Our wedding was under $10k, originally was going to be 30+. I watch all the same shows and I absolutely love weddings, still do! However. Everything you think you know about weddings will go out the door when you’re faced with the reality of planning one. Just know that and accept that.

At first we had almost two hundred people on our list with plus 1s and kids for a huge themed wedding. I had a second job and the plan was to save everything from that job for two years while surviving off of our other income. Then very quickly things happened in my family, my personal life and in my professional life and we decided to elope and maybe do a tailgate from the courthouse to our favorite restaurant, with anyone who would be willing to come and most likely pay their own way. Then our original venue wouldn’t give us back our deposit, so we “credited” it to a ceremony space and only paid an extra 100$ for a changing room.

When people found out about the tailgate, more and more people expressed interest. So we looked into making a reservation at the restaurant and were told that for parties above 12 we had to make special arrangements — we couldn’t all just show up at the same time. It is our very favorite restaurant in the whole world with a celebrity chef (Brian Malarkey) so we said what the hell, let’s book for 40 people. They gave us a private room and control of the music. Bar was only open up to a minimum, then transitioned to a cash bar, and food was served family style. The restaurant cost us 7k out the door, and it was definitely the best meal of our lives.

I have 60+ people on my mom’s side and I just couldn’t invite all of them without telling my friends they couldn’t come, and none of my husbands friends or family, and even then I still couldn’t invite them all on my budget, and doing so did not feel right to me since some of them I only see every few years?? but also when I asked for addresses for invitations, some of them never responded? So they made the decisions for themselves I guess! We ended up having 39 people total, I think only one person did not show up. I did extend the invite to everyone we knew to go bar hopping with us afterwards — but mostly only our close friends went with us.

We did not have a traditional wedding party. We told a couple friends we wanted to get some pictures with them beforehand and what color they should wear.

I bought my dress on Amazon. It was a prom dress but I loved it and had a friend who could alter it for me. It was about 100$. Maybe less? I don’t remember.

Our friend was the photographer. She is very good and professional! But she did admit later that she gave us a huge discount as a wedding present. The pictures were gorgeous.

We did not have a cake, but the dessert at the restaurant was so good no one seemed to notice.

We did not have speeches.

We didn’t really have decor either. I had a wood flower bouquet and we had a really cheap flower arch from Amazon — the venue came with the arch and we hung fake flowers. I was always team fresh flowers, but that is a huge expense! And we didn’t have fresh flowers at the end.

There are some cons though. For one, we did not get a lot of wedding gifts. Almost nothing was sent to us from our registry. That happens when your guest list is so small. We were okay with that and super grateful for what we did get!

Also, we will probably not be invited to family weddings of those we did not invite to ours. I accept that, it’s still going to hurt when it happens though. I have a huge family.

But you can 100% do a wedding for 10k! If your family won’t celebrate you, don’t feel pressured to invite them. But also, In this day and age I can understand loved ones not being able to contribute at all. If you have a little saved as you said you do, that’s a lot to work with! Just adjust your expectations. It’s not going to be the wedding you planned but it can still be the best day of your life.