Undertaking a DIY Wedding

Planning a Party

Lindsey and I decided we would have more of a DIY wedding than a more traditional wedding primarily to save costs. It’s overwhelming just thinking about the fact that the average wedding these days is around $30,000.¹ For us, our priority was having our close friends and family be able to witness this special moment in our own lives and for all of us to enjoy it and celebrate together. The object was not to spend money but to facilitate our primary objective with minimal expenditure. In essence, we are just planning a big party.

Even when you think of it like that (a party, not a wedding) it is still amazing how quickly everything adds up; the more people you have the faster the costs add up too. I underestimated the number of considerations and options that can go into such an endeavor; not to mention how easy it is for cost to be higher when the word “wedding” is attached to it. What we originally thought would be a “reasonable” cost for a simple wedding quickly became a far off dream once you did the math. As I said, we wanted to have a lot of our friends and family in attendance, and just the act of providing food and some drinks for them all nearly put us over our original budget, not including anything else.

It is far an away the most extensive party I have ever planned and it is both stressful and exciting at the same time (much like a race I suppose for some of the same reasons). I’ve learned a lot about the things to consider for a wedding and hope that some of it will apply to other aspects of my life as I begin this next phase.

What We Have Locked Down So Far

There are a lot of things that can go into a wedding and I’ve started to celebrate every element that we finalize. With 210 days to go we already have:

• Venue
• Photographer
• DJ
• Brides Dress
• Save the dates
• Hotel block
• Lights
• Centerpieces

Saving Where You Can

A couple things I am excited about are our wedding bands and our centerpieces.

We’re planning on getting QALO² rings both for their practicality and cost. It’s the perfect fit for our active lifestyles. I don’t want any reason to take off my ring and this makes that easy.

Another thing I am excited about is our centerpieces. I won’t give away the specifics now but we’re using retired running shoes to hold our floral arrangements for the tables. It will save us a bit of money as long as you don’t include the original cost of the shoes in that calculation.³