Congratulations — you’re getting married! But for many, a wedding is a significant expenditure and can cost as much as a down payment or a brand new car — or even much, much more. Unfortunately, more than a quarter of all couples go into debt to pay for their wedding, but with the right approach you don’t have to be one of them.
It all starts with making your budget a priority. Figure out how much you have to work with, or how much you’re prepared to spend, and go from there. As long as you keep your budget in mind and you don’t splurge on the wrong things, you should be able to have a beautiful wedding without breaking the bank.
The best part is that the more money you save on an affordable wedding ceremony, the more money you and your partner will have as you start your new life together — money that can be used to buy a home or take a fabulous vacation somewhere. Even if your budget is small, you’d be surprised what you can do with a shoestring budget, and you won’t have to rob your savings or max out your credit cards to make it through the big day.
While an exotic destination wedding or a nice California beach ceremony sounds great, you better be ready to pay an arm and a leg. Not only will your venue, caterer and everything else cost significantly more in an exotic location, but you’ll also have to get there, which could run you thousands of dollars, to say nothing about what your friends and family will have to pay to travel and be there with you. Simply put, a local wedding is the quintessential affordable wedding — ceremony and all.
It’s not exactly common, but almost 10 percent of weddings are paid for entirely by the couple getting married. On the other hand, 10 percent of weddings are entirely paid for by someone else, whether it’s the couples parents or another relative. However, it’s the middle 80 percent of weddings that use a combination of contributors, which can be confusing to budget for until you know exactly how much you have to work with. But just because someone’s throwing in some money doesn’t mean they get to make a bunch of requests — you’re still trying to plan an affordable wedding ceremony, and it’s your job to keep everything in line.
Once you’ve figured out who the main stakeholders are, it’s time to create a budget. The budget will be your guiding principle, and about half of couples report staying on or under budget when it comes to their wedding. But it’s the other half that blow their budgets wide open that you’ll want to avoid emulating. A wedding ceremony on a budget is possible only if you’re committed, which is actually a great way to practice budgeting with your partner as you embark on your new life together.
Your old college roommate or friends from high school may be nice to see, but every single person you invite to your wedding will increase your costs. Not only do you need to find a place for them to sit, but you need to also feed them and create additional wedding favors and other items. If you invite too many people, you might also clip your venue’s capacity, which can quickly turn an affordable wedding ceremony into something much bigger if you need extra space or you have to switch venues.
You don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on your wedding dress or suit. Thrift stores carry tons of beautiful, vintage wedding dresses and interesting suits and tuxes that are sure to be a hit on your wedding day. Forget about getting the same dress and styles that everyone else uses — a thrift store find is a great way to rock that bespoke item that you won’t be able to find in a modern, big-box wedding store, and a professional tailor will be able to make it fit like it was made for you.
If you or a family member has that one-of-a-kind backyard or outdoor area, there’s no more affordable wedding ceremony than one where the venue didn’t cost a thing. You’ll probably have to do a bit more decorating to enhance the feel, but various wedding rental companies will have everything you need to get started for a small fee.
We all know that spring and late summer are the most popular times to get married, but if you shift your wedding to the off-season during the winter or late fall, you could save a bundle over an on-season wedding. The added benefit is that you won’t be competing with all the other couples for those prime wedding dates, which should make it easier — and cheaper — to lock down a venue.
Everyone gets married on a Saturday — for good reason, too. It avoids the workweek and after the wedding there’s a day for recuperation before everyone heads back to work. But if you book a Friday or Sunday, you could save a substantial amount with an affordable wedding ceremony that doesn’t take place on a Saturday. Like an off-season wedding, you’ll also find that it’s easier to book a venue and lock down your catering and other vendors when you’re flexible with your day. The same goes for weddings during the week, so if you and your guests can get away on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, you can save even more over a Friday or Sunday.
But by far the best way to have an affordable wedding is to have the ceremony and reception at the same venue. Instead of booking two different spaces — one for the ceremony and one for the reception — most wedding venues can actually pull double duty, saving you time and money when it comes to your wedding. It’s also much easier to plan a wedding ceremony and reception that happen at the same place, and you won’t have to pay two sets of staff to make sure the event goes off without a hitch — except, well, yours.
