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I don’t just mean to toot my own horn here, but my wife and I had a great wedding. Like… epic great.I’ve had friends who two years later, still tell us that our wedding was one of the best, most fun weddings they’d ever attended, and absolutely insist that it’s not just because they’re our friends and are supposed to tell us that. A few who have gotten married after us have asked for leftover materials/designs or ideas. It really was a fantastic wedding.Before I even get started explaining this, I have to start with this disclaimer:My wife planned and executed almost everything. I was studying for the bar exam. I can take very, very little credit for how awesome our wedding was.We did ours for about $10,000 USD with an enormous family and friend group.This was most of the people we invited with a handful who had ducked out quick. As you can see, this was not a small affair.The biggest thing, the most important thing for us, was for our friends and family, our personal community, to have a wonderful time. It was meant to be relaxed and enjoyable. With that guiding principle in mind, the rest of the wedding came together really well.There were a few very, very smart things we did that not only cut down on costs, but made the guest experience the best we could make it.We had a morning wedding with an early reception. The ceremony was morning, but not crazy early: 10 am. Early enough to still be cool out with nice light, but just the right time for people to get up at a decent time, have some breakfast, and get to the venue without having to rush. Our reception was immediately afterwards and was a brunch.This also saved a ton on alcohol costs. Even my family aren’t big day drinkers. We had essentially an open bar with various beer/cider and wine options, mimosas, and a bottle of Crown Royal hidden under the table for a few select relatives. We didn’t come close to using everything we ordered.In fact, when I ordered all the alcohol, everyone fought me on how much we’d need, and what types. We ended up returning two-thirds of what we purchased and still had enough for our second reception (more on that later) and after that and giving away another dozen bottles, still had three bottles of red wine and six bottles of white wine that we ended up taking home and drinking almost until our first anniversary.The only thing we ran out of was the only thing that I thought we needed a second case of: moscato wine. People drinking during the day and at a brunch want sweet things.We also brought in a few student bartenders from a local school. I think two people for four hours cost us less than $100.We only had one venue where we did all of it. We literally walked out of the church sanctuary into the reception. Nobody had to go anywhere. This helps the guests in a couple of ways.First, it reduces the downtime between the ceremony and reception. That time is often in the U.S. when the bridal party will have the pictures taken, and in the Midwest is traditionally when the bridal party will also go bar-hopping. We didn’t do either; we did the pictures beforehand and just didn’t do the bar-hopping.Second, people only have to find one location. We conveniently made it very close to the hotels (about 1/2 a mile).Additionally, it helped us out a lot because it was easier to set up and take down, being that we had all the materials in one location and didn’t have to split our setup time.Additionally additionally, we saved a ton of money on the venue because our venue was also the church. I think the whole thing cost us $800, for the service, the ministers, a couple of church musicians, and the reception. The only caveat was we had to be out entirely by 4 pm before confession started.We made a lot of our decorations rather than buying them, and a lot of people lent us things. This one belongs to our crafty family, not us. My father-in-law made all of our centerpieces from polyurethaned tree slices he cut, sanded, and finished himself. Same with the cake stand. My wife’s relatives own a knitting shop and one has an art degree. That cousin made us a bunch of wall-flower bouquets out of book pages. We still have them. We did an amazing amount with cheap materials like burlap and a bit of ribbon.We also used a lot of things we already had in the family.My family loves cribbage; wherever two or more Krugers are gathered, there is cribbage. Everyone in my family just brought a cribbage board for almost every table. Cost: $0, and everyone loved it.My dad had refurbished and repainted some old family milk cans a few years before. We used those as flower holders in a bunch of places. Cost: $0, and everyone commented on how it made it feel like a barn wedding without the barn and how awesome that was.The knitting shop relatives for years had taught customers how to do basic knitting by having them knit little triangles, which they had glued into ribbon to create colorful knit bunting. That was awesome and people loved