DIY Invites, Weekday Events & Homemade Cake: 8 Couples Reveal Their Money-Saving Wedding Hacks

Wedding season is well and truly upon us. If you got proposed to over the festive period (AKA the most popular time to get engaged), congratulations! You're either still floating on cloud nine, or already deep in the weeds of planning your wedding. Part of the latter? Then the harsh awakening of how bloody expensive your nuptials can be has probably hit you in the face like a sucker punch.

Getting married ain't cheap — whether you've done it already or have simply heard your engaged friends complain about how much they're forking out for their big day, the wedding tax is real. Florals rack up thousands, a two-tier dark chocolate mirror glaze cake with a raspberry coulis filling costs $750 (IYKYK), and wedding dresses can require taking out a personal loan. According to Moneysmart, the average wedding cost in Australia is $36,000. Yeesh.

Eloping sounds real nice RN, doesn't it?

But if running off to the other side of the globe and getting married in secret isn't really your speed, don't lose all hope of putting your dream wedding in the bin just yet. There are a whole lot of ways you can still throw a great party without putting yourself into debt.

We spoke to eight former and upcoming brides who threw a wedding for cheap, and they told us exactly how they did it.

Don't have a cheeky $200k for a Vogue-level wedding? Read on.

8 People Reveal What They Did To Save Money On Their Wedding

Jas (married)

What did you do to lower the cost of your wedding, and what made you decide this?

We made a few decisions to cut costs for our wedding. The first was hiring a content creator over a videographer. While I greatly respect the work videographers do, sadly it would've blown our budget out. A content creator was about one quarter of the price! I loved having small snippets shot on iPhone and camcorder so we could make our own video clips.

My mum baked our wedding cake (elderflower and lemon sponge cake), and we hired a small business for the florals with minimal flowers on the dinner tables. Another way we saved money was by not having a sit-down dessert, so our dinner was only two courses. People ate the cake for dessert whilst on the dance floor! I also went to the hair salon in the morning myself rather than having hair stylists travel to our hotel. That saved a lot on their travel costs. 

Roughly how much did you save by doing it this way?

A guess would be around $10,000 to $15,000? $6,000 to $8,000 for the videographer, $750 for the cake, $4,000 to 5,000 on flowers, $1,500 on a hair stylist. 

Did it change how the day felt? Did you regret any cost-cutting decisions you made? 

I don't regret making these decisions! The only one I was slightly hesitant about was wondering if I'd regret the videographer, but the day was captured in so many other ways that I'm not missing anything.

What surprised you most about going small or budget-friendly?

How even a small, budget-friendly wedding can blow out quickly! We spent more on the day than anticipated when we got engaged. The wedding tax is so real that after a year of planning, numbers start feeling like Monopoly money (which is dangerous).

Elisa (engaged)

What are you planning on doing to lower the cost of your wedding, and what made you decide this?

• We decided to do a doughnut tower instead of a cake. The venue had a cakeage fee, but having doughnuts means we didn't have to pay it. We also aren't huge fans of cake, and they're so expensive, so we didn't see a point.
• All florals will be fake. For three bouquets, seven corsages, and one aisle arrangement, it was over $1,000, but I am DIY'ing the aisle arrangements, which would come to around $100, and for my bouquets and corsages I'm ordering silk flowers from a florist. That's only about $400, and they will last me forever!
• Our venue isn't a traditional secluded venue; it's a pub function space, and its room hire fee was only $600, and $1,000 as a ceremony fee.
• The food service style is a cocktail and canapé vibe, as sit-down formal dinners add at least another $100 per person.
• We still wanted to capture our day digitally, but a videographer was just not in the budget. They range between $3,000 and $7,000, but we opted for a content creator instead, which are way cheaper (ours was $1,000).
• We opted out of having a DJ (at this stage). Decent DJs range from $2,000 to $6,000 and weren't really important to us when we have a tonne of friends who can make a banging playlist that will have the exact same effect.
• My wedding dress wasn't designer! The place where I got my dress has a 'core brand' ('home brand' if you will) where they make their own dresses rather than ordering from one of their designer brands.
• Our venue offered a per-person drink package rather than just the regular 'pay on consumption'! My friends and family drink a lot, and I know if we paid for what they consumed, our bill would at least double.

Roughly how much will you save by doing it this way?

If I’ve calculated right, doing all of these changes and being strict with splurges has saved us approximately $12,000 to $16,000.

Is there anything that’s surprised you about going budget-friendly along the way?

