The Ultimate Guide to a Boho Glam Wedding on a Budget

Last Updated on February 27, 2025 by Hollie Giglietti

You’ve pictured this moment for years… The soft glow of candlelight, delicate lace flowing in the breeze, and the perfect mix of boho charm and just the right amount of glam.

Every little detail, from wildflowers in your bouquet to twinkle lights overhead, has been carefully imagined.

Then reality hits. Budgets, timelines, endless decisions. Suddenly, your dream wedding feels more like a giant to-do list.

I get it. In 2019, I planned my own DIY Boho Glam wedding on a budget, in less than six months. I loved creating every detail, but let’s be real… we were so ready to finally be married. Planning a wedding is magical, but juggling a budget and a big vision can be so overwhelming.

That’s why I created this guide – to help you bring your dream wedding to life without the chaos. Inside, you’ll find practical tips, creative DIYs, and budget-friendly resources to make planning feel exciting again.

Got questions? Need advice? Drop a comment, I’d love to help! And most importantly, congratulations!! Wishing you a wedding as magical as the love you’re celebrating. 💛 

ALL of our wedding photos, all photos contained throughout this post, are by Mariya of Masha Photographe. She’s a brilliant photographer in the Asheville, NC area.

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Every year on November 3rd my husband Kristian and I celebrate our wedding anniversary and it always brings back ALL the feels! 

Our wedding day felt as perfect as can be; filled with pure joy and happiness, on a gorgeous autumn day, surrounded by our friends and family in the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina. 

It was a day I had dreamt about for a long time and I was anxious to have the boho glam wedding of my dreams. 

Without much cash I knew I had to work hard to search for all the boho glam treasures on a budget. 

In this ultimate guide to creating your boho glam budget wedding, I’ll be spilling all my secrets for amazing boho glam wedding Amazon finds (I spent HOURS searching for), easy DIY projects and discounted creative resources you should be able to find wherever you live. 

The Venue

The first thing we wanted to find was a venue. In fact, my now husband didn’t want to propose until we found the venue, LOL!

In searching for a wedding venue I was seeking three things. First, we needed to find something affordable. Second, I have always wanted to either get married outside or in a barn of some sort. Lastly, we live in the mountains, so we also wanted some breathtaking mountain views. 

We visited many beautiful venues throughout the Asheville, North Carolina area, however, nothing felt right and all of them were SO expensive. 

Until we found the most perfect venue called The Fields of Blackberry Cove, nestled right in the mountains. It has a babbling brook that runs along side the road to the entrance, plenty of parking, beautiful rolling hills, a cozy building where the wedding party can get ready and the most beautiful (temperature controlled!!) barn. Which is a super cool old horse barn. Above all, The owners are SO amazing, kind, and helpful. (What more could you want??) 

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When we sat down to talk about pricing with the owner this location was the most affordable already, however, if we had our wedding in the off-season we could save a few hundred dollars! I really wanted to get married in the fall but the off season started the first week of November – so we compromised a bit, and took it! 

We also saved a bit more by having our wedding on a Sunday, rather than a Saturday.

Quite a few wedding venues require you to use specific caterers for your dinner, which can be very expensive. This venue allowed us to pretty much use anyone we wanted, as long as the venue pre-approved the company. This saved us a lot of money as well.

Wedding Planner & Flowers

This was the part of the wedding we spent most of our budget on, but it was beyond worth it! Fortunately for us, our wedding planner, also put together our beautiful boho flower bouquets, displays and table décor.

We worked with Elena of Luxe Wedding Designs, in Asheville, NC. She is the best in the area and I highly recommend her if you’re planning an Asheville wedding!

Elena sat down with me and helped organize all of my thoughts and together we came up with a cohesive plan. Many of these smart, money saving ideas throughout, are things she shared with me and I was SO grateful!

I gave Elena some examples of boho flower bouquets I had found on Pinterest. We went through each flower and decided which ones would work best, with the color palette I had chosen and our budget. Elena created these beautiful arrangements that blew me away!

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Have a super creative and organized friend or acquaintance that could help you plan, organize and implement? It is so helpful to have one person you can count on, to help you remain calm and put your thoughts together. It also allows you the ability to enjoy the day (without forgetting or worrying about any of the MANY details.)