it. Cost: $0, and people asked us where we got it so they could get some for their homes.My father-in-law took the centerpiece tree slices and has been making them into new cribbage boards. We got one of the first ones and we love it.One of my wife’s uncles is a potter. He made custom ceramic wine glasses and beer steins for the wedding party for party gifts. We tried to pay him and he refused; I make sure to help him with cutting wood and stuff around his cabin.We had lawn games outside, lent to us or even made by several family members. My in-laws found a bocce ball set for $5 somewhere, and made a croquet set out of various bits of wood lying around their property. Same with a bags set and I think someone even had a jump rope for the kids.Various relatives had a bunch of hanging string Christmas lights when we put them all together. Looked awesome. Cost nothing.What decorations we did buy, we typically bought at thrift stores, garage sales, or farmer’s markets.We got an insane amount of flowers for less than $200 at a farmer’s market. In fact, there was a miscommunication between us and the farmer, and so we got literally ten times what we thought we were ordering. We couldn’t find enough places to put all the flowers.My in-laws love to go garage saling. We got a whole bunch of jars with rope attached to them for $10 at a garage sale from someone who had used them at their weddings. We got a pile of shepherd’s hooks for $20 somewhere. We got a bunch of little chalkboard easels for super cheap. My in-laws constantly buy old deer antlers at garage sales; we used a lot of what they had, and they bought probably another dozen at various sales.We got three dozen glass milk bottles for $20 at a thrift store that we used for flower holders.Family also donated a lot of personal talents and foods. One aunt loves making pies and has won numerous county and state fair awards. Rather than buying an expensive wedding cake, she made a bunch of pies. Other relatives made their own pastry specialties to go with it. My brother-in-law donated a donut wall because a Dunkin’ Donuts opened nearby shortly beforehand.We borrowed a sound system and did the music ourselves. We could have spent a couple thousand hiring a DJ, but we didn’t feel it was worth it. By having a brunch reception, by 2–3 pm, people were ready to just go, actually. My family and friends aren’t the “dance all night” kind of crowd. My parents were music teachers, so we borrowed a couple of speakers, portable PA/amp system, and a couple of handheld microphones from the school. I hooked up a spare laptop, built a playlist, and just let it go. I built in some dead spaces to give me time to get up and pause it for speeches.In retrospect, it would have been nice to have maybe some family member or good friend act as an MC, rather than doing it myself, because I underestimated how much time everyone wants to spend just talking to you as the groom.My wife made her own dress and the guys didn’t rent suits or tuxes.My wife’s mom is a pretty good seamstress and she couldn’t find a dress she liked in a price range we could afford. By scavenging materials from various shops, my wife and her mom made a fantastic wedding dress for quite little.Note from my wife: This was a great way to make her mom feel included and still keep her distracted from trying to do and control everything else.The bridesmaids were just given a color and told to find something they liked.The groomsmen were told to just wear charcoal dress pants and a white dress shirt; part of their groomsman gifts were the socks, ties, and personalized tie clips (along with some various distilled spirits that they liked).We didn’t care how much they matched as long as they were close-ish. Everyone commented on how relaxed that made them feel, not just as party members, but our families and friends. It didn’t feel stiff or formal, it felt more like a gathering of community. Exactly what we wanted.We didn’t go nuts on rings. Mine is sterling silver and it cost $75. You’d never tell the difference between it and a white gold band that would cost ten times as much. My wife intended to buy one thin gold band on Etsy for $50 and the lady sent her a smooth one and a hammered gold one and told her to keep the other one. She wears them both with her engagement ring in the middle. We figure if we ever want to trade up someday when we have more money, we can. (I doubt we ever will.)We got a great deal on our photographer. My sister is very good friends with a couple that did wedding photography and who liked traveling to the location where we got married. They gave us a good deal and did a fantastic job. We would have paid double for even the cheapest local photographer. This one was mostly just connections and luck.We didn’t go nuts on programs. I drafted up the service programs in Word and printed them at Office Depot. I had a discount card through my law fraternity that brought the cost down almost absurdly, so I splurged for nicer paper, but even