If you’re looking for an affordable wedding ceremony and reception area in Las Vegas, look no further than Occasions4.us. We’ve partnered with most luxurious golf course country clubs in and around the Las Vegas area to bring you an affordable weddings without compromises. We take care of everything, from the ceremony to reception and all the stuff in between, so you can concentrate on your big day, not pick up a second gig as a wedding planner. Learn more about how we can help you cut costs while still organizing a beautiful wedding to remember with a group of professionals that have seen and done it all. Check out our wedding packages and browse our photo gallery to get ideas for your big day.
The day you say, “I Do”- no matter whether it is your first or third marriage- is a special moment for you and your partner. We recognize that when it’s right, it’s right, no matter how many times it takes you to get there, or even here to Nevada where we will help to make your wedding day as perfect as your Mr., Mrs. or Mx. Right.
And even if your cold feet are presently questioning whether or not your partner is the one, because that happens, Nevada is the right place to take that kind of a gamble with its long history of making winners out of a single night out at the casinos. Not to mention, Nevada is one of the leading producers of gold, which makes a Nevada wedding sound promising when you are finally done searching for and ready to marry that heart of gold on your arm, surrounded by mountains and in the heart of the Mojave Desert. It truly doesn’t get much better than that.
Nevada is the quintessential wedding destination for either the earthy desert rose bohemian chic or sophisticated metropolitan atmospheres, and then everything in between these two vibes. This state offers a magnificently beautiful backdrop to your wedding with all it has to offer from its rugged mountains, like the Sierra Nevada mountain range, to its desert regions with waves of sand.
The Nevadan cities of Reno and Las Vegas offer a contrast to the natural landscape by providing a bustling urban and fancy paint-the-town-red vibe for a more cosmopolitan wedding. And between these two versions of Nevada, the natural one of mother nature and then the one created by humankind, you can find ample opportunities to create the most magnificent Nevada wedding experience of your dreams.
Another luxury of a Nevada wedding is the weather. It genuinely is an ideal place to plan your big event with little concern of it raining on your wedding day. Precipitation in the state is minimal, as one of the drier gems of the Mojave Desert. That is, unless you are at higher altitudes in the mountains where it is known to snow, offering a snowy wonderland backdrop for snow bunnies and ice queens of all varieties. Otherwise, the state is recognized as one of the driest, or rather arid, in the United States with a very low average of rainfall each year.
A Nevada wedding is not one that you, your partner or your guests will forget. It’s a special place that offers limitless possibilities for your big day.
At Occasions4.us, we can help you find the right Nevada wedding venue to match the one in your dreams. We recommend looking beyond the cities of Reno and Las Vegas and discover the wedding venues in Henderson, for example. Henderson is the second largest city in Nevada and is a part of the Las Vegas metropolitan area, making it convenient and affordable for travel. Henderson is a desert city that offers you the assurance of a hot desert climate, with scorching summers and mild winters to help you choose between an inside or outside wedding with certainty.
We are confident that our team delivers the best Henderson weddings to meet your wishes. We’ve learned that the best wedding venue Henderson has to offer is the one that meets your expectations and there is often more flexibility in making the match than simply looking at the venues’ specifications. One of the ways we help you find the right Nevada wedding venue is by listening closely to what you want from your ceremony and then making the stars align through the wedding venues near Henderson, NV.
While Nevada is home to the largest population of wild horses in the country, there is no way we’d let Nevada’s wild horses drag us away from planning and executing your dream wedding. Instead, they might even lead us to one of two venues with which we work in Henderson- Wildhorse Golf Club, which is considered one of the top courses in the region. It offers the richly deep greens of the golf course against the backdrop of the desert scape in which it is located. The club glitters with water features or hazards throughout the grounds, adding extra sparkle to your special day in the bright Nevada sun.
