Having a wedding can be an awesome and joyous experience. On the other hand planning a debt-free wedding can seem like climbing a mountain, barefoot with a jug of milk in each hand. There’s so much to consider and think about that you can often times feel overwhelmed.

It’s a funny thing really. So many newlyweds spend more time preparing for a wedding than a marriage. And one lasts a day and the latter a lifetime (please do get pre-marital counseling by the way). This is why I’m here to show you some things to consider when planning a debt-free wedding so you two can begin your new life happily married. The last thing you need is to start your marriage paying down debt for a day that was meant to be remembered as a day of joy, love and new beginnings.

1. Plan a Year Ahead

This was something my wife was very adamant about and I am thankful to her. Start the planning a year ahead. A wedding is a huge puzzle piece that you and your future spouse have to figure out and the more time you give yourselves the better.

This means you create a wedding budget one year ahead of the wedding date and include all of the items you’ll see in this article. Make sure you two sit down and agree on a max cost for how much you want to spend. Ask around and compare similar types of weddings to the one you two want. Remember your planning a debt-free wedding, not a debt-filled one.

Using a wedding planner can be a big help. Someone gave my wife one, but we never really used it. We actually just listed everything we knew that needed to get done on a Google spreadsheet and set up columns for “Completion Date,” “Estimated Cost,” and a column for notes. I did find a Wedding Planner and Organizer by the Knot. It has over 1600 reviews with a 4.5/5 rating which leads me to believe this would be worth the purchase. You can also find other wedding planners out there that might be more suitable for your taste.

2. Selecting a Wedding Venue

The venue can definitely be one of the biggest costs of a wedding if you’re not careful. The venue you choose really depends on the number of guests you expect to have. Usually the smaller the number the less you’ll pay. However, expect to pay a hefty price for a small wedding in the ballroom of a 5-star hotel in downtown.

A grand and beautiful wedding doesn’t have to be in some luxurious building. Think of your backyard or someone else’s who you know has one and turn it into something special if venue costs scare you. The one thing you don’t want to do is go into debt for a venue you can’t save up and pay for within a year.

Remember planning starts a year prior to the wedding date. You’ll want to get at least the deposit saved up a year ahead of the wedding. This way when you find the right venue you can secure it without the risk of losing it to another couple. This happens very often unfortunately.

Things to consider: Venues are cheaper every other day except Saturday. Check for employee or military discounts.

3. Wedding Food and Drinks

Bottom line is alcohol is going to be expensive. Finding the right caterer is going to be tough. This is something you definitely want to shop around for. Fortunately, our parents and many of our parents’ friends helped cook and prepare the food at our wedding. This was a huge cost savings for us. Also, my wife’s father offered to pay for the alcohol at our wedding which was another big help towards the expected cost of the wedding.

So many relatives and close friends will ask how they can help with the wedding. Don’t be bashful. Go ahead and ask if they could bring some drinks. If you go the catering route try to keep the costs around $10-$15 per person/per plate, the lower the better. Any more will do some serious damage to your wedding budget. You can even try to bargain with the caterer to see if they could reduce and offer them the chance to promote their business at your wedding, maybe?

Note: Since we had our own cultural food we were preparing it was important to find a venue that would accept food cooked outside of an approved vendor. The venue we selected was accepting of this so you”ll want to confirm with the venue before you decide to provide the food for the wedding yourselves. Usually this comes with a fee.

4. Wedding Invitations and Save the Dates

Here is one item that will need a lot of attention. As much as you want your friends to be there to celebrate your big day, you can’t invite them all. Your parents can’t invite all their friends. Believe it or not you’re even going to forget to invite some of the most important people in your life. Get started on this as early as possible. I would say once you’ve placed a deposit on the venue you need to work on that wedding list and have it finalized.

I recommend you visit this list over the course of several months, because you’ll run into people that you’ll add to the list. Once you reach your max stick with it. No exceptions. A word of advice on when to send save the dates and wedding invitations: Save the dates go out 4 months in advance of the wedding. Invitations need to be sent about 6-8 weeks prior to the wedding. If you’re having a destination wedding save the dates need to go out earlier obviously and no less than 8 months out.

For our Save the Date photos we actually had a buddy use my DSLR camera, Nikon D5500 and we used Vistaprint for Save the Date invitations. Shutterfly is another great printing service available.

5. Wedding Dress, Suits and Attire

For our wedding we went to Macy’s for the guys and the ladies got their wedding dresses from an expensive place I won’t mention here. We also had cultural clothes imported that was challenging to get. Thankfully we had help in getting the cultural dresses from Ethiopia to the U.S. Plan for wardrobe malfunctions. Anything can happen at anytime. I remember being in a wedding for a friend and the glue in one of my dress shoes started melting the sole off. Even at our wedding my wife’s cultural dress had a little mishap that her amazing bridesmaids were able to fix quickly.

