$5k Wedding in 2026 (actually possible)

Well, hello, lovely humans, and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern-day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer, and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time-consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way, because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is actually an audio recording of one of my most popular YouTube videos. I don't know about you, but sometimes I just need to sit down and be able process through the audio without the distraction of a video. So we decided to take this sweet little nugget and turn it into a podcast for you. I hope you find this helpful, my friends. My entire wedding budget is $5,000. Please, if you've had a small wedding on a very small budget, please give me all the tips and tricks that you have because the money is not going super far and we're struggling. Please give me all the tips you have or any vendor recommendations if you are in the North Carolina South area, that would be fantastic. Thanks, bestie boo bear. Hi. All that's going through my head right now is Mrs. Doubtfire. Help is on the way, dear. Like, I just— oh, hi. If you're new here, my name is Jamie Wolfer. I'm your online wedding planner. And while I don't work any budget weddings in person anymore, we're still creating bomb content both here and in the Master Plan to help you plan the perfect budget event for your wedding day. And today's video is no different. A couple years ago, I made a series of videos of how to plan a wedding for X amount of money, uh, insert amount here, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000. And this is the fourth video in the remake of that series because the amount of times people would be like, oh no, that's not possible in 2025, that's not possible in 2026. Bestie, bet. Hold my beer because I know all the tips and tricks to help you pull off a magical wedding day regardless of what your budget is. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. So the first guest that we have here— I'm calling her a guest like this is my talk show and like she knows that she's on it. She doesn't, she doesn't know she's on it, okay? But what we will be doing here is helping her figure out to plan a $5,000 wedding, okay, in 2026 with receipts whenever possible. But before we do that, one thing I love to do actually is review other people's like budgets online and tell you if they're feasible or not, because TikTok's great, it's full of so much advice, um, but sometimes it's a little bit lacking, you know, where you're like, oh, you just forgot like an entire category. Okay, so anyways, that's what we're doing here. But for some reason, so many of like the $5K wedding budget ones were like AI'd, so I found some, but it's gonna be the carousel version, so it's a little less fun interact with. Okay, but bear with me. How I'm keeping my 2026 wedding under $5K. Venue, $1,250. Booked on a weekday so it's cheaper. That is an excellent hack if you want to shave off a couple grand for your venue and possibly even for some of your vendors as well. Some will offer a discount on a weekday, some will not. For me, I know throughout my career, anytime I had like a weekday activity, it was actually more difficult for me to go to. A Friday wedding wasn't any cheaper because I'd have to find childcare because my husband works full-time. So Saturdays and Sundays are great. I don't have to find childcare for those. But like a weekday, that became harder for me. So venues, yes, off-season, weekday, those sorts of things, you will see lesser fees associated with those. So that's a good idea. She's beautiful. She is beautiful. That actually is— that's really cute. Where is this? That's a whole barn. That's a whole cutie patootie little barn. I love it. Bought my dress 80% off on this website for $250. That's pretty dang cheap. Local barbecue place is catering for $540. I need to know how many people you're inviting. That's my one bone to pick with all these like budget advice videos is how many people are we talking about here? Because if we're talking about 15 people and you're spending $540, that's a lot of money. If we're talking about 150 people, that's really inexpensive. So can we, can we make it a rule that we say how many guests are coming to this? Because your guest count is your number one budget killer. Number one. Your guest count directly determines how much food you need, how many desserts, how many drink options, how much beer, how much wine, how how many chairs you need, how many tables you need, how many centerpieces you need, how much ice you need, how many disposable plates and forks and knives and cups and napkins. Am I making my point? So when we're putting together our budget, little, little moments to share on TikTok, can we please respectfully include a guest count? Signed, a wedding planner who's trying to make budget content. Makeup and hair, $400. That is— that's commitment to spend almost 10% of your wedding budget on your look. Which I get, okay? I'm a makeup girly. I love wearing makeup. I totally understand. But I feel like I would probably maybe allocate my finances a little bit differently. But here's what I love about wedding planning is you can literally do whatever you want. So if you want to spend almost as much on how you look as you do on your food, don't let me be the one to stop you. This bride is out here to prove that it is absolutely possible. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to. And you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jamie, actually, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions. Guess what? You need to join the Master Plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over 10 lessons that walk you through planning your wedding with videos and spreadsheets and other detailed resources along the way. Join me and my virtual clients over in the Master Plan and get all your wedding planning questions answered. Literally thousands of couples have gone on this journey with me, and I'd love for you to be next. Check it out at wolferandco.com TMP. That's wolferandco.com TMP. Listen, wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual worst. And the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget, for you and your partner. Head on over to weddingpriorities.com. A photographer in my hometown town had a special for $500. Okay, hometown town, that's really low. That concerns me a little bit, but we're getting the job done. We're having a professional— the air quotes might be implied there— take over this category. Like, it's, it's good, it's good, that's great. We've got somebody in there. And luckily from your hometown, town renting sound system for $200, 10 out of 10 recommend. If you're having a wedding under $10,000, you're probably going to need to rent a sound system. Like you're not going to get around it. You're not going to find a DJ unless you have a friend or family member who does this for a living and can do it for free or very, very inexpensive. You're going to be going the rented speaker route. Cake, $200. Again, this depends on the size of your guest count. You can go way, way less with this. Lots of people on TikTok are just discovering nowadays that Walmart sells cakes. And Costco and Sam's Club. Um, you can get cakes from your local grocery store. You can get a whole assortment of desserts from your local grocery store as well. From Trader Joe's, that's an option too. I feel like TikTok is now realizing what us budget brides were doing 10, 15 years ago, being like, oh my gosh, that's so clever, like big box stores for desserts. Yeah, have you ever had a Costco cookie? You should try it, man. Like, don't knock it till you try it. So $200 for dessert. Again, this varies based on the amount of guests that you have. That's a decent amount, but I'd probably see it a lot lower at a $5K budget, to be honest. My grand total is $3,460, uh, but giving myself a $5K budget just in case I want something extra. Okay, because right now your fiancé doesn't have anything to wear, you don't have anything to drink, we don't have anything for florals. I'm assuming your venue comes with tables and chairs and linens, but other than that, we, we got some room to work with this budget. Okay, and by room I mean some unexplained expenditures that will come up. That we just haven't taken into account just yet. Okay, wait, here's another one with actual numbers. I have to mute it though, otherwise we're gonna get copyrighted. 5K wedding budget breakdown no matter where you live from The Budget Bride Guide on TikTok. I love this already. $1,000 for the venue, ceremony, reception venue. It could be backyard, public park, community hall, or Airbnb. $1,000, totally feasible, very logical number. Food, drinks, and cake for $1,200. They said buffet, taco bar, or brunch spread, bring your own drinks and signature cocktails, two-tier cake and cupcakes or sheet cake. I don't like the bring your own drinks element. That gets a little bit risky for me. However, I do see a lot of merits in a lot of this. Again, we don't have a guest count, so if we're looking at, you know, $1,200 for all of these items for like 100 guests, that could potentially be a little bit more difficult to pull off unless we're DIYing every single element of this, which at a $5K budget, you're gonna be DIYing a lot. In fact, there's probably gonna be very few professional vendors that you will be using at that rate, and you have to get really creative with where and how you're spending your funds. Photography, $700. Hey, I mean, it's more than the one from the hometown town. Okay, 4 hours with a newer photographer, ceremony and couple portraits only, and let guests snap the rest. I would go as far to say ceremony, portrait, family, and wedding party photos, and then maybe a little bit of reception. 4 hours is plenty of time to capture the perfunctory things that you'll be going through on your wedding day. What you will not get is you will not get getting ready photos, you will not get speeches, toasts, you will not get dinner, you will not get dancing, you will not get grand exit. But this number makes more sense if we're doing it for an abbreviated period of time with someone who's newer who does not have a second shooter. Flowers and decor, $500. Okay, DIY bulk blooms, dollar store candles, and thrifted vases. Bridesmaid bouquets double as centerpieces. Here's one we have not touched on in this entire series: repurposing florals. We love this vibe, we love it. Bouquets are normally taller, okay? Bouquets are normally taller than normal centerpieces are because there needs to be more of a handle to them for your bridesmaids to hold on to. So while I love the concept of using a bridesmaid bouquet as a centerpiece. One, it depends on how many bridesmaids you have, and two, it depends on the height of your centerpiece vessel itself. I mean, if we're talking about bouquet stems that are, what, 8 inches tall? That's really high for most centerpieces. That would be like one of those Dollar Tree or Dollar General, like, glass hurricanes. It just— it, it— the visual doesn't translate as well as people would hope that it would. So ways that you can kind of work around that is if you have your bridesmaids undo the bouquet so they can kind of fall a little bit more, which means they can kind of relax and they're less rigid and less structured, it will fill out the vase a little bit better. And it will look a little bit more intentional and won't look like someone just plunked a bouquet down in a centerpiece vessel. This, this I would recommend still like practicing and thinking through. It's a little bit more difficult to reuse florals than sometimes people assume, but is absolutely possible. So yes, you can do that. But I would argue instead that maybe you should do slightly simpler centerpieces. Stick to one type of greenery, one or two types of florals, candles, thrift where you can, go to dollar stores when you can, and don't rely on bridesmaid bouquets being your only option for centerpieces. But