A Nevada golf course wedding is more than meets the eye, which is why we also work with the Legacy Golf Club in addition to the Wildhorse Golf Club. These two clubs provide the perfect setting to match the mood of Nevada for a wedding ceremony, and they are located in Henderson.
The Legacy Golf Club offers elegance in the Green Valley with park-like setting of the greens. It offers the immediate view of the rolling green velvet of the stunningly landscaped golf course and then is surrounded in the distance by the purple-tinged mountains against the open blue skies, making it a perfectly romantic setting to start your new life together with your partner.
Don’t let another day go by without booking your dream wedding venue in Henderson, the place where you get to create whatever mood you want in the perfect Nevada setting. The “Silver State” offers a lot with which to work because of its natural landscapes. The Henderson golf courses take the natural beauty of Nevada to a new level with manicured greens, and well-designed facades and features, but what is more are the little details that make your wedding day unique.
The love you share between you and your partner is only one of its kind, and it is our job to ensure your wedding ceremony embodies that distinctive devotion between the two of you. It is in that exclusive expression of love that we find the details to make your wedding the one of your dreams, exceeding your expectations.
We think a Henderson wedding is definitely a great start to making your wedding ceremony uniquely you.
Dreams come to life at weddings, which is why planning the perfect wedding for you and your partner is important. Many of us spend the first few decades of our lives looking forward to the day when we finally gather our friends, family and colleagues around to showcase the most beautiful romantic love we have come to find in our life.
Weddings truly are the most amazing form of show and tell for romantics. It is the one opportunity for you and your partner to transform into your best selves, by donning the most stunning attire with hair and/or makeup on point, in the most amazing venue with all the bells and whistles, and to congregate with a selectively hand-picked audience to proclaim your love for your partner and to have your partner tell everyone in your world that you are the one and only. It’s a day for you and your partner to recognize just how special each of you are, as the world around you pauses to stand and watch you walk down the aisle together into your happily-ever-after future.
At the start, it might feel overwhelming when you add up all the dollars attached to the things you have dreamt will make this day as special as it deserves. And it does add up, which is why it is important to take your time and think through what is most important to you on this day as well as for the rest of your life.
The best way to make a wedding even more special is to keep that energy going throughout the year and not just for the hours you’ve leased a venue. In doing that, it is thinking about how your wedding fits into the new life you are creating with your partner. In many cases, this is tied to your shared goals and visions. If you are wanting to buy a house to start having kids in the first year or two of marriage, that is just as much a part of your wedding day as what shoes you wear under your dress. Realizing that the wedding is one step in the process of reaching your dreams together as a couple, makes putting together a wedding budget much easier.
A wedding budget is a smart part of #couplegoals, which is why it is important to work out what your goals are as a couple before even starting the wedding budget. Once you have established your shared goals, you can create a 1-2 year or 5-year plan and accompanying budgets. In these shared life plan budgets, your wedding becomes a line item that can then become a budget of its own.
By thinking about your wedding budget in this way, it enables you to set intentions for and shift perspective on how a wedding fits into the rest of your lives together, enabling you to make smarter decisions with your finances. Some of the most beautiful weddings with an amazing and magical vibe are the ones that come to fruition from a tight budget. Ultimately it is about the experience and what everyone figuratively takes away with them.
One solution for couples looking to save money on their big day is a DIY wedding on a budget in Nevada.
Nevada is an idyllic place for weddings, because it offers the wonders of the desert and the beauty of the Sierra Nevada mountains, as well as the high-level energy and bright lights of Las Vegas and Reno. Nevada offers everything you need for most any kind of wedding you envision. Nevada has the highest marriage rate in the country at six times the national average, which means the state is obviously doing something right when it comes to tying the knot. That even includes saving money.
One way to keep your finances in check is to follow your budget wisely and plan a DIY wedding. Now, a DIY wedding doesn’t necessarily mean that you do every single thing on your own and from scratch. What it actually means is focusing on the shared intentions and goals you have with your partner and then artfully customizing your wedding to embody those intentions. Ultimately recognizing it is about showcasing your shared love in a financially minded and creative way.
