How I Saved $15,000 on My Wedding - And How You Can Save Money on Yours

Planning a wedding in small-town Sweden is not an easy task. While there are some vendors available, there aren't many vendors which specifically cater to weddings This means you don't get to be very choosy in terms of price or quality. My wedding budget was only $10,000, which made it even more difficult. Small towns notoriously have larger price tags for local businesses. While that may seem like a lot of money to some, considering my dress alone was going to be $1200, there wasn't very much room for the other parts; like new wedding shoes and a tiara. In order to remain in my wedding budget, I thought had to cut significant costs on a lot of the ideas I had planned. I also thought I wasn't going to have any of the things I dreamed about. I was very wrong. It's amazing what you can do to save money, when you have no other choice.

I was forced to re-examine my wedding budget, and I realized the ideas for my reception could be accomplished, if I was willing to do the handiwork myself. My colors were black-and-white, so I began my research for linens in black-and-white. It turns out this small-town has a lot of options available for renting linens, however, costs were something where there weren't a lot of available differences. When I sat down to think about how important the material of table cloths and napkins were, I realized I had more options than I thought. While someone reading this may cringe at the thought, I actually ended up using white cotton sheets as tablecloths. In order to make these sheets look presentable as tablecloths, I also bought black cotton sheets and made runners for the center of the tables out of that cloth. These little tricks saved about $75 per table (10 tables, you do the math =)). I spent a couple of days scouting around the Internet for different centerpiece ideas, and finally decided on candles and vases with Calla Lilies. My fiancé and I then began to research different places to buy the vases, and candles. After few weeks of researching, we ended up saving about $100 total. A couple of hours a week researching, for $100 savings, was well worth the time, in my opinion..

Through the research for my other projects for the wedding, I found many other discounts. For example; I bought tulle in bulk for decorating the chairs. I found flowers wholesale from a local small business owner who appreciated the bulk business, which usually went to his competitor. Instead of buying my dress at the first few vendors I looked at, I enlisted the aid of my bridesmaids and together we looked through hundreds of websites. In the end that few hours of time saved me $400 on the dress.

It's been these countless hours of research into the wedding decorations and dress, among other things, that brought me from a $25,000 budget down to approximately $10,000. If you're willing to spend the time and really research each aspect of your wedding, you will save thousands of dollars. Your budget is in your hands.