The Handmade Wedding Series has been delighted to bring you some real weddings. And hobocampcrafts' self-described "hobo" wedding kept it so real with a budget of only $5000!

Many little girls dream about their weddings, but the idea of getting married never even dawned on me. So when my boyfriend got down on one knee, I knew I had a lifetime of planning to catch up on.

We had a budget of about $5,000 — a generous amount from my retired parents. Well aware that if we went over budget it was coming out of our pocket, we decided to keep our wedding fun and unique, but simple. We were inspired by a DIY wedding article in the now-defunct “Budget Living” magazine.

Collaging our own “Save the Date” postcards, we copied them onto cardstock on my parents’ color copier.
For the invitations, we bought long, chocolate-brown envelopes, smaller orange reply envelopes and a ton of pink cardstock, on which we printed the invitation, the reply card and the directions. Thank goodness for my husband’s inkjet printer!

My lovely sister-in-law (a former wedding photographer) offered to take our photos as her gift to us.
She did a great job and saved us thousands of dollars!

I wanted to make my dress, but I fell in love with a very inexpensive, classic dress.  When I saw how expensive veils were, I laughed. No WAY was I paying $100 for tulle!

So I fashioned a cute little pinwheel-esque clip with lace and ribbons attached to a barrette. All of my bridesmaids wore inexpensive dresses in shades of mocha, latte and truffle, and we did each other’s hair and makeup.

We’re both movie buffs, so we chose to hold our ceremony at a local theatre built in the early 1900s. We figured it already had dramatic lighting and popcorn, so what more did we need?

We hired the theatre’s organist, who played old movie scores and Marx Brothers tunes as everyone made their way toward their seats. They even played the old ”Let’s go out to the lobby” film clip after the ceremony! It was a really fun, quirky touch that made the event feel special.

The flowers (kindly paid for by my mother-in-law) included some of my favorites: gerbera daisies and hyperion berries. The local florist gave me a flower-by-flower breakdown of price — each bouquet was about $40.  We picked up the flowers two days before the wedding and invited my bridesmaids over to each construct their own bouquets. My mother and I purchased lace and ribbons in my colors to wrap the flowers in, and we also made boutonnieres for the rest of the wedding party, as well as some arrangements for the ceremony. Not only did we have a great time creating these, we saved a ton of money! It all came out to about $300, versus $800 or more for someone to make them for us.

Our reception was super laid-back, held at a local VFW hall for a mere $400. Our families enjoyed homemade punch and pastries (my mom studied Martha Stewart’s baking books), light fare and cupcakes instead of the usual cake. Somehow the sign fell off of the adult punch, so one or two of the kids MAY have had some bourbon. But hey — when you go handmade, some kids are gonna get drunk.

We made a seating chart by tacking everyone’s name and table number on a fabric-covered piece of foam board. For the table numbers, we scavenged our local library for discarded hardcover books, covered them with paper grocery bags (old-school!) and glued buttons on them in the shape of numbers. Some of the books had ridiculous titles and even more ridiculous love scenes, which our guests got a big laugh at. On the tables, we scattered 1-inch pins with hand-drawn self-portraits on them (printed by KateBlack.etsy.com). The tables also had disposable cameras  candids.

Our guest book, which started off as a scrapbook, was transformed for about $30 into an adorable memory keeper, with tiny envelopes for messages and advice from our loved ones. After people left us a note, they could take home a small votive candle, which were decorated with Anais Nin quotes, and my father used his printing press to create tiny balsa wood wedding announcements.

Overall, we got great satisfaction out of doing so much of the work ourselves, and look back fondly on the handmade details. Our friends and family said they had never been to a wedding quite like ours!

Wedding Gift Guide | Wedding Category | Wedding Showcase | Handmade Wedding Series