DIY Ways to save on the little things
Here are some cost-effective ways to save on your wedding! | August 31, 2023 | 7 minute read
When planning a grand wedding it’s easy to forget about your budget and spend with a YOLO mentality. Although we certainly embodied that mentality at times throughout our wedding planning process we were also cautious to save on a few key aspects that could’ve easily end up costing us a fortune, by being a bit more DIY than others might usually be for their wedding. Rohan & I also carefully evaluated the true importance of some features that others were encouraging us to spend on, and decided where we would rather spend our money instead.
Here are some ways we cut back on expenses for our wedding!
FLORALS - Naturally I wanted beautiful fresh flowers for our wedding, but within a reasonable budget, so we stuck to natural flowers for our bouquets, boutonnieres and garlands, but asked our awesome decor team Beyond the Limits decor to stick to plastic/fake flowers within all decorations. Faux flowers for stage decorations are common practice but we have seen a lot of brides & grooms opting for fresh flower centerpieces at each table, and throughout venues, which we decided was not necessary for us.
And since we had 2 ceremonies on back-to-back days I decided to save some money by using the same bridal & bridesmaids bouquets for both! For this I went to the lovely Vahini Franklin, as I had heard so many wonderful things about her florals and wedding coordination services! After a meeting with Vahini where I told her my idea & asked her how we could facilitate bouquets that would work for 2 days in a row, with preservation in between, and she suggested a mix of dried flowers with some fresh in between to help them stay looking the same between photos on both days! And we decided on beautiful babiesbreath bouquets with white roses for the bridesmaids that would also hold well!
CAR SERVICE
Although it might be hard to believe with 4 (really 5-6) days of main events and a large bridal party - we did not hire a car service or limo for our wedding! Although we intended to a few hired cars & drivers to be on hand for our bridal party during our 2 ceremony days I was shocked to see minimum quotes nearing $10,000 (based on number of people, and the distance between our venues etc) when I began to reach out to companies. Soon after, we decided we could manage with our own cars & drivers within our bridal party itself! All we needed was a solid carpool plan!
I then enlisted the help of my amazing bridesmaid Annie (with whom I share the extremely-organed gene) and we created a true masterpiece that laid out:
Table 1: The # of trips for each day (From - To - Who)
Table 2: How many cars/drivers & which we had available each day
Table 3: Who was to be transported that day
Table 4: combined the information of tables 1-3 sorting people into:
CAR - DRIVERS - PASSENGERS for each trip of the day, including the start & end times
(the cars & who was traveling within them were color coordinated for ease)
Honestly, Annie & I are pretty proud of this mad-science we pulled off. It is still spoken of with pride today. Also, Operations was one of my favorite courses in MBA, in case you couldn’t tell.
This car service plan also speaks to how Rohan & I saved a lot for our wedding by planning the wedding ourselves! Of course this is not always a possibility for all brides & grooms, but it was important to me! More on this to come on the next blog post!
On that note, Rohan & I decided we didn’t want to rent an expensive car or limo for our own transport during the wedding either, as we rather put that money towards additional entertainment & food experiences for our guests!
So Rohan’s wonderful Massi decked out his car & his Best Man Teja was entrusted to be our bodyguard & chauffeur. Personally I found it super fun to drive around town in my wedding gown & wave to kids who thought I was a princess vs sit behind the tinted windows of a limo!
PRINTING & DESIGNING
You’d be amazed at the things you can create with a Canva Pro subscription. I have always enjoyed basic graphic design and creative direction, and I was already a regular Canva user for my business needs prior to our engagement, so when it came to our wedding invites and other signage or printed elements it was no question that we would take care of the design aspects ourselves, instead of hiring a graphic designer or wedding stationery company.
We also decided to send out digital invites only, using Paperless Post, primarily for the ease of RSVP tracking.
And when it came to printing out programmes, seating charts and any other signage/designed pieces for our wedding events I sourced quotes from my local TPH, Staples and Vista.ca and ended up ordering certain elements from each place, based on their prices. Vista was better priced for things like our programs and stickers for our snack boxes, etc. where as TPH was far more economical for our large foam core signs. Had I decided to do everything with 1 printing location I likely would’ve ended up spending a lot more than necessary! So it definitely pays off to do the research!
HOMEMADE SNACK BOXES
We decided to provide sweet & snack boxes following both our Catholic & Hindu wedding ceremonies, as it is traditional in both Tamil and Punjabi culture to give out sweets on happy occasions. Although there are a wealth of South Asian sweets companies in the GTA, as well as a lot of wonderful charcuterie box companies that we could’ve ordered snack boxes from for our ceremonies, we decided it would be more meaningful and also economical to source snacks & build out these boxes at our respective homes to provide to our guests.
This also allowed us to choose items that meant something to us, and I was able to include a printed note within our Catholic ceremony snack boxes that explained the significance of the authentic Sri Lankan snacks within (as well as their ingredients and any allergen warnings).
Luckily I have a wealth of amazing aunts & uncles who volunteered their time & were eager to help with our wedding in whatever way they could - so they happily assembled the boxes for our church ceremony for us! Special shoutout to my beloved Aunty Cuckoo and my phenomenal Uncle Terrence who also sourced the beautiful boxes themselves, and brought over authentic Sri Lankan treats from Kandy, Sri Lanka itself!
We printed our wedding monogram/logo as stickers with Vista.ca to customize our snack boxes for guests!
TRUSTING NEW VENDORS & SMALL BUSINESSES!
Many people have commented on how beautiful our main wedding events looked - and all credit for that goes to Prema of Beyond the Limits Decor! Although Prema Aunty is a true veteran of the business she treats every wedding with great attention and brings unique captivating designs to life for every couple! She was also always open to our input, wishes & incorporated things that we wanted to add on - like our famous “Rohlani” neon sign! We met with a few different decor companies but no one held a candle to her design sense or her confidence to pull together classy looking setups for us 4 days in a row!
When it came to our home decor though we saved on costs by doing a lot of it ourselves, or in the case of Rohan’s house - by trusting new vendors who were looking to build their portfolio. Rohan’s mom was an expert at locating eager new business owners who were looking to make a mark, and giving them a chance with the events held at our homes. In return we received enthusiastic service and were very happy to help other small businesses grow.
In general, as an entrepreneur myself, it was important to Rohan & I that we chose mostly small businesses to work with for our wedding - and we are so happy we did!