The average cost of weddings rises each year, like clockwork.
Zola’s Wedding Cost Index puts the average cost at $36,000 for 2026, while The Knot’s Real Wedding Study lists it slightly lower at $34,200.
Those numbers are high, but in reality, many couples are spending much more on their big days. Some have large guest lists, others want to splurge on flowers or decor, and many couples only have expensive venues available to them.
Some couples, though, are managing to pull off their dream weddings for less, like Hannah and Drew Williams.
Their intimate wedding cost a little over $21,000. Here’s how they did it.
Hannah Williams didn’t expect to meet the love of her life when she moved to a new city.
In 2022, Hannah, now a 29-year-old mental health therapist, was ready for a change. She had spent her entire life on the East Coast, growing up in Southampton, New York, and attending school in Boston and New York City.
“After grad school, after COVID, I was like, ‘Let me just try a new city,'” she told Business Insider. “I was like, ‘If I don’t leave now, I’ll never leave.'”
She decided to make a fresh start in Denver, telling herself she could always return home if it didn’t work out. Hannah only knew one person in Denver, a friend from college, who eagerly introduced her to the community he had built in the city in the spring of 2022. One of those people was Drew Williams.
“It was nice that I got to meet him organically,” Hannah said, adding that she quickly fell in love with how patient, thoughtful, and family-oriented Drew is.
By the fall of 2024, they were engaged.
They wanted their wedding to feel sentimental with retro touches.
Hannah and Drew agreed they wanted their wedding to feel intimate and personal.
“I’m very sentimental,” Hannah said. “Every single thing in our house has a story to it. So I really wanted every single thing to mean something.”
Hannah is also passionate about vintage and thrifted decor, so she hoped to buy as much of their decor secondhand as she could. That personalized, vintage aesthetic led the couple to a small wedding, as did Hannah’s thoughts on the planning process.
“I love big weddings,” Hannah said. “But I am so type A to a fault, and I knew it would not be a fun process for me to do a big wedding. There’s the seating chart of 300 people, the invitations, and all of this stuff. I knew that it would really take it out of me, so for our own benefit, I was like, ‘I think that a smaller wedding might be really nice.'”
They set their wedding date for September 19, 2025, and invited just 33 guests. They threw a more laid-back party with their friends in March 2026, so they still got to celebrate with everyone despite keeping their nuptials intimate.
“That was the best thing we could have done,” she said. “For me to put all the planning and detail into it that I wanted to do, I knew that a smaller wedding was going to be more our vibe.”
The Williamses set their budget after talking to their parents.
Hannah and Drew were prepared to pay for their wedding themselves if necessary.
“We probably both could have put in $10,000 each, so $20,000 was our budget,” Hannah said.
However, their parents were all happy to support their nuptials financially, so they didn’t have to spend as much of their own money.
“Our parents are all divorced, so we had four people that we were able to ask for money, which was helpful,” she said.
Each of their parents contributed $5,000 to their wedding fund for a total of $20,000. Hannah and Drew planned to rely on their parents’ money for most of the wedding budget, but they knew they had their own funds as backup.
They tied the knot in the Hamptons at a rental home.
The couple said their vows at a house Hannah said is a “stone’s throw away from” her childhood home in Southampton, New York.
They first considered getting married on the beach or at a park in town, but then Drew’s mom sent them the listing for the Vrbo she was planning to rent for the wedding weekend in Towd Point.
When Hannah and Drew saw photos of the property overlooking the bay, they were smitten. They received the Vrbo owner’s approval to host their wedding there, and the couple went out of their way to ensure the event wouldn’t disturb the neighboring homes, gifting them notes and bottles of wine.
Because Drew’s mother and her two siblings were staying at the Vrbo for the three days of the wedding weekend, the couple didn’t include the venue cost in their wedding budget, though it cost around $3,000.
The couple didn’t have a traditional wedding setup.
Rather than having a ceremony followed by a reception, Hannah and Drew decided to set aside two hours for their ceremony, using the first hour as a modified cocktail hour and then transitioning into the ceremony.
They provided drinks for their guests, which Hannah said was surprisingly affordable.
“We budgeted like $600 for the drinks, and it ended up being like $300,” she said.
They also provided a high-end charcuterie board that cost $400, though it was a gift for the day from Hannah’s mom rather than a part of their official wedding budget.