An easy way to save money is to do your own hair and makeup on your own. Do your research on Pinterest to see what styles you like best and then seek out videos and tips from Instagram and YouTube on how to DIY wedding hairstyles that made it to your personal must try list. Start practicing early, and with time, patience and practice, it’ll be perfect for your wedding day.
Now one of the areas where you don’t want to be too tight on the budget is the photography, as you will want good photos for nostalgia. That is, you want to get a good photographer to come in and take some beautifully shot but standard photos; however, you can save money by not booking them the entire time and encourage your attendees to document the event. In most cases after your wedding, you will have what seems like a never-ending stream of photos that attendees took at your wedding. If you want to make sure you get certain shots, make it into a contest for your guests. Make a list of “Best of” photos that you and your partner will score the week after your wedding to announce the winners. These photos can then be used on your wedding website for everyone to see with calls outs to the winners.
There are a number of DIY wedding venues, or rather places to hold your wedding that are open to your customization and DIY plans. If you are planning a DIY wedding on a budget in Nevada, we recommend that you directly communicate what you want to the venue to make sure that they do not have set vendors from which to pick for your ceremony. Even if you do, check it out, it still might work out with what you have in mind to do yourself. Here’s a link to five of Southern Nevada’s Finest venues.
To help you stay organized, we have created a DIY wedding checklist that you can customize. We recommend that you start with the big picture and then break each one of those items down until you have small actionable tasks. There will be some items that as you break them down, they will become DIY projects while others will be passed on to primary and secondary vendors.
It all starts will setting shared intentions and goals with your partner and then working out a budget. Determine the overall wedding vibe and size, so you know where to start with the items we have listed below. Knowing how many friends and family are in your wedding party and how many guests you plan to have at the ceremony and reception will help you move along the checklist.
Checklist
For the rest of the rest of the checklist, you will do similar to location and break it down to actionable steps – making and attending appointments with vendors and then signing contracts. You will always need to go through this checklist to add updates and changes and then later to finalize the closer you get to the big day.
The big question to address as you move through the checklist is: To DIY or not DIY? We recommend doing a cost-benefit analysis of the DIYs in question to determine what is best. It might be advantageous to stick to hiring primary vendors and leaving what is normally handled by secondary vendors as possible DIY projects. Such projects do take time a lot of extra time and should be factored into your timeline and event schedule.
When it comes to your checklist consider it a process. Many of your items will not be checked of your main list until you are finally married. For example, you will need to keep checking in with your venue from the day you sign the contract until the day you pack out the last items from the wedding. All in all, a checklist can keep your wedding planning and sticking to your budget easy.
If you are looking to keep your DIY wedding planning simple, book an easy wedding with us today.
Planning the perfect wedding can be one of the most overwhelming but rewarding experiences of your life. The more time and energy that you put into planning your wedding is well worth the payoff having the ceremony run as beautifully as it does in your mind. When it comes time to select a venue for your upcoming wedding, Nevada has many different locations from which to choose, helping you plan the ceremony of your dreams. Discover our top six golf course wedding venues in Nevada to make those dreams come true.
Nevada is a popular destination for weddings, as the state has a significantly higher wedding rate than anywhere in the United States, which means many people have chosen to host their weddings at a venue in Nevada. The state is situated in the breathtakingly beautiful Mojave Desert, surrounded by mountain ranges, like the Sierra Nevada mountains. The state also offers the popular destinations of Las Vegas and Reno, which provide unique wedding experiences. While Las Vegas is a popular wedding destination, as depicted in pop culture and supported by the data, there are also popular locations offering golf course wedding venues, such as Henderson, Pahrump and Nipton.
The city of Henderson is located about 16 miles to the southeast of Las Vegas. It is home to the well-known Lake of Las Vegas, which is an artificially made lake. Henderson has been included on lists by Forbes and CNN as a city that ranks high for safest city and one of the best places to live. It’s home to two of our six best golf course wedding venues in Nevada.