it could be a good option if you think through some of the things that we just talked about. Invites, favors, and signage, $200. Canva invites, print or digital. Edible or practical favors. DIY signs and QR code seating chart. Okay, I hate, I hate, mm, I hate QR codes for wedding-related stuff because it just, I just hate it, okay? I don't hate QR codes, and I understand people are trying to be convenient, but a seating chart does not have to be expensive, and it can be assembled relatively easily. My suggestion would be to do some sort of large board style seating chart and then print on individual 8.5 by 11 sheets of paper each table number. So if you have last minute changes, you can print it up again at the very last minute through your home printer or through your local printer. It can be something really easy to adjust and still feels really custom and really intentional without it being a QR code. I find that QR codes kind of can sometimes present more issues than they need to, or maybe, you know, guests are trying to not be on their phones. It's just not a, it's not my favorite. So If you're going to be DIYing a QR code sign, you could also easily DIY a seating chart sign. I understand the sizes are very different, but we've got options here so we don't have to outsource it to a professional calligrapher or someone to make it for you. And you can still do it at the very last minute where it's not a QR code. We're skipping favors. We're not doing favors at all at 5K. That's cute. Or the favor is a cookie bar and that is your dessert and you're doing that instead of cake. Canva invites, love. Prefer print, digital if you need to, to keep things super affordable. Attire, $400, dress under $250, and thrifted or store-bought suit. Use accessories you own already. Keep it simple and stunning. There's another video that we did last where the bride literally wore the same shoes she wore at her college graduation. She's like, no one's going to know. And I already know they're comfortable and they're nude, so I know they match. And so like, I don't care, y'all. I got my wedding shoes from Payless. I got little cutie red flats. Flats because if I wear heels, I'm the same height as my husband, which is fine. He's a strapping tall man and I love him for it. I just wanted to, you know, be a small girl on my wedding day, so I wore flats and I was so comfortable the whole night. And so I bought them from Payless Shoe Store. I don't even think they were above $20. Please do not fall trap. Please do not fall victim to the 'you have to have something brand new for your wedding day.' You can borrow, you can buy something really inexpensive, you can use something you already own. It does not have to be brand new. I think $400 for a tire at this rate is because yes, it is a lot, but it's honestly— it's going to be pretty difficult to go too much further underneath this, especially if you need alterations. It doesn't matter to me as much how much money you spend on your dress. To me, it's more important how much money you spend on alterations to make the dress look like it's made for you. I would rather you spend $100 on a dress and $200 on alterations to get like the perfect look for your wedding day and make sure that you feel incredible in your dress, than spend $500 on your dress and no money on alterations. I really want to make sure that it suits you, that it fits you well, and your fiancé is wearing a suit, I want to make sure it fits your fiancé well as well. Like, adjust— let's make sure we leave intention and time for the specifically for alterations and tailoring to take place regardless of the cost of the initial suit or dress. Music and entertainment, $250. Spotify playlist, speaker rental, DIY photo booth and Polaroids, friend to MC for free. Right in that same price range, we're looking at about $200 for getting a speaker rental. If you are looking for a Spotify playlist, we had one put together by one of our favorite vendors in Southern California. I'll link it right here. DJ Grift did a couple of years ago, and it's a playlist for you to use for your entire wedding, as well as ideas for all the different songs, the perfunctory songs that you need to have— cake cutting, parent dances, first dances. It's got a whole myriad of options on there. So if you do not have a DJ, if you're not hiring one, I highly recommend that you check out the free music guide because it walks you through all the things that a DJ would do. I do think a DJ is highly important. If you have room in your budget, I highly recommend getting one, as I do with all of the professional vendors. But in some cases, if you don't have the money, Say it with me. You don't have the money. License, officiant, and extra, $250. Marriage license, officiant or friend, vendor tips if needed, and backup and decor signs. Uh, you probably won't have a lot of vendors at this rate. A lot of tipping will probably not be required at this price point either. We do have a video that's either come out or will come out about tipping specifically. I don't know where this is falling in the lineup of, lineup of videos, so be sure to subscribe and keep your eye out for that because tipping culture I have thoughts and opinions and feelings and we need to talk about them because tipping culture is a lot, okay? It's a lot. So, um, $250 if we want to include marriage license in there, sure. Efficient, most people we work with have a family member or friend do it and just get, um, get the certification online and so they don't really end up paying them anything. And then total wedding budget, $5,000. Intentional, beautiful, and yours. What I like about this budget breakdown specifically is that we're not missing anything, at least nothing that I can think of. I'd have to kind of run through it one more time to figure that out, but we have a couple of really great examples of what a $5,000 budget could look like. But now, as we've done with every other video in this series, we are going to go ahead and take a quick look at a budget breakdown from the