Affluent but Frugal

Like many of you, our wedding is on a budget but we also want it to be nice for our guests (over half of which are traveling from out of state to attend). To keep on budget and be able to splurge on things like a nice dinner and open bar (for me an open bar wasn’t optional) I am DIY’ing where I can. This includes both of the favors - yes, we’re doing two one that is “me” and one that is “him.” Mine was easy, I made soap . I’ve been making soap a few years and have given it as gifts in the past so that was a no brainier. His favor was harder to come up with…we considered the trendy succulents because my fiancé is a plant addict and succulents are his favorite but we thought they would be hard to travel with for guests with many people leaving them behind or killing them immediately. So that idea was nixed.  I was looking online for ideas with could replicate with a DIY and found some custom spice favors on Etsy that were really cute and we were thinking about a DI

We set out to have a small, economical wedding...well that didn't exactly happen. I think we had a nice wedding which wasn't a fancy, black-tie soiree but also not cheap, it was mid-range. Simple but nice. I did several DIY projects which saved us a lot of money, we looked for deals where we could find them and negotiated where we could. We had two splurge items. The first was our venue, which was a little pricier than we'd originally planned on but also in some ways a good value because we could use the venue for the ceremony and reception, included with our catering costs. The catering wasn't cheap  but it also wasn't expensive and they were overall very flexible with our budget. The venue was also wired for sound so we skipped a DJ, which saved us around $800 based on the few quotes I got. The second was our photographer. Not only did we choose a full-time photographer who was really a professional (part-time semi-pro photographers seem to abound!) but we a

For me, making the bouquets was the hardest part, it was very time consumming. I tried several different "stems." The floral wires and bamboo sticks (suggestions of what to use I'd seen online) were both really rigid, which I found made it hard to put them together and shape the flowers in the way I wanted. After some trial and error, I chose a main flower to put in the middle of the bouquet (a large one) and put that one on a bamboo stick (the kind used to make shish kabobs) and attach floral wire to all of the other flowers which I then wrapped around the main flower's "stem." If you are planning to do this, start at least a month before your wedding - it took FOREVER to make the bouquets and I only had mine, 3 bridesmaids, 1 flower girl and 1 toss. If you have a big wedding party, you will need help. Unfortunately none of my girls lived nearby and I did not ask any local friends because I wasn't aware that it was going to take up my entire life for