1. The Legacy Golf Club Wedding Venue
The Legacy Golf Club is nicely nestled in Green Valley and offers one of the regions prized gold courses and park-like views. It is a wonderful place to host your wedding, with its beautiful golf greens, creating a backdrop of simple elegance and offering tranquility. It offers a beautiful clubhouse with a covered patio, providing both the opportunity to enjoy the desert sun and to take shelter as needed. There is a restaurant and bar onsite, adding to the convenience of the Legacy Gold Club as a wedding venue.
2. Wildhorse Golf Club Wedding Venue
Similar to the Legacy, the Wildhorse Golf Club offers guests the lush greens of a park-like setting in the middle of the Mojave Desert just 10 minutes outside of Las Vegas. The setting is designed to accommodate every occasion and especially the wedding of your dreams. It offers a restaurant and bar, along with a magnificent Grand Ballroom to hold your ceremony. Whether you want it indoor or outdoor, the Wildhorse Golf Club can accommodate you and your wedding party and up to 225 guests.
3. Las Vegas Wedding Venue
The city of Las Vegas is often referred to as the “marriage capital of the world,” due to its popularity among engaged couples. Las Vegas is often referenced in pop culture as the place to go when you are looking to get married with ease. The city offers all kinds of wedding ceremonies across the city with various different packages to keep it simple. If you are looking to keep your wedding planning in Las Vegas low-key but not necessarily drive-thru wedding style, the Spanish Trail Country Club and Aliante Golf Club are our favorite golf course venues in Las Vegas.
4. Spanish Trail Country Club Wedding Venue
The Spanish Trail Country Club offers both indoor and outdoor weddings to make the best of the desert sun but also providing an opportunity for reprieve as needed. The golf course’s greens are remarkable with the Sierra Nevada mountains on the horizon. The country club’s team are experts when it comes to helping you realize the wedding ceremony, wedding reception and rehearsal dinner of your dreams. The Spanish Trail is a luxurious place with natural beauty to host your big day in Las Vegas.
5. Aliante Golf Club Wedding Venue
While the Aliante Golf Club is on one hand known for its challenging 7,000 yards of gold, it also offers beautiful greens manicured to create interesting contours and angles for your game and eye, two stunning water features and a number of smartly designed Pear and Purple Locust trees to serve as the backdrop to your wedding day. The club offers award-winning chefs at its restaurant to help make your wedding ceremony or reception as elegant as you wish.
6. Wedding Venue Nipton
Nipton is an old mining town with new ties to the cannabis industry and located at the California-Nevada border. While we mention it in reference to wedding venues in Nevada, it is actually 2 miles across the Nevada line in California. The city of Nipton is about an hour drive from Las Vegas. The population is less than 20 people, which makes it a unique and peaceful place to host your wedding. It’s home to one of our five best golf course wedding venues in Nevada, or rather California.
7. Primm Valley Golf Club Wedding Venue
Primm Valley Golf Club is located at the Nevada state line in the old mining town of Nipton. It is a lovely location to host your wedding ceremony, wedding reception and other wedding events. Your guests can enjoy award-winning golf, the spa and gourmet chefs. From the clubhouse and manicured golf course set right up against the mountain range, it is a stunning location for your big day.
Check out one our six venues today! At Occasions4Us, we will help you book one of these amazing venues for your wedding.
It’s true that Las Vegas is sometimes called the wedding capital of the world. As many as 300 weddings are performed each day in Sin City, which adds up to about 10,000 weddings a month and around 120,000 weddings each year. Outnumbering locals nine to one, most of the couples getting married in Vegas are from other states, or even from around the world. But it’s not all drive-through weddings and Elvis impersonators in the world of Las Vegas wedding locations, and there are many elegant and affordable ways to tie the knot on and outside The Strip.
Before you can gather your closest friends and relatives at any Vegas venue and say, “I do,” you’ll need to obtain a marriage license. In Las Vegas, marriage licenses are issued daily at the Clark County Marriage Bureau located at 201 E. Clark Ave. Other offices are also open in Clark County that will process a marriage license, but it’s best to call ahead and ensure that the office will be open when you plan to arrive.