if I didn’t have that, I could have printed up enough programs for the approximately 200 people we had there for less than $50. We did it for $15 and the store folded them for me with a machine. People don’t save them. Don’t go crazy.We had a second reception a few weeks later. We couldn’t afford to invite everyone we wanted to. We just didn’t have enough venue space or caterer capacity. I’m very close with my extended family and some friends, but we had to figure out how to cut the guest list literally in more than half from the initial “write down everyone you can think of.” It was my dad who really came up with a fantastic idea: have a second reception later.This worked largely because most of my family and friends were in Southeast Wisconsin and we got married in the Twin Cities. That’s a long drive. But, most of my extended family was getting together for a big family camping weekend two weeks later over Labor Day. That way, we can invite everyone we were on the fence about, plus a bunch more people that would probably have declined because of the drive and hotel costs.We were able to rent a pavilion tent and do a pork roast for almost absurdly cheap. Like, less than $1,000 cheap. Part of this was that I had a family member with a rotisserie trailer capable of doing a whole pig and another with the equipment to carve it all up and put it into stainless bins. We potlucked the rest. Various family members brought it whatever salads and specialties they wanted. (My family loves doing this.)We probably got to celebrate with another 150 people this way. My wife got to wear her dress again. It was great.Now, we’re really lucky to have such handy and willing family members. Not everyone has that. This wedding could have easily cost us twice as much if not for our families and willingness to donate their time, energy, talents, and materials. We are insanely lucky to have that.So, I really want to recognize that you may or may not be able to pull off the amazeballs wedding that we had on our budget with our sized guest list if you didn’t have that.What did we spend money on? We listened to all of our friends and family, and we learned one very important principle: People generally only remember 1–2 really big things. Pick one, maybe two things that you really want people to remember and go all out on those.For us, we picked the food and the invitations. We didn’t intend to make the table IDs into a memorable thing, but people really loved those, as well.About three-quarters of our budget went to the caterer. We chose one that locally sourced everything and we advertised that. People really appreciated it. Also, the caterer comped us ceramic plates and silverware instead of compostable stuff because we were willing to shamelessly plug them and order some extra coffee. So, if you’re ever in the Twin Cities, go stop by Common Roots Cafe.We also spent a bunch on the invitations. The actual printing wasn’t that much, but we hired a friend of mine from undergrad who does custom design and branding work, and we paid her every penny of what she asked for.She did an amazing job. She basically designed us a family logo and font. She got us custom made stamp we could use from that, and with 1–2 rounds of revision, made some of the most beautiful custom invitations I’ve ever seen. Also: shameless plug for her: Inkwell Trading Company. It’s clear that these were not made from some template or font. These were hand-done, with love. It’s been 2 1/2 years and I still love them; we have one framed in our living room. Worth every penny.For table IDs, we didn’t just do “table 1, table 2…” Instead, we named our tables with our favorite authors, and people found a popsicle stick fan thing with quotes about love and/or marriage from those authors to find their tables. People loved it. A lot of people took those quotes home. We thought it was going to be a cute, quirky thing, but people still comment on it two years later. We tried to put people at tables with authors we thought they’d like; for example, we put my law school friends at the Ruth Bader Ginsburg table, and my wife’s MBA friends at the David Allen Whyte table. All it cost us was some time and craft materials, maybe $50 worth of stuff.What is it not worth spending too much on, in our experience?Alcohol. You don’t have to have a dry wedding, but I’ve had friends where the open bar tab alone was more than our entire wedding cost. They had 12 year Scotch and keg after keg of craft beer and $20–40 bottles of wine. Look, if that’s your thing, that’s fine and all. But think about it this way: you’re spending massive amounts of cash on something that will make it harder for your guests to remember everything.We bought some nicer craft beer in bottles, but mostly had a case or two of some local cheaper beer from Grain Belt, and a case of Bud and Miller Lite for those who wanted it. We bought cases of decent, but not super high-end wine that worked out to I think $8 a bottle on average. We got some inexpensive