Wedding are fucking expensive! How'd you do it?

[Bobcat Sig]

For the handful of you that know me outside of TGR know that I'm recently engaged. Woo! She's pretty awesome, but more on that later.

We now have the pleasure of bankrolling our own wedding. And by 'we', I mean me. In the month we've been engaged, the cursory research shows that paying for a decent location, food and booze is astoundingly expensive. Since I'm not a fucking dentist, shelling out five figures isn't something I really want to do.

For those of you that paid your own way; how'd you do it? What would you have done different? Should we just say fuck it and elope in Whistler while skiing for a week?

[54-46]

Elope and have only immediate family join.
Invite fewer people.
Have reception at someone's home.
Have AM wedding and serve lunch, not dinner, and people will probably drink less.
Organize groups within invitees and have them take care of favors and flowers.
Forego video
Etc...

[SB]

PM BS

[PNWbrit]

something I really want to do.

It aint about what you want....

Weddings make women go crazy.

[glademaster]

Yes they are. Your problem is the delusional desire to get married to a woman who is going to want to claim all of your shit as her own after she's sucked your bank accounts dry and realizes she can do better.

[Bobcat Sig]

Weddings make women go crazy.

Ain't that the truth. The wedding industry has wisely exploited and profited from it.

But let me be clear; I'm excited as all get out to be married to this women.

[hawkgt]

pretty much self funded our wedding.... little help from family hear and there. it turned out great and still together many moons later.... family cooked all the food in an american legion and bought a couple kegs.

vfw or american legion are small "halls" in the US that are fairly cheap. No grand hotel or conference center, talking cheap hall with kitchen, cut the food = apps only, buy a keg or 2 / case of wine for the bar and guests pay for other drinks.

not that it matters... but in the winter of 1993 I sold my beloved 1988 Honda Hawk647 GT to fund our honeymoon in Breckenridge..... still hurts

shit.. edit: CONGRATS!!!! on getting married, wish you the best.

[Bobcat Sig]

Yes they are. Your problem is the delusional desire to get married to a woman who is going to want to claim all of your shit as her own after she's sucked your bank accounts dry and realizes she can do better.

Speaking from experience?

[thewon]

Doesn't hafta be expensive. We had a small family ceremony on the vinyard and spent 6 days there chillin out. Then a coupla months later rented out a legion hall for 150 guests had a catered pig roast, a dj and all the usual stuff added.

total cost for both was about 6k

[Peruvian]

Reset expectations.

Back yard, barn, or park. Hold a pot luck. Kegs, wine, and iced tea/lemonade. Wild flower bouquets. Have friends or family make the cake.

[butterscotch]

We agreed on what was most important and spent more on those things and cut corners on stuff we didn't care about.

If you're doing it here in Bozeman, Zac's Montana Kitchen in Livingston is really fucking good. Best food I've ever had at a wedding. Shoot me a PM if you want more info about locations and whatnot.

[irul&ublo]

I think nekkid pics are necessary to allow for an informed response

[Bobcat Sig]

Reset expectations.

Back yard, barn, or park. Hold a pot luck. Kegs, wine, and iced tea/lemonade. Wild flower bouquets. Have friends or family make the cake.

I the exact same line of thought as you did regarding venue. I thought, "Hey, a barn is cheap, right?" Nope. Nearly all here are a minimum $3k just to turn on the fucking lights. Turns out, our little valley is a destination wedding location. Fuck.

We are looking into your other suggestions.

We agreed on what was most important and spent more on those things and cut corners on stuff we didn't care about.

If you're doing it here in Bozeman, Zac's Montana Kitchen in Livingston is really fucking good. Best food I've ever had at a wedding. Shoot me a PM if you want more info about locations and whatnot.

Rad. PM incoming.

[Name Redacted]

We went to the courthouse and paid $10. Month later, we put a down payment on a house. Couldn't have done that if we had a big fancy wedding.

[Buster Highmen]

Do it yourself at a park or somebody's spread, make your own food, potluck it and have a great time.
If the little lady wrinkles up at that notion, that may be a harbinger of things to come and the reaction to such a proposal might give you good information.

We did it ourselves on some land we'd bought and threw down an awesome time.

[looseofforangejuice]

Destination weddings keep costs down as less people will make the trek

National/state parks can be cheap venues

Friend did low-budget wedding - had it at folks' house, his Mom grew wild flowers for the arrangements, we cooked all the food, other people pitched in, bought booze and kegs ourselves, etc.

If you can find a cheap venue that is covered, that is half the battle. You can do a lot of the other stuff yourself

[Bobcat Sig]

If the little lady wrinkles up at that notion, that may be a harbinger of things to come and the reaction to such a proposal might give you good information.

This is why I'm the lucky one; she suggested eloping in Whistler over her spring break (she's a teacher.) I think I'm good there.

[stuckathuntermtn]

That's a keeper for sure

[jma233]

+1 on the eloping. Seems like a no-brainer if she's cool with it.

[brice618]

I hauled everyone I love up to the middle of no-where Utah, setup a camp site for them all, made them dinner, and got hitched. It was a lot of work, but totally worth it. Most everything was done by us and family members so it wasn't terribly expensive.

