Make your own flowers/bouquets. It is infinitely cheaper to go to Michels/Joanns and buy fake flowers and put them together yourself than to get real. I purchased the bridal bouquet and that was over $100. But we got all the flowers/leaves/wire/ribbon/green tape to make the 4 bouquets and dozen or so boutonnieres for closer to $70.
Make your own invitations. You can buy sets of invitations for $15 to $20 a piece, (I think we purchased 3 for 150 guests. Then you design and print them your self.
Limit the bridesmaids/groomsmen to just a few. Maybe make use of personal assistants for the bride instead of all the bridesmaids. (I had 3 bridesmaids and 1 junior bridesmaid, and 3 groomsmen). We also used younger cousins as ushers/hand out programs, instead of having men rent a tux. This will be cheaper for your friends and save you on incidentals (like food). I had two personal assistants, and one did my dress and the other did my make up and hair, so no salon fees.
We were able to utilize the flowers and decorations inside the church and thus did not purchase any decorations or flowers for church itself. I thought it was still a very elegant wedding.
As for the reception, I would say shop around!!! We found that hotels are expensive places to have a wedding reception. We found a hall, that came with its own decorations, with a minimum decorations provided for no cost. It was a nice looking hall on its own, which was nice, so it wasn’t gym or plain hall. Its food was also decent and the cheapest in the area.
Prioritize what is important. To me flowers were not important, so we didn’t spend a lot on them. In contrast we spend more on our Church music because it was important to me. (Approximately $300 on music, but we utilized a family member as one of our singers. $150 on the music coordinator $75 a piece on one male singer, and one violinist. These were the rules of our church, however, our violinist was a highschooler who occasionally played for Mass, so without these rules it could have been cheaper. The coordinator commented that the music at my wedding was one of the best she has ever been involved in). Which reminds me, if you are looking for cheaper musicians you could try the local highschool/college for instrumentalists or singers.
The dress ended up being important to me, even though I didn’t think it would be. It ended up being more expensive that I thought. So you might want to put a little buffer in the budget for something that comes up, or becomes more important that you originally thought.
Photos, find a photographer that will give you the rights to your photos. We own ours in electronic form (cd and they are all on my “other” computer, or I would post a sample) and it was so much cheaper than a more traditional wedding package. We are able to print photos as we want them/can afford them. Some photos I am very glad we have, but are not really ones I would have wanted to pay for as prints with my original photo package.
Congrats on your engagement. Don’t make the planning too stressful.
ETA: If you have a Friday evening wedding rather than a Saturday wedding you can probably save $1000 or more, on the church and reception hall alone.
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When we chose the flavors we stayed away from ones like “wedding while” and “matrimonial marzipan” lest they became suspicious. On the day of the wedding my husband and his best friend picked it up and brought it to my in-laws’ house.