What I have learned through this whole process is there is no way to do a "cheap" wedding unless you entirely cut out things. Pretty much you can do a cheap wedding itself but as soon as you add anything else on you may as well toss your budget out the window. We originally planned to try and keep everything under 10 grand including the honeymoon. We have quickly surpassed a 10 grand estimation now not even including the honeymoon and that was trying to keep things on the cheap. Hopefully we can find some ways to cost cut or drop some of the things entirely but I doubt it. Guess next years bonus is gone now too just to cover what is inevitably gonna be more credit card debt than I really wanted .

Side note.. we are still searching for a reception venue as we got slack waiting to hear back from the places we actually wanted. If anyone has any suggestions that may still have availability 3 months or so out I am calling anyone I can at this point. We have a few options now but they all are quite a bit more than we were looking to spend. We would prefer in Raleigh because the ceremony will be at the JC Raulston arboretum at NC State.

6/30/2015 8:35:50 AM

^I would check out city of Raleigh venues. They are cheap, would do the trick, and Id guess they are more likely to have availability 3 months out (well, maybe)

http://www.raleighnc.gov/parks/content/PRecRecreation/Articles/RentalInformationUniqueVenues.html

Worst case scenario, my work has used Founder's Hall at the Unitarian church on Wade Ave. There's nothing too special about the room, and there are rainbow flags hanging everywhere, but the people there are cool, its also pretty cheap, and we always seem to get availability really easily:

http://www.uufr.org/contact-us/facility-rental

6/30/2015 9:01:29 AM

Quote :

"What I have learned through this whole process is there is no way to do a "cheap" wedding unless you entirely cut out things"

Hear hear!

Getting married Saturday. There's going to be no dinner or alcohol at the reception, just a sundae bar, and it's still going to cost a lot. The only thing we splurged on really was fireworks because the wedding will be the 4th of July and the city is having their fireworks the night before on the 3rd. And I'm at the point I just don't want to know what things cost. And we're not getting married in a large city either because all the venues and people in the large city near us cost more.

My fiancé and I were planning on having a small wedding and it's just not turned out that way. We have 270 or so coming because I tell her she knows half of everyone in the county we're getting married in.

[Edited on June 30, 2015 at 9:20 AM. Reason : /]

6/30/2015 9:17:15 AM

Yeah we already hit up all the parks n rec venues we were interested in and they all are booked and apparently book out far in advance haha.

6/30/2015 9:47:51 AM

Jason, you should have talked to me! Our wedding and reception cost 7500 dollars and was pretty awesome if I do say so myself. That included the rental of the country club from Friday night through Sunday morning.

6/30/2015 10:22:07 AM

have you looked into the mordecai house downtown? it's really cheap for the day.

6/30/2015 11:06:22 AM

SHAMELESS PLUG

If you still need a caterer, check out my husband and my catering company!

http://www.spice3.com

7/2/2015 9:36:47 PM

I will try to read back through the thread some but does anyone on here do wedding reception DJing? Thats the last thing I have yet to lock down so thought I would at least check here.

Sent JTBucky a message only had to go back one page haha

Any others in case he is booked?

[Edited on July 13, 2015 at 11:02 AM. Reason : .]

7/13/2015 10:59:09 AM

We used Sami Automatic and he was the bomb.com

http://djsamiautomatic.com/

7/13/2015 12:49:14 PM

currently have http://www.islandsound.net/ booked. cannot verify if good or not yet

7/13/2015 2:12:31 PM

If you do a wedding/reception in a public park make sure you ask about the A/C in indoor areas. We had our reception at Lake Johnson and everything was fine until 9 or 10 when we realized the A/C no longer worked. It was 90+ degrees outside so the reception room warmed up REAL quick. We had the place til midnight but most of the wedding guests were gone by 10:30. I left around 11 because I was losing the battle with the heat.

8/13/2015 4:57:27 PM

somebody shoot me - getting married in the NY/NJ area is a disaster. I don't know why I even bothered making a budget

8/17/2015 8:02:02 PM

Ok guess it was worth it afterall

[Edited on September 27, 2015 at 11:05 PM. Reason : m]

9/27/2015 10:42:47 PM

Another successful TWW wedding DJ in the books.

Hopefully Doss2k agrees. Apparently the reception could only hold but so much of my system

10/5/2015 12:26:34 AM

I needed more sir mix a lot and less chicken dance, but other than that I guess JT3bucky did pretty well.

10/5/2015 10:06:08 PM

I had to do something...people were sitting to begin. It gets the people going!

But had you told me, I def. woulda rolled sir mix alot in there.

Next time!

10/6/2015 1:20:27 AM

I danced! It was a tough crowd I think. Only a handful of people who were interested in dancing. I was 5 beers in and very interested.

10/7/2015 10:13:11 PM

LOL @ next time

10/8/2015 4:03:28 PM

Next wedding I play that she attends. lol Had to clarify.

10/8/2015 7:38:23 PM

You did just fine man no worries we went back and forth on having one because we knew the crowd would be a tough sell on dancing but I figured hey even if it's just me dancing at my wedding it's worth it haha. Enjoying my honeymoon in Crete sitting on my balcony looking out over the Mediterranean.

10/9/2015 11:19:04 AM

Quote :

"Enjoying my honeymoon in Crete sitting on my balcony looking out over the Mediterranean"

...and still on the wolf web

I've got just 11 days till my wedding

10/13/2015 10:43:29 AM

This has probably been asked, but I'm lazy. An advice on a honeymoon for this upcoming June? We were thinking about something all inclusive to make the planning easier, but it's not required. Though I've got a bit of sticker shock ($3-6k) for 6 nights. We don't really have any requirements, other than thinking tropical, relaxing, good food/drinks, snorkeling/scuba diving, exploring, etc.

3/15/2016 10:27:39 PM

We went to Couples Tower Isle in Jamaica for ours in October http://couples.com/m/resorts/tower-isle and absolutely loved it. I think it is a little bit smaller and more intimate than some others. It is adults only which is very nice, no annoying kids running and screaming around the beach/pool, had snorkeling and scuba, and the food was absolutely incredible. I think it ended up being about $4k for everything for 7 nights, including flights. Of course that was before this whole Zika virus thing, have no idea if Jamaica has problems with it there or not.

3/16/2016 7:52:27 AM

We went to Excellence Riviera Cancun. It was super nice and large enough that you always had something to do if you wanted. We never left the resort, but there were lots of options if you wanted to.

3/16/2016 7:57:13 AM

^^^ There's a thread in here where I posted about Ambergris Caye, Belize. We did a full week and I spent around $7k...but mostly because we stayed in the nicest resort on the island. We did some resort/hotel pool hopping one day and there were a ton of other nice places for a fraction of the price.

I've been to a decent number of places in the Caribbean and it was the best combination of great food for a low price anywhere. Seriously...the food was amazing. Also great snorkeling/scuba. It's a destination place for both of those as it's right on the 2nd biggest barrier reef in the world.

If you decide to look further into it, hit me up for more details.

3/16/2016 8:18:03 AM

Quote :

"It is adults only which is very nice, no annoying kids running and screaming around the beach/pool"

Do this if at all possible, one of the best choices I made on our honeymoon.

3/16/2016 8:25:22 AM

I forgot to mention that Excellence resorts are adults only all inclusive. There are a few other locations. We are going to the one in Playa Mujeres for our anniversary.

3/16/2016 9:06:53 AM

divorce rate for this thread is comically high

someone should try to figure out why

4/15/2023 2:57:20 PM

You know what's annoying? The pointless pressure that people who like to dance put on people who are quite content not to do so to come join them in actin' a [drunken] fool.

4/15/2023 8:50:26 PM

getting married to a convict would be pretty cost-effective

4/16/2023 12:52:23 AM

Quote :

"divorce rate for this thread is comically high"

stats?

4/17/2023 11:03:11 AM

^ too much emphasis on wedding, not enough on Hauk Tuah after wedding

6/27/2024 10:46:52 AM

BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP HAVE YOU ANY WOOL

6/27/2024 11:09:39 AM