Making a wedding simple ...

Lifestyle Wedding, Fashion & Beauty
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So my husband wants a simple wedding; he believes in saving money so that we may travel around the world later. It is a large amount we spend on weddings. I know for sure that we cannot cut out functions because of the big family & intertwined relations involved.

Direct important family members are 125 from our end. Adding family friends & my friends it would be another 75 i think. To cut the costs, these are the options I have:

  • My brother’s valima 450 guests were invited. Who came were 300 ours & 75 in-laws, i think. I want to bring the number down from 400 to 300. 200 ours & 100 in-laws! On the mehendi, I want to bring it to 150 from 200.

  • Instead of a big jewelery set, I am thinking of getting a smaller one since my family isn’t agreeing on artificial set at all. they think I have gone nuts with all the simplicity stance I have. So I have finally resolved to keeping things going for their pleasure but with that I’ll cut costs some how.

  • I realized no one really cares for the printed event coverage photographs so I wouldn’t get an album printed for coverage because I wouldn’t be able to carry it anyway. I’ll stick to digital images and get my photo shoot printed only.

  • The MUA .. the prices are 35k+ for the really good ones. So i’m going for a good MUA but within normal range that is 25k.

  • My dress … these days dresses cost 1lac+ here minimum. There is my dad’s friend who designs clothes as well. So he will give us a discount and I’ll have my dress made in a much lesser cost, hopefully.

  • The event - I am thinking of keeping the decore regular, no one really cares what center piece or flowers any one had in the wedding unless its completely different. I am going to get the decore colourful with what ever is in the interior instead of expensive dance floors, aisle decore sorts, or stage decore, center pieces etc. It will look good anyway but would have more of a regular wedding touch to it.

What else can i do?? I think right now I’m saving about Rs. 4lacs with cutting down jewellery + photography + decore + dress compared to the original extravagant wedding that was planned originally!

Now where else can i cut cost?

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

Don’t u feel it’s a one time event (InshaAllah) so one should make it as Grand as possible? But I totally agree with your ideology, basically that’s what Islam suggest us as well.. Another area where you can cut the cost is the Wedding Hall maybe..

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

It will be grand anyway just not extravagant. We will still have a banquet hall, good food etc. Just nothing that will make it a very elite wedding. I am okay with a regular wedding and fewer people. Since I prefer calling people who mean something to us and who have had importance in our life instead of those who bring a whole family uninvited for food.

Also - I believe in the concept of evil eye. If I had the option, I'd bring the wedding guests down to 150 but err .. you have to follow the "customs".

Its a one time event & it will be special anyway.I don't need to invite far away relatives to make me feel special. My look means to me, my close people be with me means to me and that people go happily means to me. If i can achieve it with lesser cost, whats the harm?

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

:)

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

My fiance is the same, after seeing the extreme poverty in ~Pakistan he reminds me of the moral responsibility we owe and the Islamic duty to keep things simple. Which has lead me to only keep two functions, the wedding and mehndi, no other parties at home where we'd spend loads feeding people who'd just talk bad behind our backs about us anyway!

The mehndi will be 160 people, mainly because all my friends are not coming on the wedding, there are like 60 girls I won;t be seeing on my special day so this is a substitute for that! The wedding day is 350 people bride and groom side. I wanted it a lot smaller but parents and their families! my God immediate family alone is 200! I keep using the excuse that the venue hall wont fit, its a good excuse, deliberately get a lovely smaller function hall and blame it on that when your parents bring the list of people that still want to be invited!

I am also going to opt in doing my own makeup, I was really insecure at first about the idea, my fiance had always dreamt of his wife doing her own makeup so she wouldn't look like someone completely different on the wedding day. So I flit through what seems tens of dozens of youtube vids by makeup gurus, and luckily ended up assisting a friend being taught by a makeup artist...in the end i felt I knew almost as much as she did about make up! At the weddings I go to people only ever care about is the food, they don;t care about decor or centrepieces or anything! So focus on good food, happy full relatives so their stomachs give you duw'a even if their mouths don't lol!

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Will there be any entertainment on the mehndi or shaadi? You could cut down on bhangra n dhol ppl (not sure if pakistan based shaadi hve them)

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

That wouldn't reduce the cost much. they hardly cost 3-5k .. Plus, we do need some fun

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

what about the invites, 'lainay dainay ki cheezayn/gifts', jahaiz part ?

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

What a great idea.

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

I like, Daffy Duck, I like.

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

...

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

I agree wholeheartedly.

I say buy your jewelry on the sly! What your family doesn't know can't hurt them! :) Check out jewelicious on facebook and in Y block if you are in Lahore.

Are you sure you have to spend a lakh on the dress? You could get a design copied... I am very happy with my dress and it was 70k. as my handle implies I am not desi but I sure looked at a lot of desi wedding pictures and I don't feel mine is toned down at all compared to them...

Are you in Lahore? Hifsa - her salon is called Glo - is awesome, will do a trial run with you and the makeup is beautiful. She only does one bride a day to keep it from being stressful for the bride. Way better than those big salons.

We are also doing the following:

-A relative generously is letting us use the garden of his farmhouse so no $ for venue and we can choose a reasonable caterer instead of being stuck with an expensive hall caterer. I am excited about getting married in a garden...

-My MIL had the lovely idea of sending some people an announcement and mithai rather than inviting them, to keep it smaller and more intimate while still sharing our happiness...

-We printed the invites ourselves using a design from printableinvitationkits.com. Actually this didn't save that much if what I read on gupshup is right that you can get them from 20rupees each! but I haven't seen those myself so am not sure how they look - I am very happy with the one we made. The ones I saw in the States were about a dollar (85 rupees) each! that adds up with all those people coming!

