Feeding Wedding Guests on a Budget

Thank you all for visiting my little corner of the internet. I have had many questions about how I fed 250 people on $100. Well, the answer is I didn't. We had a cake and punch reception and a rehearsal dinner. Both of those, I did for $100. We fed about 25 at the rehearsal dinner and 250 people cake, punch, and cookies for that. We had TONS of cupcakes left over which went to a baby shower the next day.

There are some things that you can do to save on a wedding dinner. One is to not have one at all. 40 years ago, people didn't expect to have a dinner and dancing at a wedding reception. They expected cake and punch. This has all but died out since wedding seem to be mostly about out spending one another. Check TLC if you don't believe me.

Another is to have a pot luck. You provide the main dish and everyone brings sides. This works better for a small, intimate reception perhaps just family and close friends.

If you still want to have a catered wedding, it is much cheaper to do a buffet. Guests fill their own plates with the amount they can actually eat, so there is less waste. You also don't have to pay a catering staff to bring the food out to the guest tables and plate the food. This saves you about $600 an hour. Friends and family are usually more than happy to make sure the pans stay full and clean them up afterwards.

Check with your local grocery store deli for catering. Our local Schnuck's offers 250 pieces of chicken and a few sides for $200 dollars. Combine a few sides of your own and you can feed 150 people easily. It is also cheaper to have your main course catered in and prepare the sides yourself. They can usually be done the day ahead and refrigerated or reheated.

If you are a super woman and you are going to DIY the whole meal by yourself, consider things that stretch far and are easy to do. You will be busy getting married, so you won't be able to be in the kitchen. I know Chef Ramsey would kill me, but think about things that can be frozen and are ok. Pulled pork, Italian beef, meat ball subs are all things that can be done the day before and reheated in roasters. They are pretty easy and super tasty. Shredded meats tend to stretch farther. Check out some potluck recipe books.

The other half of planning a meal that stretches far and saves money is to shop sales. Our deep freeze was a life saver. About a month before we found pork butt roasts for 59 cents a pound. This was a great deal and we were able to purchase enough for the rehearsal dinner and one for us later down the road. I probably wouldn't shop any earlier than 3 months before the big day. You don't want to serve freezer burnt food. Don't be afraid to use coupons!

How did you save money on your wedding meal?

Invitations

I know that I've touched on this topic before, but I think it needs to be more of an in depth topic. Invitations are one of the most fundamental things you need for a wedding. Pretty much everything else can be skipped except the ones to make it legal (officiator, bride, groom, license, and witnesses). This also means that companies realize that you need many invitations and will charge for them as they see fit.

Invitations are probably also the easiest thing to make and require the least amount of experience or equipment. Basically, you need a printer and paper. Everything else is just extra depending on your chosen decorations. The first thing that you need to do is decide on your paper choice. I didn't realize how wasteful a wedding was until I took a course on designing and environmental responsibility. I also realized there are a ton of different paper choices. The texture and materials can make a huge difference in even a simple design.

I am currently in love with seed paper and hand pressed recycled paper. They have a nice thick feel and a hearty texture. They also get embossed slightly depending on the type of printer that you use with them. However, make sure that they will run through your printer without jamming. There are several companies that will send you a sample to try out and also see the color choices in person. I really like the papers from Plantable Seed Paper. http://www.plantableseedpaper.com/ They can even custom blend seeds into the paper for you. The best part is that you guests toss the paper in the ground pour on a little water and they get a constant reminder about your wedding. Cool, right?
Even if you don't pick a sustainable paper homemade invitations come out beautifully and no one else is going to have the same invitations. I get tired of seeing the same ones all the time. It also doesn't necessarily tell me how to dress for the wedding.

So once you pick out the type of paper settle on a design or at least style. Ours was rustic and simple so we used a light brown cardstock. It had a bit of dappling for paper imperfections which kind of pulled in the rustic. Some ideas would be to paint large sheets of paper with watercolors in the colors of your wedding. Let them dry, cut apart and them run them through the printer. Each guest will get a different looking invitation. Some invitations are super simple and adorable. They are just plain paper with a punched border. The writing then stays elegant and simple. Just make them fit you! You can order different sizes and colors of envelopes online or pick them up at an office store. I got mine from Walmart and we are still using the extras for homemade birthday cards.

