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Weddings are friggin’ expensive, man. I’m not even getting married anytime soon, but I still get slightly anxious hearing about the obscene costs my friends are incurring for their forthcoming nuptials. Venues want to price gouge you for the privilege of hosting your ceremony and reception at their location, you have to feed and entertain all the jabronis you invited, and those are just the obvious costs. Even minor, inconsequential things like table decorations cost a goddamn fortune.
As a result, future brides and grooms are looking for any possible way to save some extra cash on wedding expenses without having to compromise the vision or integrity of how they want their big day to go. Fortunately, I have come up with some fun ways for you to not only cut back on costs but also have the most bitchin’ wedding ever. Suggest these ideas at your own risk.
E-Invitations
Companies like Vistaprint and their ilk continue to get away with highway robbery because of their insistence that wedding invitations be printed on fancy stationery and sent in the mail. We live in an era of advanced technology, and it’s time to start taking care of the resources available to you. Why spend all that money on cards and waste all that time hand-writing addresses and sealing envelopes when you could be sending one email to your saved contacts? And don’t worry if Granny doesn’t have email, I’m sure she’ll hear about it eventually. You can even use one of the fancy fonts in Microsoft Word to write out the invitation in the body of the email. You get the same effect as a fancy invitation without incurring any of the cost!
Sponsorships
Try subsidizing your entire wedding through advertising revenue. Leave no stone unturned when looking for things to slap a sponsor on. Have the groom and groomsmen wear suits that make them look like NASCAR drivers due to the amount of ads on them. Get your favorite bar or restaurant to sponsor the bridesmaids like they’re a rec league team and call them the “Beer On Clark Bride’s Babes” or something equally dignified. Tell the priest to plug various sponsors in his homily (“I will pray for you two to stick together in marriage forever, but nothing sticks like Krazy Glue!”) and fill your programs with 30 pages of ads for local insurance agencies, real estate agents and DUI lawyers (The latter may come in handy for your uncle later.) Sell your soul over to advertising, because otherwise, you’ll be selling off everything else you own to pay this thing off.
Hire Fine Arts Majors on the Cheap
Have any friends that graduated with some sort of arts degree but aren’t working in a related field, if at all? Make their day by telling them they’re finally going to put that degree to use! Have them do all the artsy fartsy stuff like taking photographs and setting up table decorations. I assume that since they have an art degree they possess the ability to not just do those kinds of things, but do them well. The best part is you can probably leverage their desperation to finally utilize their degree to lowball them so you don’t have to pay them as much as the professionals. Does it make you an asshole? Yes, but being in a creative field, they should be used to getting shafted on payments anyway.
Win A Free Happy Hour and Catering
You can dispense with the reservation of a reception hall and having to set up meals and an open bar by simply dumping your business card into every bar and restaurant that raffles off free catering and all-you-can-drink happy hour events. If you do this multiple times at every place within a 20-mile radius of you, odds are you’re bound to win something, thus eliminating the exorbitant food and drink costs associated with weddings. As far as your guests are concerned, a free happy hour is basically the same thing as having a dinner and open bar at a reception hall. After feasting on a delectable catered meal of lukewarm sliders and two-day-old chicken wings, they’ll get to drink domestic light beer and well liquor to their heart’s content. There’s also really no plausible way for people to give speeches, but the guests won’t mind because no one wants to hear those. Honestly, I don’t know why this isn’t already the industry standard for wedding receptions.
Dance Party at Your Place
It’s time to get to everyone’s favorite part of the night: drunken dancing. But instead of going to a rented dance hall with a hired DJ, lead the party back to your place. If you got a sweet living setup with a bumpin’ sound system, why wouldn’t you show it off to everybody? Just clear out the living room or set something up in the yard and let everyone boogie. You also definitely do not need to pay a king’s ransom to have some douche set his iTunes to a playlist full of pop music, hit “play,” and pretend like he’s doing any kind of work for the rest of the night. Instead, leave the music unmanned and let nature take its course. If the people want to get down to Ying Yang Twins or if Granny wants to headbang to Morbid Angel, then let the night flow that way. Those are the kind of nights that create the best memories, and isn’t that what your wedding night should be all about?
While I guarantee that your future spouse will probably leave your ass at the altar if you suggest any one (or more) of these ideas, it might just be worth it for a party without the debt. I mean, what were the odds of you staying together anyway?.
Respond
@ArrowZeppelin
ArrowZeppelin
@Will
Had to do it to ’em
Do girls dads not fund these things anymore?
Traditionally but seems less and less common. I’ve seen more families split it than anything lately but maybe Mr. deBreeze can weigh in on this?
Never understood families that still do this. 100 years ago? Sure. But 100 years ago, the groom’s family also got a cow in exchange for the bride so I guess it all evened out.
We make more money than both our parents. If her parents or my parents or both end up chipping in that’s great, but I don’t expect anything significant. Her parents have two siblings they still help out and my parents have grandchildren so if we can make their lives easier that’s great.
With my wedding, my gift from my parents was to pay for the church. My MIL paid for the photography and supplies for the favors, decoration, etc.
When your girl doesn’t have a dad anymore :/
No because we don’t live in the 1950’s anymore
So then you don’t need a diamond ring, right? Since it’s not the 1950’s.
To be fair, a ring is significantly cheaper than an entire wedding.
I’d agree with that, but that’s also looking at an adult who might’ve been saving for years to pay for his daughter’s wedding vs. a guy who probably has been saving a shorter amount of time/ probably isn’t knocking down what a middle aged guy is. To be clear, I’m also the guy who thinks girls should purchase (if they want a ring and the guy wants something) an engagement watch, etc.
Or we don’t want them. I have an amethyst center stone with two very small, responsibly sourced, diamonds and it’s much more my style.
Do you know how hard it is to find blood diamonds these days?
Ooooo, BURN!
you’re talking to the girl who never wants to get married, so…. no
You’re not gonna have any trouble accomplishing that with that attitude
damn you’re breakin my heart today t-swizzle
Honestly, some of these are great ideas
E-vites are actually the way to go….because those fancy invitations you spend hundreds on will inevitably end up in the trash.
How we saved:
-created our own invites and a lot of the decorations
-had the reception at the church hall
-used my wife’s iPad for the DJ, and my Mom was the MC.
-catered in pizza(which people loved)
-wife crocheted her own dress.
The photog was probably the biggest expense but damn well worth it.
Dave you are 100% trolling us with this stuff and I just want to let you know that I’m onto you
Downvote Dave has quickly risen up one of my favorite commenters.
I’m flattered.
No, not trollin.
Dave, I wanna say “What the fuck” but am I surprised? No.
Hm…sorry not sorry I didn’t have my family blow 50 grand on a wedding? We had the wedding we wanted, we were happy, our guests loved it.
Well God Bless ya Dave.
I need pics of that wedding dress otherwise you’re trolling.
I’ll tag the pic later on the PGP ‘Gram.
I posted it to the PGP Twitter and Gram last night.
Can we talk about the fact that you just said your favorite bar was Beer on Clark?
I’ve never had a bad time there
Classy spot. Name is straight to the point.
Don’t get me wrong, I like it and have a great time there.. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call it their favorite bar.