Here I am as a frugal adult!
As I finished university, the owner of an esthetician’s school and spa, offered me lower tuition to study for an esthetician’s license and certification. This was ideal as I could learn the tricks of the trade and get complimentary facials and treatments that I had to pay for originally! She was hoping that I would work for her afterwards as she could see that I had the skills already….
Incidentally, after I recieved my certification, she decided to do move and I continued to work as a nutritionist. However, I still continued do my nails and for my family and friends…
I also continued to play with cosmetics and skincare…..
Getting Married
Even as a child, I knew I wanted to getting married. I had no ideal or fantasies about marriage…. I viewed it as the “graveyard of love”. But I knew I wanted to go through it, despite seeing so many failed marriages around me as I grew up. Staying together didn’t mean happiness, separating wasn’t also a bad thing…..
Anyway, in my senior year of high school, i had taken a course called Family Psychology. Each student had to plan their own wedding as a project. I was determined to plan the cheapest and most frugal one, but still had all the bells and whistles.
As a group of 17 year olds, I was surprised that all those wedding gown shops and jewelry shops were so kind to us! Perhaps it was because I was extremely serious about all my inquiries. Naturally, our group achieved a very high mark for our research.
🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫
Ten years later, I was able to follow most of the notes in my high school wedding planner.
The most frugal accomplishment I did was to sew my own wedding gown:
- I picked up a simple evening gown sewing pattern and redesigned it to suit my style.
- I added a design on the bodice, gown and train for my aunt to hand-bead with beads (she enjoyed doing this herself).
- I also sewed and redesigned my veil too!
Throughout the whole wedding planning, I did a lot of bargaining and loved it!
The wedding cake was not a real cake, it was a fake one that the baker lent to me for free. I had ordered a nice giant slab of groom’s cake for the restaurant to serve. There was one spot where I could cut into for photos.
For my flowers, I ordered most of my flowers from my friend, who was running a small business of artificial floral arrangements. Some of these gorgeous artificial flowers were also on the wedding cake as decorations.
The best part was that our bouquets were lightweight as they did not need any oasis to keep the flowers moist. The whole day was around 35 degrees Celsius, which was very hot!
Overall, because of the intense bargaining and my super frugal ways, we actually had money to fund for the small honeymoon to Thailand. Thailand wasn’t my ideal, but I decided to settle for that back then. Europe had to wait…which I did go after ten years later…..
We decided to marry with just 3 weeks notice, in a registry office, and only told one friend each, so they could act as witnesses! Even our parents did not know until afterwards!
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That’s awesome too!!!
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Wow, those are some valuable skills. I can’t sew to save my life. I know nothing about beauty products or skincare. I depend too much on others when it comes to these things. You are one amazing lady. ❤
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Thank you 🙏
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You’re most welcome 😊
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This is a fun high school project. It is great you could use your notes later as you really planned your wedding.
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Yes!
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The idea of fake wedding cake has literally never crossed my mind. I wonder how many of the almost 50 weddings I’ve been to had a fake display cake?
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The fact that not many can tell usually…
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I know for sure that not every cake I’ve ever seen at a wedding reception has been fake, because I’ve seen them cut and serve the actual display cake before.
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It’s a trick our baker told us to save money….$200 vs $900!
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Makes sense to me! One of my friends from Jeromeville (I haven’t met him yet in my story) was in a place where he had to save money, so they set a limit for their entire wedding for $5000… I don’t remember what they did for the cake.
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the advantages of being frugal!
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My husband and I spent like $250 on our wedding including the justice of the peace and marriage license. Lol
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Awesome awesome!!
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Wow! I literally only had 4 months to plan my wedding. I assigned tasks to the family members who wanted them. We purposely left some stuff out of our wedding (no honeymoon, no open bar since it was a morning wedding, no DJ since I don’t like loud noises and again morning wedding with lunch buffet). Everything turned out really lovely despite the time crunch, and we managed to save a lot of money by only including the stuff we wanted.
In the end, our wedding cost us a grand total of approx. 21K, even though my wedding dress was 2K. Some people might say this is pricy, but it was a really beautiful wedding, and everything included in our wedding sparked joy. My favorite thing was the cupcake tier cake! It’s exactly what I wanted. (Cupcakes with a small cake on the top). 🧁💕 So yes, it’s totally possible to be frugal and classy without being cheap.
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Absolutely!!! We bought our our alcohol and because we knew the owners, paid very little Corking fee….
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That’s awesome! 😀 It’s great that you have connections and know a lot of people. 🎉🥂 Ironically, despite not having an open bar, we ended up with leftover bottles of wine lol
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Leftovers are awesome!!!
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🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷
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What a great achievement to sew your own wedding gown 😊
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Yes, my mom thought I was nuts! Lol!
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That’s so amazing you got to design your wedding in high school and then make your design come to life! And your pictures look so lovely! 😊👍
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Thank you 🙏
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Waoh!. You deserve an high five. And still looked all great. 🤗
How was the honeymoon visit to Thailand? The experience there compared to reviews online 😊
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Thanks!!! Honeymoon was a long time ago way before social media was so prominent… :p
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You are welcome. 🤗
Okay ma’am. Yes that is true. 🙂
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Oh that’s so awesome! You made your dress!?! Go you!
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Thx!
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