In this solo Q&A episode of the "Engage" wedding‑planning podcast, host Jamie Wolfer answers three listener questions: (1) how to keep a wedding for 150 guests under $15,000, (2) creative ways to fund a wedding or honeymoon beyond traditional savings, and (3) whether a backyard wedding is feasible for a DIY couple. Jamie emphasizes starting with an inexpensive venue (e.g., PeerSpace, city‑owned spaces, churches), trimming floral and consumable costs, and serving budget‑friendly, filling foods like pasta, rice‑and‑bean dishes, and limited drink selections. For funding, she discusses credit‑card reward strategies (with a caution about financial literacy), honeymoon‑fund platforms such as HoneyFund, and the option to delay the honeymoon for financial or emotional benefit. Regarding backyard weddings, she outlines advantages (flexible setup timeline, potential cost savings, romantic atmosphere) and challenges (bathrooms, parking, noise, trash) while encouraging couples to set realistic limits and seek professional guidance. Throughout, Jamie promotes her Master Plan course and related resources, urging listeners to join the community for deeper support. The episode closes with a call‑to‑action for subscriptions and reviews.
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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 going to admittedly be a little bit all over the place. You see, every single month I sit down with the people over in the Master Plan course and answer your questions in Lifetime. So if you find yourself struggling and really need to sit down and speak with a real life wedding planner, I would love to be a part of your wedding planning journey. Join us over in the Master Plan today to get your questions answered. Until then, take a listen. First question Any ideas or suggestions on how I can keep my budget lower, stay under 15k while still inviting about 150 guests? So one, you're going to want to start with a really, really affordable venue. You're going to want to make sure that the baseline that you're starting with is setting you up for success and you're not putting yourself in a really difficult position. So I've got a couple videos that talk about inexpensive venues. I just did a reboot this year in 2024. PeerSpace is a great place to check for inexpensive venues. Also, if you can go through something that's county or city or state owned, that's a really good idea as well because they tend to just be generally cheaper. Or it could be a local church, etce etc. I would start there. Make sure you're starting off on the right foot with that and then everything. I would also, I guess I do have an entire video on how to budget or how to plan a wedding for 15k so you can check that one out. That's probably gonna have my best tips. I would also be mindful of the cost of florals because you have to pay for centerpieces for every table and the cost of consumables, food, drink, desserts. Those are where the costs start to skyrocket when you're looking at a large guest count like this. So if you can make sure that you are being really strategic with your food, make sure you are offering something grain based or yeah, so if it's pasta, fantastic. Super cheap. Great way to feed A bunch of people. And then you can have some grilled chicken on the side if you want to do some sort of Mexican and or Latin inspired dish that has a lot of beans and rice. Those are very inexpensive and very filling. So just make sure that you are, yes, you have a protein as the star, but we're not throwing all of our money at fancy sides. We're going to try to really fill people up with delicious food, of course, but make sure it's economical as well. And then really limit your drink options. Make sure that you don't have, you know, seven different kinds of beer, eight different kinds of wine, an open bar. We really want to make sure that you're streamlining as much as possible when you're looking at under 15k for 150 guests. If there's more detail that you want me to dive into on that one, I'd be happy to. But those should be a couple of ways to kind of get you started. 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@wolferenco.com tmp that's wolferenco.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 Wedding priorities. Com. What are some ways to fund my wedding or honeymoon besides just saving up money beforehand? Are there any hacks or reward accounts we should consider? Okay, so there is credit card hacking and which is something that some people are real gifted at and something that other people are like, there is no way in heck I'm touching that. So it just depends on your where you're at in your financial literacy journey. Some people are hardcore advocates of not using and other people know how to strategically leverage those in order to get a free honeymoon. So I do have a video about it, but I just want to caution you, like, if you know you're good with credit cards, this could be a great option for you. If you know you're not good at payments, this is not a great option for you. So just prefacing that before we. Yeah, there we go. We share the video. And there's also a video that we did about how the right way to ask for money for your honeymoon, which is, in my opinion, honey Fund. They have been, I think it's what my husband and I used back in the day. I've met with their, their founder and CEO Sarah on multiple occasions. We really like what they're about. We love that their percentage is a really, really fair percentage. There are a lot of different honeymoon funding apps out there or options out there, and they also were not packed like some other major honeymoon funding locations. I'm not going to name any names, but those would probably be the best way to kind of get some assistance on your honeymoon funding in general. And also, just as a personal aside, don't feel like you have to take your honeymoon right after you get married. A lot of people don't. We didn't. And it actually worked out really well for us both financially and emotionally because if we took off our honeymoon like the day after our wedding, we would have been exhausted. So if you want to wait a week, do it. If you want to wait a couple months, do it. Don't feel like you have to do it the following morning, especially because most people when they do that, are very, very tired. I would love to be able to be an October 2025 bride. I'm doing a wedding on a budget and I'm torn between doing an outdoor wedding in a backyard or finding a venue inside. Note my fiance's wedding dj. Nice. Which means we have a lot of companies we work with as far as DJs and rentals, which is helpful for the outdoor wedding. I'm just fearful that with the outdoor wedding, I'm going to give myself a lot more work. Gina, these are great questions and I really appreciate that you're taking the time to kind of weigh these out. I personally, I'm not scared of backyard events. We've done many of them as long as you have someone that you can consult and ask questions to. I don't think you'll get in over your head if you put limitations on yourself. So the hardest part about doing backyard weddings is it gets away from you because you think I'm saving so much money and I could just bring all this stuff in. I think if you keep it pretty streamlined. An outdoor wedding. A backyard wedding is actually not a ton more work than doing a venue style wedding. It means for your rentals, they can set up a day before or two days before, which can sometimes be more affordable for you and they can pick up a day or two afterwards that can make it more affordable too. It also gives you more time to set things up. You're not rushed into like a two hour setup time that a lot of venues will give couples and vendors on their wedding day. You get like a two hour setup and a one hour tear down. You don't have that issue here. The biggest issues you'll run into are bathrooms, parking, noise and trash. Trash was a big one. I do have a video on backyard and or Airbnb weddings that we can go ahead and toss into the chat for you to check out. I get, I get real excited about backyard weddings though, because to me they're super romantic and very unique. If you if everything that I just listed sounds more overwhelming than it does fun though, feel free to just go with the venue because I totally get where you're coming from. A backyard wedding can be very affordable, very whimsy, very, very, very demure, very mindful. So it depends on where you fall on that emotionally. 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@themasterplan wed.com I would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening if you haven't done so already. Thank you. Subscribe, Jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a five 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.
