Top Budgeting Secrets We Learned From Our Elegant Yet Affordable Phoenix Wedding
Jason and I were married on September 9, 2014 in an unconventionally elegant wedding on a bootstrap* budget. On a April 9, 2015, our wedding was featured in Offbeat Bride with the title “Melissa & Jason know all the tricks for hosting an elegant Phoenix bash on a budget”. We were over the moon thrilled!
We found Offbeat bride at a Brooklyn wedding expo when we were living and planning our Phoenix wedding in New York City. We could not hold our wedding in NYC because our budget was less than $10k for EVERYTHING... dress, venue, flowers, food, everything.
I knew Offbeat bride was for us because I could see this beautiful wedding for which I had waited my entire adult life - and yet the prices were so steep for anything labeled “wedding”. I got so depressed!
THEN, I RALLIED AND GOT RESOURCEFUL. Because that’s what you do when you feel a dream could slip away.
Offbeat Bride is the web's most popular and most inclusive website catered to nontraditional wedding planning. As a bride in the over-40 and in the strict budget category, I knew we’d be a part of this community of awesome brides! There were so many creative ideas on this site and I knew I’d be contributing our story within a year.
The Offbeat Bride website launched on January 1st, 2007 to support the release of Seattle author Ariel Meadow Stallings' book, Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides. They now have over 150k Facebook followers and have expanded into several different businesses to support the growing Offbeat Empire!
Here’s a tiny taste of the article:
“The Offbeat Bride: Melissa, Electrical Project Engineer
Her offbeat partner: Jason, Writer
Date and location of wedding:Royal Palms Resort and Spa, Phoenix, AZ — September 9, 2014
Our offbeat wedding at a glance:
Our wedding planning began with establishing the most bare bones budget we could come up with. We took into consideration that our family was spread out across the country, and consisted of retirees and parents with small children. We wanted it to be a beautiful, affordable, intimate, drama-free wedding.
We limited the guests (including ourselves) to a party of less than 40. That meant leaving out friends who were important to either myself or Jason.”
And I said I wanted it “drama-free”, right?
Find out how we conserved and kept the drama away from this mama! Read more HERE.
* Bootstraps clearly vary from couple to couple! βΊοΈ As New Yorkers and working adults, $10k was a very small price to pay for what we got on a destination wedding.