Wedding Budget: 5 Big Ways to Save & Splurge

After multiple postponements, I had my dream wedding at Atalaya Castle in Murrells Inlet, SC. I talked about it a little bit in my Double Wedding Recap if you want to read about our elopement and wedding there. I’m so glad we finally had our celebration, but lets be real – weddings can be so expensive and it is hard to know what to splurge on and what to save on to stay within a wedding budget.

When it came down to our wedding, I knew I needed bougie on a budget. I was willing to splurge on some things but to do that I really needed to save in others to stay within my budget. I want to share a few things we did in budgeting for our wedding. Hopefully this can help you if you’re wondering about other experiences!

What We Saved On in our Wedding Budget

Not all aspects of a wedding have to be expensive. We found ways to do things ourselves and to cut costs without reducing quality. Here are my top five items for areas we saved money on for our wedding.

1. Invites & Save The Dates

Hart’s dad is a graphic designer so Hart always knew he wanted his dad to do our stationary. I shared some ideas of what I liked based on Pinterest saves and he made it happen. It would have been great to have handwritten envelopes to go with it and I know a phenomenal calligraphist (@katiefaikes) but given that we live in Chicago away from her, I decided to do the envelopes ourselves as well. I used a basic printer and Templett.com to print the addressing at home. It was so easy and honestly looked really good. I would do this again.

2. DIY Wedding Signs

I think wedding signs can really help make the look of your wedding, but they’re just signs. I mean, are you really going to keep them after your wedding? Probably not. Because of this, I didn’t want signage to take up too much of the wedding budget. I loved the acrylic wedding sign look, but I quickly learned that look can add up fast.

Luckily, this was another area where I could use my own connections. My dad is a screen printer and was able to print onto clear acrylic frames for us. I ordered stands for them on Amazon for cheap. He supplied the acrylic panes the signs were printed on, but these are great options to buy otherwise. The signs wouldn’t have been feasible without having my dad to help. I tried to use my Cricut, but the small print was tedious to cut vinyl for. For my welcome sign, I printed a design on poster board through Walgreens for super cheap!

For our rehearsal dinner, I ordered these hexagon acrylic frames and stands then used my Cricut to create vinyl place cards. The font was a little bigger and it was easier to build out than the wedding menu signs. For the menu, I printed my design through Office Max.

PRO TIP: I found that no one cared about the name cards and signs with the exception of me. And no one kept their acrylic place card from the rehearsal dinner. If you’re looking to save time and money, you could do print-outs and they’d look just as good.

3. Buying Our Own Alcohol

I’m not sure how much it would cost to buy alcohol through a vendor because I never even called a full-bar vendor. It felt like buying it myself would just be easier and more cost effective. Plus, I knew that alcohol could really make or break our wedding budget. Ultimately, we used bartenders from our caterer and then supplied our own alcohol. I ended up buying it from Costco and Total Wine.

For liquor, we did just one signature drink – an apple cider Moscow mule. We bought the Kirkland French Vodka from Costco for super cheaper compared to it’s sister liquor, Grey Goose. The rest of our alcohol was wine, beer and hard seltzers. The hard seltzers were the most popular by far.

PRO TIP: After the wedding, we were able to return unopened wine to Total Wine which was great. You’d have to check your own state laws, but it’s allowed in South Carolina. We ended up keeping the leftover alcohol we bought from Costco though.

4. Wedding Favors

I feel like wedding favors are one of those things where people either splurge on or spend practically nothing on. I felt pretty indifferent about favors and wasn’t even sure if I wanted to have any if they weren’t practical. We ultimately decided on doing seed packets that say “let love grow. ” I ordered envelopes and wild flower seeds on Amazon along with a stamp on Etsy then made them myself. I made these leading up to our June 6th wedding day and then sat on them until our postponed wedding. By the time our second wedding approached, I wanted to add in koozies. We had the script Hart’s dad did for our invites for one side and then I asked his talented brother to draw our dog for the other side. These were perfect!

5. Rehearsal Dinner

I wanted to use most of our wedding budget for our wedding day, so we opted for a small, intimate rehearsal dinner at a low-key restaurant. The room was a bit tight for our group because we have a large immediate family; but I loved how easy it felt. It made for low-stress night and gave us the chance to spend more time with family before the wedding.

PRO TIP: Make sure you go see the location in person and try all of the dishes. We didn’t do this for our rehearsal dinner and while I still loved the low-key atmosphere, I wished I had really tried a few places out first.

What We Splurged On in Our Wedding Budget

We saved a ton of money on our wedding by doing things ourselves and asking our family members for help, but we also splurged on some items to make it all come together. These are my top 5 favorite splurges for our wedding.

1. Wedding Planner

Wedding Planners are not cheap, but man are they worth it. Our wedding planner helped us pick out vendors, negotiate better prices and design the layout for our wedding. The team swooped in and saved the day when the pandemic happened. We had to pick a new date that worked for all of our vendors twice and our wedding planners handled the entire thing. It made navigating a wedding during the pandemic so much less stressful. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have to handle that on my own even just one time.