“My mom is so low-key, but there are a couple of things that she’s particular about,” she said. “It’s always the guest experience, and one of the things was food. I was like, ‘Someone can just put out charcuterie,’ and she was like, ‘Absolutely not. I don’t want anyone to deal with it, and I want people to be able to eat.'”
Hannah bought her gown secondhand.
Hannah tried on wedding gowns at several boutiques, but she soon found modern dresses weren’t speaking to her.
“They just didn’t feel like me,” she said. “I knew I wanted this kind of aged look.”
She ended up finding the perfect gown during a trip to Los Angeles at Transplant Vintage. The gown had a boat-style neckline, was cinched at the waist, flowed into a column-style skirt, and featured a patterned overlay that added dimension. Hannah loved the look and how comfortable it was.
The dress cost $800. Hannah paired it with a $60 veil and red heels for a fun pop of color.
Drew got a green suit for the wedding.
Drew isn’t very formal, so he wanted to find a suit that fit his style.
“We really wanted something that he was going to feel comfortable in,” Hannah said.
Drew ended up selecting a sage-green, linen suit from Indochino, which cost $750. Hannah said he’s already worn it again to three other weddings, making it well worth the cost.
Hannah thrifted as much of her wedding decor as possible.
Hannah is a passionate thrifter, and it was important to her that she could incorporate her love of secondhand pieces into her wedding. She spent months attending estate sales both in person and online on sites like estatesales.net and auctionninja.com, searching for the perfect decor.
“I purposefully started pretty much as soon as we got engaged because I wanted it to be fun for me,” Hannah said. “I was going at least once a week.”
She said she homed in on her vision for the decor with the help of Pinterest, so she could go to estate sales and search online with intention for everything from plates for dinner to decor pieces for the ceremony.
“I did blue cobalt glasses for dinner, so I would be Googling on eBay ‘blue cobalt glasses’ every day to see what was popping up,” she said. “Then, I would order it and send it to my mom’s house here in the Hamptons.”
She also thrifted furniture online to display the decor she got. The hutch for the glasses, a drink table, and a guest book table cost $30 together from Facebook Marketplace.
It took Hannah months to find all the decor she wanted.
Hannah kept track of her decor finds in a spreadsheet, ticking off each item as she shopped.
In addition to the multicolored glasses she found for their ceremony, she bought brass ice buckets to hold drinks, coordinating candlesticks, and picture frames. A few weeks before the wedding, she bought porcelain bells for guests to ring during the ceremony, and her mom spent $100 on ceremony chairs on Amazon.
Hannah slowly transferred the items she bought for the wedding from Denver to New York over the course of her engagement. Her mom also took items back with her after visits, and Hannah’s best friend took some of the pieces with her when she moved across the country.
The process was lengthy, but eventually, all of the decor made it to New York for the wedding.
The couple kept some of their decor after the wedding and resold other pieces.
In total, Hannah and Drew spent $1,200 on decor. Because they bought their decor instead of renting it, they had to figure out what to do with it after the wedding.
“We kept one or two things from every collection,” Hannah said. She kept one bell, a few brass pieces, and two goblets to display in her home. One is red to match her wedding shoes and nails, and the other is green to nod to Drew’s suit.
Mostly, though, Hannah’s mom has been reselling items on Facebook Marketplace so other people can use them, which has been a sweet process. For instance, the mother of a different bride ended up picking up the thrifted plates Hannah used for her reception.
“My mom was like, ‘Oh my God, this woman is picking it up for her daughter’s wedding. We were crying together,'” Hannah said.
The couple’s friends helped them ensure the day went smoothly.
The Williamses didn’t hire a wedding planner or day-of coordinator. Instead, they set up their wedding themselves with help from their friends, starting on Thursday for the Friday wedding.
“It’s very humid in the Hamptons, so you can’t just leave wood furniture outside,” Hannah said.
Because they practiced the setup on Thursday, they were able to put out all the decor quickly on Friday morning before Hannah got ready for the ceremony. Drew, his brother, and his friends helped, too.
Hannah’s friends, whom she described as “angels,” also did all the last-minute setup while the couple took photos before the festivities started, putting beverages on ice so the bride and groom didn’t have to worry about it.
Drew and Hannah wanted to invest in their photographer.
Hannah said that of all her vendors, she spent the most time researching photographers because she had a specific vision in mind. Film photography is one of Hannah’s hobbies, and because of her passion for it, she wanted to find a wedding photographer who fit the vibe she likes.
