can't begin to count the number of times I've heard of mushy salmon, rubbery chicken, and rockhard beef. Noone wants to remember your wedding as "the time I got food poisoning"

@Paul D: Gordon's alive?!?!?!

Brilliant. As huge Queen fans, the wife and I debated doing that, but she hates "Here Comes the Bride". So we used "Wander my Friends" from Battlestar Galactica, known as the Adama family theme.

Alcohol and food should be the top funding priority of anyone planning a wedding.

@enriquez the water bottle: I don't disagree at all. But when you lose touch with reality and try to cut corners in too many places, it ends up being that the details make the entire cost of the reception a waste.

A couple examples: renting the smaller cocktail room to save a thousand dollars, but your guests have nowhere to sit or stand. Printing your own invitations to save money but using a poor quality ink that bleeds so bad you can't read the directions. Renting a church that echoes so much the priest's speech is unintelligible. Finding a church and reception hall that are over an hour apart, not even accounting for traffic.

@Woofer00: Of course. I fully agree.

@Rando: We did courthouse + a dinky lawyer's office, but we're still going to do *some* sort of ceremony.

We did it mostly because of benefits and stuff, but I'm glad we did. Splitting the marriage and the ceremony gives us a lot of freedom when it comes to planning. Shit, we don't even have to have a wedding per se, just a big party on the beach is fine.