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Before I decided to have professional wedding flowers arranged, I had looked into some wildflower farms in my area. With the places I found, you could pick your own flowers and pay an affordable amount for an entire bucket! 

I would have chosen this option if I had my wedding in the Spring or Summer as there weren’t many flowers still in bloom in early November.

Using individual flowers in vintage vases also makes a big impact, without spending a lot of money on larger arrangements.

If you’re crafty or have basic floral arranging skills, another option one of my sisters did for her wedding, was to book a DIY bouquet assembly session at a flower warehouse that will allow you to build your own bouquets. My sister went in and assembled the arrangements herself. They were stunning!

My other sister decided to do all paper flowers, which we created out of floral wire and tissue paper. They turned our so beautifully! Both of my sister’s flowers were gorgeous and such creative cost effective ideas! 

My Wedding Dress

I went to many traditional wedding dress shops but the dresses were too generic and way too expensive. For my boho glam wedding I wanted an original dress that fit well and had a boho flair. 

$ Savings tips $

I did a google search for discount and budget wedding dress shops in my area and found one right outside of Asheville, called Candler Budget Bridal.

This shop had so many original and unique dresses, all at amazing affordable prices. You can get a beautiful wedding dress for a few hundred dollars! 

I adored my wedding dress but I thought it would be fun to add a bit more boho glam for the reception. So I decided to add a shawl to my dress. I also added a colorful shoe (which was my “something blue”) with a DIY feather broch clip, a DIY bracelet and DIY feather hair clip. 

Accessories

The goal – to get all the super cute boho glam accessories without spending too much money. The accessories are where I really ended up saving money, because I had to! I found all the discounted treasures and then handmade the rest.

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Shawl – I found this bedazzled boho shawl of my dreams on Amazon! I couldn’t believe Amazon had something like this and I fell in love. And then it was even more magical in person! For only $30!!

Shoes – I found my blue shoes on Amazon as well. They were the PERFECT height, very comfortable and my something blue 🙂

I added white feathers I found at Hobby Lobby to make sure they were one of a kind. I hot glued the feathers to the shoes, underneath the crystals, but you could also hot glue a crystal button and feathers to a shoe clip like this, so you could remove them later. 

Bracelet – I purchased a beautiful costume jewelry bracelet at Hobby Lobby. I had no idea you could find such cute jewelry already put together there! I added some special charms I purchased from Hobby Lobby, to the bracelet. 

The charms were to remember my dog Gus, who was the love of my life for 10 years. I had always hoped he could be a part of my wedding but he passed away a few years before we got married. The charms on my bracelet were so special, as I was able to keep his memory close on our wedding day. 

Hair Clip – I wanted an ethereal feather clip for my hair but couldn’t find one that was less than $50 – $100 so I made my own. I used thicker wispy white feathers, and long wispy white feathers and a crystal button for the center, all from Hobby Lobby (but that you could also find on Amazon). I cut out a small oval shaped piece of felt to glue the botton and feathers to and on the back of the felt I glued a long hair clip like this so I could easily place the clip in my hair.

Purse – I wanted a very boho glam purse and found exactly that on Amazon. Isn’t this just the most gorgeous purse you have ever seen!? It was the perfect size and it fit so well with the rest of my outfit. 

The Grooms Outfit

My husband wanted a suit that wasn’t boring, a different color than black or gray, was fitted and not too fancy. We went to Men’s Warehouse (they had nothing that wasn’t boring) and a few other department stores. We ended up finding the perfect blue suit at a store in the Asheville Mall called Belk. It’s a southern department store similar to Kohls. 

$ Savings Tip $

Visit department stores in person and online. They have tons of different colors, sizes and fits and often have amazing sales and coupons.

My husband Kristian, wanted to do something other than a traditional neck tie. Because of his indigenous heritage he thought it would be appropriate to use a bolo tie. He also purchased one for each of the groomsmen as a part of their wedding gift. I loved the boho flare it added to the day and it felt so unique. Amazon has a ton of awesome bolo ties of all styles and colors. 

For further savings, my husband used a pair of shoes, socks and a belt he already owned. Who says EVERYTHING has to be new?? 

Bridesmaid Dresses

I wanted to make sure my bridesmaids liked their dresses so I had them pick whichever long dress they wanted, that was a part of the color scheme. I loved the eclectic look of the mismatched dresses. 