All the best and enjoy the honeymoon! :D

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

kind of off topic, but how much do invitations for cost in Pakistan? They're so expensive here in Canada, I was thinking of getting my relatives to print some out for me from Pak to cut costs.. Is it really worth it though?

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

That's already been handled. My in-laws have said a clear no on Jahaiz & any wedding gifts. I am sure my parents will be giving the immediate family gifts anyway. We have asked them to not make Barri either, I'm making most of the clothes i'll need. These customs were good when they were at a reasonable level but now they have gone way out of bounds with 20+ barri dresses, 30+ jahaiz dresses, jahaiz items, gold what not ..

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Re: Making a wedding simple …

The dress - That’s the minimum most places are quoting. But my uncle will be giving us a good discount so it will come around 75k. He has great kaam as well so its not like I’d be compromising on quality either.

The venue renting cost is also via some one we know so that too is pretty less compared to other places. Almost Rs. 25k for renting the place as compared to 1 lac that most places are asking for.

Invitations - That’s not going to cut the cost down much either but since the number of guests has reduced so will the number of invitations too :blush:

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

Wow loving this thread!

@ daffy duck I am personally planning on cutting costs too. How i am doing it is by keeping the mehendi and baraat very simple at home with loads of fun with immeadiate relatives. Its not a compromise as i personally feel a wedding has to be real. Like you know your baraat is at the door and your in your room getting ready and you finally get widaa from your place or if its the mehendi day you see your inlaws and guest coming in a whole lot of busses cars bla bla etc. at your place with the mehendi taals and all that stuff, the way you greet them at your door step, the bhangra or the dance competition which is done just when they arrive is just amazing!!! On the other hand in a hall everything is just faked and tried hard to make it look real.

Sooo mehendi and baraat is going to be simple and personal. Whereas the valima could be a grand thing where we could get over all our obsessions such as best venue best this best tht lol

This is my take to cut costs and at the same time making it memorable. Wat do you think? :-)

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Re: Making a wedding simple …

Palz - It is awesome if it is workable in your family. I would have loved if i could have kept my wedding specific to immediate too oh but the family drama starts every time so we have to resolve to those 200-300 guests! :smack: .. trust me, you’ll enjoy your wedding any way and your relatives will all remember all the fun. Many people don’t participate in the fun knowing that there will be so many outsiders at the wedding; this kind of a wedding lets people be at ease to enjoy it the way they want it. So bravo!! :biggthumb:

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Re: Making a wedding simple ...

such good ideas. Hope you are successful!

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the guest list is very hard to go lower than 250 in our culture

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I did the same as you for my wedding..... tried to keep as simple as I could ..while still making it look grand.

I made half of the centerpeices myself with my younger brother. That cut costs bc real flowers are so expensive. And in my opinion, they are only there to look good for the video. The people that luv you do not care about the centerpieces and the haters are going to hate no matter what is put on their table.

Centerpeices: bought vases from ebay for cheap, mom bought those gem/stone things from the dollar store, and then we put branches that lit up bc they had lights on them. The branches we got from Bed Bath and Beyond after christmas was over. We spray panted the branches gold.

It was cheaper for us to buy our own linens than to rent them. We can always use them later for another siblings shaadi in the future InshAllah.

I did my own makeup - saved money and bought all this wonderful makeup that I got to keep well after the wedding.

I also made my guest list go down.... it was difficult though. But the annoying part was that some people showed up with extra guests of their own and other people did not show up at all. Mailing invitations and RSVP's (with the postage on them) was a big waste of money and a lesson learned. For the next shaadi in my family we will not be doing this... we had to call up every single guest anyways to find out if htey were coming and how many were coming...

Negotiation negotiation negotiation with the hall .....so that we could get the most out of our money's worth. Thanks to my instructions and my mamma's bargaining, we were able to get free chair covers, napkins of any color of our choice, we got the hall for the entirety of the day till 1am ..so no worries inregards to vendors and set up, 1 room for maghrib prayers, 1 podium and microphone for speaches, They gave us 2 separate rooms for baraats cocktail hour and one separate for us, hotel threw in some of their own desserts and appetizers in which gave us more variety, sodas were free, and honeymoon room was on them and they gave everyone a late check out who needed it (day after the wedding). If paying so much to rent a hall....then better to get all you can from them.

** forgot to mention that the venue ALSO offered us and al of our out of town guests who stayed overnight a brunch the next day in one of their smaller halls where they offered all sorts of breakfast pastries, teas, coffees, etc.

I also did not have a mehndi - this cut costs down immensely. I instead chose to have a small home mayoun/mehndi event with women/girls only... only those people that are our closest friends came. ......... I also believe in the evil eye. A quran khani was done beforehand and a dua was done for me. Which was nice. It was a very intimate event and i enjoyed it more than any big mehndi event i think. There was no stress..no running late... nothing because it was done at our house.

Decorations for mayoun/mehndi - dollar store fake flower strands, loads of strands of lights and tinsel garlands from after christmas sale from walmart, covered carpet with green and mustard yellow felt which bought on sale at fabric store., and my mother sewed yellow and green cushion covers with muti-color gota on them for all the cushions in the house.

Thaals- made them myself... bought the platters from dollar store (pack of 4 for 1 dollar.. i got 2). They were made of plastic... i spray painted them cold. Hot glued christmas gold tinsel garland on the edges and then glued fake flowers on top of them. They looked stunning.

Lastly- my wedding dresses cost less than a lakh and everyone luved them due to their uniqueness. They cost less than a lakh even with shipping to the US.