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Tips On How To Plan A Backyard Wedding For Under $5,000
After 8 long years, my boyfriend FINALLY proposed in December of 2019 and I was not about to wait another year to plan a wedding. I’m not one for big expensive weddings, we just wanted something small, so we decided to plan an inexpensive backyard wedding.
Unfortunately, after planning everything, the wedding was canceled in March due to the pandemic; 3 months before the wedding. I was still determined to get married on June 20, 2020 so we scrapped everything and just planned a small backyard wedding with our parents since we were only allowed 10 people at the time. We ended up spending $2500 on food, decor, tables, and the photographer. In all honesty, we were almost relieved to have a small intimate ceremony by ourselves. I hope that all this time spent planning can at least help someone else plan their dream wedding on a tiny budget.
Wedding Dress
I bought my wedding dress for $150 (including shipping) on vicicollection.com. The quality wasn’t the best but it did the trick and looked great in the photos. They no longer sell my specific dress but they have many other dresses to choose from.
Showmeyourmumu.com also has beautiful dresses for $150- $200 that are better quality and a more reputable company. Keep in mind that whenever you buy something online, you have to just pray that it fits so I chose a dress that was basically a one-size-fits-all, with multi-position straps and cinched in at the waist.
Bridal Accessories
I wore white Converse shoes with white ribbon laces from Amazon and did my own hair and makeup. My makeup was very simple, curled my hair, and pulled back my bangs with some bobby pins. I stuck a couple of pieces of baby’s breath in my bobby pins, from my bouquet, to make it a little more bridal.
We found a simple necklace and stud earrings on Etsy for a total of $50. I wore my grandmother’s gold bracelet for my “something borrowed” and I think I forgot about “something blue”… oops! All of my accessories came to a total of $120.
Groom’s Suit
My fiance wore a suit that he had worn at a previous wedding, a dark grey tie, black dress shoes, a black belt, and silver cufflinks. The only thing we had to purchase was a white tuxedo shirt from The Bay for $40.
Flowers
The original plan was to buy a bunch of white flowers and baby’s breath from Costco and put them in tin buckets from the Dollar Store for a maximum of $100. My father was not happy with this idea and bought me a bouquet, boutineer, 2 bouquets of baby’s breath, and 2 large bouquets of white flowers. My only request was that I wanted them to be white, I didn’t see them until the day of the wedding and they were absolutely gorgeous.
If I were to do it all over again, I would purchase a real wedding bouquet and get the rest of the flowers from Costco. I later realized that the bouquet was in most of our photos and we also used it as our table centerpiece.
Photographer
I used weddingwire.ca to find a photographer, they have many photographers within your area which include reviews and photos. We were lucky enough to have a photographer contact us and offer us a discounted price of $1,500 since we were only booking 6 months out from our wedding; which is technically last minute in the wedding world.
Our photographer was amazing, she arrived before the wedding at 2pm and stayed until 10pm. I wanted to get some photos of us getting ready before the wedding and also at dusk, which worked out perfectly.
Our photographer had great ideas and kept things very natural. We aren’t the model type so she was able to get a lot of photos that didn’t make us feel too awkward. She also wanted us to go out onto our neighbour’s dock for some shots before the sunset and they are some of my favourite photos.
In my opinion, your photographer will make or break your wedding memories.
Wedding Cake
We bought a vanilla cake for $40 from the grocery store and dressed it up to stay on theme with our simple backyard wedding. My mom helped take off some of the icing on the sides, and added roses, carnations, and ivy around it. Very simple, effortless, and inexpensive.
Wedding Invitations
Our wedding invitations and thank you cards were created on Vistaprint. I was able to fully customize them and got a discount on the type of cards that I bought. It came to $70 which included, invitations, thank you cards, envelopes, stickers, mailing address stickers, and shipping.
Wedding Website and Checklist
I used theknot.com to create a wedding website for guests to log into and RSVP, which included all of the wedding details.
Theknot.com also has a free wedding checklist which is customizable. It allows you to check off everything that you’ve paid for and counts down the months to the wedding prioritizing what needs to be done in each month.
You can also find many paperback wedding planners on Amazon if you prefer to have it as a keepsake. This is one thing I wish I had bought in order to remember the details of our wedding.
Decor And Music
List Of Decor And Supplies:
Rentals:
Chairs $280
Tables $88
Table linen $96
Utensils $105
Second-Hand Items:
Vintage Plates $100
Vintage Bowls $100
Homesense/ Marshalls
Mix and matched wine glasses $150
Dollar store
Paper dessert plates and plastic forks $20
Ceremony cheesecloth archway $20
Borrowed
Tent – We originally planned to buy 2 tents on Wayfair.ca for $450, which we could sell afterward, but we ended up borrowing a small tent from my father. Luckily it turned out to be sunny and we no longer had to prepare for a rainy day.
String Lights – We were able to borrow some string lights for the tent and trees for the evening. If borrowing lights was not an option then I would have bought Edison bulb string lights on Amazon.ca. I found 100 feet for $93, which you could easily sell afterward if you didn’t want to keep them.
Music $0
We downloaded all of our favourite music and played it on a portable speaker outside. I also downloaded the ceremony song on an hour-long loop so we didn’t have to worry about stopping and starting it.
Food And Drinks
Alcohol $1,000
We chose to only serve beer and wine, I didn’t want to have any hard liquor in order to keep people from getting too crazy. This also meant that we didn’t have to have a bartender and could put the beer in our canoe with ice.
Food – $500
We wanted to have a casual BBQ style dinner for our backyard wedding. The plan was to buy steak, chicken and fish with pasta salad, salad, roasted potatoes, and corn on the cob. In order to keep the cost of the steak down, you can buy a large tenderloin, on sale, for $50 and cut it into 12 steaks.
Dessert – $100
We were going to buy some inexpensive donuts and cookies along with the wedding cake.
I hope this gave you some inspiration on how to plan a backyard wedding for under $5,000. If you’d like more budget friendly wedding inspo you can find my other blog posts HERE.
