They pulled off a $500 wedding – including $47 dress. Now California couple has fans

A Los Angeles couple captured the attention of many after pulling together a wedding on a tight budget of just $500, according to media reports.

Kiara Brokenbrough told Good Morning America that she and her husband, Joel Brokenbrough, wanted to avoid going into debt before marriage.

“Our goal was to just be as minimal as possible,” she told the outlet. “And to spend the least amount of money possible.”

They did just that — their wedding came together in two months and cost only $500, according to a TikTok from Kiara Brokenbrough. That included the bride’s wedding dress, which was only $47, another video showed.

In another video, Kiara Brokenbrough said that the couple had their wedding in a free venue, where they only had to pay for chairs and a decorative arch. She added that the cake and flowers were gifted to them by friends and family, while their reception was in a hotel lounge where guests paid for their own food and drinks.

“We kind of had an elopement-style type wedding, we just had our immediate family and super duper close friends – we did not have that many friends there,” she said.

Because the couple only had around 30 or 40 guests in attendance, they didn’t need to purchase a public permit, helping to keep costs down, she said in the video.

“Our village is strong,” Kiara Brokenbrough told Fox 11. “People paid to fly out here to come to a wedding, and they knew if they wanted food and drinks, it’s available for purchase, and they knew that. I didn’t hear anyone complain.”

The couple’s wedding costs were far below the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. – according to a survey of 15,000 couples by wedding planning website The Knot, American couples spent an average of nearly $30,000 on their weddings in 2021. The cost of the reception bumped that number up to $34,000, though the cost of a wedding can vary greatly based on its location, the number of guests and other factors, according to The Knot.

Joel Brokenbrough told Fox 11 that other couples should recognize their wedding day is about them, not anyone else.

“It’s not about the people who attend, or who is invited,” he told the outlet.

Kiara Brokenbrough added that it was only possible to pull off a wedding on such a tight budget with the support of their family and friends.

“The people we have there, they understood the assignment, they understood the things that we were trying to do, and they really supported us,” she told Good Morning America.

This story was originally published April 19, 2022 at 2:43 PM with the headline "They pulled off a $500 wedding – including $47 dress. Now California couple has fans."