Ten Genius Ways to Save Money on Your Wedding Day

Wedding days are notoriously expensive. The average wedding in the US costs a whopping $30,000! With that kind of money, you could enjoy a yearlong honeymoon traveling around the world, buy a nice new car, or even put down a deposit on a house and start your new life with a big step forward.

How to save money on your wedding

Spending a fair bit of money on your big day is inevitable – but it doesn’t have to amount to a fortune. There are some simple and yet often overlooked ways that you can make huge savings on your wedding day.

Rent a house for lodging and venue: You can rent an entire property in the off-season months and have a venue for your wedding as well as lodging for out of town guests. Obviously, whether you’d use the house as a venue or not would depend on the location and suitability of the house.

Have your reception in a restaurant: Instead of having to rent a space and then get all the catering equipment, dining clothes, staff, and everything else into the site – which costs a fortune – just have your reception in a restaurant. All of the stuff you need is already there and it means the restaurant gets a guaranteed booked-out night in the off-season. You can put money behind the bar and enjoy a night of celebration without even having to worry about the cleanup.

Get creative with the food: Instead of having a sit-down dinner, try just having a buffet with a hog-roast and a cheese board for dessert. This can actually save you tons of money and its way less hassle. It also means that you don’t need to hire as many catering staff.

Don’t overdo it with the drinks: Drinks are the thing that’s going to end up setting you back a lot. The average wedding reception spends $2,500 on alcohol. Try getting a couple of kegs of local beer and a couple of bottles of wine for each table and then have a cocktail bartender for a pre-paid fee.

Get married outdoors: Finding private land to get married on can save you a lot of money. On top of that, the outdoor setting means that expensive flower arrangements and decorations aren’t necessary. Getting married in a scenic outdoor location with a gorgeous backdrop can actually be a lot more memorable than a reception hall.

Skip the flowers altogether: Literally no one is going to miss them. No one cares about flowers when there’s wine on the table.

Get friends to help: Rather than hiring a professional band, DJ, and photographer, just get a friend to do it at a discount rate and assure them that they don’t have to buy you a wedding gift in return. Simple. It’s better to give your friends some work anyway, right?

Go local: Use local businesses – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because you can negotiate some better deals and build relationships with people in your area.

Don’t get a ‘wedding’ dress: If you’re willing to skip out on the Disney-puked fairytale wedding, then you could save thousands of dollars by simply not getting a wedding dress. Buy a $500 designer dress that you’ll wear 50 more times, rather than a $3,000 wedding dress that you’ll wear once then hold onto for the rest of your life like a weird hoarder.

Fake the cake: Get a local baker to make a cardboard cake with a small cake on top that can be cut. This keeps the cutting ceremony but skips the $500 cake. No one cares about wedding cake, anyway. You can always spend $50 on cakes in the grocery store and put those on the tables – it’ll be appreciated just as much and possibly even more in today’s anti-sugar age!

With the thousands of dollars that you’ll save on your wedding day, you can focus more on having a blowout honeymoon. Spend a week in one of the most gorgeous hotels in the world without having to worry about your budget.