How to Have a Vogue Wedding on a Budget

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Vogue weddings are the elegant answer to any pedestrian nuptials. They see your chocolate fountain and raise it a Tibetan waterfall full of holy water. They see your country club ballroom and raise it a Venetian cathedral. They see your potential partner and raise it a different partner, one worth your 401k multiplied a whole bunch of times. They're about taste, people, and probably money, and also travel, and sometimes horses.

But what if you, a card-carrying poor person, want a Vogue wedding too? First, way to admit that your empty wallet won't hold you back from having a little elegance on your big day! You contain multitudes! Another man's trash is your Vogue wedding! Second of all, do these things in no particular order:

• Do your own makeup with testers at Sephora.
• Avoid the Sephora cast member's makeover offers, but do ask them to be your bridesmaids. Vogue wedding bridesmaids tend to be ex-models and "tastemakers" from various culturally significant fields. Cast members are really, really pretty and can taste things. Check and check!

• Prabal Gurung designed these bridesmaids' matching off-the-shoulder looks. Just have your cast members/bridesmaids rip an arm off of their uniforms at the shoulder seam. Voila!
• Commandeer a barge! Now you're just like Amal and George Clooney!

• Vogue weddings always involve something from the Renaissance era — doesn't matter if it's art or architecture, but preferably both. Make your own cathedral by collecting cardboard refrigerator boxes thrown out after the neighbor's children are done coloring on them and pretending they're spaceships. Build a fort out of them. Huddle close.
• Instead of a Duke or Duchess attending as a guest, ask your uncle Gary to bring Duke, his Great Dane, and Duchess, his Maltese.

• Who needs a lily of the valley bouquet when you have Lily from the Valley, who found this "whole bunch of glow sticks" on her way to the wedding?
• Fireworks are an easy way to say, "Go home! Get! Scat!" but when you're on a budget, just set fire to the centerpieces. Guests will file out accordingly.