Congratulations on setting a wedding date! Isn't it wonderful how much advice you can get from BB! Seriously!

I was married just over a month ago and I have a few pointers to keep the cost down, and I'm sorry if I repeat other things people have written here, I haven't read every post. Just keen to share my 'expert' advice! :P

DH and I paid for our wedding completely on our own, and we needed to be careful about cost, as we were also going through IVF and we're moving overseas shortly.

Try and get as many people you and DF know involved in helping you. It is a wonderful feeling to have friends and family involved in getting things organised, and it's their opportunity to offer a special gift for your wedding. Even people your friends and family know can help by being prepared to offer you a discount for a referral etc.

Prior to that, DH and I decided on the things that were really important to us and that we were prepared to spend money on. This was having live music during the ceremony and the photography, particularly. We wanted to have beautiful photos. The other was choosing a venue that really suited us and reflected who we were. We saved money on our perfect venue by having the ceremony and the reception at the place, and by having the wedding on a Sunday, when prices for venues are cheaper than Friday or Saturday. Even consider a mid-week wedding, especially if you know you don't want to be raving until the dawn, or your guests either!

As an example, these were the things that I myself, my friends and family did with organisation for our wedding:

~ My best friend's mother made our wedding cake. She is not a professional cake maker, but she does it as a hobby. The cake was the most exquisite thing ever, and it was her gift to us for the wedding. Do you know anyone who makes cakes?

~ I made our invites, placecards and ceremony booklets. I used materials I bought from Officeworks, which I researched as one of the cheaper places to by non-bulk invite supplies. It was a lot of fun (although time consuming), especially if you do like creative things like that. I even designed a small flower theme for all the stationary (gum leaves and gum flower) which then influenced the design of everything and even the colour theme of the wedding. It's a good place to start. Even more, I had a good friend who is very handy with Adobe Creative Suite and photoshop and helped me with the layout of everything. If you're not so keen on the creative stuff, perhaps you can find a creative friend who loves that kind of thing.

~ Our florist was a friend of the owner of our venue, and as she did it as a hobby also, we saved a great deal of money, but had beautiful flowers.

~ I researched my dress by deciding on a style from a mix of different magazine pictures. I then went a researched material costs so I could make a decision about how much on material I could afford to pay, per metre. From there I asked for a referral from the fabric shop of a private dress maker, and spoke to a few before deciding on someone who I felt comfortable with and could design my dress from a picture. I purchased my own material and she made the dress for a good cost, and it saved me a substantial amount of money compared to buying from a shop or a shop dress maker. An now I have my very own, self designed wedding dress as a keepsake!

~ I had a friend who is a beautician to give me some pointers and did my makeup myself on the day. If you are clear and confident about how you want to look, then there is actually less stress involved in doing your own makeup instead of letting someone do something that you might not like.

~ I had another friend who was a hairdresser in her previous career and she did my hair for nothing on the day.

~ DH wore his only black suit - we just spruced him up with a tie made from left over fabric from the dress, a new shirt and shoes and a kerchief as well as a buttonhole on the day. I worried it might be a bit informal, but he looked so good, and even our best man wore his own suit, and a hired tie and kerchief. You can't go wrong with the men wearing plain black suits with nice accessories. It does work beautifully, as is just as formal as hired suits.

~ Our bridesmaid (DH's sister) paid for everything herself, and we bought her a lovely present to say thank you. You could do exactly the same for multiple bridesmaids.

~ We researched a number of celebrants, but ended up going with someone who I knew who was a celebrant from working with her and it was wonderful to have her involved and became good friends with her. As being a celebrant was not her full-time occupation, she was also a very reasonable price.

~ We skipped on hiring cars - really didn't think it was necessary - and I had planned on being at the venue early and just simply hiding out until it was time for my entry at the ceremony. It worked out beautifully, and saved money not to have to worry about a car that people see you in for 10 seconds. We had friends and family chauffeur us around for the day!

~ This one may be a little harder, but I decided to save money on the music at the reception as we hired a string quartet for the ceremony. I was going to pick my favourite CDs and put a play list together, and I would have been happy to do that. I ran out of time to do the playlist, so just had a bunch of CDs I was going to let someone deal with on the day, but in the end I was lucky, my muso friends decided to get things together and play live music on the night as a surprise! (I am a professional musician, so there were plenty of muso friends at the wedding!) But, I would have certainly have just been happy with the CDs and music that DH and I love, even for dancing!

~ We asked guests to contribute to our honeymoon instead of a gift registry, as this allowed to have a lovely honeymoon even though we were paying from the wedding directly before that.


Our wedding wasn't big - we had 70 guests, but asking as many people as we could "do you know of someone...?" helped us save a great deal of money, even though it took time and effort. The effort was soooo worth it as we felt we had a really personalised our wedding and made the best we could with our budget. I know I've blah-ed here and told a lot of my personal story (sorry! ), but I hope it helps you to know that there is always a way to have the perfect wedding and save a lot of money.

I hope you have a wonderful time preparing for the big day!


Miss C