Money, Money, Money

Ah the budget. What can I say but ARH! We're working with a very small budget -- $15,000 for the wedding AND the honeymoon. An intimate wedding for $10,000? Doable right? What about an intimate wedding with 130 guests for under $10,000? A little crazy? That's what I thought.

We saved a lot of money on my dress since it's pretty simple and hand-made. In total, it only cost me $265! We're committing wedding blasphemy and not doing engagement pictures and not really having a professional photographer for the ceremony or the reception. I have a couple friends and friends of friends who are amatur photographers and looking for work to beef up their portfolio. I'm meeting with a few of them next week and hoping that someone would work within our measly budget of $400. We're really just not picture people.

Like many of the other bees, I'm DIY-ing the invitations myself. The invitations require a separate post, so I won't go into the details. I made the Save the Date postcards with Photobooth on our Mac and InDesign on my work computer. They came out pretty good and only cost $26 to produce. We've gotten a lot of compliments about them. We're trying to do our part to save money where we can.

We got hit hard in a few places. Mr. Papaya Dog works for a Catholic high school in the area and we were told we could use the chapel for free since the wedding is in the summer. When we met with the priest to discuss details, he let us know that he wasn't charging us for his services but we'd have to pay the teacher discount for the chapel - $500. We're trying to see if we can get around that. We also didn't plan on paying for the mandatory premarital counseling. I heard it was between $200-500.

We also planned on using my frequent flyer miles for part of our honeymoon airfare and my Aunt's timeshare for one of our weeks away. We couldn't get reservation for any of the 10 properties in Greece we wanted to stay at so we change our honeymoon plans to Australia (the Joey's -- get it?). That seemed OK until I realized I didn't have enough miles to get even half of one of our tickets to Sydney covered. We could pick somewhere else but we both have our hearts set on Australia and you only live once right? So instead of saving money on the moneymoon, I mean honeymoon, we're using everything we budgeted. It may be time to come up with a budget cutback plan.

Some of the first things to go would be the favors and the music. We plan on making limoncello and bottling it for our guests. While we can get the lemons for free and the Vodka at a reasonable price but it's the bottles that wouldn't come cheap. Actually, they aren't too expensive but getting them shipped would be.

I have a little money budgeted for a band, but in the end we may have to go with the trusty ipod. Not as exciting, but it's better than nothing. We're still hoping one of Mr. Papaya Dog's many musician friends will "gift" us their services.

I'm trying to come up with other places to save money. In the end, I think it will come down to turnout. We've invited 150 people. If 25 of those people don't show up, it will be a huge help. We've got a lot of family members we were asked to invite.

What elements are you will to change or scrap to stay within budget and which ones are considered no fly zones?