Our 8k Wedding- All About the Budget

Ever seen a wedding blog post where the budget comes to over $50k? Easy to do, but YIKES. Being young, dumb and broke (k, just young) we didn’t have much to spend on a wedding. Ours cost around $8000!  Let me share with you our 8k wedding, how we spent our money and what we did to keep costs down. P.S. I wrote a wedding planning ebook! Skim to the bottom of this post to check it out!

I’ll start off my sharing all about the wedding expenses, including how we paid so little, then I’ll talk about our honeymoon at the end. We had 160 guests at our wedding. 80 at the reception and 80 that came back for the dance and supper.

Bride

Dress- $450

Veil- $50

Shoes- $30

Jewellery- $15

Lingerie- already owned/gifted

I was fortunate enough to have in laws that own a bridal shop so I got my dress half price. I bought cheap shoes (that got pretty wrecked in mud on the day), and a bracelet from Forever New. The earrings I wore were actually from my high school ball but they worked perfectly. It’s not like new earrings would have broken the bank, I just loved my old ones!

Groom

Suit Hire- $100

Shirt- $60

Shoes- Already owned

Bow tie- Gifted

Wedding Ring- $350

Aaron rented a suit to wear for the wedding. I bought him two cheap shirts (incase something happened to one of them) from Hallensteins, and replaced the white buttons for black ones. He wore shoes he already owned.

Bridesmaids

Dresses- $240

Shoes- $120

Gifts- $120

My bridesmaids paid for their own dresses ($60 each) and shoes ($30 each). I bought them all a robe and bracelet as a gift.

Groomsmen

Suits- $400

The groomsmen all paid for their own suit hire at $100 each and also wore their own shoes.

Hair and Makeup

Hair- $300

Makeup- gift

We had a hair dresser come to my parents’ house and do all of us ladies’ hair. She charged $50 each. One of my friends did our makeup as our wedding present.

Catering

Catering company- $2276

Drinks- $300

Supper- $100

Cake- free

Extra Staff- free

We had a 2 course buffet meal provided by our catering company. It worked out at about $30 per head for 80 guests. We provided our own drinks (mainly non alcoholic) for guests. Mum and I did baking for the supper and kept it in the freezer until the wedding. Since we did the supper ourselves, we needed extra staff. Some of my parents’ friends helped out which was fantastic! One of our talented friends made our cake for us for our wedding present.

Want help planning your wedding? Check out my wedding planning ebook!

Venues

Church for Ceremony- free

Community Hall for Reception- $500

We used our church for the ceremony which didn’t cost us anything. We opted for a community hall for the reception and dance because of its large space and affordability.

Decor

Decorations- $200

I made a huge amount of decorations for our wedding which was obviously an affordable option. I sourced lots of glass jars for free, as well as crates, and wooden tree rounds. I used quite a few things that I already owned such as photo frames, lanterns, candlesticks, etc. My parents own a gift shop so I was able to borrow some things from there (like an easel and big chalkboard).

Transport

Gifts for Drivers- $50

Two of the vehicles we used belonged to my extended family members. The other vehicle belonged to a friend of a friend who was happy to lend out the car for a nice home baked chocolate cake.

Flowers

Bouquets- $450

Buttonholes- $50

I kind of die a little on the inside about how ridiculously gorgeous our flowers were. We hunted around and found a super affordable florist. I opted for a relaxed country style bouquet (because I loved them) which also ended up being a pretty cheap style. They were GORGEOUS! We didn’t pay for any arrangements, instead a friend sourced a huge amount of hydrangeas from someone’s garden that we used to decorate the reception.

Photography

Photographer- $2200

We paid for one of our photographers cheaper packages and then paid her extra hours to be at the reception and dance. We didn’t get any photos printed through her, but ended up printing a photo book for about $50 through Vistaprint.

Invitations

Invitation Supplies- $90

Postage- $20

I shopped around to find the best deals to make our own invitations (read all about it here!). I bought lots of brown card and used EVERY SINGLE SCRAP of it. Most of our guests lived local so we hand delivered the invitations. There was only a small amount that we had to send via the post.

Everything Else

Ceremony Band- free

We had a group of people from our church do the music and sound for the ceremony.

Favours- $30

I bought a bunch of gourmet jelly beans and sewed them in a wee paper pouch. See them here.

Celebrant- free

We were fortunate enough to have our pastor marry us!

Licence- $80

And that was that! Our 8k wedding may not have been worthy of the cover on a wedding magazine but it was certainly good enough for us. At the end of the day, it simply is just a day and we would rather put money into our future.

Honeymoon

What’s a wedding without a honeymoon? We went to the gorgeous Gold Coast in Australia for 10 days, where we lay poolside, beach side and explored the theme parks. It was the BEST TIME EVER.

I hope you found this insightful and it helped you to see that you don’t have to sell a kidney to have a lovely wedding! Thanks for checking out our 8k wedding! Want more help to plan your wedding? Check out 6 Months to Plan Your Wedding.