I’ll talk about this a little more below, but a cold front came in the week of our wedding and the temperatures were way too cold for our outdoor wedding. The night before Thanksgiving, Sara, our wedding planner, moved mountains to get us what we needed to make sure our day went off without a hitch. We used Stunning and Brilliant Events as our planner.

2. Videographer

A few of our friends recommended we get a videographer for the wedding after wishing they had done it themselves. I always knew I’d love to have videography so this nudge helped us decide to splurge on it. I knew we needed to include one in the budget for our wedding day. We have absolutely zero regrets on this. It was so nice to have someone capturing all of the moments. A picture is worth a thousand words, but being able to hear the sounds and words of special moments is priceless. We are still waiting on full video, but the teaser can be watched on my Instagram here.

3. Light Night Snacks

Alright, hear me out – what does everyone want to do after drinking and dancing the night away? Eat! We had passed hors d’oeuvre with mini chicken and waffles come around an hour before the reception ended. It was a hit. Everyone was eager to eat something and by that point, our wedding was less crowded so it gave me a chance to be able to eat something too. Hart and I had food brought to us before we entered the reception, but I was too excited to eat so I loved having the chicken and waffles available.

PRO TIP: We ordered less for our late night snacks compared to the appetizers for the cocktail hour because we knew not everyone would stick around. This helped us save money and stay within our wedding budget and probably helped save a few of our guests from a massive hangover.

4. Neon Sign

Everyone loves a good photo opportunity backdrop at a wedding. Something personalized, yet not cliche. I love a good photo backdrop that can be re-used after the wedding. A personalized neon sign checked both of those boxes. I bought and customized ours from this Etsy Shop. It was super easy to do. The hard part was committing to the purchase. It was something I knew I wanted, but I also had a hard time hitting “purchase” because of the expense.

What got me there was knowing I wanted to re-use the sign in our home after the wedding. It was a wedding and a home décor item. A ton of people got photos under just like we wanted and now it sits above our kitchen table.

5. Last Minute Floral Additions

We had a game-time decision splurge that I am so grateful for. We were initially set to have our wedding in June 2020, but with the pandemic and postponements, we ended up having the celebration in November 2021. This means our outdoor wedding just got more complicated due to switching seasons. South Carolina weather can be so unpredictable. In 2020, we enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner outside because it was so nice out. In 2021, the weather was nice leading up to our wedding, but then the temperatures completely dropped. It was so cold!

In order to combat the cold and make sure our guests didn’t want to abruptly leave after the ceremony, we needed to get a tent with heaters. I was DISTRAUGHT. You would have thought we were postponing the wedding again at the tears. It took me a long time to get on board with having a tent because I didn’t want it to take away from the *~vibe~* I was looking for and at the same time, I also didn’t want miserable guests.

Luckily, my wedding planner saved the day with making it want I wanted, but it cost us a pretty penny. We ended up getting clear wall sidings for the tent and ordering extra greenery to drape across the top. It was gorgeous! It wasn’t what I initially envisioned and that’s okay. The tent made it feel so intimate and I couldn’t have imagined a better setting.

What I Would Do Differently

I absolutely loved our wedding – it was such a cool experience to be able to elope and also have a big celebration. All of the vendors, the food and the atmosphere were amazing; but there are a few things about the process that I wished we had done differently.

1. Engagement Photos

We never took engagement photos in the traditional sense. Hart hired a photographer for our proposal that snapped a few photos of just us, but it wasn’t a full shoot. It was mostly to capture the actual proposal. I was happy with those and felt like having a separate engagement shoot was excessive and expensive so we skipped it. We ended up having a friend take a few shots of us around Lincoln Park and then used a photo from that for our save the dates.

Our save the dates were fine and the photos were great, but it still would have been nice to have a full shoot for that. If I could go back, I’d have spent a little bit more to have them done.

NOTE: A lot of photographers offer an engagement shoot in their wedding package, but given that we were getting married out of state that didn’t work out for us.

2. Bridal Party Outfits

I loved our bridal party outfits. We used Bella Bridesmaids for the bridesmaid dresses and The Black Tux for the groomsmen suits. For the bridesmaid dresses, I chose a color and they chose a dress style of their choosing. I went with Bella Bridesmaids because there was a location in every city where my bridesmaids live. Hart also liked that there were brick and mortar locations of The Black Tux in all major cities.

However, they weren’t the cheapest options. The guys complained that the shoes were uncomfortable and my girls’ dresses could have been more affordable. If we could do it again, Hart says he’d let the guys wear whatever brown shoes they wanted rather than ordering them through Black Tux. I would let the girls choose a few different color dresses in the style that they liked. Lulus has a ton of bridesmaid dresses that are just as nice and a lot more affordable.

I hope you found this useful! I’d love to hear what you splurged and saved on for your wedding and if you’d do anything differently the next time around. Let me know if you’d like a more in-depth review of how we DIYed different aspects of our wedding.