My parents gave me a fairly small budget (compared to the *average* wedding) for our wedding. And although they did give me some wiggle room, I had to be creative on how the money was spent. My two biggest expenses were the venue+food and drink and the photographer. Looking back I have no qualms about the money spent on either. This week I’m going through some of the projects I competed to stay on budget.
One of the reason—besides my total love/obsession—for choosing cupcakes as opposed to a traditional cake, it I’d heard it was more economical. One Saturday I my mom and I visited with a baker in town. Her portfolio was certainly impressive, especially considering we live in such a small town. And her prices were also astounding, but not in a good way. At this point I was already well over my budget because of my choice in photographers. But to spend almost $600 on cupcakes was just a bit much for.
I mentioned this to one of my dear friends who was recently married and eager to help. She offered to bake all my cupcakes. What a gift from God she is in my life! My dear friend made over 100 cupcakes free of charge to me. And her husband make cupcake toppers with our monogram using Photoshop. For the top layer of our ‘cake’ we had an oversized cupcake that A even created an oversized cupcake wrapper to go around it.
*****
For favors I opted for a candy buffet. Originally I thought we would use black, white, and pink candies. Then I decided it was really more hassle than it was worth. Plus the color restriction really put a damper on yummy candies. Plan B: bulk candy shopping at Sam’s. I think we spent about $125 on candy from Pixie Stix to M & Ms, to Gummy Bears, to Ring Pops, to Reece’s Pieces, LifeSavers to mini chocolate bars. They were all arranged in vases purchased at IKEA. And let’s just say the kids (and grown-ups) loved it! We purchased little favor boxes at Wal-Mart and decorated them with heart stickers and placed those on the table too along with little scoops I found online.
I also made little signs to go on the table saying “A sweet ending to a new beginning”. A little cheesy, I know. But if you can’t have some cheese on your wedding day, when can you? And that was our stress-free candy buffet.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my little budget-friendly wedding projects. I know there was nothing too unique or extraordinary about it, but it worked for us. And more importantly we loved our wedding and the opportunity to share the day with our family and friends.
Come back the rest of this week for more wedding DIY projects!
The cupcake stand looks perfect! and I love the giant cupcake on top! You have very good friends :-)
ReplyDeleteThat sign is not too cheesy, it's darling! The candy is a great idea for the favors.