The Up & Coming Magazine

Image Source: Unsplash- Beatriz Pérez Moya

I got married on November 1st, and going into it, my husband Ian and I knew that we wanted to spend as little money as possible on our wedding. Since we were having our wedding in a small conference room, we knew ahead of time that our guest list would not exceed 32 people. That included both of us, some of our family members, a few friends, a few of my husband’s coworkers, and our wedding party. Although our guest list was small, we knew we would still need to send out invitations. Since I’ve always been creative, I designed our wedding invitations on Canva, choosing a template that matched our wedding’s color palette. After printing our invites at Staples in July, we sent them out after the Fourth of July to avoid any delays in the mail. The finished product turned out really cute, and our family and friends loved it. Our wedding was held in a conference room in the nature center at Killens Pond State Park in Felton, Delaware. We knew we wanted a small wedding anyways so renting out a big venue for our wedding day wasn’t something that was necessary for us.

The next step for any bride-to-be’s to-do list is always finding the perfect wedding dress, but I know some of us can be very particular about the sort of dresses we want to find, and that’s why, for mine, I ended up going the nontraditional wedding dress route. I found a really pretty white dress with multi-colored flowers on it at Macy’s for twenty dollars sometime last year, and as soon as I found it, I knew it was perfect and the one. However, a lot of brides do want a traditional wedding dress to wear for their wedding, but sometimes, when you’re trying to have a budget-friendly wedding, the options of dresses to choose from in a bridal store can be very slim because there won’t always be dresses within your price range. Another place to find a wedding dress is at a thrift store or secondhand clothing store. I have often seen brides on TikTok find great wedding dresses at thrift stores, but they’re usually really hard to come by.

Image Credit: This photo was by our wedding photographer Diana Walston.

Two weekends before our wedding, Flora hosted a party at her house, complete with cupcakes, charcuterie boards, and lots of fun board games. We had a fun time there with her, Harvey, Kevin, Glenda, and our other friend, Raven. It was a night filled with great food, lots of laughs, and just like every game night Flora and Harvey host at their house, it was wonderfully memorable.

Image Credit: In this image are Hanna, Ian, their friends Flora, Harvey, Raven, Kevin, and Glenda. This photo was taken by Hanna’s maid of honor, Flora Gilder.

We bought artificial flowers from Michaels for the table centerpieces at our wedding. We had pink, blue, and purple flowers in our centerpieces, and we just bought glass vases for them at Walmart. The cost of artificial flowers for our wedding was probably around $350, and that was for eight centerpieces. For our wedding, the only real flowers we purchased were from a local florist. We purchased four bouquets and five boutonnieres, totaling $510. If we had bought all of the centerpiece flowers from the florist, our total cost for flowers would have been in the thousands.

Image Credit: In this image are Abby, Hanna, Flora, and Glenda. This image was taken by our wedding photographer, Diana Walston.

We got all our catering from a local Italian restaurant, and the cost was $1,634, which included a tip. Our catering from the Italian restaurant included three types of pasta, a tray of meatballs, a tray of bruschetta, a tray of salad, and a tray of bread. Our guests were all very pleased with all of the food. In addition to our catering, one of my husband’s co-workers baked 144 cupcakes for us, which cost $375, and another one of his co-workers did all of our photography for our wedding, which cost $375. We had three types of cupcakes at our wedding: chocolate peanut butter, strawberry shortcake, and coconut. All of our wedding guests loved our food, and they enjoyed the variety of cupcakes we had, too. Most guests told us that the strawberry shortcake cupcake was their favorite.

Image Credit: This photo was taken by our wedding photographer Diana Walston.

When it came to finding our dream wedding rings, I knew that I wanted mine to be a vintage ring, so I ended up finding a very pretty ring in an antique store that I fell in love with. My ring is silver and has a pink topaz stone at the center, surrounded by pavé diamonds. It’s a very beautiful ring and it was only around 250. We found Ian’s ring one day when we went to Macy’s, and he really likes it too. I know most women want their future husband to spend thousands of dollars on their engagement ring or their wedding ring, but that wasn’t how I was. If you want to find a truly unique ring and you’re looking for one that is budget-friendly, I would highly recommend looking at your local antique stores or at estate sales, because sometimes you’ll be able to find really unique rings there.

Image Credit: This photo was taken by Ian’s dad, Chip Peters.

Our wedding party was made up of Ian and I’s mutual friends. His best man, Rob, is one of his co-workers, and Flora is one of Ian’s and my closest friends, so that is why I chose her to be my maid of honor. My bridesmaids were our friends Abby and Glenda, Ian’s groomsmen were our close friends Kevin and Flora’s husband, Harvey. They are some of the kindest people we know, so we knew they would be who we would ask to be in our wedding party. My bridesmaids and my maid of honor all bought their own dresses. My bridesmaids, Abby and Glenda, wore lavender dresses, and my maid of honor, Flora, wore a pink dress.

Image Credit: In this photo are Glenda, Abby, Flora, Hanna, Ian, Rob, Harvey, and Kevin. This photo was taken by our wedding photographer, Diana Walston.

Everyone at the wedding was very impressed with our attention to detail. I knew what I wanted our color scheme, catering, cupcakes, invitations, and flower colors to be like a year in advance, so planning wasn’t as time-consuming as it sometimes can be for other couples who might not know exactly what they want for their wedding day. Luckily, our wedding day turned out to be a perfect day, and we even had nice weather for it. I wouldn’t change anything about how our wedding day went because it was exactly what I had always hoped for.

Image Credit: In this photo are Flora, Hanna, Ian, and Rob. This photo was taken by our wedding photographer, Diana Walston.

This was written by our founder and editor-in-chief, Hanna Peters.