champagne for the mimosas. The booze tab ran us about $350 after we returned 2/3rds of the initial $1,000 purchase.Cake. Wedding cakes are insanely marked up. If you don’t want to crowd-source it like we did, or don’t have the family and friends who would do something like that, just get a sheet cake. We have some friends who spent $2,500 on a cake. That’s just… bonkers to me.Venue. We originally considered some various farms and barn places, and some hotel ballrooms. I think $3,000 was the cheapest bid we looked at. The church didn’t charge us anything extra since we were already in the space for the morning. It was a no-brainer. If where you’re getting married has a nice space and it doesn’t cost much extra, use it.Rings. This is personally dependent. Some people want to have really elaborate wedding rings. Some people absolutely insist on gold. Gold is usually plated with rhodium because it’s soft, but it will scratch and ding over the years. I got sterling silver and it’s held up just as well as any gold ring my friends have at a fraction of the cost. Same with stones — diamonds are an insane racket. If you’re going to have a band with stones, I’d get something less expensive.Music. I’ve been to some great weddings with live bands and DJ’s. If that’s your jam, go with it. If you want your guests to remember the New Orleans style jazz band, that might be worth it for you. If you’re the dance until 2am crowd, maybe you do want a DJ with lights and stuff.But if you’re on a budget, this would be one of the things I’d get rid of. Rent some sound equipment and hook up an iPod. By using VLC and a network remote from my phone, I was actually able to control the music from anywhere in the venue myself.Clothes. A tux or suit rental is usually $100–200. A wedding dress can easily run into a sizable fraction of our entire budget or more.If you’re a guy, use a suit you already have. If you don’t own one, you can often find a good one at a thrift store for $30 or less. Get it dry cleaned, pressed, and tailored if you need to. You’ll still be out less than renting one, and now you’ll have a good suit.Most people don’t have the resources or talents to make their own wedding dresses. But you don’t have to go crazy here to have a really beautiful one. You can buy secondhand dresses for much, much cheaper, or buy a dress that is not specifically a wedding dress. There are bridal consignment shops that allow for rentals. You’d be amazed at what you can get off of Etsy or even Amazon.Personalized favors with your wedding on it. Seriously, nobody will save these. You will pay exorbitant fees to put your wedding name on it and nobody will want them. Maybe, maybe personalized M&Ms or candies. But honestly, you don’t need to even personalize those. Not worth the cost.What is it worth it to shell out for?A good caterer. Just because someone is expensive doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good. But a good caterer is probably going to set you back. Ask around, get reviews, talk to people who have actually hired them, and go in for tastings. Good caterers will be happy to sit down and give you tasting. (Also, that was worth so many free date nights when we were engaged.)Space for guests. If you want a small affair, that’s totally up to you. We have a massive family and large friend group. But even if you’re inviting 20 people to a low-key affair, have a venue that’s twice as large as you think it needs to be. People want to get up and move around and won’t stay put. If they’re packed in, it won’t be comfortable.Also, people generate significant heat. Make sure the venue’s HVAC system is up to the task. This is something I never considered until we were at a friend’s reception and it got stifling hot even though the place had an air conditioning system.Child-friendliness. Even if it’s a small affair, please be conscious of people with small kids. We went to a wedding this summer that we were explicitly told not to bring our 7 month old son and frankly, we weren’t even sure if we were going to go at that point. Unless you know for sure that nobody is going to have little ones, just be prepared for kids running around and pulling at decorations and plan accordingly. If a baby cries, it will not ruin your day.Non-monetary considerations:There’s some things to consider that can make a good wedding into a fantastic wedding (for both the guests and you) that don’t have anything to do with cost.A logistics master. I did this for my youngest sister’s wedding. It was my job to keep things on schedule, round up guests for pictures, etc. I ran ahead to the venue and made sure everything arrived on time, got set up, etc. I transferred flowers and equipment and the like. This freed up the bridal party to just enjoy the day stress free.When it got to my wedding, I thought, hey, I can do that myself! That was a bad plan. I should have had a friend minding that part. Balls came very close to being dropped and it was stressful to be the groom and handle that