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My fiance and I paid for our wedding ourselves. We simply paid cash from our savings or from our paychecks.. with zero amount being billed to credit cards. My in-laws insisted in paying towards the wedding, even though we declined over and over, they wanted to pay for luxuries that we would otherwise gone without. They paid for the limo, our hotel accomodations, the DJ , the photographer, postage, caligraphy, miscelaneous stationary, tips and the rehearsal dinner. All together they paid $10k, I paid $10k and my fiance paid $10k.

Good luck

TIP: Do not buy from any wedding stores or vendors. Buy online, ebay, craigslist or directly from the manufacturer. Off season (october -April) venues are cheaper. Friday and Sunday you can get even more deals.. so you can score a greta deal on DJ.s photographers and venues ,say a Sunday during the winter. Ask for discounts… you will be suprised! Good luck
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i would ask your parents it doesnt hurt to ask , the worse that could happen is they say no
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The money for my wedding will be payed by my fiance and I. His parents are going to be paying for a certain part of our wedding. I just got some news that may affect us so, I am really going to have to see.
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My parents helped out – mucho. We did kind of the traditional paying thing – groom’s parents paid for alcohol and rehearsal dinner, my parents paid for much of the rest. We only had to pay things that were a "step up" from the minimum.. like we wanted more prints from our photographer, so we paid for a higher package, I wanted a slightly more expensive wedding dress so we paid the difference, etc.

I’m very lucky that our parents are able and willing to help. Even though we’re still cutting corners, we couldn’t have done this wedding without their help. I wish you the best of luck!!

One tip – Friday night weddings are cheaper for most anything. Also weddingwire.com had a lot of vendor discounts. Shopping around got us some great prices!
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Experience

We are paying for our wedding ourselves, and we are paying cash. No credit, no loans. If we can’t afford it, we don’t need it. I would recommend the same for anyone else, although we are an older, established couple so we can probably afford more than a younger couple just starting out, but still, don’t start you marriage in debt to your wedding, it’s only one day out of the rest of your lives. And don’t expect anyone to pitch in anymore. If someone offers great, but don’t expect anyone, not even parents.
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we paid for ours ourselves with my mom buying my dress. My sister’s was very creative in how it got done though – she had friends who could cook so she just bought the food and they prepared it. One friend could sew so she bought fabric and her friend made her dress. One friend donated flowers instead of giving a gift and they used the local community center for the ceremony so it wasn’t very expensive. I think she spend under 2K for the whole wedding and it was really nice. Just remember though – a wedding is just a 4 hour party in the end – not worth going into huge debt for it – it’s really about family and friends celebrating your marriage.
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My husband and I did pay for it ourselves using our everyday money-no savings or anything. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how I paid for my wedding. It matters how you will pay for yours.

Have you both looked at your own spending to see where you could cut costs? Is he saving as well? He should be. Have you looked at alternative venues like someone’s home? How about having a cocktail reception instead of a full meal? No favors or programs–unnecessary expenses. You could have simply a punch adn cake reception, which seems like it would be quite inexpensive, while still allowing you to celebrate with friends and family. How about getting someone with an iPod to do a playlist and you could do that instead of hiring someone. Ask someone with a decent camera if they would do your photos as their gift instead of paying a photographer, ask someone like your mom if they would consider paying for your flowers as their wedding gift. Take each component of your wedding that you want, figure out if you consider it a must have thing, and then figure out how to do it less expensively. It can be done.
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My fiance & I set our budget as if we were paying 100% on our own.
We set our budget at $20k – – we had about half of that in savings already between the two of us and used that for all the deposits and initial expenses.

We then cut our budgets and saved as much as we could to pay for the rest – we refused to take a loan or use credit cards to pay for our wedding (the idea of that is nuts!). We dedicated our tax refunds to the "wedding account" as well as any bonuses we got at work.

We shopped around for as many bargains as we could find (we live in a high priced area), cut what we could, and did alot of DIY to cut costs.

Unexpectedly, my Mom gave us $2k and my Aunt & Uncle gave me $300 towards my dress – – and we were very grateful for those gifts, but we didn’t increase our budget.

Now that RSVP’s are coming in and guests are declining (we budgeted as if all those invited would say yes), we are now tracking at just about $17k – – which is $3k under budget.
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My parents paid for the "big ticket" items – my dress, the ceremony site, and the cake/desserts. We paid for the rest. Now our budget was really small to begin with, so the best thing to do is figure out what costs can’t change (site, dress, catering, dj) – whatever you have to have that can’t be negotiated. then work with the rest.

our site and my dress was obviously set, but instead of a big cake, we had a little one for us to cut, and then a dessert buffet for the guests. we had our ceremony at noon for 50 people with an optional lunch after, and then had our big reception at 7pm, so we didn’t have to serve a meal.

