Most recently I met with the crew of BFC and got to thinking about what else I had to offer future brides. I’m not really crafty or creative but one thing I was able to do successfully for my wedding was to save!  Below are a few “life” changes that I was able to make that really helped me meet my saving goals.

Source: www.1weddingsource.com

Giving Yourself Time to Save: I can’t say enough how nice it was to have a few extra months to save for the wedding. We ended up booking a date for our wedding that would give us 20 months to save. Although during the last few months we just wanted to get married already but having the extra time to save allowed us to add a few things to the wedding that we hadn’t originally planned.

Source: www.theweddingideasblog.co.uk

Setting Goals:  The biggest part of paying for your own wedding is that you actually get to work towards goals with your future spouse. After our engagement we decided to sit down and put together a financial plan. We noted each other’s debt, school loans, house payments, car payments etc. and came up with a set amount to contribute each month to our “wedding fund.” Over the course of our engagement there were a few times we needed to dip into the fund to cover something but we always made sure that we put it back in the following month. I think this was a great way to practice for marriage!!!

Source: www.nationalweddingshow.co.uk/

Prioritizing: If my husband had his wish we would have had a 300 person wedding. We each prioritized our guest lists and figured out a cost per person and decided what was within our budget to have. We ended up having a goal of 150 people and had it in a venue that only held up 160 people. There is nothing worse that having a wedding with a lot of empty space!

Source: www.tent-rental-chicago.com

Be Open to Options: Even though I wanted to get married in a church, deciding to have your ceremony and reception in the same location cuts back on a lot of costs including flowers, transportation and of course any site fees. I started seeing some amazing tent wedding photos throughout my planning process and really wish I had considered it earlier on in my planning. I wanted to have a relaxed wedding but nothing too simple and had originally shied away from something like this. If I had decided to go with a tent I could have paid much less for a place to have the wedding or even had it at a family member’s home. A bride can really have the wedding of her dreams in some of the modern tents that a lot of party rental companies are able to provide.

Cutting Back:  Both my fiancé and I made sacrifices for the wedding that we agreed on. One that was controversial (but necessary in our case) was moving in together. My rent payment was part of my wedding fund contribution each month. We also made a decision that we would not make any big purchases and not do unnecessary travel. We also ended up combining our cell phones to a shared plan as well as our gym memberships. Those two things alone saved us $200 a month! A few of the smaller things I did was to cook more (no more eating out!), do my own manicures and pedicures, pluck instead of wax and buy clothes on sale (small things but they helped)

Did anyone else end up paying for their own wedding? What did you cut back on to achieve your saving goals?