Apr 19, 2011

My "Budget" Wedding

From the very beginning, Hubby and I decided we didn’t want a big expensive wedding.  For one, it just wasn’t in our budget, and it just wasn’t “us”. We had the marriage celebrant picked out so we could have the Wedding where ever we wanted to really. We looked around at a few places and decided on the little non-denominational church set in the cute heritage village near our house. The lovely old buildings would be a perfect backdrop for our wedding photos, and the hire of the church was very cheap.  We got a good price for the photographer and the boys suits were beautiful black wool suits that the shop assistant gave us at a remarkable price. But, the BEST thing... my wedding dress cost only $200. I bought it off a mark down rack and it was perfect. Nothing big and Poofy, just nice and simple. It was actually only the third dress I tried on. LOL! My sister was stunned. Apparently she spent months looking for her dress. (Very scary 80’s dress)  The car that drove me to the wedding was free cause it was my Daddy’s nice white Ford Falcon. The Girls dresses I got were only $80. And they are the kind that they can wear again. No I mean REALLY. They were lovely. Black with crème. I made them fascinators for their hair. I also made my bouquet and the girls' as well. I used these gorgeous fake roses that looked real. My son was the ring bearer and I bought his spunky little suit off eBay. He looked so handsome. My little niece was the bridesmaid and she already had a pretty little white dress. I made her a white basket to scatter the fake rose petals, and a ribbon beret for her hair, that matched the ribbon roses on the top of my veil (Which I also made myself). Hubby’s sister played Pachebel Cannon in D on her violin, when we walked into the church. Hubby cried... (LOL)
The reception was another matter. After researching the hiring of a hall and caterers, we decided to do it ourselves. At first it sounds crazy but we had the perfect house and back yard to have it in. Our house was a low set brick with a back patio running down the entire length. The yard was nice and the whole thing overlooked a river and country side beyond that. None of the neighbours houses or yards overlooked our back yard. So it was the perfect choice.
A friend of ours, who is the CEO of an organization we are clients of, gave us for free the use of the chairs, tables, white table cloths, cutlery, crockery, glasses, urns, BBq’s and two gazebos. I set up the tables down the length of the patio. The tables had the white cloths with red runners (that I had made) running down the middle. I made a candle centrepiece for each table in clear glass bowls. The two gazebos were set up side by side and strung with fairy lights. Under these we had tables set up with two huge Baine maries. One with hot food, the other with the cold.


Hubby loves to cook, and entertain. So he made all the food. We had a lady looking after it on the day for us. Hot food consisted of roast chicken and roast vegies, veggie bake, fried rice, and steak and sausages. Cold food was a couple of different salads, and lots of fruit. Drinks were BYO, but we did provide wine for toasts, and an esky full of canned soft drinks (sodas). Plus tea and coffee. Desert was the wedding cake. I made that to. It was a two layered square chocolate mud cake. With royal icing and red sugar roses (which I also made).
Only two dramatic things happened that day:
1. I was LATE. I am NEVER late. It's was the girls fault, and a popped button on the flower girls dress.
2. Meanwhile, back at the house, a snake apparently wanted to make a deposit into the wishing well, but was politely moved on.
All in all it was a perfect day.  One we wouldn’t have done any differently. One also that all of our married friends said they wished they had done the same. Sure it was a bit of extra work, and we were too buggered at the end of the night to do anything frisky, but we had the wedding WE wanted and it didn’t cost us more than $3000.
 Seriously.

24 comments:

  1. It all sounds like such a lovely day :D The pictures look wonderful!

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  2. It does sound lovely and is similar to what Gemma wants and I'm helping organise. It's the logistics on the day that worries me doing it ourselves .
    I will have to find your email ,I'd love to talk to you more about this... esp the cake. It is eeriely similar to what Gem's after, hers has another 2 tiers and black lace instead of red ribbon! We are trying to come in under $2,000 !!

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  3. Awwwww! How fabulous! I love all of the detail, and the fact that it only cost $300!!...You outdid us. We paid about $500 for the wedding and honeymoon to florida for a week. The honeymoon was the least of it I think. But ours took place almost 29 years ago!!! ^_^ Everything sounds like it was so pretty!