i bought my shoes, corset, accesories online/eBay. my centerpieces were vases with glitter/sugar in the bottom and branches with cherry blossoms. so the vases i got at the dollar store, i bought a bag of sugar and some glitter. bought a fake cherry blossom tree on ebay and picked off the flowers to hot glue to branches that i found in parks/people’s yards.

that’s just one example, but be creative with all the little stuff, because all that little stuff adds up
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I am getting married but i had to budget , cooking the food yourself, buying stuff from walmart or off ebay, calling around finding the cheapest flowers, finding the cheapest wedding dress or someone who knows how to make it , going online looking for ways to decorate yourself , they have sites that shows how to make your dream wedding your self. CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP THAT IS THE ANSWER. AND JUST BECAUSE IT IS CHEAP DONT MEAN IT WONT LOOK OR TASTE GOOD
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We had a longer engagement – over 2 years, so we could pay for most of it ourselves. My dad paid for the place ($3,000), my mom paid for the dj, His mom made the cake, his dad built us a trellis, and we paid for the rest by taking money automatically out of our paychecks each week. Our income tax money went in there, as well as any bonuses or extra cash. I did things myself where I could like the invitations and favors. I also saved money by just ordering the flowers and made the bouquets and put the centerpieces together myself. I found a photographer on Craigslist who was just starting out and offering a great deal. Being engaged for a while gave us plenty of time to find the best deals and wait for the sales.
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My parents had saved up money just for my wedding, so they paid for most of it. My fiance paid for the honeymoon, rental car, etc, and I chipped in some as well, but my parents paid for most of it. $6500 for 500 guests, not including rings and honeymoon.
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It came from our bank account. We spent as much as we thought we could comfortably afford, regardless of what our "dreams" may have been. (My dream is flying first class, but my financial situation only allows to fly economy – so I fly economy. If the only thing we could afford was a courthouse wedding – then this would be what we would have done.)

I would never "get others to help me" – if I’m old enough to get married, I should be old enough to finance my wedding. Adulthood comes with responsibilities.
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My husband & I paid for everything but the rehearsal dinner, his parents were adamant about paying for that. We basically bought things little by little so it wasn’t quite a large hit at once. We kept things really simple and didn’t splurge… at all… Instead of getting flowers for the head table we just put mine and my girls bouquets in vases with colored glass marbles below, saved a couple hundred right there. The ring bearers were so young we couldn’t see paying for boutonnieres for them so my mom made them out of artificial flowers and nobody could tell the difference, saved us a good $20! We opted to make our favors ourselves, which was a great savings but make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew.

The most important thing… we didn’t feel bad about doing without some things (did we even do without, I don’t feel like we did) because we knew the most important thing at the end of the day was that we would have each other and we would be surrounded by the people that mattered most to us.

Congrats & good luck!
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We paid for it ourselves, Having said that we were incredibly lucky , the photographer was a close personal friend of mine who did our photos as a wedding gift to us and the caterer was a childhood friend of my husbands who owned a cafe and was looking to branch out in to catering and he gave us a sizable discount. A big tip that helped with other expenses for us was to shop around, Avoid any business with the words ‘wedding specialists" (or something similar) in their title, it seems to be an invitation to jack up the prices. My bouquet came from our local florist, a tiny little hole in the wall place and I got change out of $100, it was just as beautiful as anything I could have ordered from a more expensive florist. Our wedding cake was the same. it came from a little suburban bakery, it , tasted great and cost $300
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My husband and I paid for our wedding ourselves. We just saved up as much as we could, and we didn’t spend beyond our means. We decided from the beginning that we would not go into debt for a one-day party. Best advice is to either continue saving until you can afford what you want, or else plan something less extravagant if you don’t want to wait so long.
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We paid for it ourselves. We used money that had been saved up that was specifically earmarked for a wedding. Our parents contributed a little bit–rehearsal dinner, dress, flowers–but everything we did was from our own pockets. We had savings that more than covered our wedding expenses so we were lucky.

A few tips:

* Choose a time of the year that is off season.
* Fridays and Sundays are less expensive.
* Do you research before booking a vendor. Don’t go with the first vendor you see, but rather shop around and compare.
* Choose flowers that are in season. Roses are inexpensive all year round.
* Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. Many people don’t when it comes to wedding planning, but if you don’t ask for a discount or try to negotiate down prices the vendor won’t do it for you. It never hurts to ask and you may be surprised. We negotiated every vendor we had.
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My husband & I both worked so we pooled our resources and had the kind of wedding we could afford without going into debt or cutting corners on nessesities. "Dream" weddings are not worth going into heavy debt over, and are highly over rated.

Ir’s supposed to be about the marriage, not all the fluff that gets you there.
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My husband and I had a small ceremony with just family on the beach. We paid $345 for our ceremony. My mother paid for all of us to go out to eat afterwards. You know getting married is not about the ceremony you have, if you can’t afford it, then you can’t afford it. All you have to do is have a marriage license to be married.
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