Budget Wedding Tips - Part 6: Wedding Attire for Bridal Party

Bridal Party Attire


Before we got engaged, I hadn't really been in a bridal party, but I had girlfriends who had, and heard about how much energy and $$ went into being a part of someone's wedding.
Although there's nothing particularly wrong with this, I felt uncomfortable asking my sister and 2 of my best girlfriends to shell out a lot of money to be in our wedding.


So I set about thinking of ways to make it as easy as possible for them.


The Girls:

My Gorgeous Bridesmaids

I gave up early on the notion that we'd make something they could wear again.. does anyone actually wear bridesmaid dresses again?
I asked each one individually how they would feel about wearing something strapless, and they had no concerns or objections, so I found a two piece pattern and we all talked about colours.  The only one they hated was pink.  After settling on cherry red, we went shopping and found some great looking affordable fabric at Spotlight.


I made two of the outfits and one of the girls made her own as she sews too.
I sourced cute little belt buckles from eBay and we made faux belts; and I found red chiffon and made wraps for the girls too.  
I happened upon 3 pairs of gold sandles for next to nothing and after finding out their sizes nabbed these too.  All in all, each of the girls paid $50 for their whole outfit, and I found great little gifts of gorgeous diamante earrings on eBay and gift wrapped them.  The necklaces were from a great little bead shop in Melbourne Central and were on sale 3 for $10.


When it came to hair and makeup, I had a hair/makeup lady come to the house on the morning of the wedding, but gave the girls the option to use her too, or to do their own, so that they weren't paying lots of $ for this if it wasn't what they wanted to do.


The Guys:

Our Groomsmen

Similarly to the girls, we didn't feel comfortable asking the guys to pay in excess of $300 to hire suits, so just asked them to wear a dark coloured suit they already owned with a white shirt {they weren't even all black, but it didn't matter}.
I found great matching ties and cufflink sets on eBay with bright red and orange, and won 3 of them and we gave them to the guys as a gift and to wear on the day.
Easy Peasy.


I think one of them was wearing a dark green suit, but you wouldn't even know, because when they were wearing the ties, they just looked like they all matched.