I would also not waste the time or money with RSVP cards. There are many sites where your guests can RSVP for free and an email alert is sent to you. This is more green as well as saving you money on stamps and possibly envelopes. Also many times guests forget to write their names, number attending or even their dinner choice on the cards. Basically, a waste of a stamp and paper because the information just isn't there. Another reality is that they won't RSVP at all unless you call them. We had about 50 people RSVP for our wedding and 250 showed up. I'm glad I didn't pay for plates. :) I've seen invitations go out on Facebook. It is a little less classy but in reality it's super functional.

I do realize that not everyone has the time or energy to put forth on their wedding. Basically, my wedding was cheap because I saved myself the labor costs and did everything myself. If you need help with invitations, I can help you out by sending a comment or email here. I am also able to make them for you and save a little bit of cash by sending me a message on Etsy at http://www.etsy.com/shop/KatieDidKreate

The most important thing to remember is to have fun. It's a wedding after all!

Guest Favors

This is really one area that I felt a lot of conflict with. I wanted something that my guests could enjoy and also leave with. I also wanted it to reflect the tone of the wedding and our personalities. There were so many options to choose from and when you are talking about 250 guests, they all add up fast. Even at a dollar a piece, there is 250 dollars of your budget right there. So it was important to find something that was cheaper and still reflected us as a couple. We settled on puppy chow, york peppermint patty drops, and cootie catchers. These were things we enjoyed or played with as a child. Perfect right? Also very simple, and definitely within our budget. You can see our favors below. The cootie catchers are the blue origami paper figures.

The York drops were a relatively easy favor to produce. The tulle came from Joanns, at a reasonable price per yard. I used less that 1/4 of a yard for these little bags. The drops came from the grocery store which I used a coupon on. These were our wedding colors. If your colors do not correspond to any of the drop candy, you can purchase custom M&M's on their website. That is obviously more expensive. I cut the tulle in a 5"x5" square. I put a serving size in the bag which was about 50 pieces. I then tied them up with some ribbon left over from other crafts for the wedding. It was about 50 a spool from walmart and comes in a lot of different colors. A second set of hands would be helpful when tying up the bags so that the candy doesn't escape.

The cootie catcher was a little more difficult. This is where the degree in art was helpful or at least the design programs that came with it. I made a cootie catcher out of paper and then wrote on each of the flaps to find the correct orientation of the text. I then came up with 16 difference questions and answers to put on the 2 different cootie catchers.  The picture below shows what the cootie catcher will look like before it is folded. We printed these on blue paper and folded. They cost about a penny a piece and the guests had a lot of fun reading the questions and answers that we put on them. You can now purchase a custom printable cootie catcher file in my shop. You can print them at home on any color paper your choose!

If you have any questions please let me know. Happy Creating!

Decorations

Decorations may in fact be the scariest decision you have to make about your wedding. This is not only because there are so many decisions to make about the matter, but also the large quantities you need and the endless possibilities. This decision is also hard because you may or may not have picked the wedding and reception venues, and you still must envision all of your decisions together filling the room and tables.

For our wedding, we opted to make ever single decoration that was displayed. This could have been possibly the most expensive part of the wedding had we let it. To our benefit, we decided early what we were going to do. This gave us extensive time to gather supplies that we either could borrow or be collected with the help of our family members.

This is a photo of our tables. You can see the various decorations that we have displayed.
We borrowed the beads in our wedding colors from our sister-in-law. She had used them at her high school graduation party and was kind enough to let us borrow them. The bottles were collected for 6+ months by our family and friends. They also brought a sense of earth friendliness to the wedding since we were reusing glass bottles that would have otherwise been trash because there is no where around here that recycles glass anymore. All the bottles that had paper labels were peeled off and cleaned until all the residue from the glue was gone. We used a combination of a razor blade, finger nail polish remover, and Goo Gone to achieve this. Some bottles were painted with chalkboard paint blue and white with different designs. (You can make your own chalkboard paint by combining 2 tsp white unsanded tile grout to one cup of acyclic paint.) Other we wrote on with a hot glue gun before painting over them in black chalkboard paint. The chalkboard paint just gave them a matte look and little texture. It also covered better on glass than regular paint. And some we left plain and then put metal hooks on to hang from the tent with wild flowers in them outside. Unfortunately, it rained and we had to place those on the tables also since we couldn't use the tent.

