You may be super-duper excited to marry your true love, but you may not want to throw a wedding that costs your entire life savings. You may also want a wedding that favors the eco-friendly side of things. Don’t you worry your pretty lil head! Thankfully a budget-and-eco-friendly wedding is essentially one in the same thing. Reusing and recycling equal big wedding savings, after all! Start planning with these helpful tips:
Use Recycled Paper Invites – Or Evites
Invitations made with recycled paper starts you off right, especially if you support a local company that makes such products. If you don’t want to spend money buying and mailing invitations, go the evite route (email invite).
The stigma around the wedding evite has lessened in recent years due to more and more people wanting to keep their nuptials inexpensive. If you just can’t bring yourself to do the evite thang, try a happy medium: use evites as your save-the-dates and send snail mail invites.
Visit Consignment Stores For Dresses
If you have ever set foot in a consignment store or similar establishment, you know they are stocked with wedding dresses. Browse the options at your local thrift shops and see what you find – and remember, you can always have a dress altered any way you want. This saves you hundreds if not thousands of dollars and ensures your dress is entirely unique.
You can also tell your bridesmaids to go the consignment route so long as their gowns are a certain color or style.
Make Your Centerpieces & Bouquets
The internet is loaded with tutorials all about DIY centerpieces and bouquets. Buttons, feathers, and old jewelry are some of the bouquet options that don’t involve spending precious cash on cut flowers, all of which are fabulous and fantastically-unique.
The same is true of recycled centerpieces, as there are endless ways to show off your creativity. Wine bottles, old tin cans, mason jars, found natural objects such as twigs and dried flowers… these and many other options provide cheap and gorgeous centerpieces.
Serve Wine & Beer Only
While it is in extremely poor taste to make your wedding guests pay for their booze, you don’t have to stock the venue bar with top-shelf liquor. Stick to kegs of inexpensive domestic beer and purchase those $8 – 10 bottles of wine available at every single liquor store in America.
If you are concerned about a lack of spirits, encourage guests to bring their own. They will appreciate it a heck of a lot more than having to pay, especially if they have to drive or fly to see you get hitched.
Make A Playlist
Instead of hiring a DJ or a band, make your ultimate wedding playlist on Spotify or Pandora and blast it over the speakers. Not only is this music option cheap, it ensures you will hear exactly what you want instead of arguing with the DJ or lead singer.
Ask A Family Member Or Friend To Cater
Having a talented family member or friend cater your wedding most likely equals a deep discount. This person can place their business cards on the reception tables if you want to help them get more business. You may also want to get said person a nice wedding gift for all of the work he/she is putting in.
Provide Sustainable Favors
Instead of wasting money on plastic wedding favors that may not end up in recycling bins, go the sustainable route. Give your guests small plants or flower seeds as favors, or browse wedding sites with coaster, magnet, and pen favors made from recycled materials such as cork.
You want your guests to say, “Oh wow, I can really use this! How clever!” instead of “Oh great, more stuff I don’t need.”
Throw A Backyard Wedding
Backyard weddings are often so, so, so fun. You don’t have to be off the property by a certain time, and there’s a homey vibe that’s hard to beat. If you have a relative with a few acres or at least a big backyard, turn it into a magical spot for you and your number one to say “I do.”
You’ll save serious money on a wedding venue, especially if you have friends and family with access to supplies such as tables, chairs, linens, dance floors, and port-a-johns. Even if you don’t have a friend or family member with access to these things, you will still save money for use elsewhere, like your honeymoon or new house.
Hope these ideas help! Have you thought of any ideas you would like to share below?