It’s been almost two months since Bri and I tied the knot. We’re on our final days of holiday and honeymoon at the moment as we prepare to enter the United States for work. While the experience is still fresh in my head I wanted to write an article about our wedding experience. Planning a wedding is a stressful experience, and I made lots of use of online lists and guides. This article is intended to be a guide to having a cheap or modest wedding in Melbourne, Australia. Most of the content will be relevant for anyone wanting to plan your own wedding day, but I’ll also discuss a bit more about the paperwork process in Melbourne, Australia for getting married. In a seperate post I’ll add our wedding day video and talk more personally about mine and my wife’s experience on the day. This article is more intended to be a practical guide to the planning and costs of the day.

How this article is structured

I’ll talk a bit about our motivations and what made our situation unique. Then talk a bit about what went well with the planning and what could have been better. You may want to skip to the last section where it takes more of a checklist form, talking about key dates and orderings. We’ll also do a full cost breakdown at the end as well as discuss any other issues not covered in the checklist.

We had a local wedding service with 45 guests, and a reception afterwards with 75 guests. We spent 5 weeks to plan and prepare everything, and it all went really well! The total cost for our wedding was $13,311 AUD (see breakdown). We received a lot of help from family with the venue setup (15 people), and friends helped us pack down at the end of the night before we went to Karaoke.

Our motivations and considerations

Our motivations in the wedding planning were likely different to most people. I had recently accepted a job offer to the United States and after receiving legal advice found it was best for our situation to marry. This would in turn make the visa situation much easier. We had floated the idea earlier when I was in the job interview phase. For us personally, marriage was never really a big issue, we always talked more about starting a family rather than marriage. But it has been a great move for us as a couple, now we’re ready to face the future in a new city. We had changed our minds along the way in regards to a wedding celebration. At one stage we were going to have a family only ceremony, and a big ‘going away’ party before we left, with a ‘full’ ceremony to occur sometime in the future upon return to Australia. In the end we decided to do it all at once and do it properly.

When we decided this, we discussed at a high level what we wanted our wedding to be like. We didn’t like the look of ‘traditional’ weddings, where everything is very white, elegant and perfect. Above all we wanted to celebrate our love and have a great party with family and friends. We didn’t want to break the bank either - far too many people end up significantly in debt before they’ve even started married life. We, and particularly I, despise the ‘wedding industry’. Every time we mentioned the word wedding, quotes would double. I get it because a lot of people want top tier service, but our needs were more modest. One of the key decisions we made here was to DIY food and drinks. We did a big shop at Dan Murphy’s and Coles for drinks, and ordered food from three of our favourite restaurants. We saw this being much better value than $100 per head for dry chicken breast or steak, with set wine brands (how boring). We also decided to lean heavily on family for help setting up, this helped us greatly with being able to have a modest venue set up the way we wanted.

Don’t die in Victoria

The visa process and paperwork in general really put a timing squeeze on everything that needed to happen. Amongst a larger effort to organise visa, finish my masters and take some holidays, it quickly became apparent that the wedding timing was the most critical factor. It turns out that the state of Victoria is not a very good state to get married quickly. If you are in a real rush I would suggest scoping out other states (seriously). You will be working with BDM (Births Deaths Marriages), a bureaucracy that proudly scores 1.4 on google reviews with several thousand reviewers. It’s important not to die in Victoria so your loved ones won’t hate you after experiencing BDM.

You may want to skip this section, it’s seriously just a whinge. Do read if you’re in a rush to get your certificate.

First you need to fill out a NOIM (Notice of Intent to Marry) form, which must be submitted and received by BDM (Births Deaths Marriages Victoria) 30 days before the ceremony. Following the ceremony it take ’25 business days’ to get your official certificate issued from when you apply for it. You’ll need to wait a few days to apply for it to ensure the ceremony is recorded in their systems. Having our ceremony at The Old Treasury building which is run by BDM with a BDM celebrant helped us smooth some of the paperwork. It was faster to apply for the certificate and easy to work with the NOIM. It also appears that celebrants can be quite expensive and book out easily. Now, it turns out BDM do have a priority service which costs $125 and turns around in ‘5 business days’. The reason I keep using quotes here is because these indicate their estimates, in both cases you can expect to double these times.

