Organising a multi-day wedding is a very tricky task, especially if you are on a budget.
What do you do? Where do you even start? The experience can be intimidating.
But let me tell you, if you are looking for answers (and hope), you are in the right place.
I photographed one of these weddings a few years ago and yes, I can confirm it was hard work.
I spent long hours shooting in multiple locations, and with so many people! But it was such an incredible experience which I’d do again.
Two years after the wedding, I asked the bride how did she manage to organise her multi-day wedding on a budget.
She took the task very seriously and explained to me every little secret. Because having a multi-day wedding on a budget is challenging, but still possible!
Imman and Sam decided to celebrate their love with a traditional Pakistani wedding.
Usually, the wedding events in Pakistan are done one day after the other. They usually start with the Haldi function and end with a Walima function. And according to the bride, Imman, “It can be a 5–6 day ordeal”.
Since every event is very meaningful, I’ll quickly explain their cultural significance and then reveal how Sam and Imman managed to keep everything on a low budget.
Haldi
The purpose of the Haldi has different significance depending on which region of Pakistan you are from, but the general concept is purification and cleansing of the body.
Haldi is turmeric and is mixed with yogurt or water to make a paste-like form which is then lathered onto the groom and bride during the ceremony.
This initiates the start of a wedding. Usually, the theme of the event is yellow.
Mehndi
Mehndi is usually the next scheduled event.
Here is where Mehndi, which is henna, is applied to the bride.
The mehndi traditionally comes from the groom’s family which is then applied to the bride’s hand.
They say that the darker the colour of the henna the more your mother-in-law loves you!
The Mehndi is the most energetic part of the wedding, with loads of dances.
Often pranks are done on the groom by the bride’s girls’ cousins and sisters, with the most popular prank being hiding the groom’s shoes.
To get his shoes back the groom must surrender money in exchange! The mehndi theme is pink, green, yellow, and orange, but you can incorporate all or just one colour for your mehndi event.
Nikkah
The Nikkah is the most important event of the wedding.
This is an Islamic celebration of marriage. Nikah ceremony often takes place in a mosque and the leader or imam of the mosque officiates the wedding.
The Nikkah legitimizes the relationship in front of God and it’s when the couple says, “I accept.”
For the Nikkah you must have two male witnesses that can witness and confirm that both the bride and the groom are willing to accept the wedding.
During the Nikkah the husband hands over the Mahr (obligatory gift) to the bride.
This is usually decided before the Nikkah ceremony takes place, and it’s often a sum of money given to the bride as security. This is a religious obligation.
Once the Mahr is given the father gives consent to give away his daughter to the groom.
Then the bride and groom are asked for their consent and both parties are asked three times and must accept three times before the Nikkah is finalised.
Rukhsati
This is not a reception, instead represents more a “sending off” after the Nikkah.
This takes place when the bride finally leaves her parents’ home and goes with the groom and his family to his house. This is a bride’s farewell to her family.
This ceremony also has the usual pranks and dances.
However, at the end of the event to bless and protect the couple, the Quran (holy book) is held by her brother over the bride’s head as she leaves the venue with her husband.
Walima
This is a reception. Sadly, Imman and Sam could not hold this event because Covid-19 hit and they couldn’t go to Pakistan to have this last event.
The Walima is an event held by the groom’s family to introduce the bride to their friends and family.
Organise a multi-day wedding on a budget
Imman and Sam organised 7 events for their wedding, one in Pakistan and 6 in Australia!
According to Imman, the first thing you need to decide when you organise a multi-day wedding on a budget is how many events you want to have.
It is custom to have a Mehndi, Nikkah, Rukhsati and Walima in the Pakistani culture.
However, nowadays it depends on the budget and personal preference.
The next thing you must work out is a budget. You must be strict with the budget because it can get very expensive in no time if you are not careful.
You need to allocate specific parts of the budget to specific things such as venue, food, hall décor etc.
To be able to allocate appropriate funds for each category you must do research…. a lot of research.
Once Imman had an overall wedding budget in mind, she was then able to look for her venue.
The venue
The venue is the first thing you tick off your list of things to do when you organise a multi-day wedding on a budget.
Because a venue is a big, ticketed item. During their research, Imman and Sam realised that many fancy and known venues are extremely overpriced and often don’t allow outsourcing catering.