• How much unnecessary money people spend on stupid sh*t and how easy it is to cut back on costs for the non-essential stuff (different cutlery, desserts, napkins, music, etc). It’s not actually hard to make sacrifices if you aren’t very materialistic. If you have the basics and the core things you need, the rest is all just "stuff".
• How much flowers can cost. I thought food would be the most expensive thing in a wedding, but having real florals can set you back like $5,000 to $15,000 if you have a big venue or want the full shebang.

Cam (married)

What did you do to lower the cost of your wedding, and what made you decide this?

• Well, for one, having your wedding in a country like Bali is a lot cheaper! Money goes further at least. We did kind of ball out, but we got a lot more than we would have here. 
• My wife Dani and I both know graphic design, so designing our own invites, branding, and website was easy for us. 
• Getting a wedding coordinator that has good contacts and rates helped a lot. 
• Keeping track of everything with a good spreadsheet.

Roughly how much did you save by doing it this way?

We definitely saved around $30,000.

Did it change how the day felt? Did you regret any cost-cutting decisions you made? 

No. It was not about the event; ultimately it was about us having something to remember. We actually did the signing in Melbourne to make it official a week before, which was like $390 because it was too annoying to get the forms transferred from Indonesia. No regrets.

What surprised you most about going small or budget-friendly?

How much we can get with our money in another country. We could have spent way more and gone to the best resort in Bali. We could have also gone cheaper by getting a villa.

We designed and wrote a personal message to each guest at the wedding on a postcard, and the personal touch of designing it ourselves surprised me by how much closer it felt. The price of the wedding wasn't what made it amazing; it was the cheaper, personal things we did that made it special.

Emma (engaged)

What are you planning on doing to lower the cost of your wedding, and what made you decide this?

Some of the ways we plan on lowering the cost for our wedding are by having ours on a Friday instead of a weekend, and we are doing our own stationery. We have also undertaken extensive research to find the most competitive prices for our main vendors and have some family/friends who are doing things such as making our cake. I think choosing what you value most and putting your budget towards that is important to keep you grounded and not blow your budget on things you don’t really care about.

Roughly how much will you save by doing it this way?

Hard to say at this point, but definitely a few thousand dollars.

Is there anything that’s surprised you about going budget-friendly along the way?

Whilst our budget isn’t super low, I was surprised that most of the vendors we have booked have come in under what we accounted for. Being willing to take time to do lots of research definitely pays off and gives you the knowledge/power to make an informed decision about what a realistic cost is.

One other thing that did surprise me is that lots of vendors have crazy minimum spends; for example, lots of florists start quotes at $4,000, so we are working on finding a way around this! Going budget-friendly has also helped keep in mind that, at the end of the day, it's just a single day of your life and you shouldn’t break the bank for it.

Tamsyn (engaged)

What are you planning on doing to lower the cost of your wedding, and what made you decide this?

We’re making our own save-the-dates and wedding invites via Canva; this also offers a printing service, which reduces the cost of professionally printing invites. We’re also looking to create our own signage via Etsy and Canva, as the cost to have signage professionally created is quite pricey.

We chose a venue that was naturally beautiful to reduce the need for extra decorations and extra floral arrangements, and also booked our venue three years out, enabling us to lock in pricing for 2025 for a 2028 wedding, saving us heaps! We did this with our photographer and videographer as well. Not all vendors will allow this, so where we could lock in 2025 pricing, we did. 

Roughly how much will you save by doing it this way?

With all of the above, I am not quite certain exactly how much we would have saved except for invites and venue. For the venue, we’ve saved $30pp extra for the reception meal and drinks, roughly $4,200 with our guest numbers, by locking in 2025 pricing. I had a quote for invites to be professionally made, which came to almost $1,500, and with Canva this may cost $100 to $150, so significant savings there.

Is there anything that’s surprised you about going budget-friendly along the way?

What surprised me the most is vendors not wanting to lock you in so far out. I understand they want to make sure you pay their current pricing, but work is work, so it’s interesting that some would prefer to lose potential clients by making them wait for 2028 pricing to be released.

Hidden costs are a huge thing. With our venue, we pay per head for the reception, but that doesn’t include cocktail hour, canapés, pre-ceremony drinks or anything! So really being cautious of what’s included is important when looking at venues.

Darryl and Jihyun (married)

What did you do to lower the cost of your wedding, and what made you decide this?

At first, we were looking into individual vendors on the internet that ranged from about $1,000 per service offered (chairs, tables, the marquee, etc). It was stacking up exponentially.

