Cheap.

When I first started planning the wedding our budget was $20,000. Twenty grand starts to feel like a drop in the bucket when the average cost of weddings in your area is over $30,000. But having never spent even close to $20,000 on anything in my life (except college), I started to feel kind of crazy with the whole budgeting process.

Since, we've decided to do other things with some of the money we were given (honeymoon, pay off debt, etc). Our new $10,000 budget is actually a lot more enjoyable. Maybe I'm cheap, but digging around the thrift store for the on-sale color-of-the-day tag dishes instead of renting them at 50cents a pop, has been enjoyable.

My dress was found via craigs list in a strange, but amazing story (to be posted later) for less than half of what I would have paid retail. We are doing almost everything ourselves (some of the food food, the cake, flowers, decorations, linens, etc). The location went from a $5000 barn to my parent's pecan orchard/backyard.

And while diy can be challenging and a lot of work, so far it's actually been more relaxing than all the stress of spending.