bit.You don’t have to hire a wedding planner, but have someone whose job is just handle those things.Someone or something keeping the parents distracted, but involved. I didn’t appreciate this until I got married. As long as you’ve been thinking about your wedding, your parents have been thinking about it longer. You have no idea. They will make it into the wedding that they always wanted if you are not careful.My mother-in-law was kept busy for months working on the dress. My father was kept distracted working on the sound system and a few other decorative things.If you cut them out, they’ll feel resentful, but find some aspect where they can, with limited parameters, live out some part of their dream for the wedding and feel appreciated and contributing, without taking over.The time of day, and year. Honestly, I know some people really love the idea of sunrise or sunset or evening weddings. It’s unique and all.You have to keep in mind: this wedding isn’t for you. It’s for your guests. They are not going to love getting up and getting out to the edge of a lake at the ass crack of dawn. I’m sorry. The light may be beautiful. But it’s just not fun for the guests.A winter wedding can be beautiful and a way to save money on a venue. But if it’s icy and freezing, it may be a difficult or even impossible drive for some guests, and your wedding won’t be particularly memorable for the right reasons if Grandma slips and falls and breaks her hip there.How long and engaging is the ceremony? It doesn’t have to be five minutes with the justice of the peace, but as an old priest used to tell me about his homilies: “The brain can only withstand what the butt can endure.” A half-hour to 45 minutes is plenty if it’s enjoyable. You don’t have to have your second cousin’s mother’s former roommate reading a piece of original poetry she wrote for the ceremony in Sanskrit while being accompanied by sitar and theramin. Songs people can sing and know are nice.Keep the venue and lodging nearby to each other. People will underestimate the time to get anywhere. The closer the places are together, the less that can go wrong with that.Also, don’t book insanely expensive hotels. You can find something better than a Motel 6, but it doesn’t need to be the Four Seasons.Assume at least one thing will go wrong. The more moving parts you have, the more likely something will go wrong. But just assume that at least one thing will. Be okay with that. Just try to make sure that whatever can go wrong is very small.All in all, how much does a good wedding cost? As much or as little as you want it to. Just think about what will make for a great guest experience, what you want them to remember, and how you can maximize the fun for your guests. They’re what count.Some pictures of our awesome wedding:Table decorationsThese incredible invites. Note the logo stamp. That’s custom designed. Thanks, Becka!Donut wall from my brother-in-lawShot of the venueA toast to you, dear readers, with those custom ceramics I mentioned.

What are some tricks used by pastors or priests that most people never notice?There are probably many things that people do which, to some might seem manipulative and to others seem quite in order. So I can’t say definitively that I have never done something some people found manipulative, but I have tried not to.MY MOUSTACHEOne trick came from two elderly women in the congregation where I was student observer for a year. They both taught lip reading in a seniors’ organisation, and taught me the importance of speaking slowly and always keeping my moustache trimmed. “We can’t see your lips, and we wouldn’t have been able to read them,” they often told me. I also tended to speak rather quickly. I had developed the habit partly to compensate for a speech hesitancy. Again, they would catch me after the service with a “Good, but…” comment.THE DEAF MAN IN THE BACK ROWMy grandfather had been a Methodist lay preacher until his hearing went on him. In his day, hardly any churches had amplification, and, even when I began preaching in the mid 1960s, it was mainly only larger churches which had it. My grandfather told me several times, “Preach so that the deaf man in the back row can hear you.” It was good advice, and it also was a reminder that, even when there was no one in the back row, I should still preach to that deaf man. If the church has an amplifier, let the person on the deck manage the volume!Incidentally, I worked at one time for an organisation which employed several “high fliers” who were often sent up from head office to tell us about the latest, Very few of them knew how to speak to that deaf man, and, in a packed room, talked to the first two rows. As a fairly lowly functionary on the boundary of data analysis and IT support, I was often the man in the back seat who didn’t have a clue what was being shared with the local luminaries up the front. Learn a lesson if you speak in public!THE CELLO PRINCIPLEAnother trick with public speaking is to speak on a chest-full