Weddings on a tight budget

I got married about 2 months ago. I had a goregous, 50 guest wedding. It costed less than 2000 dollars. All it takes is patience to research out the cheapest possible option. This wedding had everything you'd expect. Food, dancing, a reception, decorations, flowers, a wedding party, invitations, and so on.

First, the invitations. www.123print.com is an excellent website for inexpensive invitations. They start at about 12 dollars for 25 invitations, and the more you buy, the less they cost per invite

They also have postcard invites, the best value of them all in my opinion. They start at about 10 dollars for 50!

The website also has, save the date cards and bridal shower invitations. You could all your invitations in one place,

My invitations came out so nice, Lots of compliments. The invitations shipped in the time expressed. I highly recomend this site.

 So you want a fabulous dress? Who doesn't? But you don't have to spend 1000+ on it. There's even ways to get them under 500 dollars.

I personally got a Maggie Sotero for 200 dollars.

First a few great websites:

http://www.lilywedding.com This site has a great selection and some very great dresses. These aren't white prom-like dresses. These are full blown wedding gowns. absolutely goregous. There are a few gown that get upn in price but, you can get a fabulous dress for around 300 dollars. There's even some bridesmaid's dresses to take a look at too.

www.lightinthebox.com/ This is actually a wholesale site, but don't let that freak you out, you don't need to buy 20 dresses for an order, they will let you order one. They will even custom make your dress. But make sure you order these well in advance, custom dresses take a bit to make. Again 300 dollars will get you a fabulous gown.

If you order online, MAKE SURE YOU FOLLOW THE SIZE CHART!! This is so ridiculously important. You might not have time to exchange the size, depending on when you order.

Now, for those that want the experience of trying dresses on. Here's my advise, go to a shop in a small town, honnestly the smaller the town the bnetter, chances are they're hurting financially and will sell to you cheaper than anyone else. I bought mine in a very small farm town for 200 dollars. Take a look at the website http://www.pattysbridal.com/ take a look at the designers these types of places will have, everything any other shop would have.

When you visit the shop, give them a very low budget, we told them that we were on a 200 dollar budget. I found my dress in the half off section, maked to about 400 dollars, told them i didn't need any alterations, and i took it out the door, that day for that price.

Ask around, chances are you might know someone that can make a great cake. My cousin could, and didn't charge me a thing, I just had to buy the stuff for it.

Now, even if you don't know anyone, Cakes aren't that hard to make, at least the simple ones. Fondant is a miracle worker. Dont like fondant? Try putting a ton of frosting on the cake and rolling out your fondant really thin and putting it on like that. Your frosting will probably cancel out the fondant taste.

Or try a cake without fondant, but it is rather difficult to get the frosting smooth, but with practice you can get it to look pretty nice

Check out all these cake shows that are on now, cake boss, ace of cakes, etc. Watch them smooth their fondant. That's honestly how I learned to do it, along with practice. Make sure you buy some cake release, that's the key to getting a cake out without it breaking apart.

Decorating with flowers and ribbon can make a goregous, yet simple cake.

Before you try to make a monsterous 7 tier cake, practice some smaller ones first. Anything above 3 tiers is going to require some doweling, research that subject a little.

Make sure you practice well in advance for your wedding, that way if you're just no good you still have time to order another cake in time for your wedding

I'll try to put a specific cake hub up pretty soon, on all these individual subjects.

 My flowers were done by my aunt, I was lucky to have such great connections, but you can do flowers yourself. Flowers are so goregous, it's pretty hard to make them look bad.

My suggestion is to order a wedding in a box package. http://www.amazoniaflowers.com has some pretty good prices. My sister-in-law told me about this site, and her flowers were great. She even said she had more than what she needed. Her only complaint was her timing on ordering, the flowers have to be delivered on a weekday, but she got married on a sunday. So a few of them were no good. But, most weddings are on saturdays, so getting them on friday for your saturday wedding is fine. Make sure you cool them. Ask customer service exactly how to do so. Unfortunately, you'll probably be up all night working on your flowers. So make sure you plan for that. It's a little inconvenient, but it'll save you a bunch of money. 

 There's tons of options for a low priced wedding, feel free to suggest more topics for me to write about. I hope this helps, everyone deserves a beautiful day in my opinion. Money shouldn't prevent your dream from coming true.