What's the cheapest way to get hitched?
Thursday 12th May 2022
Ryan Martin
Why are weddings so expensive?
Weddings don't need to be expensive but if you are looking for a cheap wedding, be prepared to do a lot yourself or rely on friends and family to do things for you. There are surprising a lot of people involved in making a picturesque wedding come to life.
I'll give an example of recent wedding I was involved in.
Mel & Tom got married at Austinvilla Estate in the Gold Coast, which had multiple employee working at the venue. 4-5 front out house staff serving drinks etc., 4-5 back of house cooking meals etc. and then the wedding coordinator overseeing the whole operation. If your venue has accomodation like this one does then a lot more which were not even visible at the time of the wedding.
The celebrant on the day was Andrew Michaels from AM Weddings. I was employed to do live music at the ceremony, live music at the reception and then DJ into the night.
This is just scratching the surface of how starts to add up. Think about transport, cake, flowers, make up, hair, dresses, suits, arbours, seating for guests, table decorations, meals, gifts for your guests, alcohol...
Photo by Juliette Murray from https://colourcaptured.com/
Save money on the ceremony!
If you are looking for the cheapest possible wedding, head to the registry. The cost of getting married at a registry is $469 on a weekday and $584 for a weekend. They do also charge a NOIM lodgement fee of $169. So if you are wanting to get married on a Saturday, you are looking at a cost of $753 at the local registry.
Can you save money?
The bottom line is, if you want people to be involved in your wedding day, then you have to pay them. If you are okay with cooking your own food for your guests at your wedding, then do it! Save on a caterer! If you are okay with baking your own cake, or asking your bridesmaids to bake a cake, do it! if you want to have a dry wedding and only supply soft drink & water, do it! The choice is yours!
I personally, don't charge any extra for my service if it's a wedding compared to a public gig. I charge for the hours I work on the wedding.
For a wedding, everything has to go to plan and you only have one take. An itinerary is essential, the itinerary is drafted, sent back and forward until the couple are happy with it. Specific songs need to be learned for significant events throughout the day. I can't just rock up to a ceremony and play the song I have ready to go on my iPad. For a wedding, I am often setting up 2 PA's, one for the canapé / cocktail hour and one for the reception dance floor area. A lot of weddings I do, I'm arriving at 12pm to start setting up and just starting to pack down at 12am so of course it's going to be expensive to have someone working for you for 12 hours.
Other Things that you could do to save money on your wedding day:
Do any of your friends / family have any skills / assets in the following area
Cake making
Flower arrangements
Live music/DJ
Transportation
Catering
Photographer
Videographer
Doing Hair or Make up
I hope this article has given you some information about how to save money on your wedding!
If you want to check out some more of my stuff head to www.ryanmartin.com.au