Master Plan. The Master Plan is the online wedding planning course where I walk you through everything you need to know to plan your wedding from point A to wedding day. Okay, and this is the budget spreadsheet. This is just a screenshot version of it, but if you join the Master Plan, it is editable and you can go in there and like change things around. We have the option to add monthly contributions, family contributions, and and savings. For this, for the sake of conversation here, I've only added savings contribution of $5,000. Regardless of where your income comes from, regardless of where your money comes from for this event, $5,000 is still a lot of money. So we want to make sure that we're allocating that appropriately. When you are working with a budget of this level, basically when you're working with a budget that's this small when it comes to an event, you're going to want to get as creative as possible. Speaking of which, before we even launch into breaking down this budget, let's discuss a couple of rules that we're gonna have to abide by, okay? One, you're going to be DIYing things. You cannot afford professional vendors in a lot of these categories. I think I've already said this in this video, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but you either have the time or you have the money. So if your money resource has a cap on it and there is no more, you will have to find the time either through yourself or family members and friends who are willing to pitch in and help you out. The experience of planning a $5,000 wedding is not going to be the same experience as planning a $25,000 wedding or a $45,000 wedding. You will have to get creative. And it will not feel like a Cinderella story at every single moment. There will be times that it gets really, really difficult, but I know there are a lot of couples out there that really truly want to prioritize making sure they stick to this budget for whatever reason they want to or whatever reason they need to. And I want to make sure that you feel honored and heard here and that you will not be budget shamed, because if that's all you got to spend or if that's all you choose to spend, then I support you. We also need to define what a wedding is. A wedding, in my opinion, is a hosted event where you have people come, right, over 50 people. Anything under 50, I consider the wedding. Any under 30, I consider more like an elopement. All right, so for the sake of all of these videos, I've used the guest count of 100 people to try to make it as practical and as usable as possible. If you can adjust your guest count lower than that, your number one budget killer is going to be your guests. The amount of food they eat, what they drink, the chairs they sit on, the tables they sit at, the centerpieces on those tables, the amount of dessert they consume, the size of the venue that you're hiring. So many things are affected by your guest count. Count. So the more, uh, mindful you can be with your overall guest count, the better, and the more opportunities you have to save. But for the sake of these videos, I've tried really hard to maintain the 100-person guest count to kind of give you a general idea. Because again, a lot of times what we'll see on these TikTok videos is people be like, I planned a $5,000 wedding for 30 people, and you're like, that's an elopement. Like, that's not— that doesn't help most people who have a $5,000 budget because all of your consumable costs are going to be so much lower because your guest count is so much lower. Another thing that we're not doing is we're not skipping categories. So I'm still going to try my best to include catering, drinks including alcohol, desserts, florals, music in the background, chairs for people to sit in and/or a place for people to eat. So it follows the traditional flow and outline of a wedding. And we're not doing a cocktail hour only or a desserts only style reception. We are doing a classic quintessential wedding reception within these numbers. And last but not least, the venue track. This applies to budgets that are typically a little bit larger than this. Most of you are not gonna run into this, but there are different echelons of weddings. There are different levels of wedding planning, right? There is the budget sphere, which is what we're talking about in this series. There is the lower end of the professional spectrum that probably starts at about $25,000, $30,000, $40,000. And then there's the more low-end luxury that you're looking at 6 figures $600,000 or just under 6 figures. And then there's the high-end luxury, which you're looking at multiple 6 figures. I mean, the sky's the limit for how much you can spend on a wedding day. But when we are hovering at $20K or below, one thing that I really strongly urge couples to pay attention to and/or consider is something that I call the venue trap. Oftentimes couples will look at a venue and say, that venue is only $5,000. Of course, in this particular situation, you know, we're like, oh, we can't, we can't afford that. That. Um, or it could be that venue is $2,500. That's great, that's half of our budget. All of the spreadsheets and all of the infographics online say venue should be 50%. What they're saying when they say that is venue and catering and rentals and possibly even alcohol should be 50% of your budget, not just the venue itself. So oftentimes we see couples opt into these venues that seem like it's a great, really affordable rate, and then they're locked into preferred or required catering companies, or preferred or required rental companies that have minimums that are not achievable for the budget you're trying to pull off. And so they fall into this trap of, oh, it's a really inexpensive venue, and then all of a sudden their only catering options are $30, $40, $65, $150 per person. And that budget wedding that they had hoped for and that they dreamed of has slipped entirely through their fingers. They've lost the plot. That's, that's the low end of this echelon. When working on the budget end things, we