Also, these venues usually want you to pay per person, and here in Perth, it can cost you between $200 to $250 per person, or more.
Imman and Sam had about 150 guests at their wedding, so it would have been extremely expensive for them to book one of these venues.
Therefore, they decided to go with an alternative route: they held their biggest function in a community hall.
Imman and Sam looked up every community hall in Perth and visited each community centre hall until they found the perfect one: the Mills park community centre.
This is an elegant venue and to them, did not feel like a community centre hall at all.
It is a recent build, so it is a modern building surrounded by a beautiful park. Plus, they charge you by the hour which comes down to a much cheaper price.
Since they saved a lot on the venue, the couple could spend more on food and décor.
For all the other smaller events, Imman and Sam hosted them in their house and at her aunt’s house. This saved them from having to pay for a venue, plus they kept the events intimate with close family and friends.
The decorator
The next problem was finding an affordable decorator for the hall.
In this case, Pinterest was Imman and Sam’s best friend.
They used the image platform to find inspiration for the décor style they were looking for.
Imman then went online and searched for small wedding décor vendors, because they are cheaper to hire as compared to larger wedding companies.
Imman and Sam even tried to source a bigger wedding company, however, it did not work out very well. Because of their small budget, they were turned away by all the bigger vendors.
They were aware that a $1000 budget for the décor was an extremely low budget, but this is what they had and they had to make it work.
After hours spent researching, Imman managed to find a woman who runs a wedding and events hire business.
She quoted Imman for everything she wanted within her budget, and all her items were modern and elegant.
Do It Yourself
For all the other small events which they hosted in the mosque and at home, Imman and Sam did a lot of DIY décors.
They used the Facebook marketplace and eBay to find everything they needed. Then, they learned from YouTube how to do DIY wedding décor. Imman even went to Bunnings and bought PVC pipes and with the help of her father-in-law, she was able to build a couple of easy free-standing arbours.
They also borrowed décor items from some friends who had bought their wedding décor from Pakistan.
Lastly, they used material from Spotlight and sowed them to fit them onto the arbour.
There was a lot of DIY projects done for the Haldi and Mehndi function as well. It took them four months to organise and do up all my DIY projects, but it was so worth it.
At the end of the day, it cost Imman and Sam half of what a normal vendor would have charged. And the decors looked amazing!
The videographer
Imman and Sam admit that they weren’t really into wanting a fancy video. Although that is very nice, they knew they wanted someone to just film the whole event as it happened.
They also knew they wanted only a couple of events filmed, those being the Nikkah and Rukhsati.
Imman and Sam were also looking for someone that could provide raw footage of the whole event because they did not want snippets of footage that the videographer deemed fit to make a trailer out of. And they also didn’t just want a 1-hour video of a five-plus hours event.
These were difficult specifications because videographers will charge you extra for wanting all the raw footage. And they also charge extra for each extra hour you want.
Considering how many events they were going to host, it was going to cost them nearly $8000. And they simply could not afford it.
Their budget for the video was about $1000, therefore they tried their luck on Gumtree. And they got lucky! Imman found someone who posted an ad for her on a film school page with her specifications and her budget.
Anyone interested could contact her. Surprisingly, she got over 30 people to contact her and she picked one based on the sample work they sent her of the previous weddings they had shot.
In the end, Imman and Sam were happy with their wedding video. They were given all the raw footage of almost 10 hours’ worth of videoing, plus a wedding trailer.
The photographer
Because they had cut the cost on all the rest, Imman and Sam were ready to spend more on a photographer.
Each event they had was almost 3-4 hours long, and they wanted someone to be constantly taking pictures during the whole event, not just moments.
Imman got in touch with about 15 photographers on Instagram, but her search wasn’t fruitful. All the photographers quoted her $200 an hour, with a limit of photos they took and limitations on how many photos she could pick.
They found this frustrating because they didn’t want to be paying someone only to have limitations on their photos.
Imman decided to give up with Instagram and look for someone on Gumtree.
According to Imman, “this was a godsend that I found Enrico because Gumtree is such a dodgy place to find someone authentic. But as I said it was a miracle, I found Enrico and he took the time to meet us, discuss the importance of each event with us and gave me no limitations on the number of pictures I wanted.”