Weddings don't have to be expensive but know that flowers are really expensive. We bought wholesale and the ladies of the family did all the arrangements the day before. Still expensive, easily the biggest single ticker thing we bought. I spent maybe 400 bucks on food for 70, but I made everything (had some help day of to tend the dutch ovens and paid them a couple hundred bucks). Made my own PA sound system that ran on a car battery, borrowed a buddies LED light setup for dancing and light to hang out by.





I tried to convince her to elope, we were less than an hour from Reno when we got engaged, but she wasn't having any of that.

[Bunion 2020]

The Community Center in Emmigrant MT can be had for 100.00 buck for the night, just a few miles from Chico, beautiful location...

BTW Congrats.....

[TAFKALVS]

We kept it cheap:
Invited small group of people and had it be a destination. Ended up with 20 or so people.
Held Wedding on National Forest land in a meadow. $Free
Invited friends to bring their own cameras. $free
Picnic style lunch we provided. $200
Booze from Costco. $150
Held the wedding in early May which meant paying off-season rates for our honeymoon. ~$600
Held reception for extended Family and more distant friends, potluck/byob style at a Grange.~$300
Brought in about $2000 in gift cards and cash from wedding gifts.

So in a way we broke even or maybe even made a little money after you consider fuel, wedding dress, suit for me and all the miscellaneous stuff.

I'm glad I married a pragmatic accountant woman.

[dtown]

If you do it in a traditional type venue you have to pay for and your friends are anything like mine, don't have an open bar. Easily adds a few grand and your friends will pay for drinks. We skipped the open bar so we could get the food we wanted/ could afford. Seems cheap but all about what's important to you two.

[MontuckyFried]

There are plenty of ways to minimize the costs. We got married at Chico Hot Springs which is an amazing venue, but a couple of key things. With you timing it over spring break that helps as venues are cheaper than in the summer. We did a mid-afternoon wedding, so that way it was perfectly acceptable to serve just appetizers. We did open bar, but it ended up not costing us much at all. We kept it pretty small. Just our immediate family, closest friends, and church friends. Scheduling on a Thursday also helped keep the guest list to a minimum and the cost of the venue down. Maybe that wasn't cool of us, but whatever. We were on a budget! Everybody who we really cared about came anyway. For all the ceremony music, I hooked up my iPod with a set list to their PA system. Worked great and was easy. For reception entertainment, we actually hired this jazz band out of Bozeman who was comprised of a bunch of high school girls who were somehow involved with the MSU music program and let me tell you...they were freaking good! Also, cost like $50 and they were super stoked to have a "gig." We tipped them greatly with all the loot we saved from not having some silly DJ. After they wrapped up, I just threw the iPod back up to my stereo setup which I lugged from home. Sounded great and was free. Everybody then retired to the pool for apres drinks and partying. Good times were had by all.

All in all, I think our wedding set us back a few grand including the dress, hotel stays for my immediate family and ourselves, food, the works. Contrary to popular opinion and bridal magazines who brainwash girls by saying "the average wedding cost like a million dollars so if you have anything less, then you must be having a crappy wedding and everybody is going to hate you forever." Screw those guys. Some of the absolute most killer weddings I've been to were practically free. Get married by JP, or have it at your church, or a friend's backyard, whatever. Have friends supply kegs, get a friend to make a cake, do the decorations yourself, buy flowers in bulk from Costco (DIRT cheap and dang nice), do a pot luck, there are TONS of options. We also decided to NOT do a bridal party and skipped all that nonsense (and costs). No butthurt either that way. Chicks ALWAYS get their feelings hurt for some reason when they're not picked or aren't the maid of honor or whatever, so wedding parties so often get out of hand huge. We figured, no bridal party, no drama, less expense, less hassle. It was great. We didn't even do a rehearsal (Thank God!). All that matters is that you and your awesome lady are getting hitched. If guests lose sight of that, then forget them. They should be stoked for you, and be down for what's simply a great party. Think of the best shindigs you ever went to that weren't wedding related. They probably didn't cost all that much. There's NO reason weddings have to cost a fortune if you get creative.

Congrats, man!!!

[muted]

We kept it cheap:
Invited small group of people and had it be a destination. Ended up with 20 or so people.
Held Wedding on National Forest land in a meadow. $Free
Invited friends to bring their own cameras. $free
Picnic style lunch we provided. $200
Booze from Costco. $150
Held the wedding in early May which meant paying off-season rates for our honeymoon. ~$600
Held reception for extended Family and more distant friends, potluck/byob style at a Grange.~$300
Brought in about $2000 in gift cards and cash from wedding gifts.

So in a way we broke even or maybe even made a little money after you consider fuel, wedding dress, suit for me and all the miscellaneous stuff.

I'm glad I married a pragmatic accountant woman.

That all sounds smart. Costco I think does cheap bulk flowers if you have to have them.

I've run into a couple renegade weddings on public land, seems easy to do. One did it at a trailhead though and I arrived right as the bride was walking. So I'm sure I'm in a bunch of their photos even though I tried to keep my head down and leave quickly to my car.

We invited very few friends and my wife had to explain to some of her friends a couple times why they weren't invited over a heartfelt glass of wine. So be ready for that. Guys, of course, don't give a shit and if they do they forget about it pretty quick, IME. I'm talking VERY few friends, basically family only. Reception for everyone back at home made up for it.