can't afford to be booking your typical wedding venue, which is— that's the only thing they do. All they do is host weddings. That's it. With a $5,000 budget, we are going to need to make sure that we are booking a venue that does other things and just happens to host weddings, or is a private space, AKA an Airbnb, a VRBO, which on VRBO you can actually toggle, I think, to say whether you're doing an event or not. Airbnb, I believe, still doesn't allow them, but sometimes the, the homeowners will let you. You just can't book it through that. I don't know exactly how it works these days. I just know a bunch of people are still doing Airbnb weddings. If it's illegal, don't do it, okay? Or you can go for an option like a rec center. So like someone's backyard or a rec center, super private or super public, right? Those are going to be your options when you're looking at this level of budget event. So taking a look at our cost breakdown here, we have percentages listed for every category. Venue, coordinator, catering, drinks, dessert, rentals, photo, video, florals, music/DJ, stationery, apparel, hair and makeup, and then miscellaneous. As we've done with all of these videos, let's call attention to the miscellaneous real quick. That money will get gobbled up real quick with a $5K budget. Do your best to have it set aside for moments when you go, I thought I wanted to DIY this, but I don't anymore. I no longer have the desire to do this. I no longer have a desire to, uh, go through with this plan. Or, hey, I think I'm gonna spend a little bit more on this photographer. I think it's worth this splurge. I think we need to do this. Or, um, I found the dress that I really want, but it's a couple hundred more than I thought it would be. Or I didn't budget for alterations. It's the, uh, I didn't plan ahead for this, or I no longer want to do this the way that I thought I wanted to do this. That's what that $10,000 budget is. You're very likely not going to be blindsided by a ton of unforeseen fees, especially at a $5,000 rate. We want to make sure that you have enough to like scoot over to cover any of these categories should you need to. Oh, and another thing, last rule that I totally forgot about: variety. Okay. The less variety you have, the cheaper it's going to be. If you only have one kind of cookie on your dessert table, it's probably going to be more affordable than 7 kinds of cookies. If you only have one kind of floral and one kind of greenery, it's going to be a lot more affordable than 7 kinds of florals and 4 kinds of greenery. If you have one kind of protein and one kind of starch, it's going to be a lot more affordable than having 3 kinds of proteins or multiple kinds of starches. So you can see, as we're kind of working through this, like if we can really streamline and we can dress it up nicely enough, we can DIY the setup of it nicely enough, most people aren't going to care if your cookies are from Costco if we get them out of the plastic trays and set them up nice and neat, you know. We just need to limit the offerings that we have, be really intentional, make sure there's enough for everybody, but not go outside of our financial means. So venue at 19% of $5,000 would be $950. Like one of the videos that we watched, $1,000 for a venue, we did find some in our last video for the $10K budget, um, on Peerspace, that could totally be feasible. They're kind of dancing right around the $1,000 level. So we've got this one that— this is for 65 people, probably reception-only space, for $1,100. We've got this one for 150 people at $1,600. We've got this one, $1,635 for 200 people. That's another great option. We've got this one for 100 people again, this one I don't love the aesthetic of necessarily, but it's $1,100. Public parks are another great option for this. I picked all of these in the DFW metropolitan area because that's one of the closest cities to me, so I'm trying to use like city numbers. But don't get me wrong, I literally did a video in the recent past where I did a $10K wedding in New York City. So when I tell you that's still totally feasible even in today's economy, even with inflation, position to pull this off, it is absolutely still feasible. We just need to make sure that you're not falling into the trap of doing the bare minimum events here at $25K, $35K, $45K and starting with a venue that provides a lot more accommodations or has a lot more opportunities for you to bring in the vendors or bring in the DIYs that you want. One reason I love Peerspace specifically is you can say, does the venue allow, or does the space allow, outside food and/or cooking on site? On site, right? So if you are barbecuing or if you're bringing in a food truck that can prep on site, is that allowed? Um, is there a prep space allowed? You know, is there any sort of anything like that? Can you bring in outside food and beverages? And can you bring in outside alcohol, or are there stipulations on alcohol? So you can toggle those filters to really hone in exactly what you're looking for so you're not, you know, searching back and forth and being like, is this place going to be affordable? Is it not going to be affordable? Oh, it is. Super affordable, but wait, it doesn't have my guest count and I can't even have beer or wine here. That's definitely not what we're looking for. So I do appreciate that PeerSpace will go ahead and like narrow that down for you. Public parks are another great option for this. The city of Dallas's website needs a little bit of work when it comes to their rec centers. I— they don't have any of their pricing online, but I got married at the community center and it was under $1,000, you know, 10+ years ago. And I can tell you with full assurity that there are plenty of of community centers that still offer rates that are at or around $1,000 in many of the metropolitan areas, if not outside of that. If you're considering a backyard or a friend's backyard or an Airbnb, you can pretty easily find some locations for $1,000. There are some other stipulations we need