Groomsmen Attire

The bolo ties were the center piece of the outfit. We had the groomsmen wear pants from JC Penny’s and vests from Target, to keep it simple. 

Ceremony Decor

For our outdoor wedding ceremony I knew I wanted to use boho rugs for the aisle runner, a welcome sign and some sort of boho arch. 

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The Aisle Runner

I borrowed these beautiful rugs for the aisle runner. You could also search for “Vintage Rentals” to rent anything from boho rugs and pillows to rattan chairs or wicker tables to velvet settee’s or vintage china. 

DIY Wedding Signs

I made all of my large signs throughout the ceremony and reception. This saved me a lot of money and I was able to personalize them the way I wanted.

How I did it – I went to thrift stores and found large unique picture frames for $2-$5 (that would cost a FORTUNE anywhere else) and I flipped the original picture/painting over to the blank side. Some signs I sprayed the entire board with black chalkboard paint and wrote with white chalk markers, some I wrote right on the glass and used paint pens and the others I kept white and used a black permanent marker or gold paint pen. I searched on Pinterest for the words or letters in calligraphy I wanted to use, and let that be my guide as I sketched them out in pencil, before going over them in color. 

Some of the frames original colors were a bit lackluster so I went over them with antique gold spray paint to make them look brand new! 

Wedding Arch

My wedding planner already had the triangle arch we used for the front of the ceremony site but if you know someone who could do basic wood working, this shape would be very easy to put together.

Ring Bearer Box

I found this beautiful glass hexagon box and these delicate dried flowers to put in the ring box, both from Amazon.

My adorable nephew, Vander was my ring bearer and my brother in law, Scott helped him down the aisle.

Flower Girl Basket & Crown

I bought this cute basket at a thrift store for a couple dollars and painted it gold. My mom added the lace to the basket and made this adorable flower crown for my beautiful flower girl, my niece Ruby.

Ruby walked down the aisle with my other brother in law, Stephen. I have some really great brother in-laws!

Wedding Programs

I kept our wedding programs simple. For all of my paper designs I needed for the wedding, I used Canva to design them in. This is a free web based design program that I am OBSESSED with. They have a completely free version but if you do this sort of thing often you should splurge on the business plan.  It’s $13/a month and the first month is free! You can cancel at any time.

For the wedding program, I simply added our order of service to the front of a half sheet of paper and put the wedding party names on the back. We also added lyrics to the two songs played during the reception, on the back.

(Fun fact – I recorded a song for my husband that I walked down the isle to and he recorded a song he wrote that was played in the middle of the ceremony. **so dreamy**) 

The programs were printed at Staples, individually rolled up and tied with some gold wrapped jute twine around it.

The program box was lined with an old velvet curtain, I found at Goodwill.

Wedding Invitations

The design of our invitations was also created in Canva. To create the design, I purchased some floral graphics and a font from a website called Creative Market, to use in my design. For the front of the invitation, I used some of our engagement photos within hexagon shapes.

These were printed out at Staples on glossy cardstock paper and then assembled with colorful feathers, fall leaves (that I lightly spray painted gold) and tied up with some yarn. I love how these turned out.

The white envelopes I used needed some glam too so I put them in a stack and lightly sprayed the edges in gold spray paint. This looked so cool! 

Reception Decor

I envisioned a vintage, romantic boho glam feel for the reception. I wanted to include table numbers for each table, a guest book, a DIY photo booth, a creative seating chart and velvet table clothes. 

**Savings tip**

Table Numbers

I found these cute wooden table numbers on Amazon and spray painted them gold. They were perfect!

Seating Chart

I took one of the thrift store frames I mentioned earlier, tossed the glass and painting and ran thick jute rope back and forth, securing with hot glue on the back of the frame. I printed off table designations and names at Staples and attached them to the rope with mini clothes pins. 

DIY Photo Booth

My best friend, Leah and my husband, Kristian decorated this cute photo booth area using leftover decorations from our boho wedding shower my mom and sisters threw us. This included handmade bunting and lace my sisters created and whimsical dream catchers my mom crocheted within wrapped hula hoops. I found the wooden H & K letters at Hobby Lobby and painted them white. 

Wedding Guest Book

For the guest book I wanted something I could have on a coffee table one day and found this super cute guest book on Amazon. My favorite part of this guest book was that the outside front and back cover is wooden.

