Every year, more than 400,000 French people get married.
But while celebrating your love can be very expensive, some do everything they can to lower the bill.
This is the case of Marine and Anthony, who opted for a “participative marriage”.
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Great wedding at a low price. If this association seems a priori contradictory, some couples do not hesitate to think outside the box to reduce the cost of the most beautiful day of their lives. However, sometimes this requires showing a little nerve. “By being well surrounded, we manage to reduce budgets”, summarized in the TF1 video at the top of this article Marine, who dreams of a grandiose wedding, with 400 guests, for a budget of… 14,000 euros. With her husband, Anthony, she therefore opted for a daring idea: to involve as many guests as possible in the organization of the big day. An event that the couple from Burgundy describes as “collaborative”.
“I really like living together, sharing things, I find that that’s what leaves us with the most memories,” explains this school teacher as the wedding approaches. Or how to combine business with pleasure to save money. “And since we have competent friends, that helps,” she laughs alongside Anthony, who is full of enthusiasm. “The big day goes by so quickly, we might as well prepare together with friends and family,” he believes.
Take as many loved ones on board as possible
Decoration of the room, preparation of the petits fours, alterations to the wedding dress, makeup, hairstyle… At all stages of the preparations, the couple requisitioned loved ones without spending anything. This was particularly the case on a Sunday morning, about a month before the wedding, when around ten of them showed up for a decoration workshop. “We’re going to have to form teams, we have a certain number of wine crates to sand and paint, a stepladder to sand too, tealight holders to bomb, and an arch to bomb in gold too”, she lists that day at the end of the table, before everyone sets about their task. “Fortunately they are all here, it creates a super positive energy,” rejoices Marine.
The material to be customized was almost all collected free of charge from Anthony’s clients or from friends, such as the tealight holders which were already used at a previous wedding. While all the decoration must be completed that evening, everything takes shape before the eyes of the participants throughout the day, from the candy bar made from an old sideboard, to the arch which will be covered in flowers on the day J, passing by the green wall made by the father of the bride and which will adorn the reception room.
3000 petit fours to cook between now and D-Day
For good reason: the theme chosen for the wedding is “plant-based.” However, there is no question of breaking the bank at a florist. Here again, the couple had a daring idea: to collect from friends, a bit as if they were using plants from a nurseryman that would beautify the reception area.
But it is not only in terms of decoration that Marine and Anthony can fully benefit from the dedication of their loved ones: the guests were subsequently again seriously requested, notably for a cooking workshop. To save themselves the cost of catering for the 400 guests present at the cocktail reception, the bride and groom implemented a strategy: having the petits fours made by their friends months in advance, and on an assembly line basis. “In total, we will need 3000 on the big day, we will just have to reheat because the week before we will have many other things to do so everything that can be done in advance, we plan,” says Marine. But it’s Patricia, the mother of the bride, who is most active in the kitchen. While waiting for the wedding, she dedicated an entire freezer to these thousands of bites in the barn at the bottom of the garden.
“It’s the wedding of our dreams”
For the reception, the couple chose a farmhouse that the owner occasionally rents for 600 euros, a reasonable rate but to which it would have been necessary to add the installation of a floating floor at more than 1000 euros. Anthony, boss of a construction company, therefore suggested that the latter pour a slab instead. Result: the rental company gave him the rental of the room. For the 18 tables and 180 chairs, a friend of Marine’s father who works in events lends them. And here again, relatives were there to unload the truck and set up the reception room on the eve of D-Day.
For this big day, there is no barber, hairdresser or makeup artist for the bride and groom: for this final stretch too, it is their loved ones who do everything. It’s Lucie, the witness’s little sister, a communications student, who does the bride’s makeup. “It’s not my job but it’s true that I love it, so it makes me very happy to do this for her wedding,” explains the young woman, while a makeup service costs on average 250 euros.
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What about the wedding dress? Here again, Marine benefited from an unbeatable plan. “I was basically looking for a second-hand dress, for the eco-responsible side, because it’s something you only wear once. And when I started looking, Margaux (the witness, editor’s note) said ‘I have a dress: I’m sure you’ll like it’“, she says, delighted, before continuing: “in fact it’s the dress she wore the day after her wedding.”
As soon as the ceremony is over, while the bride and groom are enjoying the reception, their little assistants get back to work. While Patricia, the bride’s mother, is back in the kitchen, their friends are serving the 3,000 petit fours made in recent months. It’s at 9 p.m., when the party is in full swing, that the bride and groom fully release the pressure. “It’s the wedding of our dreams,” says Anthony, while Marine adds: “it’s beyond our expectations (…) we managed to have a big wow effect by having a limited budget for the number of people there are.”
As a benchmark, each year, more than 400,000 French people say yes and the total budget for the event for 80 guests is 12,000 euros on average.
