A wedding on a budget goes wrong in one of two ways: by cutting the things guests notice, or by cutting nothing and hoping. There is a third way, which is to cut the things nobody can see. The date, the format, the length, the cake, the paper. Most of what a wedding costs is invisible to the people attending it, and that is exactly where the money comes out.
The ten invisible cuts
Marry on a Friday, a Sunday or in the off-season
The single largest saving available. Venues and suppliers price for Saturday in summer; everything else is a discount on the same room and the same people.
Shorten the guest list before anything else
Every guest is a chair, a meal, a drink, an invitation and a slice of the total. Twenty fewer guests is often the cost of the photographer.
One venue for ceremony and reception
No transport, no second hire, no gap that needs filling with a cocktail hour.
A lunch or a late-afternoon wedding
A shorter day costs less at every line: fewer hours of staff, of music, of drinks, of light to fill.
Limit the bar rather than the wine
Sparkling, red, white, one cocktail and beer. Guests do not miss the full bar; the total does.
A display cake and a kitchen sheet cake
Same photograph, same dessert, a third of the price.
Digital invitations
And spend the paper budget on one beautiful thing at the table.
Fewer, bigger flowers
One arrangement that stops people in the doorway costs less than a small one on every table and photographs better.
A DJ for the evening and a playlist for dinner
A band is the most expensive way to make a room dance, and not always the best.
Buy the dress from stock, or off the rail
Sample sales, previous-season stock and off-the-rail gowns are the same designers at a fraction of the price.
Where not to cut
The three lines to protect
Photography
It is all you keep.
Food and drink
It is what guests remember, and what they talk about in the car.
The person running the day
A day-of coordinator, or the venue coordinator if there is one. Without them the couple runs the day, and the couple should be attending it.
Guests notice whether they were fed, whether they could hear, and whether the couple looked happy. Everything else is for the album.
Track it as one number
A budget that lives in five places is not a budget. Put every quote and every payment against one total as it arrives, so that the decision to spend more on the flowers is made knowing what it takes from somewhere else. UNSTAGED's budget tool does exactly this and shares it with both of you, which matters more on a tight budget than a generous one: the money conversation is easier when the numbers are the same on both phones.
Cut what nobody can see. Protect what everybody feels. The wedding that follows those two rules does not look like a budget, because it is not one.
— The UNSTAGED Studio