In our case, we got priority service by appealing to the celebrant and bringing proof of our upcoming visa appointment. This was followed by a visit to BDM that took three hours of waiting, just to apply for the certificate. Five days came and went and I started getting nervous so I started calling their call centre. Bad idea - their call centre is constantly busy, to the point where after 30 minutes it automatically routes you to an ‘overflow’ centre. This overflow centre has no database connections to BDM, thus no way to actually check status or do anything at all. They will raise it as a ‘case’, not give you any receipt number, and no call back will eventuate. I later found a second phone number which is intended for people overseas - this number actually gets you through to the right people (with no wait time). This is when my request started to get traction and we received the certificate a total of two and a half weeks after the marriage, with a week to spare from the visa interview.

Some extra wishes and things that went well

The whole day was lovely and exceeded our expectations. On reflection there were a couple of things I wished we had done, and also some things that worked a lot better than expected. Consider taking the learnings from each of these.

• I wish we had more time for planning! Of course that wasn’t really possible in our situation. Interestingly it would have been the exact same amount of work, but more time would have allowed for more consideration particularly with theming and decorations.
• I wish we had more time at the venue! We were stuck with what we could get last minute and could only take on the venue from 4pm (finishing at 11pm). We took 2 hours to set up and kicked off at 6pm. Time goes so quickly on the day that I wish we had more time at the venue so we could have set up in the morning and had more reception time.
• It would have been better to keep the party hire simple - less fairy lights and wine barrels (which weren’t really used). This could have saved some time and money.
• One of the main regrets is I wish we had a bigger guest list. Leading up to the day I started wishing I had invited certain people. The cost per head doesn’t increase that much with this method of organising the wedding so for a few hundred more dollars on food and drink we may have been able to have another 10 people.

There were several things that worked much better than expected, and would recommend that you consider these for your plans.

• Having our own food and drink was fantastic! We ordered food from our three favourite restaurants for take away, and then reheated and served using Bain Maries. Having our own food allowed us to insert a lot of character into the event, as they were our favourites. The places were already very familiar to most of our friends, so they loved it as well. By having three seperate places, we reduced risk of something going wrong and had much more variety. There was at least 15 different dishes available in the Bain Maries and it was a hit. Likewise having our own drinks meant we could custom choose all of the brands. We set our fathers to the task of selecting wines, and we ended up liking the process of choosing different beers so much we ended up buying a lot of 6 packs (as opposed to slabs). Guests loved being able to find their favourite and sample everything.
• People we generally very understanding (and forgiving) of the general chaos and madness that was the setup on the day. People appreciated that we didn’t have a lot of time to organise the event. Family and friends were also extremely helpful in the pack and cleanup at the end of the night. Having an afterparty to go to really helped with this as well, as there was something extra to look forward to, which leads me to…
• Karaoke. We organised a karaoke room in the city for an after party. There’s nothing like a room full of 20 people singing all the classics well drunk after celebrating the day.
• The theming and printing worked out really well. We took a lot of time to discuss the sort of theme we wanted. The effort paid off however, because our theme really came through in the invitations, placemats, flowers, decorations and feel for the day.
• We approached a photographer on Airtasker and his work was phenomenal. He worked so hard for us, didn’t break the bank and gave us so many memories of the day.
• The wedding planning was quite stressful and tested my partner and I at times. Although this one is both a negative and a positive, it was the joint challenge and learnings about each other’s styles and tastes that was a great experience.

The planning

This section onwards looks at what you should be looking to organise and how many weeks out from the event. You can use this as a checklist to see if you’ve covered everything. I would recommend replacing the word ‘week’ with ‘month’ for some of these if you have the time.

5 weeks out

• Budget
• Approximate guestlist size, initial save the dates
• Book ceremony
• NOIM
• Book venue
• Party permit
• Theme

Two of the most important things off the bat is to decide on a rough budget and guest list size. These two questions are very related. Do some research from articles and blogs (such as this one) as to how much you would be spending on parts of the wedding. Some weddings run as high as $30k without too many changes from ours. We were originally aiming for about $10k, but when we received a generous gift we decided to option up a few things.

Once you have your guest list size you can then make informed decisions about the sort of venue you want. Ours had a 100 person capacity but glad we had some breathing room. On the day it didn’t help that it was raining, because that cut down on the available space. We were limited in the guest list for the wedding ceremony at 45 people capacity, so we were already in a position to need to invite some people to the reception only.

Make sure to fill our your necessary paperwork such as the NOIM form, and if you hire a venue yourself, those forms and a part safe permit form (all very straightforward).

Theming is an important one to discuss early and discuss often. I have a history in advertising and marketing, so having a central concept for the theming of the wedding will help you have a strong consistent feel for the day. We liked the idea of a colourful affair, and by choosing some key colours it meant that we bought flowers and decorations to match. The theming also directly influenced our invitations and placemats. It even informed the dress code and messaging (Dress code: colourful - it’s a party!).