These paper stars were all constructed by hand by myself and my family. They are simply origami stars and we made probably two hundred of them. The wonderful thing about these was we could make them in whatever color we decided and they cost all together about 50 cents. Imagine what we could have done with ten dollars worth :)

The yarn balls were probably the biggest hit at the wedding. They were still simple and cheap to do. It did take a little figuring out and some flops before we got it right. Fortunately, we had extra hands to help us with this process and it did get a little messy. We combine one cup liquid starch to 1/2 cup flour in a bowl and mixed with a whisk. We did this four or five times because one batch only makes about three balloons worth of balls. We then used white yarn and dipped it into the solution. The yarn was then wrapped around an inflated balloon in different patterns and directions to get what you see above. They were then let to dry for about 24 hours and then the balloons were popped and pulled out. Any extra crusty stuff in the string can be scrapped out with a toothpick. They are actually a little sturdier than they look, but are not resilient to crushing. Keep that in mind during storage and transportation.

Another feature of the decorations not pictures are the little coaster like things we made. We cut a log from a sycamore tree (left over from the branch of which we made the unity candle holders) on the diagonal. These were then sanded and word burnt with K&S and the date and hearts. These were also placed in the modge-podge of decorations on the tables.

These banners were probably the most time consuming of the decorations. These were cut out of burlap. I then used the wedding font and blew up some letters. We then had to cut out the letters and trace them on the banners. We then painted them in with white paint and glued a loop in them. They were then strung and hung in the appropriate places. This consisted of the gift tables, as well as different areas and the in memory table. They were just a simple way to direct guests and the burlap fit in well with the rustic theme.



My favorite part were the mason jar center pieces. These were so simple. We just used the silver rings that go on mason jars, we then tied jute bows around them and placed blue sea glass inside. These were topped off by a white lit tea light. They were simple and the only things we bought were the silver rings and the tea lights. We come from families of canners and so the jars were already on hand and I stole the sea glass from one of my moms flower arrangements. Be innovative on where you get your decorations. You can almost always make everyday items beautiful with little work.

The last bit of decoration would be the signs that we placed on the guestbook and the in memory tables. These were little plaques that were made out of scrap booking paper and frames we already had. The one on the guestbook said "Come as you are, stay as long as your can; we're all family now, there is no seating plan." I have also seen one similar that says, "As two families are becoming one, we ask that you chose a seat not a side." These were helpful since his family is large and mine is small. The church would have been lopsided and neither of us saw the since in having to sit on one side or another just because you were related or friends with one of us. We also had a lot of people that knew us both separately and as a couple because we both lived in the same town our whole lives. The in memory table had the paper stars and a votive candle. Its plaque said, "For those we have loved and lost along the way, a flame to remember burns today."

I think that pretty much sums up our decorations. They were simple and easy to create which was great since most of that occurred about three days before the wedding. I would not recommend waiting. It might have made me a little nuts, but it all worked out beautifully. Questions? Just ask. :)

Flowers

I believe that the most stressful part of the whole creation process of anything in the wedding including the cake, has been the flowers. I think this is mainly because my experience with them is almost squat and they are one of the focal points of the wedding. There are also many elements that involve flowers. If people would have just bathed more than once a year in medieval times, we would not have to carry a bouquet because it was tradition in order to cover up the brides stink and then you and I would not be worrying about this flower business. But alas, here we are.

Alright, so down to business. My advice here is to find your favorite silk flower supplier. I got most of mine from Old Time Pottery because they are cheap and really nice there. They also have good sales almost all the time on some flowers or another. I also used the Home and Gardens Brand from Wal-Mart. These were more expensive, but they had some styles that I didn't find at OTP.

So what you will need: A good pair or wire cutters, flowers (about 2-4 bunches per bouquet and 1 bunch for 3-5 corsages/boutonnieres), floral tape (1.29 from Joann's), hot glue gun and glue, ribbon, and probably another set of hands.