As long as you and your partner are 18 years of age and not related or currently married, you can get a marriage license in the state of Nevada. A birth certificate or passport and a Social Security number are all that’s needed to complete the application process, in addition to a small fee. Typically a license can be obtained the same day of the wedding ceremony, though you can apply up to a year prior to your ceremony. For minors or non-U.S. citizens, special paperwork or parental consent may be needed, so make sure to work out the details with the proper parties before heading to the Marriage Bureau. In general, it should take only about 10 minutes to fill out the required paperwork, but couples can save time by completing the forms at home before arriving.
With your marriage license in hand, a Las Vegas wedding is in your future. You’ll have up to one year to get married, and the marriage is only legal if it takes place in the state of Nevada. Once your wedding occurs, your marriage official must file a marriage certificate within 10 days of the ceremony, which allows you to order your certified marriage certificate from the state, thereby legalizing your marriage.
But with everything in order, where should you get married in Las Vegas?
In addition to the aforementioned drive-through weddings and Elvis look-alike witnesses and officiants, the possibilities of a Las Vegas wedding are almost limitless. If you’re on The Strip, no matter where you’re staying, chapels are everywhere, and any place without a chapel attached has relationships with an assortment of chapels in town. Downtown, small, little wedding chapels are a dime a dozen, and the many churches and synagogues in the region also perform wedding ceremonies. For the adventurous, helicopters, rooftop bars and other attractions can also help you tie the knot, or maybe a beautiful golf course or resort off The Strip is more your speed.
That said, the easiest place to get married in Vegas is at the Office of Civil Marriages, right next door to the Marriage Bureau. Seven days a week, couples can walk in or reserve a slot to be married as long as they bring a witness.
In the immediate vicinity of the Marriage Bureau are dozens of wedding chapels that dot the area, as well as more on The Strip. Since the 1950s, many of these chapels have seen countless celebrities, as well as tourists and locals, get hitched within their doors, or via a drive-through service. In 1977, the Graceland Wedding Chapel introduced the Elvis theme to a Vegas wedding ceremony, and Vegas weddings haven’t been the same since.
The oldest chapel in Las Vegas is the Little Church of the West, which opened in 1941, moving three times before landing in its final spot in 1996 due to the construction of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. In the movie “Viva Las Vegas,” Elvis Presley himself recited his vows with Ann-Margret at the Little Church of the West, where it received international attention by movie-goers.
If you live in Las Vegas, all of that surely sounds like a tourist trap, and you’d never think to invite your friends and family for a wedding night of binge drinking and hamming it up on The Strip. Instead, consider the refined relaxation of getting married right here in Vegas but worlds away from the cliché of The Strip.
They’re known as resort weddings, and from ceremony to reception, including all vendors and services you’ll need, you can have the wedding of your dreams while an alert and attentive staff makes it all happen behind the scenes. With affordable packages and countless personalization options, a unique wedding can be both fun to plan and kind to your budget.
With five fabulous venues in the Las Vegas Valley, including Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, and Primm, you’ll find the right venue for that dream wedding without the headache of wondering how you’ll pull it all off. Put your trust in Occasions4.us, and we’ll take care of the rest. From catering and drinks to decorations, photographers and the right baker to create your one-of-a-kind cake, our professional team of associates and vendors have the experience and know-how to ensure that your ceremony, reception and all the little moments in between go off without a hitch — well, outside of you two getting hitched!
From the Aliante and The Legacy to Primm Valley, Spanish Trail and Wildhorse, our beautiful clubs and resorts offer an innumerable number of experiences to happy couples looking for something less touristy or traditional in the Las Vegas area. Affordable and customizable, our wedding packages contain no surprises or hidden fees, and you can rest easy knowing that we’ll take care of it all so all you have to do is show up and enjoy yourself. It’s your big day — don’t spend it worrying about all the things that can go wrong. Book a Las Vegas wedding venue with us today and take that next step in your life. You deserve it, and we’ll help make it a reality.