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  4. And THAT was probably much more memorable than a mega-wedding like, oh, say, an obscenely huge affair in England which shall remain nameless (and I have yet to receive an invitation for).
    Incidentally, while I realize that snakes must do so, I never gave much thought to them actually, uh, leaving a deposit anywhere. I mean, how could you tell? Did it look like another, smaller, snake?

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  5. @Poetess it was $3000! Not $300! LOL! We're not THAT good! LOL!
    @ IWBY Yes I thought it was too much to take on ourselves as well, but if you deligate and give other people things to do then it takes the load off you. The cake: I bought the mud cake mix at a specialty cake shop in Brisbane. I had the larger square tin and bought the smaller one. You could hire them if you don't want to buy them. Just make sure you follow the recipe to the letter and cook it slowly, or it will burn or dry out. Royal icing is dead easy to make. As for the sugar roses, I got the petal cutter from Spotlight, along with the red sugar icing. I watched a lot of youtube videos on how to make roses. Just make sure you are patient and let each stage dry in between. Or you could just buy them. Any good cake shop will have them.

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  6. @AL.. LOL! If I thought it was going to contribute to our wedding gifts then I would say let it, But it freaked our catering lady out. SO it had to go..lol.

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  7. Ha! Ha! Well I take it all back then!!! LOL

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  8. This reminds me of me and my husband's wedding. We were on serious budget so my mom and I made all the bouquets out of fake flowers we bought at Hobby Lobby during their 50% off sale. I was a member of the church we got married in so they let us use it for FREE! The most expensive items were my dress and the invitations. I wouldn't change a thing. Neither of us wanted a big fancy overpriced wedding.

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  9. Your day sounds fabulous! I'm glad you got to do it your way and not be swayed to go into debt!
    We wanted 35 guests but once our parents added all theorist it went up to 165. At that point I just let my mom spend whatever she wanted on whatever she wanted.
    Poofy was the style in 1977 but I went out by myself one day and came home with a white dress from a chain store that cost $50! It was peasant style and simple, simple, simple!

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  10. I want you to arrange my wedding!!!!

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  11. Your wedding day sounds beautiful. The pictures are stunning. You did it right! :)

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  12. I love this idea for a wedding. I, too, am not a fancy, all-out kind of girl. As we look to plan our wedding, I kind of want it to have that cook-out feel to it. Where did you find your dress at?

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  13. @Leslie Sounds good! I forgot to mention that I made all the invitations as well.
    @Loach Yes!
    @Carole. I think we ended up with around 50 at the reception. Though more were at the wedding.
    @AIDI I would if I lived in Canada! (I wish)
    @Frisky Thankyou so much!
    @MMALA I bought the dress from a wedding dress shop a friend recommended to me. She just happened to have a nice big marked down rack.

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  14. How nice :-) Mine and Hubby's wedding was small as well; I shuddered to think of slogging through the same effort/details that my sister had for her wedding! A few family members pitched in and helped with the food, which was great. I think big weddings are overrated. Too much pomp and circumstance for my tastes!

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  15. I think it sounded beautiful and from the photos of the table and the cake I can SEE that it was beautiful!! Love the red/white...love how creative and down-to-earth that you are...your husband loves to cook??? Lucky, lucky YOU!! xoxo

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  16. @Chocoangel Exactly! We loved everything about ours.
    @Caren Thankyou. He cooks all the meals. I do dessert. :)

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  17. This sounds fantastic. There's really nothing you can't do. I bet your guests had a great time. I've been to weddings like this and they are so much fun. We had a more traditional wedding although still on a budget but one thing I'm proud of about my own wedding is that my wife and I introduced the wedding table ourselves. We had an MC but we wanted to make it more personal. We also wrote our own vows. We had one glitch too. It was -40.

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  18. Awwww... it sounds like a wonderful event! I love your pictures too. I think the smaller weddings that you prepare yourself have so much more meaning. If you're too focused on making a big show of things you miss out on all the wonderful little details like a snake in the wishing well. lol.

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  19. @dbs We wrote our own vows to, and both completely forgot them..lol!
    @Sunny It was. I didn't know about the snake until way later on in the night.. It was funny.

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  20. Tasteful and creative, awesome Sprite. Amazing what you accomplished on a budget.

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  21. Thanks Ant. It's nice to look back at the photos and think, we did it all.

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  22. I still can't believe you did it with that budget.
    Really impressive.

    Where are you? :[

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