The Wedding Budget. How much are you willing to spend?

The question posed should be really, how much should you spend.

We're not the only ones to say this - please, please, don't spend an extravagant amount on your wedding. A beautiful wedding isn't going to promise you a beautiful marriage. Save your money and put it to your future home, or to your honeymoon.

These days, all people really care about is how to outdo each other, what the trends are, how does my wedding compare to this person's, etc.

If you're on a tight budget, perhaps our experience can help you decide where you can cut the fat in your wedding.

The first thing we highly recommend is creating a wedding budget planner. You don't need to hire anyone, just use the pre-made wedding planner template that's available on Google Sheets. It's good, it's shareable, and it's so detailed. Here you'll be able to set expectations on how much you want to spend, and keep track of how much you're actually spending and what you're spending it on.

WHAT WE CHOSE NOT TO SPEND ON (that people usually do):

1. Physical, formal invitations
Normally: RM500 | We Spent: RM 108
Honestly, people are just going to throw these away after your wedding is over, if not right after they receive it. We opted for an online website invitation complete with RSVP that you can visit here. You can actually spend RM0 because there are sites out there that provide free templates and free hosting, but I really love coding my own site so I bought a wedding html template that was customizable and hosted it on our own domain.

2. Venue decorations
Normally: RM5,000 - 10,000 | We Spent: RM 850
Again, what are you going to do with these decorations after your wedding is over? Especially if you're getting real flowers. You're literally making your money die in days. Some friends spend four to five thousand just on flowers and decor and they're not even noticeable, really. Get a nice venue, and save on decor.

3. Wedding dress
Normally: RM2,000 - 5,000 | We Spent: RM 0
I couldn't justify spending thousands on a dress I was going to wear just one time. Read more about it here.

4. Gate crashing
Normally: RM6,000+ | We Spent: RM 0
We decided to do away with the bridal gate crashing ceremony. Not only are gate crashing ceremonies mostly obscene and humiliatingly emasculating for the groom, they're also a great waste of money.

5. Pre-wedding photos
Normally: RM3,000 - 5,000 | We Spent: a few hundred (kept private)
We originally never intended to take any pre-wed photos. These usually come in packages and cost anywhere from two to ten thousand. We only asked Shaun's sister to take a few for us to put up on the invitation website. Again, as another blessing, God gave us a friend from university that works with one of the best wedding photography companies in Malaysia who volunteered to take the pics for us for free! The pictures turned out far better than we could ever imagine and we gave him a small monetary gift as a thank-you in the end.

6. Videographer
Normally: RM2,000 - 5,000 | We Spent: RM 0
Videographers tend to make really nice videos that are artsy but don't really capture what happens on the day of. They film you fake getting ready, close up shots of your shoes, and sometimes interviews of you sayings things you wish you could change. We chose to let our guests take photos and videos as and when they liked, and just share them with us after the wedding was over. We still look back at those videos now, and they're a real representation of what happened at the wedding, from the tears to the funny little mistakes that make us laugh when we rewatch them.

7. Rings
Normally: RM10,000 - 20,000 and beyond | We Spent: RM 0
This was easy for us. As Adventists, we don't wear jewelry, so this was not a consideration at all. But you can read more about it here.

8. Hair and Makeup
Normally: RM2,000 (bride alone) | We Spent: RM 500 for four
Even though I didn't want make up (read more about it here, I know both my mommies did. The RM500 we spent was for hair and makeup for four people. I went on ServisHero and Kaodim and just chose the cheapest one with high ratings.

WHAT WE CHOSE TO SPEND ON:

None of these recommendations are sponsored. :) We just really like them.

1. Venue
We spent a good amount of money on the location. We decided that if we chose a nice-looking location with plenty of sun and greenery it could save us a lot on decorations. It did. The only decorations we needed was for the registration table and the stage.

2. Food
We're both foodies, so this was probably our weakness. We can however, recommend a really good caterer - MG's Cafe. They're really nice, their food is all vegan, and best of all, they decorate their food display! Most caterers just put trays of food on tables. Not them! Plus, their deco comes free! (or at least with no extra charge, just calculated into their very reasonable food price).

3. Shaun's suit
While we didn't want to spend on my dress, we agreed to spend more on Shaun's suit. This was an item of clothing that he could wear for years to come, so we decided to spend a little more on something that was made of a good material and that he could wear to any occassion.

4. Day-of Photographer
Photography has always been a nice hobby for the both of us. Shaun is more particular about choosing a good photographer so we both decided on someone who didn't care for the frills and taking posed shots, but wanted to take real pictures of moments, tears, and laughter - regardless of how "good" you think you look. She's expensive, we will admit to that. If you want to save more, you can always ask a friend, but the risk with that is that you can't expect too much, because it's a friend who's helping.