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In the last five decades, weddings have moved from a relatively simple affair with a small group of friends and family and a couple hundred dollars worth of expenditures to major high-strung luxurious occasions costing upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. The average wedding now costs just under $30,000, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can still have a relatively simple wedding for just a few thousand dollars. In fact, you can get a wedding dress for anywhere from $100 to $300 that looks quite nice.

Many brides are now paying anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500 for their wedding dress. On the real high end of things, some brides have even paid up to $35,000 for a designer dress! They buy these expensive dresses because they view their weddings as the most important day in their life and want everything to be just perfect. Many practical brides understand that your day can be amazing regardless of how much money they spend on a dress and other brides who have the false notion that they need to spend thousands of dollars on their dress would be wise to follow their lead. Most brides wear their dresses exactly once, there’s no reason to spend thousands of dollars on an article of clothing that will be worn for all of two or three hours once.

There are a number of retailers which are offering high quality wedding dresses for under $500.00. David’s Bridal and Filene’s Basement are two wedding outfitters that are selling wedding dresses in the range from $100 to $300. Some of the big-box retailers have even started offering dresses at very inexpensive prices. For example, Target, through their Isaac’s Bridal department, offer a number of wedding dresses, one even as low as $34.99 and a full 15 different dresses for under $199.00.

There are all sorts of other things that you can do when it comes to weddings to substantially cut back on the cost. Instead of having a big fancy reception, you can call in some favors from friends and family and provide food yourself in the church basement for a fraction of what you would pay for a caterer and a large reception. Other people don’t care how much money you spend, rather that they just have fun at a wedding! Remember, it’s not about the dress, the caterer, the reception, or anything else you buy, it’s about finding the right person to marry and celebrating that event. It should be an event of great excitement and joy, not of great amounts of money flowing from your bank account!