How to Use Your New Home as Your Wedding Venue

A lot of new couples are finding it difficult to throw a wedding on a budget. It comes down to how much your parents can lend and how much you and your fiancé can reasonably spend. However, after your wedding, will you be needing to buy a home?

With a recovering real estate market couples are having to budget and save their money for years, just to be able to afford a down payment on their first home, without having to get mortgage insurance or get locked into a high mortgage payment and mortgage rate. An average single-family home costs $203,000; if a couple is looking to save the ideal down payment of 20 percent, they would be looking at around $40,000…the cost of a wedding.

When weighing which is more important: a wedding or a home, most couples would probably say that a home is the necessity and the more practical item to save for, putting a hold on their wedding plans.

If you and your fiancé will be moving to Memphis, budget your move and you might have extra money in order to throw the ultimate house warming party ever…your wedding! All My Sons Moving & Storage can help you save money not only on your move, but also on your wedding, by offering some advice on how to throw a wedding in your new home.

Figure out how to space your wedding out. Depending on the size of your new home and your new yard, you may want to either plan your wedding for outside, in the living room, or multiple rooms. Space will also determine how many people you should invite. If you do not have a lot of space you will want to be strict on who you invite. If there are a lot of people that you want present, you can have your wedding ceremony for family only and invite more people for the reception party. Thoroughly clean your home. You are going to want your home to be spotless for your guests, so the best idea is to hire a cleaning service to come and clean the week before your wedding and the day after. The best part about your home being your wedding venue, is being able to decorate any way that you please. Visit your local dollar stores, thrift stores, garage sales, and even flea markets to pick up cheap items that you can turn into decorative masterpieces. With an abundance of online DIY tutorials, you could save hundreds of dollars on your wedding by crafting all of your decorations by hand. If you will need help, this is the perfect area to involve your mother, grandmother, sister, and even your soon-to-be mother-in-law; they will love knowing that they helped create a beautiful wedding for you, on a budget that is friendly to their pocketbooks. You also want to make sure that you decorate the week before your wedding, so that you can see if there is anything that you want to tweak or add. Decorating the week before your wedding will also save you the stress of having to put everything together last minute, leaving no time to relax before your big day. Food, catering, and alcohol do not have to be expensive. Rather than going to food tastings and hiring a caterer that charges per head, opt for a food truck, or a buffet-style food spread. You can also use food as another way to get family members involved, by having them cook a few dishes and creating the buffet items themselves. When it comes to alcohol, you do not have to hire a bartender, but if you personally know one that would love to do it for $100 or so, then go for it. Otherwise, you can stock up on bottles of liquor, beer, and wine…and it can be cheaper than you think. Modern, unique weddings are extremely popular, so if you have a “Pick Your Poison” beverage table and a “Dive On In” buffet table, coupled with a relaxed atmosphere for your guests, they will be more likely to remember you as the couple who had kegs of beer and Fireball on tap at their wedding. The cake. Wedding cakes can cost hundreds of dollars…but they do not have to. If you are hosting your wedding in your new home, have your mother or grandmother make your cake. You can even opt for cupcakes. Ordering 30 cupcakes from a local baker may be cheaper than ordering a wedding cake. Make your guests the photographers. Find a couple Polaroid or digital cameras and let your guests take as many photos as they want…until the film that you supplied runs out. If you make sure that at least one person captures your ceremony and gets enough photos of you and your spouse throughout the night, you can allow everyone else to get creative and have fun with the cameras that you supply, you may even end up with some funny keepsake photos that you would otherwise not have gotten.

There are many perks to using your new home as your wedding venue: you do not have to pay for a venue, you do not have to make it fancy, you can get more people involved in the planning, there can be less rules, and your guests do not have to leave by midnight. Best of all, you can plan it all on a very small budget. If your new home will not be big enough to use as your wedding venue, you can see if a family member or friend can lend you their home. If parking is an issue at your house, see if there is a nearby park or ask your neighbors if they would not mind all of traffic for your special day.

Buying and moving into your first home does not have to stop you from planning a beautiful wedding, you just might have to get more creative and celebrate your new home in the most creative way…by using it as your wedding venue.