Your first step will be cutting the flowers apart. I went ahead and cut them as close to the bottom as possible. You can always cut off more stem, but you can't add it back on so better safe than sorry. I got all of the flower cut apart that I wanted to use for the arrangement. Then I started arranging them until I found something pleasing. Then I would wrap between 3-7 stems together with the floral tape. The tape is self sticking when it is stretched. This means that it will be sticky afterwards too so be prepared for sticky fingers. But the best part is that it is easy to get back off if you finish and decide you don't like your arrangement. And it is cheap so you don't feel bad arranging it like 6 times. Keep arranging until the look like you want and then secure them well with the tape. Cut off the stem ends of the flowers to an even and appropriate length. Try to cut them straight so that you don't have wires poking out and stabbing you. Then hot glue the ribbon over the stems. You can also layer ribbon for a different look. And that's all to a bouquet.

Here are pictures of the mess:) :

Boutonnieres and corsages are a little different. Those are just a couple flowers or elements added together. The fun part about these, is that they don't have to be flowers. They can be scrabble pieces or test tubes or anything else that shows off your personality if you chose to go down that road. Feathers are particularly popular right now. Check out this site http://www.ohweddings.net/accessories-original-boutonnieres.php for some ideas. If you go with flowers. You again cut them apart. Then arrange a couple to how you want them to look. Cut off the ends and wrap with floral tape. These you don't have to wrap with ribbon, but we chose to tie a bow around them with either ribbon for the girls or twine for the boys. These just need to be secured to the clothing with a pin that you can pick up in the bridal sections at Michael's or Joann's. They usually have a pearl looking thing on the ends.

While you have your flowers out, this would be the perfect time to make your guest book pens. We have all seen those huge daisies on pens at stores so that we don't walk out with them. This is the same idea, but I would suggest toning down the flowers so that the pen is not unbalanced and it makes it easier for the guests to write with. Anyways, you can just take a stick pen like a Bic in the color of your choosing and cut off the end farthest from the writing point. You should then be able to stick the stem of the flower down in the pen. If you can't you need to cut a little farther down on the pen until you can. You will need to stick the flowers around the ink tube instead of in. If you need extra room, you can always strip the plastic off the wire on the flower stems. The starting at the writing tip of the pen, wrap the pen in the floral tape. The stickiness will eventually dry and wear off. Wrap all the way up to the flowers as far as you can for the best hold. Ta-Da. You have your own flower pen. I made two of these for the wedding just in case. I also made the different so you have choices later down the road.

Here are the pictures of the final look:

The Final Numbers

Well, the final numbers are in. I was so excited that I couldn't wait until the last post to fill you all in on how we did.  Not include our wedding bands we are at. 1812.46. That's a whopping 1187.54 UNDER budget. Incredible right?

But, let's get back to talking about how you can have this wedding too. Today, let's talk about the cake. This is probably the hardest place to cut back. This is because not everyone is a cake decorator like me by trade. I budgeted 150 dollars for reception food and the cake. We went 2.12 over that budget, but I think I'm going to forgive myself on that one. I got 20 boxes of cake mix at the grocery store for .69 a piece. After tax, that put the cake mix at 14.73 cents. That's approximately enough cake to feed 480 people. That not only fed the wedding, but the bridal shower and a baby shower's worth of guests and there were still left overs. That's a lot of cake. The oil was around 2 dollars a bottle at Aldi's. I used one and a half bottles I believe. I also got an amazing deal on eggs. I bought a box, which holds 18 dozen eggs at a local food coop. That made them .75 a dozen. I counted the water and electricity as free. I got white cupcake holders at Dollar General for a penny a wrapper. I made around 300 cupcakes, so that was about 3 dollars on wrappers. If you get them at a specialty store they are about three dollars for 50 of them. The fancy ones are even more expensive. This was a place I was willing to sacrifice, because I know my family and they are more concerned about the cupcake than the wrapper and the wrapper gets thrown away anyways. I did buy an ice cream scoop to ladle out the batter, but since it got re purposed after the wedding, I didn't count it in the budget. If you want to count it, it was 5.17 after tax. All of my cake decorating supplies were in the house already. The icing cost about .75 cents a cup to make it. Pillsbury or whatever is about 2.75 a cup in the store premade. That is a huge savings because we used a lot of it. Here's the recipe:

1c. shortening
1c. butter (real butter NOT margarine, I usually just do another cup of shortening instead of butter to make it really white)
1-3 T milk
1 bag powdered sugar sifted (2lb bag)
1tsp vanilla

Use an electric mixer to mix all the ingredients except milk and powdered sugar. Mix in powdered sugar gradually or it will be all over your kitchen. Then add milk to get the right consistency.

