My wedding was accidentally pretty anti consumption, I really was just broke

My wedding was 10.5 years ago so apologies if my aesthetic is quite cringe now lol I am a millennial, I promise you it thought it was cool back then. And sorry I don’t have a lot of good images, mostly screenshots from old ig posts and photos of my wedding album.

When we got married, we were fresh out of university and didn’t have much, I had about $10,000 saved and my hubby even less so we had to pretty much DIY everything or relied on our community. Thankfully I am a graphic designer so am quite creative and have plenty of creative friends. Here’s what we did:

  1. My friend made my wedding dress, she was starting a business and offered to do it for me, I paid her for her time and for the fabric of course but still it was not nearly as much as buying a wedding dress. I still have it and it is one of my most treasured possession.

  2. Another friend and I did all the flowers for the bouquet and centrepieces, I wanted a ‘picked out of the garden’ look and we went to the flower market the day before and spent the afternoon arranging them

  3. A few months before the wedding, I collected empty jars, wine bottles and sauce bottles, decorated them with hessian fabrics and strings to put the flowers in. We also thrifted old books to use as decorations. We also made all the table numbers, signs and table settings.

  4. We didn’t have wedding favours, instead we had a candy bar with paper bags so the guests could help themselves. Also we told the guests to bring home the centrepieces if they feel like it and most of them were taken.

  5. I hired my friends who had a wedding decoration business to set up the venue, hiring any other additional props from them

  6. We didn’t go overseas for a honeymoon, choosing to go local.

We had such an amazing, memorable day and the fact that so many of our friends stepped in to help us make the day possible was so special. We only used vendors for the venue and food, everything else was through the generous efforts of our friends and family. Many of the above steps were taken to save money but I’ve only just realised recently that they were good for the environment too so win-win!