to look into. There's a whole other video about that. I highly recommend that you check that out up here, because just because it's a backyard doesn't mean it's automatically cheaper. Okay, okay. But I just offered two event spaces in the $1,100 range um, and then a couple in like the $1,500-$1,600 range. So if we take the budget from some of these other areas and kind of build up that venue a little bit, we could be okay here. Wedding coordinator— you're not having one at $5K, so that $250, we're tossing that back up with the venue. Catering for $750— this one's tight, this one's tight. I mean, even Chipotle is going to be like a $10 minimum per person, so $750, that's going to be a lot more difficult. This is where I recommend the Costco route or the Sam's Club route. This is where I recommend kind of getting some of those pre-done things and making sure you have a nice table to set it I'm sure there are other options that are gonna be a lot more affordable, but in my limited research, I looked at 3 different companies, Chipotle, In-N-Out, 'cause I'm a Southern Californian girly and I can't break myself of that habit and I love an In-N-Out Burger. And I also looked at Chick-fil-A. All of them have really, really affordable options, but I think kind of the minimum we're looking at when we're going with some of these places is gonna be more like $10 per person. So if you wanna get crafty and creative and you're trying to keep it at $5K, I highly suggest finding a mom-and-pop shop near you you that can cater. This is— we're gonna do something called drop catering. You can send an uncle to go pick it up, you can send a friend or a family member to go pick it up, especially if they could pick it up during cocktail hour so it's not sitting around and you don't need any chafing dishes to keep it at temperature. That's perfect. I love this for us, right? So that way your affordability really comes down quite a bit. If we want to make sure it's a full meal, we can also add in a DIY salad bar. That's really inexpensive to do. If you want to do a really cheap appetizer option, nacho bar is one of my favorite recommendations, or chips and salsa bar. It's really, really, really affordable. When we did our event, we had chips and salsa bar and we had family members make salsas and they like wrote what it was, and so everyone could just snack and have whatever salsas they want, and it made it extremely affordable. And then whoever brought salsa, we said, don't bring a gift, don't bring a gift at all. That is it, that's it. Thank you so much for your contribution to our wedding day. So if we could bring that number up, great. If not, we can get really scrappy with this and get some heavy DIY in here. Also drinks at 150. That's, that's going to be pretty tight. That's going to be pretty tight for trying to do beer and wine. I would suggest maybe picking one of those. Maybe it's just beer only and then you can have lemonade, iced tea, and water in dispensers if possible, especially if it's powdered because it's really easy to put together on your wedding day and you don't have to keep it cold. Cold. That's one issue with some of the non-alcoholic beverages is keeping them cold ahead of time so they're chilled and ready for service gets a little difficult. So if we can have dispensers where you simply fill them up with water and then add in the powder, or add the powder into a gallon of water and shake it up and then pour it in, and then we're adding ice on top of that, then you get cool ice, cool beverages for a fraction of the cost, and you don't have to worry about beverage storage. The only thing you'll have to worry about is ice storage and where you're hiding the powder. That's it, that's it. So with drinks at this level, I would definitely try to, uh, narrow down what the alcoholic options are, potentially even go non-alcoholic for this, because $150 for water, iced tea, and lemonade, very feasible for this amount of people, including disposable cups. But if we want to include alcohol, then we're going to want to remember that variety rule, keeping it very simple, like one, maybe two options, and that's it. Dessert, $150. Again, Again, Costco, big box store, cookies. There's one gal who got her wedding cake for like $40, $60. We can absolutely bring this down and then put that number towards an area that needs a little bit more work, like your catering or like your drinks. Rentals at $250. Ideally, this number either doesn't exist or it's getting added on to your venue fee. So if you can find a venue that has tables and chairs, perfect. We are going with whatever they have. We're going with whatever option is made available to you, especially if it's already on site and you don't have anything to to rent. You don't need to rent anything. At $250, you will not be able to bring in very many professional rentals at all whatsoever. If you want to just rent chairs, you can, um, if you have a friend with a pickup truck. Oftentimes rental companies will let you come pick them up and drop them off to save you the service fee, the delivery fee, and the setup fee. So that can keep things more affordable, but it's a big ask. That's a lot. That's a huge request to have a friend move 100 chairs for you, right? And even then, we're looking at $350-ish a pop, maybe $400 a chair, depending on the area that you're in. So that's $350 instead of $250. A really creative solution or workaround for this is to have a picnic-style reception, especially if it's outside. So cute, we love to see it. Borrow blankets, borrow quilts, really invite a relaxed atmosphere. If you have a location that has some picnic tables and chairs and benches, save those for those who can't get up and down off the ground very easily. As I'm recording this, I'm 7 months pregnant and I, I would not be able to do a picnic picknick very well. I'm not gonna lie to you. So making sure to accommodate those who, you know, just can't rebound from the ground that easily is a good idea. But with a picnic-style reception, you don't need to worry about