We switched it up and found cheaper vendors on Facebook Marketplace that offered packages in a bundle for less. We were able to save so much, and for food, we allocated some money to a friend who was a former chef to do the catering. We also asked and paid a friend to bake a simple cake for us instead of opting for a grand, pricier one.

Roughly how much did you save by doing it this way?

It is hard to determine how much we saved, but I believe we spent only half or a third of the average cost of weddings in Australia (according to Google — $36,000 to $41,400).

Did it change how the day felt? Did you regret any cost-cutting decisions you made? 

We didn't regret any cost-cutting. Honestly, we were so caught up in our original plan and vision, but we had to divert. If we had more budget, we could've stuck with the original plan, but we are so glad we didn't because it ended up perfect. Cheaper solutions don't necessarily mean a cheaper-looking wedding. It allowed us to elevate it even more, but more personal. It also helped knowing what we were willing to splurge on. For us, it was wedding photos and our wedding bands.

What surprised you most about going small or budget-friendly?

It surprised me (the bride) how quickly costs can add up, even with DIY projects due to the cost of materials — especially if it is your first time making certain projects. It also surprised me how much people were willing to help and be part of our big day. Our friends were more than happy to help, run errands on the big day, sacrifice their time, and make sure that we had a beautiful day. We are very grateful.

Laura (engaged)

What are you planning on doing to lower the cost of your wedding, and what made you decide this?

In an effort to keep costs down, we’ve decided to DIY a bunch of elements on our day and rope in friends and family to help where appropriate. For example, I'll be doing a grazing board and the flowers myself from the Sydney flower market the day before/morning of. My dad is making dessert (cannoli; he’s an amazing cook and they’re my favourite), a close friend has designed our digital invitations/save the date, and another is making our cake. Both of these are their wedding presents to us, and it’s so sweet!

Roughly how much will you save by doing it this way?

I haven’t done the exact maths, but it’s easily in the thousands. We set a budget, and after recognising that a lot of the stuff I wanted was out of that budget, I’ve turned to DIY options to make it all fit. So far, so good!

Is there anything that’s surprised you about going budget-friendly along the way?

I was surprised that my budget made things easier for us to plan. My partner and I are fully funding our wedding, and we were determined to make it as stress-free as possible. We thought having a strict budget would make things harder, but really it established helpful parameters for us to work within and made the whole process easier. 

I think there was a part of me that had to accept that my wedding wouldn’t look like it was out of Vogue, but now I’m excited to have a wedding that feels authentically like me and my partner and will still ultimately be beautiful.

Nic (married)

What did you do to lower the cost of your wedding, and what made you decide this?

• I designed my own flowers for the venue, my bouquet and the two bridesmaids' bouquets. My total cost for flowers was $110, and I bought ribbon and tape, which cost $10. Could anyone tell that I made them? Absolutely not. 
• We had two cakes. One from my husband Keaton’s favourite chocolate shop in Melbourne, Mork. I placed an order for one of these to be picked up the day before, as well as a Filipino ice cream cake. Total cost around $200.
• We knew the dates and costs of weddings on Fridays and Saturdays were going to be limited. So, how about a Wednesday? Having it on a day that doesn’t normally have events, we were able to negotiate with the venue to pay event minimum spend prices rather than wedding prices, as I kept the reception to three hours instead of the usual five hours. FYI, food-for-event prices were $80 per head at the venue, whereas wedding prices were $110 a head (insane).

Roughly how much did you save by doing it this way?

We paid approx $10,000 for both the ceremony and the reception.

Did it change how the day felt? Did you regret any cost-cutting decisions you made?

I look at other weddings that I’ve been to, and it makes me think: why spend money on all these things we’re told to have at a wedding when no one even remembers that? When there are fewer things to worry about, there’s less things that can go wrong in a wedding, but it’s all about perspective. 

I got to spend quality time with people I love and cherish in my life, make core memories together, they had an excuse to take a day off work and check out Melbourne, and it wasn’t a long, drawn-out wedding.

 What surprised you most about going small or budget-friendly?

The difference in costs when you say you’re having a wedding. Luckily, I chose a day when barely anyone gets married, so I could keep that wedding tax cost down. Also, I still had the chance to have quality conversations with 50 people.

There you have it, folks. Not all hope is lost if you don't have a wildly large budget to work with! Not a single person regretted cutting costs.

This article was made possible by our mates at MALTESERS® Australia

Image credit: @jasmineeskye / @camcheesetoastie / @lemondani_ / @nikx_d_