Here's my issue, in November of 2017 I will be Getting married. I have no clue what should be arranged and when, I have never been to a wedding nor do I really have a lot of family or people to help with it. So any advice on anything wedding? My budget will be about 3,000 dollars. I am extremely lost on any of the steps other than:
-the colors
-the venue
I am so lost and out of the loop.. HELP!!

Congratulations. I have no idea how much weddings cost now but if you know your venue for the reception you would want to know how much per head it will cost so that way you can plan how many people to invite and how much money you will have left for other things. Back when I got married we went around looking at places that made cakes, party places, stationary places as well as actual wedding stores, but they tend to be more expensive. If you know your colours you can then hunt for stationary to match. Depending on the venue you have your reception at you might have to buy the table napkins and any decorations. We got a heap of helium balloons and hired helium tanks from a party place. If you hire clothes it costs less than buying but if you buy a wedding dress off the rack that can cost more or less than getting it made. It really depends. My bridesmaid mother was a professional dressmaker so she made all the bridesmaid, the matron of honor and my flower girls dress from material I bought.

So, I've been to two weddings so far. One was my uncle's and one where my mom was the photographer and I videotaped the ceremony itself.

It depends on how fancy you want to get. Depending on where you live, you could just head to the nearest courthouse and borrow an officiant and be done with it - which would be cheaper than a traditional walk-down-the-aisle wedding.

If you do want a list of things to work on, here's what you can find in the average wedding.
- Invitations
- A venue for the wedding
- A reception hall for the wedding (or the same as the wedding venue)
- Dresses and accessories for the wedding party
- Officiant
- Food and (optional) booze for the reception
- Plates, silverware, and napkins
- Photographer

And that's pretty much all you need. You can add other things like specialized makeup and hairdressing, but those are all extras.

If everything is overwhelming you, you hire a wedding planner to help you out, but that's going to eat away from your budget.

Your budget is about a tenth of the average wedding budget, but it definitely can be done. The trick is to figure out what you absolutely must have. Want a fancy dress? Put that in the budget. Want to put your favorite flower on every table? Budget for that.
For a cheaper wedding, limit the guest list. If you don't have many people to help out with the wedding, then you probably don't have many people to invite. Ask only the most important people to join you - if you can keep that under 25 or so, you'll be good.

Typical wedding catering is about $50 a head. If you can find a restaurant you like that does catering for cheaper, then that'll help you save. Aim for about $15 a head, if possible.

Reception halls and other venues tend to be cheaper on weekdays. Shop around for a better deal. Plus, if it doesn't have a reputation as a wedding hall, it's less likely to have inflated prices. Think outside the box.

If you have fancy enough clothes at home, then you can probably save on the dress. There's no reason anyone can't get married in a dress that's not white and cut in a particular style. Plus, those things can only be worn once. Do you have a favorite dress at home or one you want to buy? That might be a better option. You could even tailor an existing dress to your size, which will be a lot cheaper than a new one. Also, you can ask the rest of the wedding party to buy their own clothes, but make sure you keep the price low for them.

For the wedding music, think about the songs you like. Any of them good for a wedding? If you make your own playlist, it'll be a lot less expensive than purchasing a set for the wedding.

You can make your own invitations and thank you notes. If you have nice handwriting, you can purchase some nice stationary and do it all yourself, or you can even print something out. Word has some nice calligraphic fonts.

Really, wedding prices tend to be inflated. The more you can get that's not earmarked for weddings, the cheaper things will be.

My wedding experience is no good to you - not that I've been married - my wedding experiences involve tying the couple's hands together and jumping over fires ...

1. YOU'RE ALIVE HALLELUJAH!
2. I'm in the same situation. I have no clue what I'm doing for my own wedding. I don't even know by budget (I'm dirt poor.) My future sister in law said she'll put down a hefty sum for the wedding but... I don't trust her.

In the eyes of the law? Get registered.

For the partying side? Plan for the food, maybe show some videos you made with your fiancee. I'm not sure of your cultural background, so I'm guessing at random. My cousins' weddings involved restaurant trips and slideshows of their dating days.

I don't plan to marry yet, and I'm not ready for it in the first place.

Ha - a charming question. Here's my advice: don't listen to anyone who has done this more than once.

