Jen Wood and David Hall walk their dogs at a local mountain bike trail in Rossland, B.C. The couple put on a DIY wedding that involved mountain biking for $5,000.Salmaan Farooqui/The Globe and Mail
Jen Wood never cared to have a traditional wedding, but she was sick of being asked when she and her partner would get married. So she came up with a solution: She’d give a bit of money to a close friend, get her to organize an event, and make it clear there were no real expectations to meet.
“We just gave her a budget of $5,000 and told her to roll with it,” said Ms. Wood, who lives in the small mountain community of Rossland, B.C.
“We really didn’t care what it was; we had low expectations.”
Despite those expectations, the end result was intimate and exactly what Ms. Wood and her partner wanted.
Their friend found a rustic shed on unused land near their outdoorsy B.C. community, where they held a quick ceremony with 50 people, before about 30 of them went mountain biking on local trails. Then, the whole party went to a nearby pub, where they rented out the venue for a buffet-style meal.
“Everyone had a great time, and said, ‘This is so different!’ ” said Ms. Wood.
More couples are looking to do-it-yourself alternatives to traditional weddings now that the industry has been overwhelmed by a surge of bookings in the first summer free of pandemic restrictions. Earlier this year, wedding planners said some caterers were charging roughly 25 per cent more as a result of surging demand, inflation and labour challenges. Other vendors, such as florists, were quoting more than double their prepandemic rates.
Maria Chi, the lead planner with Toronto-based wedding planning firm Peppermint & Co., said the increasing cost of traditional weddings is one reason more people are looking at alternatives.
She said a wealth of information online, on platforms such as Pinterest and other marketplaces that let people buy wedding goods and services at wholesale prices, are further enabling couples to use DIY methods for their weddings.
Couples booking weddings as COVID-19 restrictions ease face skyrocketing prices from vendors
“They feel more empowered to do this,” said Ms. Chi, who noted that while price is a factor in the decision, there’s also a sense of pride that comes from DIY.
“Now they can say, yeah, we created that. It’s something they’re proud of to say.”
Global search engine research by the British-based party supplier Ginger Ray shows there’s an increasing desire for alternate ways of celebrating a marriage, with searches for “micro-weddings” increasing by 519 per cent from 2019 to 2022, and for cheaper “alternative wedding cake ideas” up by 129 per cent. The study also noted people are looking at food trucks as a casual and cost-effective way to cater their wedding.
In Eastern Ontario, Kelsey Young also went the DIY route and planned a 130-person wedding in her aunt’s backyard, with a $16,000 budget this month.
They borrowed whatever items they could, sourced lights from family members, and organized local community caterers near their reception in Cornwall, Ont. They even grew their own flowers and crafted table centrepieces from herbs from her own garden.
“Anything that was decor-related, we were able to source and bring in ourselves and kind of make it our own,” said Ms. Young, who said the current environment of rising prices in the wedding industry drove her to be as independent as possible.
“We knew we’d be competing with a lot of folks who pushed their weddings forward because of COVID, so we wanted to make sure that we were reasonable and not paying a down payment’s worth of wedding prices.”
One thing Ms. Young, Ms. Chi and Ms. Wood all agree on, however, is that a DIY wedding is only possible with immense help from friends and family.
“You can calculate cost, but you can’t calculate time and stress,” said Ms. Chi, who warned that anyone going the DIY route should be prepared for the heavy workload involved.
In Ms. Wood’s case, the onus was all on a good friend to set up their simple celebration. She thanked her by buying a fire-feature table for her patio as a gift.
For Ms. Young, setting up the event took days of preparations with intensive help from three bridesmaids and her husband’s family.
“You’re saving money, but it means you need a really solid group of people to put everything together,” said Ms. Young.
There can be benefits for the guests, too, since the expectations around dress codes or wedding gifts aren’t as rigid. Ms. Wood specifically instructed guests not to provide a gift, since their celebration was meant to be low-cost.
Ms. Wood, an avid mountain biker, said the couple might celebrate how cheap their wedding was by buying a new bike. Ms. Young said she plans to use the money she saved to build a fence in her new backyard.
“The fence will cost more than our wedding,” said Ms. Young with a laugh.
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