This week’s guest blogger is Richard’s youngest daughter, Amanda, who just married her long-time beau in Austin, TX.  Amanda, who is just as money-conscious as her father, acted as her own wedding planner, and wanted to share her best money-saving tips, gleaned from months of research, with the blog.

The average cost of a wedding in Austin, TX is $20,041 to $33,402.

This according to www.costofwedding.com. There was just no way I could justify spending so much on one day, especially because we are also in the process of saving up for our first house.

We considered the usual alternatives: eloping, the courthouse wedding, etc.

But I decided that I really wanted my father to walk me down the aisle, and to have our families there as we exchanged vows. We considered a destination wedding, but learned that this isn’t necessarily a more cost-effective option. Plus, I didn’t want to burden our families with the time and money required to travel somewhere far away for us.

So I started to research budgets for a traditional wedding to see exactly how much I would be willing to spend, without sacrificing the quality of the day.

I learned that we were looking at a minimum of $5K, and even that would only cover a very casual, mostly DIY (do-it-yourself) backyard wedding. I wanted something that felt a little more upscale than that, and less labor-intensive. (I was planning the whole thing from another state.)

I saw that wedding authority TheKnot.com had a section called “Budget Weddings,” which included a section titled “$10K Wedding Budget Challenge.” I felt comfortable with this number, so I began using it as my benchmark and was determined to stick to it.

How did I do it?

Tune in the rest of this week to find out how. I’ll share a list of general wedding tips, tips on specifics like invites, attire, venue, flowers, and hopefully by Friday, my dad will tune in on how well he thinks we did!

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Posted: 11|2|09 at 6:58 am. Filed under: budgeting, personal finance.
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