4 weeks before

• Propose
• Write draft of ceremonies / schedule
• Hiring
  • Photographer
  • Guitarist
  • Photobooth
  • PA
  • Airtaskers
  • Equipment
• Full guest list spreadsheet
• Save the dates, ask for addresses/email
• Solicit help from family
• Elect MC, MOH, speeches etc.
• Order wedding bands

Propose?? Yeah make sure you do that. Because we had to get moving on the bookings (and because I hadn’t found a good time to pop the question), we got this out a bit out of order.

You will want to start writing up a draft of the ceremonies and schedule for the evening early. It will focus your planning and help you feel comfortable having a plan. Our plan contained a lot of the details in this article, contact numbers, instructions for setup and duties. Many of the details will come later such as decoration and electrical plan. This plan will also inform the hire you might need for the occasion. We used a photographer, a Photobooth, an acoustic guitarist and two general helpers. We got many of these from airtasker and they worked out great. While you’ll need to book several of these weeks out, the equipment hire and PA can be researched online at this stage and ordered later. In the end our friends lent us a PA system to use for speeches (thanks Will!). In our case we hired lighting, Bain Maries, eskies for drinks, wine barrels and linens for tables.

You will want to start preparing the full guest list now. A google spreadsheet is the way to go, as you’ll need to record all kinds of details such as address, RSVPs, dietary requirements. This will eventually feed into your seating arrangements. Once this is established, start sending out general ‘save the dates’ for those you haven’t already discussed it with. Use this opportunity to ask for their address if you are going to mail out invitations (a bit old fashioned but I wanted to do it). It was a great chance for me to update all my phone contacts too.

At the same time as sending out save the dates, you will want to ask people for their help, either with setup or with duties on the day. Some duties may include being an MC (master of ceremonies), maids or groomsmen (we opted not to), and importantly speeches. Give people plenty of time to plan their speeches, let them know who else is speaking and the ordering.

Order your wedding bands - they can sometimes take a few weeks to arrive so do this early.

3 weeks before

• Vows and Reading, email celebrant
• Venue visit (scope bins, parking, outlets)
• Venue setup plans
  • Decorations
  • Electrical
  • Tables plan
  • Signage and bins
  • Welcoming area / areas
• Printing - invites, placemats, signage
• Send invitations

BDM had an additional requirement that we sent through our additional vows and readings 10 or 15 business days before so they could be vetted, so now is a good time to prepare them.

You’ll want to do one or two in person visits to the venue (if you haven’t already), and taking notes of certain things. In addition to taking lots of photos, you’ll want to draw up a map with some key information. Note down the location of electrical outlets, how you might hang fairy lights, where you might put additional lighting (if you’re not happy with the venue lighting), and where you might place signage. You’ll want to try setting up the tables to see how it all fits, and how to use the space. We were lucky that our venue came with 10 circle tables, 100 chairs and three additional rectangle tables which was perfect for our needs. We checked out the kitchen in great detail including turning on all equipment and filling the commercial dishwasher. We worked out how the heating/cooling for the venue worked. We noted how to access the bins. All this information will feed into a more detailed plan on how to set up the venue. We provided this along with instructions to our family to help us set up the venue. All in all we were very happy with the venue it was extremely functional.

You’ll want to finalise all the time and date details and get the invitations printed. They don’t take too long to produce, a day or two, nor are they too expensive, but it takes time to write out letters and mail. If you’re ready, you can print out other signage too. We elected to print placemats for the event. This had a photo of us, menu and drinks information, the reading from the ceremony and room for trivia as part of speeches.

2 weeks before

• Book Karaoke / after party
• Book family catchups
• Schedules
  • Photography schedule
  • Help on the day plans
  • Finalise ceremonies and schedule
• Music selection
• Venue arrangement
  • Table settings
  • Decoration design
  • Seating arrangements
  • Lighting
  • Wishing well
• Food
  • Place food orders
  • Desserts plan
• Purchases
  • KMART
  • Ikea
  • Booze
• Wet weather plans

This will be one of the busier weeks, so definitely do some more of this earlier if you can manage. Start with booking the after party (recommend Karaoke!). You’ll have family and friends coming in from out of town so make sure to allow time and bookings to meet up with them around the time of the wedding.