“That was something that I said, ‘I don’t care how much it is. If I find whoever I find that I like, that I vibe with, that is free on our day, there’s kind of no budget,’ and Drew totally got that,” Hannah said.
Luckily, she found Sara Anderson Davis, whose work was exactly what she was looking for. Davis’ service cost about $5,000 for the Williamses’ nuptials, and she provided a mix of film and digital shots.
Hannah said she couldn’t have been happier with the photos, especially because she thought she would have to spend more than $5,000 to get the kind of photos she wanted.
“She really overdelivered,” Hannah said of Davis.
The couple centered their guests during their ceremony.
Drew and Hannah said their vows privately before they got ready for the day, exchanging their promises to each other on the lawn of Hannah’s childhood home.
Drew’s brother Nick officiated their actual ceremony, which took place overlooking the bay. And although they didn’t exchange personal vows during the ceremony, the couple surprised their loved ones by saying “vows” to everyone in attendance. Hannah expressed her appreciation for Drew’s family and friends, recalling specific memories and voicing her thanks for their impact on her and Drew’s lives. Drew did the same for her people.
Hannah and Drew hosted their guests for dinner at one of their favorite restaurants.
The couple wasn’t interested in a traditional reception with dinner, dancing, and cake-cutting, and it was important to Hannah that the food be a standout at their nuptials.
“I didn’t want anyone to feel like they’re hungry,” she said. “I didn’t want anyone to feel like they can’t get what they want.”
Instead of having a traditional reception, the Williamses rented out a deck at Cowfish Restaurant, Hannah’s favorite restaurant in the Hamptons, for a three-hour meal.
The space had a retractable roof, which was open for much of the meal so they could enjoy the September night air. The couple sat with their friends, eating, gabbing, and drinking espresso martinis throughout the night. There was no dancing, but two of their friends gave speeches.
Hannah said she and Drew were happy to splurge on food to give their guests the best experience they could.
The dinner was the priciest aspect of the wedding, costing just over $8,700.
Flowers helped make the reception space pop.
Hannah and Drew decorated their reception space with some of the thrifted pieces she found for the day, along with an array of orange flowers.
Overall, they didn’t spend too much on flowers. Hannah had a bouquet for the ceremony, and the couple stuck to bud vases for the space, which saved them money, as did the fact that Hannah’s best friend worked at a flower nursery.
“She was able to get us a ton of flowers in bulk,” she said.
In total, the couple spent $1,000 on flowers.
Some of their favorite aspects of the wedding were the most affordable features.
Hannah said she went out of her way to look for affordable alternatives whenever she could to stretch the wedding budget. For instance, they only spent $60 on their invitations.
“We still loved it, and it felt like us, but we knew that, just like every invitation we get, it’s going to go in the garbage,” Hannah said of their invitations.
Likewise, the couple wanted video footage of their day, but they didn’t want to spend thousands on a videographer or content creator. Instead, they decided to buy a camcorder that their loved ones could pass around throughout the day.
“I searched on eBay and Mercari, and I found it for $50,” she said. The camcorder turned out to be one of their favorite features of the day.
“It’s literally the best seven minutes of my life,” Hannah said of the home wedding video they made with the footage their loved ones captured.
The couple’s wedding cost just over $21,000.
Hannah and Drew’s wedding total came in at $21,647. That cost doesn’t include a welcome clam bake they hosted the night before their nuptials, which was an additional $6,610.
The couple primarily used the money their families provided for the event, so the wedding wasn’t a financial strain on their personal bank accounts.
Hannah kept track of their spending in a spreadsheet, which helped them stay on budget as they planned.
Hannah would advise other engaged couples to take their time with wedding planning.
“Start early,” Hannah said when asked for advice for other engaged couples. “It prevents a lot of that last-minute crazy purchasing.”
“I can’t imagine how much more money I would have spent convenience-wise,” she added. “I think starting early and making it a long process and really spreading it out can make it so much more enjoyable.”
She’d also encourage couples to prioritize their vision for their wedding day, regardless of what other people in their lives may want.
For instance, Hannah said some people asked her why they weren’t invited to the wedding. She said those interactions could be “uncomfortable,” but at the end of the day, they didn’t matter because everyone she wanted to attend her wedding was there.
“I know obligations are hard with your parents, who might be spending money, who will want to say, ‘Can you do this or that?’ — but just get used to saying no,” she said.
“Do whatever you want,” she added. “It is your wedding.”
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