seating, and you don't need to worry about tables, and you don't need to worry about centerpieces. So let me put you on to something: check out a picnic-style reception. A little weird if you're inside though. Little weird. If your venue comes with tables and chairs, much the better for it. If there is a local organization that will let you borrow those. We've definitely done that in the past. Highly recommend it. Okay, okay, we just want to make sure people have room to sit and eat. This could also be a great opportunity for a non-seated style reception. So you just have cocktail tables, the high boys. Not ideal for a lot of people, it's not their favorite concept, but people can stand and eat. It's a lot more difficult to eat something really cumbersome like a burger or a plate of pasta, so you might want to kind of keep that in mind as you're selecting whatever your food is gonna be, whatever your catering option is gonna be. But that could potentially bring that number way down. The high boys aren't that expensive. Photo and video are both at 9% for $450. There's no video. Video is not happening. So if we can find a photographer that we can get in there for $500 from your hometown town, fantastic. If that is a student photographer from a local university, if it's a family member or friend who knows their way around a camera that's taking these pictures, I want you to have the full ability of capturing your wedding event event as easily and as affordably as possible. A professional wedding photographer is very, very unlikely in this scenario unless you find someone who's new or very limited in hours. So that's something to keep in mind at this price point. If you want to hit all the other things, if you want to have dinner, if you want to have alcohol, if you want to have tables for people to sit at, if you want to spend over $1,000 at your venue, it is really going to limit some other things. So either we cut offerings like dessert or alcohol or even the meal and keep it heavy appetizers only to afford a more experienced or more expensive photographer. Photographer, or if we're gonna keep all those offerings that we want, then we need to cut back on the hours or the skill level or the experience of the photographer to accommodate our bottom line for this budget. Florals at $450? Absolutely not. We're doing like $100, $200. We're going big box store. We're keeping the variety down, like way, way, way down. Um, so if it's all eucalyptus and that's the only thing you have, great. If you're not doing bouquets for your bridesmaids, great. If you're not doing any corsages or boutonnieres, highly recommend it. Those are actually they're, they're kind of a pain to DIY if you're doing them for the first time. So if that means that you are only doing a bouquet for you and you're doing just green around the tables, we are automatically just plummeting that overall floral cost in general. You don't need to have any sort of floral installation for your ceremony. You don't need to have any sort of arbor or arch piece behind you. If you really want to do something there, cheesecloth dyed in the right color for your event is a great thing that kind of swoop or dangle or hang from things to bring a softness to the space and really frame out where you guys are having your ceremony. That could be really fun and really, really, really affordable and cut back on your overall need for florals in all of these locations. Music, DJ— again, no DJ at this rate. We're getting speakers just like we saw in, I think, both of the videos. They rented speakers and both of them quoted about $200, $250. So we're sitting right where we need to with $200, right? Especially if we got about that music guide. Stationery, $150. I would think that this could be okay. This might be the amount that you would spend if you really want to have them printed up. If not, you can go digital for this aspect. I prefer printed ones simply because I love the tactile experience of that, but if we're talking about, you know, 60, 75 invitations for 100 guests, that will add up over time. So if you can get thrifty with it and you can get scrappy and you can find some discounted ribbon at your local thrift store or Whatnot to dress up the printed invitations. Highly recommend. There's a lot of fun that you can have with this. But if you choose go digital, then that $150 can go into another category. $250 for apparel. This is going to be hard. This means you're finding a dress that fits you directly off the rack. You're probably not gonna have any room for alterations. If your fiancé is wearing a suit, not a lot of room, if any, for alterations there either. But there should be enough room to get the job done. So if you want to find a dress off of Amazon for $100, leaving $150 for a suit, that's what your fiancé wants to wear, fantastic. If your fiancé already owns a suit, also fantastic. Or you can do one of those routes where you have the wedding party members rent suits, and if there's a certain amount of them renting, the wedding couple gets a suit for free. That could be great. I think Generation Tux has it where if 5 groomsmen rent a suit, then the groom gets it for free. So that could be a really, really, really affordable option, especially if you're balling on a $5K budget, you're like, you have nothing to wear, and we are not a jeans and suspenders kind of couple, okay? So we're gonna have to do a little bit more work here to make that happen. You can have family members, friends, wedding party, etc., ask them to rent, uh, especially if they're wedding party members and you want everyone matching. You can ask them to rent through a company like Generation Tux and then get that suit rental for free, which can be a huge game changer. I also believe they still offer if 7 groomsmen rent their suits the groom gets to keep their suit for free. I think they still have that, you'd have to double check on their website. But like, how sweet is that, that your groom could keep the suit forever? Especially for wedding parties big enough. Again, we're