Actually, there are no rules for weddings - apart from the civil bit. So my advice is to think about what it is you would like to do to mark this event in your life. My personal opinion is that you should do something that is significant and meaningful for you and your friends and family. A lot of people like the public church/major venue weddings but you don't have to do that. Some people, as Fairycakes MR Oropherion says work out other types of event and ceremony. If I were getting married (again), I might go for a small family/friends gathering for which I would cook a big meal and try to make everyone comfortable and happy (I love to cook). Having said that, there were four - no five - people at my actual wedding, two witnesses (required in the UK), the registrar and us. I didn't want a fuss at the time and told no-one else. I've never regretted it and my silver anniversary is coming up next year (good grief, how did that happen?). So make your own judgement.

as I am just a teenager I have no knowledge on preparing for a wedding but I just want to say congratulation and I hope you enjoy your special day when it comes, I'm sure you'll find away to get everything nearly the way you want it for the wedding, goodluck

All sound like great ideas thank you!

Wait... hands? I thought the noose went around the guy's neck?

Will it be a church ceremony or officiant ?
Since you do not have many invites, why not have a home wedding ?
Not sure what your feelings are on a dress, but you could go non traditional with something you love that you already own or something purchased. You could shop thrift or yard sale for a dress and see if you come up with something. In my area we have online yard sales where folks sell things at reasonable prices and recently I have seen many wedding gowns for sale, some never used.
Check out bakeries in the area for a wedding cake, if you are interested in having that, buy your cake topper yourself at a craft store, Michaels and AC Moore if you have them in your area have coupons.
You could make a favorite song play list for your guests to listen to while waiting for the ceremony to begin and for whatever else you would like it for you could serve some small snack like crackers and cheese, and beverages.
You could decorate a space in your home with wedding type decorations from Dollar store or find some easy do it yourself craft ones online. as well as some small favor type crafts you could put a favorite small candy in, dollar store may have the fixings for this .. Anyone you know that could lend you a chocalate fountain ? you could do dipping fruit ?
Create your own unity candle, .. Plain candle, with a few decos added on and a nice poem printed and attached. ( I did this) two tapers to light it with ...
Buy some sand and glass bottles or bowls, or whatever and take turns filling them with sand instead of candles.

I did many of these things for my own wedding. The key is not to pay someone for something you can do yourself. It does not have to be professional, what is most important is that it makes you and your spouse happy and you have a very special day no matter what.. To me unless you have a lot of money to splurge then expensive weddings are just that expensive weddings.

Take the guests to a near restaurant for a sit down dinner instead of a venue, I went Chinese, but it was a small group of family.
Not sure if you were looking for a dance floor type environment, but I did not have that, but then I guess you could go with renting a hall .. such as a community club hall .. we have VFW, Elks and Moose type halls in our area that are cheaper to rent.

I could prob come up with more if I had some ideas of what types of things you did want.

My Advice,
Don't get caught up in all the marketing / TV show wedding hype.

Do what seems romantic to you and your fiancee.

We got married. in a Heritage church over 100 years old. Cost Free.
Reception at parents oceanfront home. Free
Dinner was brought /cooked by Family and Friends. Buffet Style. as a Gift to the Couple
Smoked Salmon,Barbecue Salmon, Prime Rib, Whole Roast Lamb on Spit . Salads assorted desserts
Sister made 4 tier wedding cake it was amazing.
A friend is a wedding DJ ... so much fun
Parents gave us a week stay at a private resort for honeymoon..
I wore my Mum's wedding dress. She sewed it herself. Gorgeous.
My husband's friend bought him a second had suit at a thrift shop. My god he looked handsome!.
Total cost to us was gas for the car , and marriage licence.. a few odds and ends...
We did not have "Colours" or " Wedding Planners". such like things..
Mums and Sisters and I did everything and my husbands friends took care of all the guy stuff...
Wonderful time was had by all...
Cost under 300 $
Community shares in the Rituals of Birth, Death, Weddings, Funerals.
That's the way it should be.
IMO

For $3000 You can have a fantastic wedding
skip the marketing hype.


!

With your budget, you're not going to be able to put on a big extravagant wedding. But you know what? That's perfectly fine. I've been to those kind of weddings and they're nice but I've also been to the simpler kind and I think those are even nicer. Weddings are about a couple celebrating their love - NOT about the decorations and the food.

There is one piece of advice I haven't read yet. Be sure you get married the way you want to. If you want to get married in a church, do it. If you want to get married in someone's backyard, do it. If you want to get married at the courthouse by a judge, do it. It's your (your = the two of you) day, do it the way you want to. (Says the person who got married by a judge at the courthouse and regrets not waiting and having the wedding she really wanted.)

If you want a budget wedding, there are lots of ways to do things simple. A more down-to-Earth wedding can even be a lot niceer than a big, posh wedding.

Adding to SimPersia's list, you can have the wedding in the summer, and set up a garden wedding (make sure you're in one of the places that actually has nice weather most of the summer). You can use wildflowers for decorations, and borrow chairs and tables from neighbors or friends, covering them with either white tablecloths or throwaway paper tablecloths (I think you can get them on rolls, patterned so they look like proper cloths). If you don't have enough plates and silverware, you can borrow from friends. It will look nice as long as you keep the same style on separate tables.