You may want to prepare a photography schedule and send it through to the photographer. It helps to have this, as if you plan out the photos you’ll get a sense of how long is needed, and what particular places you want photos taken. The photographer would also benefit from having a copy of the ceremonies and schedule so they know when to take breaks and when to snap important parts of the day. On that note, by now your ceremonies and schedule document should be fairly comprehensive by now and ready for sending to family and friends helping on the day. If you use hired help, it’s worths sending any relevant sections to them as well.

We opted to self-DJ the dancing part of the evening as we expected to get some requests. We also prepared music choices for the ceremony, discussed song choices with the acoustic guitarist.

You would want to start getting detailed on your venue arrangement utilising your notes and maps from earlier. It’s time to come up with the table seating list. More generally you’ll want to do lots of shopping and ideating for the decorations. Things like table centrepieces, napkins, games and confetti might pop up here. Create a lighting plan if you are so inclined. Our venue looked a heap better with uplighting rather than using their fluorescents.

If you have a wishing well, have a plan for how it looks and how you will transport it. As it’s quite valuable make sure someone keeps an eye on it and has a plan to lock in the car or at home later.

It’s also time to order the food, you may want to do this in person and talk to a manager. Arrange for someone to pick up the foods, we asked some family to pick it up after the ceremony. We came up with a desserts plan which was to uber eats some ice-cream and gelato, and provided those instructions to a family member.

There will be a lot of purchases especially for decorations. Kmart ended up being awesome for most of our decoration needs. I’d recommend hanging on to your receipts as we managed to return about $60 worth of unused unopened items. We did our booze and drinks shop in the week prior and had a lot of alcohol around the house for a week or so.

For cutlery, plates, glasses and glass centrepieces we ended up buying it all from Ikea. After looking at hire costs it worked out cheaper to buy new. We’ve since stored the equipment in family’s garage so its available for reuse for other occasions later (if you’re a mate hit me up and you can use it).

Prepare for the worst and come up with some wet weather plans. This may affect how you get to the venues, photography and how much space people have for mingling.

1 week before

• Last minute touches
• Clean the house
• Clean the garage
• Flowers
• Cake
• Pick up hire
• Van
• Try to relax and enjoy spending time with family and friends!

On the home stretch! As much as possible this week should be about relaxing and preparing the last minute things. There will be lots of family and friends arriving and it’s good to be able to catch up with them as much as possible.

Bri made our wedding cake (it was awesome!), so that was prepared in the day or two before the event. We also rented a van using car next door for cheap and used that to pick up the equipment hire.

Buy the flowers fresh - we got ours through a family member who is in the industry and took us to a wholesale market. This allowed us to save a packet and get really nice fresh flowers!

It’s worth cleaning up the house and the garage during this week. The house will already be littered with lots of stuff from preparing the wedding, so having it clean while guests come past and for your wedding day dressing preparations makes things a lot nicer. There will already be a tonne of stuff to do in the next few days.

Budget breakdown

Now for the solid figures! This will be very useful for anyone looking to benchmark and set expectations for what you’ll get for your dough.

Category Cost Description

• Cake -$99 Home made cake, ingredients and tins
• Ceremony -$643 Ceremony, celebrant and official certificate
• Crockery -$557 Ikea plates, cutlery, glasswear, centrepieces
• Decorations -$660 All sorts of stuff, there was a little wastage here
• Dress -$1,000 Bri's wedding dress
• Drinks -$1,584 Booze, soft drinks, sparkling water
• Entertainment -$968 Karaoke, guitarist Matt M from airtasker, highly recommended
• Flowers -$311 Flowers for centrepieces, corsages, bouquette
• Food -$1,743 Sichean House, Belles Chicken, Stalactites, Nibbles platters, Vegan options, Ice cream
• Help -$445 Two airtaskers to help with serving and cleanup
• Hire -$1,177 Bain Maries, linens, wine barrels, lighting, electricals, eskies (Can probably reduce some costs)
• Misc -$90 Extra stuffs
• Photobooth -$650 Big Day Little Booth, highly recommended
• Photographer -$600 Evan Sycamnias photography, highly recommended
• Rings -$1,000 Simple gold bands
• Signage -$526 Invitations, placemats, misc signage, postage
• Van -$765 Car next door hired van (includes a 550 damage to vehicle which is totally avoidable)
• Venue -$493 Venue hire after bond return

TOTAL -$13,311

If we had have avoided some damage to the vehicle, reduced our hire costs and were more accurate with decorations, we could have saved a further $1000 probably. But, our food and drink orders were spot on for 75 people.

Well that was quite a long write up probably and quite a long read. I hope you got something out of this and that we’ve helped you get some ideas and a checklist for your wedding. Make sure to send us an invite for your special day!