If your wedding party is tight on cash then try to have a strategy where everyone just wears similar color suits and dresses. As long as you and your fiancé aren’t overly concerned with uniformity this can be a great way to save on wedding costs.

The wedding dress really depends on the bride. Is a used wedding dress an option? Or does it have to be brand new? Which designer? Is there a dress for the day program and another one for the reception? So many things to think about. I’m pretty sure on this I made a conscious decision to stay out of it and trust my wife was not going to get a $10k-$20k dress. Thankfully I made the right choice to trust her on this.

6. Singer, DJ and speaker system

Good wedding entertainment can be hard to find, especially for a big cultural wedding like ours. We needed to make sure our singers and speaker system were good enough to get the crowd hype. This was another expense we had family graciously help us with. Honestly, a DJ with a nice sound system is what most weddings need these days. Or just rent some speakers with an auxiliary connection, make a playlist and press play. Ultimate cost saving hack right there!

Nowadays with YouTube and the internet you should be able to do research on options for the entertainment. Book them in advance and make sure to clearly specify who’s providing what. They may be expecting you to provide the sound system. That would not make for a good show if there was no sound system at the wedding reception.

7. Wedding Cake and Sam’s Club sheet cake

I give credit to my wife for this genius idea. Wedding cakes can be very expensive and one strategy we had was to have a multi-layer cake where only the top layer was real.

The rest of the cake was a dummy cake or fake cake. Your wedding cake designer or baker should know about this. The cake that gets passed around to your guests would be a sheet cake from Sam’s Club or Costco. This is a great way to save for wedding cakes.

Based on what my wife told me, we saved about $800-$1000 just by following this strategy for the wedding cake. And you don’t have to go to Sam’s Club for the sheet cake. You should be able to find this sheet cakes at most grocery stores and bakeries. Bottom line is if you’re really trying to plan a debt-free wedding then the cake is something you can easily hack. Heck, get a one layer cake if you want!

8. Decorating the Venue

Decorating was something we had a mix of professional and non-professional help with. If you’re really strapped for cash and want a debt-free wedding then you’re probably going to need to figure this one out yourselves. I recommend looking to Pinterest or Instagram for ideas to create your own setting. If you do hire a professional decorator see if you can work with that person and have your bridal party be the hands that do the physical labor. This could be a way of saving some money with decorating.

9. Wedding Flowers

I didn’t realize how critical and expensive this part of the wedding was. Naive of me, right? Well there’s no easy hack for this. You could get fake flowers, but that probably won’t fly. Check with your decorator and tackle this part of the wedding by setting a max cost. The more you express to your decorator your financial situation the more I’m sure they’re will to work with you.

Part of planning a debt-free wedding could be that there just won’t be any flowers. It’s your call. Just don’t fall into the hype of having a bunch of crazy, high-priced flowers. At the end of the day you want your marriage to last forever and expensive flowers won’t help that cause. Check out this Pinterest Wedding Flowers board for some ideas to help you plan.

10. Wedding Transportation

Hummer limousines are just not for everyone and really not necessary when planning a debt-free wedding. The ultimate hack would be to have a friend with a convertible drive you around. Obviously, this only works on a nice, clear day. Still, having friends drive you around is a great hack to save on wedding costs.

We actually did rent a hummer limousine for half the day and the driver was helpful in giving us a little extra time. And for the rest of the day we used Uber. Yup, Uber! This turned out to be a great steal on transportation. If you and your wedding party can manage to get some Uber credits right before the wedding then you can save even more on transportation costs.

11. Wedding Photographer and Videographer

Remember, I told you about my Nikon D5500. Well, we used that camera along with a professional videographer and photographer to record our wedding day. This proved to be a decent hack. The two professionals we used were excellent and the wife was very happy with the final products. That’s what ultimately matters right? “Happy wife, happy life,” is the saying I kept hearing from all my married buddies.

The photography and videography of your wedding is something you want to make sure you get good quality for. Just like the venue you will want to shop around for a photographer and videographer. Usually they have samples you can review to make your final decision. We actually had 4 different photographers before we made our decision.

12. Saving for the Honeymoon

Just like your wedding your honeymoon is something you have to plan for. I was able to receive a discount through my employer for an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic that was so awesome. I really like the all-inclusive resort idea, because it takes so much of the planning effort out of the way.

The key here is to plan a honeymoon that you can just go and enjoy, whether that’s in an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbeans, a multi-country guided tour in Europe or a 10-day cruise to wherever. I like the idea of being somewhere and not having to rush everywhere. Maybe that’s just me, but I like to enjoy each moment.

What are some wedding hacks and strategies you used to save money? Planning a debt-free wedding can be difficult, but I think there are enough of us who have been successful and can share what we did.