Frugal Wedding Ideas

A wedding on a budget may be a tight rope walk. However in the long run, it pays off. Here is how to plan a frugal wedding for a financially secure marital bliss. A budget wedding or a frugal wedding may sound like an oxymoron to many of you. But it's a reality.


The word frugal many mean, economical or sparing and can turn your wedding plans upside down. With a little restructuring of your wedding planning, a frugal wedding can seem right out of your dream. Getting on with the wedding preparations well in advance is the first step at making a successful frugal wedding ceremony. Before you begin you need to chalk out the wedding budget and resolve not to shell out a penny more than the decided funds. Here are some frugal wedding ideas that you modify to make them yours. No royalty charged!

Frugal Wedding Planning

At Home

As the saying goes, charity begins at home, I say a frugal wedding happens at home. It saves the cost of putting up the guests at hotels, it saves the cost of booking a wedding hall and pretty much eliminates the wily cost of logistics involved.  Hosting your daughter's wedding at home a great way of making the affair homely. Rent a gazebo and decorate it with the seasonal flowers (cost lesser than the exotic counterparts). Set up chairs as per the head count, hire caterers to look after the rest. Easy?!  As for wedding music, burn a CD of best wedding songs ever and let the party begin!!

Time of the Day

Having a wedding in the day time is less expensive than a wedding done at dusk. The timing plays a crucial role in deciding the formality of the event, which clearly reflects on the cost of your food, attire and the invitations. Daytime weddings, such as beach weddings are casual in nature and demand less formal etiquette. After the day wedding, a cocktail party at around 5 - 6 pm is way cheaper than a reception at night. This way you also save the cost of booking a reception hall and the elaborate dinner. Couldn't have come up with more frugal wedding tips?!

Wedding Decorations

Pretentiously expensive wedding decorations are useless after the wedding day and are a massive sunk cost. Wedding centerpieces are sure way of saving a few bucks. Look out for inexpensive wedding centerpieces or better still try making some simple wedding centerpieces at home. Throwing away frugal
wedding centerpieces won't hurt too much either. Decorate the chairs with tulle, which looks elegant and is a cheaper alternative to satin. Instead of  spending a bombshell on the flowers, just order the seasonal blossoms.

Genuine Invitations

If you really want an economical wedding, then send out invitations to only those people, who you'd want to make a part of your wedding ceremony. Often times, the familial pressures and social pressures makes us invite those who we don't care for and vice versa. It would be wise to not invite such people and save the trouble of paying for their food cost and frugal wedding gifts. This way, if you do end up saving you don't have to go in for frugal wedding invitations. You can actually splurge on classy wedding invitations on your choice!

A frugal wedding, is not cheap. I say, it's the best way out. After all, what is the point of spending your life's savings on a party that will not even be remembered by those who came, ate and left! Save the penny saved and use it for a better cause. You just need to reassess your plans and make the right choices for the fairy tale wedding and the frugal wedding to cohere.

By Mukta Gaikwad