“I always say that the best part of my wedding is all the amazing pictures I have from Enrico. He became the favourite at my wedding among my family and friends. He spent 4 hours of my Rukhsati function on his knees taking a million photos. I loved that he took the time to visit the venue beforehand to make sure if he needed extra lighting, he had it on the day instead of me receiving bad pictures later because of the bad lighting.”
I must admit when I read these words I got a bit emotional…Imman and Sam, you are amazing!
The DJ
As with all the other vendors, DJs can be very expensive, therefore Imman and Sam only hired a DJ for their event.
A DJ usually bundles speakers, microphones, consoles and lightning in a single package. Although there are a lot of cheap options for a DJ, Imman and Sam would recommend hiring a DJ from a company because it removes the stress of your DJ being inexperienced and ruining your party.
They have heard a lot of horror stories about DJs, which is why they didn’t even try to look for someone super cheap and opted for a company instead.
But for her in-house events, they simply paid for Spotify premium and used a soundbar as speakers and played their favourite playlist. Easy as!
The Catering
Imman and Sam opted to have traditional Pakistani food in a buffet style. So they were able to contact different family friends who ran restaurants and catered to weddings to host their events.
The benefit of doing this is that you get food servers sent with the food by the restaurant. And you don’t even have to hire buffet stations either since the restaurant is already equipped with everything you need.
They had no alcohol at their wedding so that cut costs a lot, and they simply bought drinks from the supermarket.
Instead of buying cutlery such as plates, spoons, glasses etc, Imman suggests hiring them because it’s way cheaper. It cost them about $300 to hire all those items for 150 people guests.
Hiring waiters can also be very expensive. But as with everything else, Imman and Sam found a cheaper way.
They contacted a local Tafe who taught a Diploma in Hospitality and Management because they often need experience in serving as part of their course.
Therefore, they enquired about needing a couple of wait staff and asked them to give them a reasonable amount of wait staff for a certain price. It turned out to be cheaper than hiring a professional wait staff team. And the staff was amazing and did a great job during the night!
Bridesmaid’s dresses and MUA
When you organise a multi-day wedding on a budget, every little details matter.
Regarding the Bridesmaid’s dresses, Imman does not recommend paying for them yourself as this can become so expensive.
She gave her bridesmaids a colour and a dress style that they had to comply with, and they went out and found their dresses.
Surprisingly, they all ended up looking like she had coordinated their dresses! Instead, they had bought their dresses from different online stores.
This helped her keep the cost down and let the bridesmaids find a dress that fit their body shape better and something they were comfortable with. She also went on eBay and bought silk robes for each of them.
Imman tried to contact people on Instagram who do custom made robes, but they were so expensive.
Instead, she found good silk robes with “bridesmaid” written on the back for all of them on eBay, for half the price.
For her makeup and hair, Imman got smart and did not tell the MUA that she was a bride.
She purchased a party makeup package for all her events, and she honestly doesn’t think there was any difference in makeup aside from the label “bride”. This way, Imman managed to save a lot of money!
She also asked her bridesmaid and family to organise their makeup and hair person.
When it comes to family and friends, Imman is pretty clear: “Do not feel obliged to pay for everything for everyone.
There is no harm in asking family and bridesmaids to bear their costs.”
To sum it up
Imman and Sam saved a lot of money by organising so many events this way. And the great thing is that they could spend more on a great honeymoon.
You don’t need a lot of money to organise a multi-day wedding on a budget. Especially if you are smart with how you spend your money.
They had a total of $6000 budget for their Rukhsati event only in which they paid for a: videographer, photographer, cutlery for 150 people, drinks, DJ, venue cost, decorator and wait staff.
They admit catering for food was one expense that they did not have to worry about as Imman’s father was so nice to cover us for that.
But even with food and alcohol, you can hold a nice reception within a $7000-$8000 budget or even less.
So the top tip here is that you need to start hunting for good deals on everything early on. And have a diary to keep track of everything! Software like Microsoft Excel will be your best friend when budgeting for a wedding.
Because it can get chaotic and you cannot mess up your calculations for anything.
You also must have self-control when looking for things, it is easy to get lost in the glamour of things. But you must remember your initial budget and stick to it.
At the end of the day, a wedding is all about having the people who love you close to you on your special day. All the rest is superficial.
If you need to organise a multi-day wedding on a budget, I hope this article will help you! With a little bit of effort and creativity, everything can be achieved.
