I got married this week (~$30k)! Semi-DIY and here are my big take-aways:
After two years of planning and endless hours of stress, our wedding day was one of the best days of my life and I want to pass on some of my key take-aways:
DIY flowers save soooo much money but what you’re not spending in cash, you’re spending in time. We ordered flowers from Bloom by Bunches, which is a farm-to-person wholesaler and they were wonderful to work with. With that said, DIY flowers were way more work than I was anticipating and flowers are a lot more delicate than I thought so we definitely lost a couple stems due to my inexperience lol. We had to do so much flower prep (cutting the stems, taking off the leaves, refreshing the water every 24 hours, designing the bouquets, wrapping them in floral tape, wrapping them in ribbon, etc.) We prepped them over 3 days, and we had the help of one of my cousins and bridesmaids. If it was just the two of us it would have taken wayyy longer and it still took so many hours. They ended up looking gorgeous so I’m still really happy with how it turned out but just a heads up for anyone else looking to DIY! We spent $800 total for my bridal bouquet, 7 bridesmaids bouquets, a ton of greenery, and 12 boutonnières, and we repurposed the bouquets to decorate the sweetheart table. We used fake florals for the centrepieces ($200). We then took our florals the day after the wedding to the elderly long term care ward at our local hospital and they were so appreciative and sweet - would recommend.
Have super clear timelines! Do both an “overall” timeline broken down just by hour (I.e., when hair and makeup is and where, when the first look is, when ceremony is, cocktail hour, dinner, speeches, first dance, etc.), and then also a “detailed” timeline that breaks down exactly where each member of the bridal party/family should be and when. Build in an extra 15 minutes of buffer time in each slot - we did this and it helped us stay on time because then if one “slot” went over, it wasn’t a domino effect for the rest of the day. Send these via text to everyone who needs to know so they have them on their phones AND print out a couple versions to have around the getting ready areas on the day of. I also handed one to our photographer and MC and they helped corral us all. We still got some questions about who needed to be where but the timelines helped a lot imo.
We decided not to get a DJ and just use Spotify, using their mix feature to add fades/rises/blends between songs. Instead of just choosing the “normal” version of each song, for a bunch of the songs I found “DJ remix” versions on Spotify to add to the playlist. I was super nervous that it wasn’t going to go well and people weren’t going to dance but ohhhh man the dance floor was PACKED. Like I think it was genuinely the best party of my life hahaha everyone was getting DOWN. We had a ton of people come up to us afterwards and tell us how they wish they had Spotify for their weddings because it felt like a DJ had been there. I will say that I did spend hours curating the playlist, moving songs around to create good blends of slow/fast/genres/etc but I’m so happy I did that because the vibes were impeccable. We also had a “song request” section in our RSVP and I made sure to add in everyone’s songs requests throughout and that was also a huge hit.
We used a local Italian restaurant for our catering and worked directly with their head chef to curate a buffet menu and wow it went amazing. Would highly recommend y’all reach out to local restaurants you like to see if they do catering - it was $5500 for full cocktail hour catering + buffet for 80 people and they just went above and beyond with the food.
We picked up 3 Costco cakes the day before the wedding (one chocolate, one vanilla, and one cheesecake). They added writing on top of each one as well! We got soooo many compliments on the cake and every time we were like “if you want to taste it again, we got it from Costco!” everyone was shocked and super happy hahaha. People especially loved the chocolate cake. For 3 cakes it was $90!!! (They weren’t our only dessert but we feel like we saved a ton by not doing a custom wedding cake and no one even knew the difference.)
I created “wedding day binders” that had the seating chart, ceremony lay out, photography shot list, photography inspo pics, important phone numbers (like parents, maid of honour, vendors, best man, etc). I’m not sure if these actually got used by anyone other than our DOC for the set up but it gave me peace of mind to know they were there just in case.
I think that’s everything off the top of my head but I am happy to answer any questions anyone has!! Everything went seamlessly and I’m just so happy with how it all turned out.