Budget Backyard Wedding : Where to start, where to save & extra tips
They say the average cost of a wedding is $30,000. That, to us, is a huge amount of money. I am in NO WAY judging the amount you can and want to spend on your wedding! By all means, go for it! But if you only have a budget of $10,000, I’m here to tell you it is STILL possible to have the wedding of your dreams! Keep reading to see where we started, how we saved and extra tips we picked up along the way!
Where to start:
Setting a budget for a wedding is of course, a very personal decision. My best advice is to figure out what you can financially set aside. You’ll also want to sit both sides of the family down and discuss if and who is paying for what and if contributing, what their budget looks like as well. This is a great time to talk about the amount of people you want at your wedding. All this will give you a clearer picture of what kind of wedding you can realistically put together.
Side bar: Pinterest is your best and worst friend. I kept joking that I’m planning two weddings; my Pinterest wedding and my actual wedding!
The next thing we did was figure out what kind of wedding we wanted. We threw around the idea of destination, venues nearby and further away. (We already eloped during covid but this is a wonderful idea for a budget wedding!) After looking at a million venues and none of them seeming “just right”, in struck the idea of having it at home! *Cue all the backyard wedding research!*
After deciding on a venue, comes the fun part! Figuring out exactly what we want to spend the bulk of our money on. For example, we knew we wanted good food, an open bar, flowers, a poppin’ DJ, and of course, a tent and everything that came with it to create our backyard wedding venue. But there’s still so many things you will have to spend money on, so this brings us to our next segment –
How to save:
When I started looking into photographers, cake costs, decorations, tables settings, heck just ordering napkins TO RENT was crazy expensive. I swear you put the word “wedding” in front of any word and it goes up in price about 50%. This lead us to DIY as many projects as possible, ask for help, & get as many family and friends involved as we could!
First things first, THRIFT AS MUCH AS YOU CAN! No seriously – if you are giving yourself a year to plan, you have plenty of time to thrift plates, decorations, frames for signage (entrance sign, bar sign, memory table sign) and anything else you can think of. We planned and had this wedding in three months time and still were able to thrift all these items plus 190 white plates! Yes, they were all slightly different but it added its own charm to my boho wedding theme – I highly recommend this idea and my mom thrifted all of them for us!
We also DIYed 200 napkins. We used Cheesecloth gauze & Rit dye to create these burnt orange napkins I found on etsy! It would’ve been $580 for the amount of napkins we needed and instead ended up costing us $150 plus 3 days of dying, ironing and cutting. DIY blog coming soon!
Attire is another huge way to save. This is a personal choice but for me, I didn’t want to spend thousands or even a thousand on a wedding dress. Lulu’s has an amazing section of wedding dresses (a quick google search will show you affordable options!) If you scroll to the bottom you’ll see our full amount spent on attire. And Kory found everything he was wearing from Etsy! Do your research, shop local or on Etsy to save on attire!
I and the girls, did all our own hair and makeup. I realize this isn’t possible for everyone but if possible, this one will save you $300 for the bride and $150 PER bridesmaid! Something to think about and if you decide to go this route, still have a practice run of what you will be doing on your wedding day!
With my dad being a handyman, he was able to create a lot of the main pieces we used. For example, he made this beautiful stage and backdrop in two days. Our family friend Chuck, designed and created the Meadows board above the backdrop! My dad and Chuck also made this charcuterie board, a guest book life-sized frame and they even made a sink for our “sanitation station” from materials left over from a recent job! You never know whats laying around or what your family/friends may have that you can use for your wedding! Moral of the story – find ya a handyman!
Another big way we saved was shopping for our own food and drinks at Sams. My brother is a chef that works at a Michelin star restaurant and was graciously doing ALL the food for us. He was a huge help in telling us how much and what food products we needed. He organized all the prep, hired staff and made the most amazing Italian themed food that our guests are STILL talking about! Just make sure if you are cooking your own food, that you have enough storage space for your chilled items – we had 3 fridges completely full. Ryan whipped up enough food for 180 people in 24 hours, I truly do not know how he did it! All this easily would’ve cost $5000 for services and an average of $100 per plate which is $18,000 for the amount of people that attended, in return saving us BIG time! Thanks Ry!
Drinks on the other hand, are a little trickier because you have to judge your crowd. Decide what signature cocktail you want to do and what drinks you want to serve – you dont want to give your guests too many options! We opted for Crown, Titos, & Beer/Seltzers. For our big cheers we did an apple pie shot – our signature “drink” – Apple of my Pie 🥰 Doing a shot toast instead of a champagne toast saved us money in many ways because we didn’t have to buy champagne glasses for 180 people or champagne that no one really drinks anyway!