of air: the “cello principle”. A cello without a sound box full of air would produce a very thin note, barely audible from a distance. A vocal cord without a chest full of air also produces thin, inaudible notes, and is hard to hear at a distance, too. By learning to speak with a lung full of air you not only sound more in control of your voice, but you will be heard better by that deaf man who keeps on sitting in the back pew (he’s shy about his deafness.)STAYING OUT OF WOMBAT HOLESSomeone said he had never met anyone with such a “head-full of unsaleable information” as my father, and that seems to be true of me, too. Voyager disaster? February 1964. Australian forerunner of Lorena Bobbitt? Valmaila Loisi. Carbon dating? Depends on ratio of C12 to C14. Battle of Hastings? 14 October 1066.This is an issue for me. Perhaps I have mild ADD or something, but I can get lost in wombat holes. I NEED to preach from notes. Some people don’t. My wife could speak at a welfare conference for an hour with four illegible sentences scribbled on a torn piece of notepaper. If I had done that, my 25 minute sermons would last for two hours and run from the parable of the foolish bridesmaids to marriage practices in the Ancient Near East to how this relates to same sex marriage, to where I see Australian society headed — and how to fix it; then, after a quick discursus into the etymology of a word which had sprung to mind, perhaps end up on the second coming of Christ and how the Bible doesn’t teach what some people say.I had a lecturer who was just the same, so I know how dangerous it can be!THE PRINTED WORDBut there was something else about my sermon notes. I didn’t use a word processor: I used a DTP program, mostly Adobe InDesign, but I have also used Pagemaker and now use Affinity Publisher. I had a template set up. This didn’t mean that I had the same notes for everything, but it did mean that I laid everything out on a folded A4 sheet, with a title block and a block with Church contact information, two columns per page, different fonts for introductory paragraph and body text, and so on. I didn’t have to stop and think how I would do it this week: that was all laid out already. I could focus on content.I had several reasons.First, it limited my sermons, They were pretty consistent in length within about two minutes. I didn’t just read what I wrote, and felt free to diverge as needed, but I always came back to where I should be.Second, I wasn’t going to find midway through that Page 3 was out of order, and have to rummage through notes. Page 3 always followed Page 2.Third, I could print extra copies in a form other people could easily keep. I first did it for the benefit of a couple of people with poor hearing, who otherwise might miss occasional words, but others liked to pick up a copy and think about it during the week. All good.Fourth, when I preached a series, from time to time I turned the entire thing into a 16 page booklet if people were showing interest in reading the whole thing.THE VALUE OF FAILUREThis is not exactly about preaching, but happened at a church concert.We organised an “Old Time, Down South Gospel Night”, with a number of performers versed in Black Gospel and White Spirituals. One singer had been one of Australia’s leading female rock singers in the late ’50s and early ‘60s, and got things going.Then we discovered that the next performer on the schedule was refusing to start. We didn’t know at the time, but he had an anxiety condition and needed to have his wife present. She was a journalistic photographer, and was running late from a shoot.The MC grabbed me and said, “Peter, you’ll have to fill in and we’ll hope his wife appears!”I did a quick run through two songs with the bass player, and the chap waiting for his wife was prepared to play in a corner but not sing, and I was ready to go as the previous singer finished.The audience realised what was going on. My first song was suitable for clap-along, and soon they were singing and clapping with our little ad-hoc group. It was as though everyone were saying, “We know you’ve had to do something you didn’t plan for, and we are behind you!”The photographer arrived, the next bracket of songs proceeded smoothly, and everyone was having a wonderful time! People enjoy a smooth performance; they identify with those who struggle.As the architects say, “If you can’t fix it, feature it!”DRESS CODEMy last trick is, stay neat and dress just slightly more conservatively than the congregation. The men in my congregation usually wore jeans or long trousers and tee shirts; I often wore work slacks and open necked business shirts, and tried to remember to keep my shoes polished.There is nothing to be gained from wearing a suit when everyone is in jeans and tees, particularly if that is all they have to wear. On the other hand, by dressing up just a little, I felt I was showing that I was taking my role seriously.Most of these tricks can be translated into any public communication situation.