So far, 2016 has been a constant blur of work and wedding planning. What I’ve quickly learned during the past few months is that the wedding I’ve been designing in my head over the years is extremely unrealistic due to costs. When I came across Priceless Weddings for Under $5,000 by Kathleen Kennedy, I felt that I struck gold. The author promises that you’ll be able to have “your dream wedding for less money than you ever thought possible.” That’s a pretty bold statement, so I figured at the very least I’d take away some secret tips to help me out!

Let me first set the tone of this review by stating that I started reading this book on February 3rd and every time I opened it up, I immediately became stressed out. I thought that this book was supposed to help me de-stress! It took me over a month to read Kennedy’s “comprehensive guide” and eventually I just started skimming over the abundance of useless information.

Now, let me get straight to the point because frankly I really don’t want to waste anymore of my time on this book. Kennedy released this revised edition in December 2015, but it still feels extremely dated. I’m pretty sure 98% of brides know which websites to go to for inspiration. Who doesn’t know what Pinterest and Etsy are? We didn’t need 25 pages explaining how to navigate cyberspace.

Aside from being dated months after the re-release, what bothers me about this book are the examples of $5,000 weddings. The author made it very clear to have an affordable wedding you either need connections or to sacrifice quality. Actually, I feel the entire moral of this guide was that you can keep costs down by cutting the quality of everything. So, in other words a 5k wedding looks just about as unrealistic as my ultimate dream wedding.

The only saving grace for this book was the overall design and the included worksheets. This is the only reason it is receiving 2 out of 5 stars from me. I did find some tips to be useful, such as the vendor question lists, but that is something you can easily find with a quick Google search.

Did Priceless Weddings for Under $5,000 help me begin planning my dream wedding with that low of a budget? No, not unless I plan on eloping. It seems Kennedy should’ve done a little more research before republishing this book and she should’ve altered the name to be “Priceless Weddings for Under $15,000.” I highly advise you not to waste your money on this book. As for me, I’m still going to have a beautiful priceless wedding, but it won’t be price-less.

Please note, I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review.

Do you have any great cost-cutting tips for weddings? Share in the comments!