For invitations you can make them yourself, or ask some creative person in your family to help you. There's no need to use very expensive material. You can get far with some white carton, a gold or silver pen, ribbons in your color of choice, and some stickers. There are also ready-made invitations if you don't feel like being creative, and those might even be cheaper.

The food seems to be one of the more expensive things in a wedding, but there's no need to have a three-course dinner and an expensive wedding cake. You can ask your closest family to bring either a cake or some sort of dinner-dish, and set up a table where people can eat what they want. For the wedding cake, most people seem to have at least one person in their family who is a self-learned cake expert. It can even be a simple one-floor cake with one of those funny bride/groom figurines on it.

Sometimes, planning and carrying out the wedding (or any other occasion, for that matter) yourself, with the help of family and good friends, can be much more memorable than having a big, extravagant wedding that cost a lot for just one day of fun.

I've only been to one wedding that I can remember (my cousin), and it's at least ten years ago so I don't remember a lot, but I don't think they did it all-out. They had a location we've used several times for various occasions (so I think it's cheap, plus I think they supplied the silverware), a somewhat simple dinner, and all the cakes were made by family and friends. Our family isn't big on alcohol, so the drink was cheap-ish, with soda and alcohol-free cider. Basically just enough to feel like a big day without spending all their money on it.

Update-

I figured a venue, a date, and catering out... I'm excited.

Colours? I don't think I have planned anything for as long as I did my wedding. We were engaged for 9 months and I needed every bit of it.

Colours:

OP, it sounds like you've figured out much of the plans already but I just wanted to chime in and say "It's YOUR wedding! You and your partner get to the freedom to decide what it is!" (Though I get that maybe it gets overwhelming and you were looking for practical pointers.)

I've been to a few weddings. The one that stood out in my mind also happens to be the least "traditional" or fancy or formal. The couple rented out a farm with some open space (trees, grass, country fencing, plants here and there) and had the ceremony in a large gazebo. Guests showed up in what looked like American "dress country"--vest+shirt+slacks (and maybe straw hat), pretty sundresses, etc. They wrote their own vows that contained a bit of comedy about what they'd been through together, so it was all very personalized and heartfelt.
I don't even remember if they had food or music--though they must have had, because we have photos of people dancing. Everything else was eclipsed by the sheer love and warmth that the whole family brought out.

Pinterest and I have a love/hate relationship at the moment.....lol

I think I'm going to bookmark this page. I'm getting married July 2017 and I have no idea what I'm doing. Today I arranged to meet the reverend so I kinda have a church, not a clue about anything else though.

HAHAHA so your in the same boat as me, we aren't doing a church or a pastor....just and officiant.

We picked a big beautiful church, it's like the first thing we did and we've been emailing back and forth with the pastor for a few months. We've been engaged for about 3 months now and I still haven't told anyone I'm working on an engagement video, but it requires somehow getting our parents wedding videos, one of which is in a safe and the other is in my Nana's house- and for 3 months we've been trying to trick our families into letting us borrow them.

I have two venues for the wedding reception (the eating/dancing part?), just need to figure out which one would be better. One is 5 mins walk from the church, and doesn't seem to have a dance floor unless I want less chairs (which is probably fine, it's only 90ish people). The other is 20 minutes drive away - but I don't know if some of my guests have cars, so if I choose that I might have to arrange special transportation, it has a lovely room with both a dance floor and a place to eat without getting rid of chairs, and it's where my parents got married. but both are expensive as hell, I think? I have no concept of how much things cost but it's in the thousands just for 1 meal per person.

On a side note, one of the venues suggests other businesses, one being a horse and carriage - but does that take you to the church? or from the church to the reception? or from the reception home? I don't understand this stuff

It's all very confusing...

I do admit, the venue we are going with is the majestic in Bellingham. It provides us with a space for ceremony and reception in one place. My fiancés is a cook/chef so he's doing the catering, and I am a graphic designer by trade so I am making the majority of decorations.

One rule of getting married-don't let anyone take over the planning-not your mother, aunt or the 'professional' wedding planner. They all have plans that involve lots of money, which is sometimes in short supply. Remember this, also: the wedding is for one day. The marriage is for your lifetime.

This is very good advice, his aunt is helping me plan my wedding, but with all my own ideas. I am stubborn and will not bend or bow on something unless is seems without a doubt reasonable.

Things I ask myself:

Who is it benefitting?
what is it?
when will it be used again?
Where will it fit best if at all?
why do I like it/ want it?