The cake pans were actually borrowed from a friend and my mom. You would be surprised what people have that you can borrow. Just ask! They are more than accommodating if you explain to them about your wedding on a budget.

We also used fondant to cover the cake and make it look more professional. This is not something that I had done before. However, fondant is easy and cheap to make. I got marshmallows on sale for .75 a bag. The powdered sugar came from Aldi's like it did for the icing. It cost about 2.88 a batch to make. I had a double layered, 4 tier cake. It only took me to batches to cover the whole thing and I had some left over. I would say if you aren't sure, to make it as you go or plan on an extra batch compared to what you think just in case, especially if you are buying supplies as they go on sale. The recipe can be found here. The supplies needed to use the fondant came from a girl at work, so I didn't have to buy those either. The topper was actually a Christmas present from my mom. She knew we had a hard time finding the perfect topper and now Willow Tree is now making them. That was perfect for our rustic wedding. Pictures of the cake are below.

We also made sugar cookies and cupcakes. Pictures of them are also below. I have recipes for no fail cookie cutter sugar cookies if anyone is interested. These cookies are the ones my new husband actually decorated. Aren't they cute. Oh, and the blue tray that exactly matched our wedding colors, were two dollars a piece at Dollar General. We also had creme cheese mints that were actually a wedding gift from a wonderful friend were contained in little plastic bowls that looked like cut glass from the Dollar Tree at .25 cents a piece.

Questions? Need some help? Email me. :)

The Next Step

Alright, so now that you have those coupons and emails rolling in, we now get to the fun part: saving money! Your second assignment from last posting was to begin thinking about what you wanted out of your wedding. You don't have to have it all figured out the first week, but it is a pretty good idea that to know what theme you and your future spouse want to go with before a single thing is purchased to stop from purchasing those things twice.

Let's start with the boring stuff first. Get out a pencil and paper or open an excel document, because we are going to start at the beginning by setting up the budget. Excel has some premade wedding budgets that you can download from the Microsoft page. I decided to set up my own because then it works exactly the way I want it to. Mine might be lacking some areas that you need to include and then again it may have some extras that you won't need. I have attached a screen shot of the file for your viewing pleasure. If you have any questions about setting up your own, please let me know!

Now, lets start with invitations/save the dates. Ours cost about 78 cents total. That includes the postage stamp and envelope. That's crazy cheap right? I know you have begun to look at invitations and the cheaper ones start at a dollar a pop and that doesn't include a return card or envelope. (My scanner is not working so I can't post a finished picture of our invitation, but I will add ones ASAP.)

 

This is where being an artsy person or knowing one comes in handy as well as the DIY part. For our wedding, we found that the save the date that we saw online were closer to our personality than a lot of the formal and stuffy invitations. Our invitations consisted of card stock from Joann's or Michael's. They run under 5 dollars for 50 pages. We cut these in half to get 100 total from a package. If you have a 25% off or more coupon this will add to your savings. We will be using the left over paper for other things in the wedding. Waste not want not and all.

We then used a rubber stamp to get a cute design for under 10 dollars. The back had simple writing on it like a normal invitation and to add some elegance we rounded and embossed the corners. These embossers/rounders come in many different styles. They run about 14 dollars and the best ones in my opinion are made by Fiskars. Again, they can be found at Michael's or Joann's where you now have coupons to. http://www.joann.com/search/_corner_punch/brand_fiskars/ The other side had a picture which we designed and then printed at CVS and a bow. These did take a bit of time to make and several people. If you start early and do it in steps, it seems like less of a challenge.

For the wedding shower invitations, I designed a front and back and then printed four to a page on the same type of card stock. Stephen cut them out with a straight edge cutter and it took me about an hour to address them all. They then got a postcard stamp and were dropped off into the mail. They are pictured below.

If you have any questions about this you can always email me at katheryn.mangelsdorf@gmail.com Other than that, just keep planning. I'll have a new post up soon with another part of the wedding planning process.

Also, if you have not signed up for the Knot, you should do so. They have tons of great ideas and tips on their site. www.theknot.com They also offer a free wedding website which allows guests to RSVP (for free :) ) and keep updated on your wedding.

Happy Planning!