Having a wedding during peak season is always a bad idea, especially if you want to save money or at least not break the bank. By peak season, I'm referring to the months between December to April. These are typically the best months to have your wedding for environmental reasons, so vendors tend to capitalize on these months and ensure you don't get out of it in one piece.
I knew this and wanted a wedding in March but plans changed so I had to plan my wedding within 3 weeks and have it within the first week of December before the month got packed with activities as usual. So here's how I had my wedding in 3 weeks with an initial budget of $3,000 that eventually increased to $5,000.
My traditional marriage was held at my parent's residence so that saved us the cost of venue rental, however, I still spent on some renovation work within the compound, labourers, rental chairs and a decorator. Other expenses included food, logistics, hotel accommodation and traditional rights payments. All in all, we spend about $500 on the entire traditional marriage.
The main event was the wedding dinner which was held at a hotel venue. Although we were strict with our invitations, we invited only 80 people and made arrangements for 90 people, I believe there were a little over 100 people present but I don't know.
Our wedding dinner was expensive. We almost rented out an entire hotel, took their hall, pool area and about 7 rooms within the hotel, all at a major discount. We had an expensive decorator who did a shabby job but still got paid, and a DJ who was nothing short of a disgrace but still got paid in full. all these cost us about $2,000.
The best part of the dinner was the food, which alone cost us $600. We had a cute menu with 3 different meals and servers who took orders and served people accordingly. We had a wide range of drinks to cater fully for alcoholics and non-alcoholics, we had an amazing MC who kept the audience fully entertained while the DJ messed u the music.
Our clothing, rings and legal payments probably cost about $1,000. We had an 'out-of-court' legal wedding so that made us incur extra charges but it was worth it. The balance of $900 went into other random payments that I probably can't remember at the moment.
I've never wanted to have a big wedding and considering the population, I didn't have one. I had a quality wedding at a considerably cheap rate. We had great deals on the hotel and although the food was pricey coz of the season, we made a head start by buying the majority of the foodstuff 3 weeks earlier.
Planning this wedding was also a hassle because we had a unique setup from the start. We didn't want a conventional wedding so we didn't have one. This was possible because we self-funded the wedding without any major assistance from anyone. We had a lot of cash gifts (up to $700), but these came towards the end of the entire wedding planning.
Normal Nigerian weddings involve a lot more family members, church politics, family politics and al that, but we avoided it all by doing things our way.
So, there you have it. A small-ish wedding on a $5,000 budget during wedding peak season.
