How we planned our bay area wedding on a budget

 

According to this article, the average wedding in California costs $39,000. When my husband and I were planning our wedding, we decided to keep our wedding cost below the average wedding cost.

Summary

• Why did we choose a budget wedding?

• The ring

• Wedding venue and vendors

• Wedding dress

• Wedding decor

• Photographer and makeup artist

Why did we choose a budget wedding?

Why did we choose a budget wedding instead of a luxurious wedding? This is because we both don’t think it is necessary to have a very expensive wedding. 

We wanted the wedding to be nice, fun and worth everyone’s time to go there, but neither of us wanted it to be extravagant or excessive. We are just a young couple starting our life together. Down the road, there will be many occasions for large expenses, such as buying a house, having kids, etc. We would rather save the money for the down payment of our future house instead of squandering it on a one-day event.  

We understand that different people have different opinions. Maybe for you, it is very important to have a wedding in a specific way. Maybe you have spent many years planning their dream wedding, even long before you met the right person. You should do whatever you feel like is the right thing to do. It is totally ok for you to have a different belief from us.

That being said, here is how we planned our bay area wedding on a budget.

The ring

Price

I don’t know why the general rule of thumb is to spend at least 2 months salary on the engagement ring. I think that is totally BS. I wouldn't feel loved less by my husband if he had proposed to me with a cheap engagement ring. Actually, I would feel it is unwise if he actually bought me a ring worth 2 months of his salary. This is why:

• As soon as you put the ring on your finger, it will start to depreciate. Actually, the resale price engagement rings are typically only 25% - 50% of their original retail price. Of course I will not sell my engagement ring, but I just felt it is not worth it to spend a large amount of money on something that is doomed to depreciate at least half of its value.

• I wouldn’t feel safe wearing a super expensive engagement ring outdoors. I’ve heard of a woman putting her engagement ring in a safe and never wearing it, because it is worth more than 20k. If that’s the case, I would rather have a cheaper one that I feel safe to wear all the time.

Material

Diamond mining can have a bad environmental impact, including soil erosion, deforestation and ecosystem destruction. Some blood diamonds were mined by slave labor in war-torn countries.

In light of that, we chose a lab grown diamond. They have the same physical and chemical properties as natural diamonds. As a bonus, lab grown diamonds typically cost 50-70% less than natural, mined diamonds.

My two cents

This is something I discussed with my husband, then boyfriend, before he bought the engagement ring, both for the price and the material. We decided that since we will spend our life together, we should start consulting each other when making big purchases. We actually have studied the cost of lab grown diamond engagement rings, and we came up with a ring budget that is less than two weeks of his salary.

If you are thinking about buying an engagement ring, please discuss this with your significant other, instead of directly buying a lab grown diamond ring that costs two weeks of your salary. A lot of people have a particular style of ring (cut, material, price, etc) they like, and they might have very different opinions than us.

Wedding venue and vendors

We wanted to find a wedding venue that provides all the vendors, so that it will be a one stop shop for us. We ended up finding a wedding company called Wedgewood weddings. They have a few locations in the bay area. 

They provide all the wedding vendors: catering, bakery, florist, DJ, wedding officiant, photographer, etc. After visiting one of its wedding venue locations, we decided to go with them.  However, we got external vendors for a handful of services where we found better deals elsewhere or wanted to bring in a specific person for the role (such as the officiant).

Wedding dress

I have always imagined finding my wedding dress at a beautiful boutique, then I will ring the bell to let everyone in the store know that I have found THE dress. The reality is quite different.

I went to David’s bridal and tried on a few dresses. They are all pretty expensive ($800+) and they all need to be tailored to some extend. The cost of alteration depends on the number of layers and the materials of the dress. Since I prefer the fluffy ones with many layers, the alteration cost will be more than $300. 

I have also looked into renting a wedding dress, but they are not cheap either. Renting one would cost anywhere from $500 to $2000.

My theory is this: I will only be wearing this dress for a few hours, so it is not worth it to spend that much money on it. I ended up buying my wedding dress from Amazon. It has since been discontinued from Amazon, so I could not share the link here. 

Wedding decor

We bought most of our wedding decor from Michaels. Here is an example of them:

We also printed two big canvas photos for part of the decor. We got them from Costco at a good price.

For the guest seating chart, we painted it together on a canvas. It was a wonderful project to do with my husband. We blurred the guest names in the photo below:

Photographer and Makeup artist

I found our photographer and makeup artist on thumbtack. It is a good platform for you to compare prices and see the reviews of the pro before booking.

That’s it. That’s how we planned our wedding in the bay area on a budget. 

How did you plan your wedding? Did you spend more or less than the average cost in your state? Either way, I hope you had a wonderful wedding and a memory to be cherished forever.