Our $2000 Summer Camp Wedding

The Offbeat Bride: Sara, Educational Consultant and Obsessive Blogger

Her Offbeat Partner: Matt, Director of Sharing for a network of charter schools

Location & date of wedding: Sunshine Mountain Lodge in the mountains of Colorado — July 19, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat:We started the wedding planning process by declaring a strict and modest budget: $2,000 to be exact. We wanted our wedding to be about sincerity, authenticity, connection, and a celebration and proclamation of love and commitment. We didn't want it to be about monogrammed napkins and excessive amounts of fondant. In all honesty, we didn't want to let our wedding overshadow our relationship (and we needed to save money for the house we planned to buy four days after our wedding).

We purchased my wedding dress from the clearance rack at Target for a whopping $15 and set out to personalize it by embroidering the story of our life together along the bottom. Since our first date involved a frolic in the sprinklers, for example, we depicted two birds splashing around in a bird bath.

Further, I took some old fabric of mine and—with the help of internet tutorials—fashioned a matching sash for the wedding dress, a tie for my fiancé, and a bandanna for our dog.

We asked our friends and family to donate their old gold to the environmentally-friendly jeweler, greenKarat, so we could incorporate a piece of their history into ours. The company melted the donated gold, credited our account, and created new rings. Our invoice came to $157.

We gave up visions of a stacked cake with ultra-smooth icing and instead ordered seven small cakes from Whole Foods, we elected to use an iPod instead of a DJ, and we sent hand-painted postcards with personalized messages to each guest as an invitation.

We tried to be as environmentally conscious as possible by using biodegradable tableware, setting up several different composting bins during the reception, serving only hormone-free and free-range meat, making cloth napkins, relying on electronic Save the Dates, asking people to RSVP online, and sending postcards for our invitations.

We wrote our ceremony from scratch, which included a tree-planting ceremony and a quilt wrapping. We had asked friends and family to send us scraps of fabric before the wedding, and (again with the help of internet tutorials) crafted them into a quasi-log-cabin quilt. A friend of mine spent an hour before the ceremony collecting wildflowers for my bouquet, my best friend officiated the ceremony, and our dog was part of the wedding party.

The Knot advised: “The more guests feel involved with your wedding, the more likely they will have a great time.” Their advice for helping guests feel more involved — “Create a detailed ceremony program.” Well, we took the advice more literally. We asked our friends and family to serve as the photographers, caterers, hair stylists, DJs, bartenders, officiant, traffic directors, and videographers.

Our budget wedding planning culminated in a three-day extravaganza that felt a lot like summer camp. People arrived on Friday and enjoyed a Welcome Picnic, which featured a make-your-own-sandwich bar, lemonade, volleyball, board games, a hot-tub, and horseshoes. The fun continued with the ceremony on Saturday afternoon and a reception into the evening. Some guests amused themselves with ghost stories and s'mores around the campfire, while others got wild with the kegs on the dance floor.

Late in the evening, I traded my wedding dress for a bathing suit and soaked in the hot-tub with several of my closest friends.

The next day, as we all hung out around the breakfast table and people started leaving, I actually cried as I hugged my good friends and family goodbye. It was more than a wedding. It was a reunion. It was summer camp.

Our biggest challenge: The obvious answer would be that our biggest challenge was planning a three-day event for 80 people within a $2,000 budget.

The bigger challenge, honestly, was simply believing in ourselves. A self-catered reception and Welcome Picnic? A $15 dress? A ceremony written completely from scratch? During the planning process, certain friends and family scoffed at different elements (“What do you mean you're not going to do a traditional cake-cutting?” and “You seriously want me to help make salsa for 80 people?”). At times, it sounded crazy even to us.

However, we stuck to the path we had carved for ourselves and are definitely glad we took the road less traveled. It has made all the difference.

My favorite moment: Since we rented out the entire B&B and filled it with our closest friends and family, we were entitled to a homemade breakfast every morning from 8-10. We would stumble out of our cabin (I stayed in my pajamas) and make our way down to the main lodge. With a plate full of fresh fruit, warm scones, and frittata, we would settle into chairs on the patio and bask in the good food, good friends, and good conversation. It was such a relaxing start to every day and it ensured that we got to spend significant quality time with our friends and family.

Oh, there was also our surprise first dance. We assumed the traditional first-dance pose, but as soon as the music started (“Kiss” by Prince) the entire wedding party joined us on the dance floor and performed a choreographed dance. My brother-in-law even did a striptease during the free-style section and revealed hot-pink spandex under his suit.

My advice for other offbeat brides: If you can swing it, pay for it yourself. Because we took on the financial burden of paying for our whole wedding, we also reaped the benefits of making all the decisions ourselves. We could make sure that every detail represented who we are as a couple.

Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!: