A Wedding You Can Afford *Frugal Fridays*

As you probably noticed if you read about my excursion into real life I got married on March 31st.  We had to pay for it ourselves, and Lord knows we’re not a bizillionares, so naturally we did it the same way we do everything else-on a budget.

Our wedding cost  us exactly $229.06 including minister fees, wedding liscence, rings, something to wear, and batteries for our digital camera.  The key to our nice but severely-uh-“budgeted” wedding? 

E-L-O-P-E.

However I understand that not everyone can, and that even if they could a lot of people wouldn’t want to. Here are some things I found along the way that can help you can have a nice big wedding with out a nice big price tag.

*The Bridal Online Store has beautiful hand made wedding dresses custom fit just for you with prices ranging between $99-699 (plus S&H).  An added bonus?  You can, with just a little bit of planning, actually talk to the OWNER of this business directly (her name is Jill and she’s available between 8-11am EST).

*Having a wedding outdoors can be wonderful during the summertime (depending on the climate you’re in).  Also, it can save you a ton of money if you don’t plan on doing it at a church.  You can get married at a national park for FREE (unless it’s involving big set ups that require permits or you plan on camping there as well…).  You can look up National Parks in your area here, or Google “______ state parks” to find one that is run by your state.  I do recommend scouting them to make sure there is a good spot somewhere there, AND keeping in mind who you are inviting, what kind of seating they may need (can great grandma sit on a folding chair in the dirt for 30 minutes?), and if you are going to need any type of electronics (do you plan to play music?).

*Talk to your county courthouse to see if they can refer you to a minister-usually they can.  Also-retired ministers tend to charge a significantly less amount of money than practicing ones.

*Do you live close to a state line (we do!)?  If you do, it’s definately worth seeing how much it costs to get your liscence in that state instead of yours.  Some states require that if you get the liscence there you get married there, so keep that in mind, but I know for us we saved  $32 for crossing the state line to get married.

*Do your own flower arranging.  You can buy flowers themselves fairly inexpensively, and all you have to do is put them together.  It can get a little tricky though, so I recommend using some reasources.  Good ones I’ve found are this about article, this Lowes article, and this article at the gardener. 

In the end, if you are going to elope but have a slightly bigger budget (but not too huge, about $500-$2000) or want to elope it in style, I highly recommend using Let’s Run Off.  The tagline is “Elopments made easy” for a reason.  If we had a slightly bigger budget we would have used one of their adorable B&B recommendations.

There you have it-I hope it helps.  No reason to start married life $10K in debt right?  Whatever you do for your wedding, remember that it’s really all about you and your husband and what makes you happy in the end. Congratulations!

*for more Frugal Friday tips visit Biblical Womanhood*