Love Sick: I Do

Our blog friend Life2pointoh!, recently posted a diagram that detailed the average cost of a wedding in the U.S., breaking down the average price for each service typically needed for a wedding.  I was astonished by the grand total, a whopping $27,000!

Only being 22 and no where near being engaged, weddings are not something that I think about often. However, I can’t help but notice that all of a sudden, many people I went to high school with are getting engaged and planning their weddings. Besides totally freaking me out, I also wonder how these recent college grads are paying for their weddings. I’m sure they get help from their parents, but I doubt any of them are near the 27K price tag.

So in honor of those who are soon to be married, I’ve come up with a five tips on how to cut costs at the chapel.

1) Don’t hire a DJ (avg. cost $900). Not only are they overly expensive, but DJ’s also kind of suck. I went to a wedding a few months ago and the DJ was playing music that I hadn’t heard since high school. I had promised myself that I would never resort to having to listen to the Cha Cha Slide post prom. But little did I know, wedding DJ’s are a huge fan of this song and every other song that has a choreographed dance. You could get a live band instead except the average price for them is more than triple the cost of a DJ. And they will probably just play shitty cover songs all night anyways. Instead, get together with your fiance and create an iPod playlist of all your favorite songs together and rent some speakers for the big day. Not only will it personalize your wedding, but it will ensure that everyone will not be forced to ride the train, cha cha ride it.

2) Enlist the help of your friends and friends of friends. More likely than not, you know someone who is into photography, baking, playing music, has been ordained. Instead of paying a stranger to take your wedding photos, ask your photography friend to do it for you. If you guys are good friends, they will probably even do it for free as a wedding gift to you. Same goes for finding someone to bake the wedding cake, or finding someone to marry you. And if you have a friend in a decent band, they can play at your wedding and sell their albums there, benefiting the both of you.

3) Don’t invite everyone you know. I know it’s hard to cut down the list of people who you want to celebrate the most important day of your life with, but the more people invited, the more expensive the wedding will be. You will be expected to have enough space to fit everyone, enough chairs for everyone to sit in, enough food/alcohol for everyone to drink, a big enough cake to get everyone a slice and to have enough party favors for everyone to bring home. That ends up adding up to a lot of money. Now do you want to invite your second cousins you haven’t seen in years? Keep the invite list down to those you are regularly in contact with and truly, deeply care about. If anyone gets offended about not having an invite, be honest. Tell them you had to keep the wedding small to save on money. If they don’t understand, well that’s exactly why you’re not inviting them to the wedding.

4) Create the invitations yourself. Yes it will take a long time, and yes you might get carpal tunnel, but it will save you tons of money on something that most people will probably just throw into the trash.

5) Instead of having people buying you wedding gifts from a registry, request cash. It will save your guests a trip to the store and it will save you from getting two of the same blenders that you’ll never use. Instead, you can use the cash to help pay off your wedding, or even better, use the money to pay for a legit honeymoon. Wedding gifts are usually home items that you and your honey can accrue over time on your own. And they will be a lot easier to obtain if you aren’t paying off your wedding for ten years.

Do you have any tips on how to save money on your wedding? Write them in the comments section below!