For the guest book, I wanted everyone to take a polaroid picture, place it in the book and sign next to their picture. I was able to borrow the polaroid camera from a gracious friend who also gifted us the film to use. This saved quite a bit of money. It never hurts to ask a friend to borrow something! 

Dinner Ware

Trying to figure out what to do about the plates, cups and silverware was a challenge. I originally wanted to use vintage china but knew that would cost a fortune or be challenging to find. My wedding planner suggested these disposable plates, and then I found these cups and plasticware. They all worked perfectly together!

To add a touch of elegance to the table setting, I tied velvet ribbon around the plastic ware and placed it in the middle of the plate. Everyone thought the plates and plastic ware were real china before they lifted them off the table. I can’t recommend these enough!

Wedding Table Cloths

The table cloth situation was something I also struggled with. I wasn’t sure if I should rent them or buy them. I ended up buying my table cloths from a website called the Table Cloth Factory because it ended up being cheaper.

The Table Cloth Factory website always has amazing sales and their table cloths are super affordable. They have so many options, colors and sizes. I ended up purchasing blue velvet table cloths for our head table and navy table cloths for the rest of the tables. 

Appetizers

We had an afternoon wedding with an evening reception and knew we needed to have a snack for our guests in between. We were running out of funds at this point and knew we needed to get extra budget savvy. 

**Savings Tips**

We bought boxes of seasonal donut holes at Walmart and you wouldn’t believe how good they were. Our guests thought they were gourmet donuts! We also purchased meat and cheese trays from Walmart’s deli. We added an assortment of nuts that we got from Sam’s Club and apple cider to drink. 

Wedding Dinner

We knew we wanted something affordable, that was buffet style and still tasted amazing. As luck would have it, the Valentine’s Day before our wedding, we had the best barbeque pulled pork we’d ever had and it was from a food truck! 

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Don’t shy away from tasty barbecue and small businesses. You can really find some gems if you search hard enough. Doc Brown’s Barbecue in Candler was the perfect choice for us. Doc himself hosted the barbecue buffet and the food (and Doc) were a big hit! 

Wedding Cake

I’m a huge wedding cake fan and I wanted ours to be perfect. But to have a perfect wedding cake that we could afford, we needed to think outside the box. 

I also found this gold vintage looking cake cutting set on Amazon for $12.00!!

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Our wedding planner mentioned how affordable and tasty the cakes were from the Whole Foods bakery, so we went there and tried some cupcakes. They were delicious!

We ended up getting 5 different cakes! Some were already decorated and we put flowers around the middle white cake that had our cute bear topper on it. 

I am so serious when I tell you that I will never get cake from anywhere other than Whole Foods. The cakes were delicious and it was so fun to have a variety of options for everyone to choose from. Not to mention, this was the most affordable option we could find for wedding cakes. 

Photographer

Our friend Mariya of Masha Photographe took all of our engagement and wedding photos. She did an amazing job documenting our Wedding Day. If you’re trying to find something to cut from the budget, I’d suggest keeping the photographer. I will always treasure these photos documenting our special day!

Videographer

I wanted a videographer so badly but the companies I was finding were completely out of our budget. I had *somewhat* made peace with not having a videographer until I had an idea a few weeks before our wedding day!

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I went to local Facebook Wedding Group pages to find a videographer that was just starting out and wanted to gain some experience for their portfolio. In my message I mentioned that the wedding would be an amazing location in the mountains to shoot in and that I would promote their work and my video, in exchange for a very discounted rate.

I had quite a few inquiries so I went through samples of what each person sent me and chose the one that best fit our style. Austin and his wife were amazing to work with and they created the most beautiful wedding video (as posted below.)  We will cherish this forever! I’m SO happy we were able to have a videographer.

I hope you found this information valuable and it inspires you to have your own boho glam budget wedding! Comment below any other Boho Glam Budget Wedding tips you have or DIY projects you created, that I missed!  

And If you’re currently planning your boho glam budget wedding, I hope these tips helped you. I wish you the VERY best on your big day with deep love and magic into your future marriage. 

Always remember to enjoy every minute of your wedding day. You plan for so long and the day comes and goes so fast. Try and be in the moment, every moment, truly remember how you felt and relish in the joy and the love of the day because that is the most precious wedding gift of all!

If you enjoyed this blog post and found it helpful, don’t forget to pin it or share it with a friend! I always appreciate the shares!