My DIY Jewish wedding

I got married this past summer. The wedding ceremony was beautiful, heartfelt and touching. The reception featured delicious food, great music, dancing and celebrating. The day reflected our personal style and tastes perfectly.

And, miraculously, it didn’t put us in debt.

If you’ve ever planned a wedding, you know just how hard this can be. American weddings are a $60 billion-a-year industry, according to the market-research firm IBISWorld. And theknot.com found the average cost of a wedding in Los Angeles is $38,735. Think of all the things that money could be spent on: a down payment on a home, saving for your kids’ college tuition, several world-class vacations or a charitable donation to your favorite local nonprofit.

As my then-fiancée, Amanda, and I thought about it, we decided the “dream weddings” seen in magazines and online would be a nightmare to plan, and not worth the cost to us. So, instead, we relied on our friends’ help to pull off the wedding we actually wanted, not the one we thought we were supposed to have.

Location: After surveying our family members’ availability and picking the most accommodating date, we had to choose the location. We decided against a destination wedding and instead spent a few weekends visiting local parks, gardens, private clubs and other venues. Many of the spaces were not that attractive and would have required a lot of decorating. They cost several thousand dollars for just a few hours, and many require you to hire their preferred caterer, bartender, and even security guards and valet.

As we discussed our ideal location, we kept comparing it to our friends’ gorgeous backyard in Culver City. After they bought their house, they spent several years building a lush garden space with hanging plants, a fountain, a bar, a movie screen, fire pit and chairs. We asked them if they’d host our wedding, and they excitedly agreed. The husband makes a living as a carpenter and craftsman, and he offered to build us a stage for the chuppah. The labor was his gift to us, and we chipped in for the supplies.

Because of the smaller space, we decided to cap the invitation list at 50 people, which meant we had to make some difficult decisions. But we were able to celebrate with our family and closest friends — and we actually talked to everyone who attended.

Invitations: Once we had a date and location, we had to invite our guests. The cost of custom-printed invitations, RSVP cards and envelopes adds up quickly, and they lacked the personal touch we were looking for. Amanda is an artist and loves making things by hand, and she decided we should make our own invites. She brushed blue and green watercolor strokes onto blank cards. She then hand wrote the text in beautiful calligraphy on one card, which we had scanned and printed onto the painted cards at a professional printing press. The result was simple yet elegant, and, most important, handmade. We decided RSVP cards are a weird formality that somehow persists, so the invitations simply asked guests to confirm their attendance by email.

Chuppah: We spent a lot of time looking online for the right chuppah, the canopy that would cover us during the ceremony. Rather than use a big white sheet or tallit, we asked our friend Graham Keegan to make one. He uses natural, plant-based dyes to create original textile designs. We sifted through prints at his Silver Lake studio and chose a honeycomb-like pattern with an indigo dye. The blue patterned fabric served as our chuppah and will be used as our tablecloth for years to come.

Ketubah: We spent a lot of time looking at ketubot online, but couldn’t find a design that appealed to us. We were looking for something that was more contemporary than kitschy. Our criterion was: Would we actually hang this on our wall? I asked my younger brother, a budding graphic designer, to create one for us. Amanda and I came up with a text that conveyed our true feelings for each other, and my father (a native Hebrew speaker) helped us with the translation. My brother created a striking, minimalist design and silkscreened it onto high-quality poster paper. It’s a piece of art that we’ll cherish forever.

Food: We turned to our friends who own an incredible Mediterranean restaurant in Atwater Village called Dune. They laid out an enormous spread of falafel, hummus, pita, grilled veggies and mouthwatering focaccia sandwiches made with pickled beets, feta cheese and hard-boiled eggs, and our guests helped themselves. Another friend prepared giant salads, and a friend who manages a gourmet-food import company laid out a spread of artisan cheeses, charcuterie, olives and fruit to snack on before the ceremony. We also pre-mixed a couple of signature cocktails, which we served out of glass dispensers, next to buckets of ice-cold India pale ale and bottles of wine.

Cakes: A close friend of ours is a wonderful cook and loves to bake. She created some sample cakes for us and they were all so delicious; we couldn’t choose one. So she made three: pistachio with rosewater buttercream, lemon with lavender icing, and red velvet. She topped them with fresh flowers, and after we smashed the first slice in each other’s faces, my new wife and I served up platefuls to our delighted guests.

Flowers: Rather than hiring a florist, Amanda and some friends visited the Los Angeles Flower Market when it opened at 6 a.m. on the day before the wedding. They returned with buckets filled with red, orange and yellow ranunculus blossoms, purple globe amaranth pompons, green chrysanthemums, golden yellow brush-shaped celosia and silver-green eucalyptus leaves. They fashioned them into stunning table centerpieces, boutonnieres and flower crowns using floral wire and tape.

Miscellaneous: Luckily for us, the garden already looked beautiful, so we didn’t have to do much to it. We rented tables and chairs and a giant piece of artificial turf for a dance floor. We bought fabric from the Fashion District and cut it into table runners. We gathered some childhood photos and displayed them using string and miniature clothespins. We set up a Moleskine notebook for people to write messages to us. For wedding favors, we didn’t want to give people kitschy souvenirs that would just take up space in their homes. So we baked a big batch of vegan banana bread granola and scooped it into small white muslin pouches, each hand-stamped using an ink stamp of two daffodils, one leaning against the other.

Because I work at a radio station, I was able to get a good deal on a photographer and a DJ, and I borrowed an iPad stand from the office and set up a photo booth. We projected a looping supercut of film dance scenes onto our friends’ movie screen as a backdrop. Our host also had a smoke machine and a glittering gold disco ball, which added to the dance party ambience. We did hire someone to help with washing dishes, refilling the drink containers, and other chores so we could focus on having fun.

If this seems like a long list of details, that’s pretty much what planning a wedding is: a never-ending checklist. In the end, we threw a memorable party, and our guests had a great time. That’s all you can hope for in a wedding, and we demonstrated that it can be done well on a tight budget.

We are lucky to have friends and family who are talented at things such as baking, floral arrangement and graphic design, and who own a restaurant and could cater our wedding. But if you think about it, you probably also have friends whose skills you can tap to make your wedding more personal and, yes, more affordable. They’ll feel honored to be included in your special day, and their gift to you will be that much more meaningful.