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Personalize Your Wedding Cheaper

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Personalize Your Wedding Cheaper
abby murrish

I’m a big fan of finishing touches and small details.  Candles lit for dinner.  A single flower in a bud vase.  Just the right music on in the background.  Adding sprinkles to an iced cake.  I’m also a firm believer in the easier and more frugal the better.  If it takes too much trouble or costs too much money, it won’t happen.

personalize your wedding
Cookies by DJ’s Test Kitchen Cookies by DJ’s Test Kitchen (the baker who’s making our favors!)

Since my engagement to Mr. M, I’ve been receiving lots of catalogs with suggestions of how to personalize your wedding and add details your guests will remember.  And guess what?  99% of those ideas cost money.

As someone who wanted a personal, thoughtful wedding, I started to consider ways to add details to our wedding while keeping my budget lean and clean.  Here are four finishing touches Mr. M and I are planning on incorporating into our day.

Music. When it came to choosing songs for our ceremony, I wanted to choose songs that would capture the depth and breadth of our lives and our collective life to come.  We’re having two congregational songs we sang throughout our college years and our recessional is a nod to some of Mr. M’s favorite books.  Since Mr. M’s an engineer and I’m in agriculture, we’re going to incorporate some parodies our guests will know.  We’ll play this parody of “Thrift Shop” (which features my cousin!), and this parody of “I’m Sexy and I Know It.”  And our first dance? Well, that’s a surprise I can’t wait to share after our wedding,

Photos.  Mr. M and I both have loved ones who have passed away.  To honor their memory, we’re going to have framed photos of them on our appetizer tables.  It will be a special way to pay them tribute and introduce them to our guests through photos.

Favors.  Although we had initially nixed the idea of favors, I was introduced to a local baker who does decorative cookies (fun fact: she does all her work freehand!).  She charging us $13/dozen, and similar cookies run $4 each online.  It’s worth talking to your friends, searching Facebook and finding a deal.

Ceremony.  My favorite way we’re personalizing our wedding is by carefully crafting our ceremony.  Mr. M and I have put a lot of time thinking about the details of our actual wedding.  From asking our beloved college friends to read the Scriptures we want to shape our life together to gifting our mothers roses to having our pastor from Purdue marry us, our ceremony will be sweet and personal.

I’d love to have more ideas about how to personalize a wedding the budget-savvy way!  So please, comment below with any other thoughts you have/things you’ve done.


abby murrish

wrote about her wedding at The Budget-Savvy Bride in 2013 and 2014. She loves sharing info and advice with brides about how to create beautiful weddings that they love. Abby lives in the Midwest with her husband and dog.