Millennial Money: Planning A $12K Wedding In Santa Barbara, CA

Kayla, 29, and Andrew Picciuto Elia, 33, spent over $12,000 for an 18 person wedding.

The original wedding, was which scheduled for March 2020, consisted of 300 people, and expected to cost $40,000 but was pushed back due to COVID-19. They rescheduled it for July 2020.

Although they loved a lot of the expensive details in a big wedding, they decided to strip it down to save costs.

“If you stripped all of that away, what’s behind that is our love,” Kayla said.

Due to their years working in weddings as a career, a lot of their venders gave them major discounts. The usual cost for a videographer is over $6,000 but they were able to get the services for free.

A lot of people were not able to show up to the wedding because of the pandemic. They managed to livestream the event for those who could not come.

Kayla and Andrew originally met in coffee shop in 2015. Although they did not talk to each other for two years.

After a fire alarm went off in the shop, they ended up sharing a space with each other outside. Kayla struck up a conversation with Andrew and asked him about his most recent book that he read.

A few years later, they got engaged soon after they found out Kayla was pregnant.

Although they very much enjoyed the wedding, they hope to have a much bigger wedding in 2021.