Ways to save money!

My fiancee and I came up with a couple of ways to reduce costs, but these may not work for everyone:


We are doing our own invitations/save-the-day cards/thank you cards, as my fiancee is heavily into scrapbooking and already has the materials to do them with.
We are planning to use artificial flowers for most of the floral arrangements (bouquets, boutonnieres etc) where possible. Flowers can become quite expensive, depending on the extent of the arrangements.
Renting a tuxedo/suit (for men) is less expensive than purchasing one (this may not apply if you're already planning to use it more than once).
These are a few ideas but I imagine they wouldn't apply to everyone.

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I agree with you! Favours are generally useless, and often I find them junky especially the DIY ones. Even the edible ones get left behind if guests have dietary restrictions/allergies and don't know if they can eat the favour, or if they just don't care for a mason jar of your homemade jam or jelly lol.

Due to COVID, we got travel size bottles of Purell ($1.50 each from Dollarama) for each guest’s plate at the reception. Many were actually used during the reception before dinner, and almost everyone took their bottle home. We can actually use the few leftover bottles ourselves too. So it was a cheap, but useful favour that 90% of our guests took home.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but a lot of stuff in weddings is non-essential. Not only do you spend money, but also time planning these extra things that your guests won’t remember in a few days. I feel like a lot of people spend money on little things for the Instagram pics of “details”, but these “details” don’t really matter in term of the guest experience, or the grand scheme of your marriage ("details" like décor, florals, signage, fancy linens or dishes/charger plates, vinyl dance floor wraps)

We saved on things like stationary, fresh flowers, place settings, but we splurged on the guest experience by getting a meal package with many options, and picked a wide range of alcohol for the bar.

We saved money by doing the following:
- Saved a lot on video costs by hiring a videographer for only 5 hours to cover ceremony, reception entrances, speeches, first dance, etc. He also got candid footage of our guests during cocktail hour, arriving for the ceremony, posing for photos with us etc.

- Minimized stationary and printing costs: we emailed Save the Dates and used a free template online to create it. We spent only $55 on the actual invitations with e-vites and a website from Appy Couple. No wedding signs or wedding programs, they are used for an hour and go into the garbage. We didn’t print any giant pictures of ourselves which some people do, and no guest book because we don’t care to look at signatures. Our receiving table super simple - just the card box, a few candles that we now use in our home, and a basket of masks if guests go inside the venue to the washroom. Keep it simple, don’t pay a decorator to add flowers or other trinkets to a receiving table.

- Picked a venue where we could have ceremony, reception and photos all on site. We had no limo or transportation costs. Also makes logistics of the day easier in general.

- No wedding cake or dessert table. Our caterer provided 2 different desserts for each guest as part of the family style meal served to the tables. Nobody even noticed or asked about a cake.

- No wedding favours, most are useless junk that guests leave often behind. Due to Covid, we placed travel size bottles of Purell ($1.50 each from Dollarama) at each guest’s plate at the reception. Many were actually used during the reception before dinner, and almost everyone took their bottle home. We can actually use the few leftover bottles ourselves too.

- Used the free chairs, free table numbers, free linens/dishes/cutlery from our venue. We didn’t waste money on charger plates, fancy linens etc. Our venue has nice chairs included, like Louis chairs or Chiavari so we didn’t pay extra to rent anything.

- Cheap centrepieces. For $17 per tbl, our decorator did fresh hydrangeas in a glass cylinder vase. Nobody remembers or cares about your centrepieces, don’t waste money, effort or time planning this.

- Minimized fresh florals. Our decorator had silk florals and silk greenery that look realistic in photos and in person, so we used 85% silk greenery/florals for the ceremony and reception decor. My bouquet, bridesmaids bouquets and boutonnières were all real flowers and were all in season flowers so it was very affordable.

- No formal bridal party where everyone wears the same dress or suit. Just asked them to wear something nice they already own in a range of a few colours. Gave them bouquets or boutonnières. No money wasted on bridesmaids or groomsmen proposal boxes, matching silk robes , useless gifts etc. I have been in a bridal parties and I have too many robes, and random trinkets I never use from bridesmaids gifts and proposal boxes lol.

Pic of Reception Sweet Heart Table - the only real florals are the piece on the table and in front of the table on the floor. The round arch, the 4 pieces on the 4 clear stands are all silk greenery and silk florals.
Cheap Centrepieces with fresh hydrangeas + free table numbers from the venue

Save where you can and cut what isn't important to you and your fiance. If you don't care about favours, don't do them. If you don't want printed programs and would rather save that cost, don't have them! There are tons of wedding checklists out there that will say you need xyz, but ultimately, you don't need to do/purchase something (examples above) just because it's on a list and the list said a wedding needs it.


We decided to save some $$ and do electronic save the dates. We'll do physical printed actual invites, but save the dates aren't as important to me as those, so figured we could cut a cost there. We will also only be doing a one piece invitation (you don't need to have the separate RSVP piece, and the separate directions card, etc etc) this will save us some $ too, as well as having our guests RSVP via the website, not physical paper RSVP (so we don't have to pay for postage), I'm also going to hand deliver 90% of the invitations.
Another tip is honestly, if you can, try to book your vendors through weddingwire, some vendors will have weddingwire exclusive deals/discounts when you book them/contact them through this platform. If you're going to book that vendor, do it this way and maybe utilize that potential discount. It might only be a 10% discount, but it's worth it and all adds up.

I’m making most of my decor/ invitations & have 50 people coming. We originally wanted less but it worked out this way. We are also saving on having in our backyard along with family prepping the dinner & we all have cutlery so we aren’t ordering catering.
The most costly thing so far has been my dress!
We are also limiting drinks and saying people can BYOB as we aren’t serving people to get drunk. More a couple flats of beer and once it’s gone that’s it kind of deal. I’ve looked on marketplace for stuff, items on sale and dollarama/michaels.

I think the biggest way to save or the easiest way to go over is with the guest list. The more people you have the more it will cost. Figure out what's most important maybe have a top 3 for each of you. I bought most of my stuff from marketplace (hopefully I'll be able to resell most of it). I have quite a few DYI projects but be very careful you don't pay more for supplies than the object is worth lol.. I also got my dress online so I saved so much there.

The biggest expenditure that we were looking at was the venue, so we were looking for ways to cut corners there without having to compromise on beauty. So we looked at places that don't normally hold weddings. In the end, my husband's parents offered to let us use their backyard and it was perfect and completely free! For photography neither of us were willing to compromise there, which was helped by saving on the venue. Catering we were lucky that my mother in law works for a club, so she was able to get us a huge discount on the dinner. I was also able to save a lot of money by not going for a traditional type wedding dress and only paid $100 from an online retailer.
Point is there's lots of ways to save some money here and there if you look around. Your friends and family are also a great resource and are usually more than happy to help you and to play a part in your big day, so don't feel guilty about asking for help. Things like your centerpieces is something that you can get your friends/bridal party to help you with one night and order some takeout and make a fun night out of it, instead of having a florist or whoever to do it for way more money.

View quoted message I’ve been looking at the Facebook buy and sell groups for wedding stuff and definitely think I’m going to find some things there!

My fiance and I have found a lot of decor from Homesense/Winners, Party City, Michaels and Dollarama and we've saved a lot of money this way. We've also have found pieces from our local wedding sell/swap groups on Facebook where other couples are selling their weddings items for great prices.

One thing we have scrapped out on is wedding favors. We decided not to hand out favors because half the time guests forget to take them home and there goes your money that you've spend on them