Is there any way to have an elegant...?

Question

Catholic wedding in Dallas,TX under $12,000. We are not rich and we are saving for a house down payment so we have $12 grand for a nice wedding. Any suggestions? I need a cermony site and reception area. Thanks

Answer 1

For a Catholic ceremony, try the church. The usually don't cost as much as banquet halls and other places. If neither one of you is a member at a church, then it will be a little pricier, but still shouldn't run that much. Check the yellow pages for churches. Call and ask how much they charge, and ask when you could take a look at them. Many of them have a hall or room that you can use right there on site.

Try some of these sites:
http://www.holytrinitycatholicchurch.org/
http://stedwardparish.org/
http://www.cathedralguadalupe.org/index.cfm

You could also look into having a friend or family member host it in their yard and still have a formal traditional wedding outside. It would save on the site fee, and you could put the money towards other things to add to the elegance you are trying to achieve.

For planning ideas, local vendors, and other ideas, try
http:www.weddingchannel.com/
It's free to join, and they have many great tools, like a budget calculator to help you get the day you want.

Try
http://www.bridesave.com
for inexpensive gowns for you and your bridesmaids. They have many designer labels at much less than retail.

Try this for more money saving tips:
http://www.fireyourweddingplanner.com
She's put together some great advice on how to get better prices and still get what you want.

Congrats and Good Luck!

Answer 2

Absolutely this can be done.

something that helped me a lot:
-you and have your beloved too write a list of five things that are really, really important to each of you to have at the wedding. That way you'll know what the priorities are, and what you can cut back on.

for me --it was to have my family there, to have a bride-looking dress, to have a cake, to get married in a church, to have a friend marry us, ect.

pick a theme --a color, the ocean if it's by the beach. . .

get a place where you can have the reception and the wedding both. or if can't do that --have the reception at a nice hotel. they will make sure it looks nice. and then you don't have to worry about linens, ect.

and get the book bridal bargains. seriously the best book I've ever seen on doing just this.

have the wedding in the afternoon =less food needed.
the cheapest wedding invitations are one panel black ink. you can use an embossing stamp and tool and decorate them yourself.

burn a cd for music of the ceremony (and the reception.) and hire someone to play what when instead of an orchestra or a band or whatever. or for the reception have an 8 cd disk changer set up to the speaker system and have the whatever four hours of music. could have a cocktail hour first, ect.

for the guest book have people sign the matts for photos with metallic pens.

for favors --do tulle circles and italian almonds.

make your own programs for the ceremony --did ours by typing out the text on a word program, then copying it to a smaller size and so it's on the inside and folded it like a card and decorated the front and the back.

avoid buying ANYTHING for the wedding at a wedding store if you can help it: buy candles from costco. buy bridesmaid's dresses off the rack at the mall --We did this!!!! IT WORKED.

hire a wedding coordinator. they know all the shortcuts and saved my LIFE the day of.

a site that helped me: theknot.com
dvd set that's good: like 5 disk set of martha stewart weddings.

all my best to you!!!!

Answer 3

That's a huge amount of money for a wedding. I'm surprised you are having budget problems.

If money is a concern then plan the ceremony and reception for a non-meal time of day and just serve finger foods or just serve cake and punch. Include the reception information on your invitations wo people know there will not be a full meal, like:

Cake and punch reception at three o'clock
Light refreshments and dancing at three o'clock
Tea reception at four o'clock

or whatever.

If you are Catholic, don't you already belong to a church? Does the church have a hall?

Answer 4

there's a book or two called how to have abig wedding on a small budget. there are plenty of ways to do it. I'm planning a small to medium sized wedding in Iowa for under that much.

also, check with www.theknot.com. very helpful website.

Answer 5

Obviously, you wanna stick with wholesalers, and smaller businesses to try to keep costs down. Larger retailers can charge a killing when it comes to wedding stuff. We're from New Mexico and we used OnceUponATimeABQ.com to supply us with a lot of our accessories and decorations. They have some really neat (or "cute" if your talking to my wife) things. There's a ton of different things to choose from. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

yes there is my husband and I got maried and had a really wonderful wedding for 4,500.Just be careful how you spend and be ready to do alot of the stuff your self I made every thing and I had my bridal party pay for there own stuff