not trying to exploit them or anything here, but if they're gonna rent a suit, have them rent it all from the same location that offers a service like this. Could make that a lot more affordable. And then with rentals, you don't or shouldn't have to worry about size adjustments at all because you'll be sending your measurements in or working through whatever their online avatar is to make sure you get a suit that's right for you. Hair and makeup at $50, that's not happening. We're DIYing it, we're having a friend do it, we're doing it ourselves, we're practicing. We're not even going into Drybar, we're not even going into a makeup artist at the mall to have them do it. We are gonna do it ourselves, or we're gonna have a family member or a friend or somebody who's really good at this help us do it as well. Practice. Highly, highly, highly recommend practicing in this capacity because this is gonna be a heavily photographed day, so we want to make sure that you feel and look like yourself. Yourself and that you feel confident in what you're wearing and how your makeup looks. And you don't want to be second-guessing your hair on the day of your wedding. So as a quick return, let's see, bump up the venue a little bit, get rid of the coordinator, get rid of the videographer, see if we can add a little bit more to photography. Catering, we can do $750 if it's all from Costco and someone else sets it up for us. Um, drinks, maybe if we can get a little bit more in there, great. Dessert definitely could be right around $150 if we keep our variety down and keep our expectations where they need to be. Also bear in mind, uh, as an aside, if you're doing cake, you will need additional plates, forks, and cocktail napkins to serve those. So anytime you serve from a sheet cake or from a tiered cake, that, that's something you'll have to keep in mind. Um, if you can do single serving like a cupcake or, um, cookies or brownies or something like that, those don't need utensils to eat them with. In fact, you could probably just eat those over cocktail napkins, which inevitably ends up being a lot cheaper. So there's another budget nugget for you. Rentals, I mean, we're hoping they're included at the venue at this cost. If not, we're doing a picnic inside or outside, doesn't matter. Florals, we're bringing that down and putting that somewhere else. DJ, that's, that's relevant. Stationery, we'll keep that there. Apparel, we got some ideas going there. Y'all, just because you have a $5,000 budget does not mean that you cannot have a wedding event where you invite 100 people and you serve them a meal and you show up wearing something beautiful and you feel like a million bucks. The wedding industry is not intended or built to serve weddings that are under $15,000-$20,000. A lot of the resources that you're gonna find out there are going to be catered to higher-end events simply because it's hard to do weddings at this amount. And honestly, the industry is not gonna make really much money off of a $5K wedding at all whatsoever. So it doesn't make sense for them to spend a lot of time there. That's why I make these kinds of videos, because you're probably not gonna find a lot of offerings out there or a lot of advice out there that's gonna help you walk through this. And I know this because we didn't have these kind of resources when I got married. And so that was the whole heart behind this channel channel. That was the whole heart behind why I started my wedding planning business, was because I wanted to help couples figure out how to navigate planning a wedding on a budget. And in the decade plus that I've been doing this in person, and the 8+ years that I've been doing it online, I, I can tell you with full assurity, we are still well within the realm of being able to pull off a $5,000 budget wedding. It's hard. It's really, really hard. And $5,000 is still a— it's a lot of money. Like, let's not kid ourselves, It's a ton of money, and to some of us it's kind of all we got. But if you are determined to host a wedding for over 50 people, for wherever you're at in the United States and or beyond, please know that with the right choices you have the ability to get a little creative with this. Make sure you're not boxed into a venue that puts a lot of limitations on what you can bring in, such as food and or alcohol, because when those limitations are in place, it really does affect your overall budget. Be prepared to do a lot of DIY and or have your family members or friends jump in and pitch in and help out and make sure that your priorities stay aligned. The whole point of this wedding day is to celebrate your love story with your favorite person, with all your other favorite people around you. And if we can maintain that focus and we can be intentional about where we're spending your money, you can have a $5,000 wedding day. So that's what we have for today's video, guys. Thank you so much for watching. If you haven't done so already, jump on down there, like the video if you like the video, and subscribe subscribe to this channel for more tips and tricks for the modern-day bride. And if you're doing a $5K wedding budget, can you do me a favor? Can you put your budget breakdown in the comments down below? Because if you can encourage anyone else, including guest count, please, if you can encourage anyone else to show them that this is possible, I would love that. I would absolutely love that for you and for them. You guys make the comment section honestly one of the sweetest little corners of the internet, and I love you for it. And until next week, bye guys! If you are struggling with wedding planning and you have questions and you just need someone to listen and to chat with, come join us in the Master Plan community over at themasterplanwed.com. I would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, subscribe, jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a 5-star review so we can let the podcast people know that Jamie knows what she's talking about sometimes. And until next time, bye guys!