An Epic Wedding Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
Image by Katherine Stinnett
What makes a wedding truly epic and magical? Pinterest would have you believe that hand writing your table assignments on a vintage mirror and piling your tables with towering arrangements of fat peonies will be enough to wow your guests and make your wedding stand out. The wedding industry is huge—$50 Billion in the US alone—and the reality is that the aesthetic details bring in BIG money. Florals, paper goods, wedding attire, food, decor, and booze are all huge industries in their own right, and it’s easy to go down the rabbit hole of spending obscene amounts of money on these things when we believe they are necessary ingredients to creating an epic wedding.
We focus on the details because we know it’s something we can control, we believe it’s integral to making our wedding one for the ages, and trying to shape the way people feel can seem frustratingly esoteric and impossible if you’ve never done it before. The industry doesn’t want you to focus on the experience, because there’s no money in that. Of course you can easily spend thousands designing an unforgettable experience, but you can also do it with almost no budget at all if you have a great deal of intention and heart.
The experiences that stick with us, that we talk about, that have a profound and lasting impact on us, are ones where we are engaged emotionally and given a sense of purpose. They tap into something innately human, that reconnect us with the joy of being alive. There are four qualities that truly transformative experiences share, so keep them in mind as you plan your wedding day:
Generosity
Delivering a magical experience for your guests, one that makes them feel loved, delighted, and seen is an enormous gift and an expression of your appreciation for them. Designing your wedding from a place of generosity ensures your dearest friends and family will experience joy, surprise, and tenderness.
Location
Where people get married matters. The physical space sets the mood and determines how people behave. You are removing people from their daily lives by creating a magical alternate universe, free from the mundane every day, from work or routine, and the location does a lot of the heavy lifting of creating this experience.
Intimacy
Intimacy is a sense of closeness and affection, and it takes some creativity to build it into a large event with lots of people, but when experiences are created with intention and heart, your guests will feel a deep sense of gratitude and belonging. Gatherings designed for intimacy satisfy our very human craving for connection and meaning, especially in the face of increased isolation.
Engagement
Too often wedding guests are treated like passive observers rather than active participants, but the more people are given to do, the more they engage, and the more moving and transformative the experience of having been there. It feels risky to ask too much of our guests when we just want them to have a good time, but great experiences require active engagement.
As you can see, all of these four qualities can be met on literally any budget. You don’t have to go into debt or refinance your home just to have a dream wedding. If you can integrate all four of these qualities into your wedding day, I guarantee it will be one your guests won’t stop talking about. If you need some ideas for low-cost (and often even free) ways to inject some magic into your wedding day, check out our e-book 50 Tips & Ideas for a More Magical Wedding, or download a free excerpt of it here.
