If you set the time of your ceremony carefully, you can save quite a bit on food. Don’t set it so that the ceremony comes too close to a regular mealtime, and serve a variety of drinks, appetizers and desserts.

I second MissPinkKate’s advice to cut out anything you don’t actually need that isn’t important to you. Throwing bouquets, individual menu cards, corsages for third cousins…all of these things and dozens more are not actually required for a successful or attractive wedding, but they cost a bundle! Remember, if you’ve got a legally-acceptable partner, a marriage license, a recognized officiant (and in many places this can include your friend who got ordained online for free who doesn’t plan to charge for services rendered), and the minimum number of legal adult witnesses (two in most parts of the US), you’ve got a wedding. From there, anything is either a religious requirement, a social custom, or a personal choice. That means if you don’t want a special white gown, you don’t have to have one. If you don’t want rings, you don’t have to have them. If flowers make you sneeze, you’re fine without them.

That said, you’re probably going to buy some of the pretty extras, particularly if you’re having a significant number of guests. Buy as few as possible that say ‘wedding’ anywhere on them or their packaging. Once the word wedding appears, vendors know they can charge more for items like clothes, floral arrangements, chair covers, tablecloths, and ballpoint pens with big, honking feathers sticking out of them.

Don’t be afraid to go second hand. If someone you know has a leftover item in good repair from a wedding in their family they’d like to give or lend you, take a look at it and see if it will work for your wedding. If you find just the right thing at a consignment or thrift store or in a garage sale, go for it. You can save a lot of money, and if you choose carefully, it will be perfectly nice. If it embarrasses you, well, nobody has to know where you got that gorgeous gown or those adorable baskets you used for the centerpieces.

If you hire any professionals, make sure you read and completely understand the contract before signing. Fine print can cost you an arm and a leg and possibly a vital organ or two. If, however, a professional doesn’t offer a contract in reasonable time, RUN FOR THE HILLS AND DON’T LOOK BACK. A proper contract serves to protect both sides in any dispute. If there is no contract, you have little to no recourse if the vendor fails to come through for you or delivers something completely inadequate.

Know what you can and cannot do. If you think you might want to do a DIY project for your wedding, make it one that you already know how to do or do a test run to make sure you won’t waste a lot of time and money on a project you then have to outsource to a pro.

Most of all, let go of perfect. Your wedding day won’t be perfect no matter what you do, and trying to make it perfect adds huge amounts of stress to an already momentous occasion. If you keep it in perspective, it’s a lot easier to make intelligent choices and not second-guess yourself. Believe it or not, that can save you money.

We’re DIYing the usual – invitations, my dress, decor, music – and skipping or calling on our community of friends and family for the rest. A good friend who owns our favorite coffee shop is making our wedding pie at cost, we’ve found a new-to-weddings photographer through a friend, another friend will officiate, our favorite cafe is putting together affordable eats, and the city-owned lakeside lodge was cheap enough to rent for two days.

We’re also going to sub paper flowers for florist-provided ones and are incorporating food service into the centerpieces to make the non-floral decision thematic (to support our loose ‘lakeside picnic’ vibe) rather than budgetary.