Another huge help was Kory’s sister, Mary. She happens to work for a wedding planner and saved us a ton of money on decorations and flowers. Not only that but the second she came into town, she whipped my families home into the wedding of our dreams! Mary even reached out to her friends and if it wasn’t for them, we would’ve had half a wedding. For example, here’s a list of everything we had help with! Everyone listed as a “family friend” is actually the family we’ve adopted as our own🧡
Our incredible family friends:
Tim, beautifully officiated our entire wedding for us. Saved: $250
Andre, brought and set up all sound and lighting. Saved: $1000
Zack, bartended our wedding for 8 hours. Saved: $350
Dom – DJ are wedding for 8 hours, prorating his services. Saved: $300
Mary alone, saved us $4300 on floral, $3000 for a planner, and up to $1000 in decorations!
As you can see we had huge savings from our siblings, meaning, we have the best brother and sister in the entire world 🤪🥰 Seriously love you guys so much!
Now last but CERTAINLY not least, our dearest, closest and oldest family friends, the Poe family. As mentioned earlier, my dads bestie Chuck, helped with most of the wood work but he ALSO did all the photography and video which saved us the most. After researching the cost of video and photo for a wedding and finding out it would cost half our budget, we started reaching out. Chuck graciously offered, hired extra staff and now our wedding pictures mean more than ever! He easily saved us $5000!
But wait, it doesn’t stop there! His wife Pam, my moms bestie, worked her tail off! She helped decorate, clean up, organize the days leading up to the wedding and of course the wedding itself. Not only that but she convinced her baker to make our wedding cake and then PAID for it as a gift! Saving us another $300! Chuck, Pam and Gracie – thank you SO MUCH for doing all this and more for our wedding day! You guys are the most incredible friends to every single one of us.
If it wasn’t for the incredible family and friends we have, we wouldn’t have pulled off this wedding for this price. When realizing this, it made writing this blog post that much harder. But then it dawned on me, asking for help is one of the hardest things to do sometimes. We feel like a burden, or like they really dont want to help. But im here to tell you, if someone offers help – take it and know they mean it! They wouldn’t be saying it if they didn’t. And if they didn’t actually mean it – it’ll teach them not to say things they dont actually mean! Win win situation 😉
As I drift back on topic, I just want to give the biggest thank you of my life to all of you that helped make this day come to the beautiful light that it was! We wouldn’t be who we are if it wasn’t for each and every one of you making such an impact on our lives since the moment we met to the best day of our entire lives! They say you cant pick your family but you can pick friends that become family – and we are so grateful to have our big, blended family!
Tips & what to expect during your backyard wedding:
First, make sure you have enough room. If you are getting a tent, (which you absolutely should for a backyard wedding) you’ll need clearance all the way around and flat ground. We had gravel laid (pricing below) to level the ground as much as possible. My husband and father smoothed and compacted it while also trimming trees for clearance and getting the grounds polished. Know where you’re putting everything within the first two months of wedding planning. Ground work can be done up to two weeks before event.
Important: Check with your home association to make sure an event like this is allowed. And you MUST check with local ordinance to make sure you have all the right permits. Sometimes wedding vendors will take care of this so make sure you check with them first! We also called my parents insurance company to make sure we were covered incase any one was hurt – it was already included in their plan but it was nice to check all the safety boxes!
Along with making sure you are following all city and local ordinance, make sure you can pull enough power or start thinking about renting a generator. We had 3 separate buildings to pull power from and the power STILL went out once! Also make sure you have enough bathrooms – if you run on your own septic, it can get overloaded with a big event such as this. Save yourself and your family the headache of septic problems and get porta potties just incase! This will also reduce the amount of traffic going in and out of your house. We put a tent around the porta potty’s, added in the homemade sink, a rug, some lights and plants! It definitely made it cute and way more inviting!
All this to say, our backyard wedding was a dream come true. My childhood home holds so many wonderful memories and now it holds my most precious memory of all time!
Congratulations to those that are here in the midst of planning your own wedding – it was probably the most stressful thing I’ve ever done but one that was 100% worth it! I wish you luck and the most beautiful wedding day!
Break down of our backyard wedding:
Budget – $10,000 | Actually spent – $12,000
Tent cost – $4400
Included: Set up and take down of Tent, curtains, lights inside, tables and chairs to seat 185 people, linen, dance floor, bar, & high tables
Gravel- $1000
Food- $2000, Help $1000
Beverage – $1000
Flowers- $700
Attire – Kory $350 Jodie $200
Table setting – Plates thrifted $100, DIY napkins $150, plastic silverware $150, cups & misc. $200
Decorations – lights $200
DJ – $550
We truly thank each and everyone of you for contributing to our wedding in all the small and big ways, near and far. They say it takes a village and I truly believe we have the best one yet! Thank you so much for celebrating our love with us!
