A couple who thrifted their entire wedding for 100 guests at a Christmas tree farm only spent $5,000

The Arkansas-based couple first met in high school but didn't fall in love until they reconnected in 2016 at college.

Houston proposed to Jess in 2018, and the couple set their wedding for May 25, 2019.

Today, Jess is a full-time content creator focusing on sustainability, and Houston is a pastor.

Jess told Insider she had cared about sustainability since she was a kid. While studying marketing in college, she watched Annie Leonard's film "The Story of Stuff," which made her turn her attention to how much waste humans create.

"I felt like a part of the problem instead of the problem being out there somewhere," she said of her response to the film. "It is mostly companies and politicians that hold all the power, but I decided I could at least start making different decisions to show that consumers want eco-conscious products on the market."

Jess's epiphany about waste happened early in her engagement to Houston, and she knew she wanted their wedding to be as waste-free as possible.

Jess said she already had misgivings about the nature of Western weddings before her sustainability epiphany because of how consumer-driven many aspects of weddings are.

Seeing the waste associated with them only made her more upset.

"I had gotten engaged like three months prior, and then I was just overwhelmed," Jess told Insider. "I was like, 'What about all the plastic forks and cups? And what about the registry? And what about the bridesmaid dresses?'"

When she put together how much waste there was at a typical wedding, Jess knew her wedding had to be different.

"It felt like a disaster at first because it seems like every aspect of a wedding is wasteful," she said. "But just making one small decision at a time ends up being really simple."

Jess's family owns a Christmas tree farm just a one-minute walk from the home where she was raised.

"I grew up running in the Christmas trees," she said.

As she started to plan her wedding, she realized the farm would be the perfect spot for it, especially because one of her other family members had already gotten married there. The farm even had a small stage that could serve as the altar.

She planned to use the farm for her ceremony and her parent's front yard for her reception, so she didn't have to pay for either venue. This saved her thousands of dollars, as the average cost of a wedding venue is $10,700, according to The Knot's Real Wedding Study.

About 100 guests attended the wedding.

Jess and Houston said their vows on the stage that had already been built on the property as their loved ones watched from rented chairs.

Jess told Insider that she tried to use rentable items whenever she could, as they help to minimize waste.

Alex Blankenship photographed the wedding.

"I was a waitress at a pizza restaurant, and I knew that they didn't recycle or anything like that," Jess said. "So just when I would serve brunch on Sundays, I would save all the wine bottles and take 'em home for my wedding."

Jess said the experience was valuable because she could reuse free items and also enjoyed collecting the bottles.

"It made work fun," she said. "I was excited when a table ordered a bottle of wine or champagne because it meant I got to take it home."

Jess's grandmother, with whom she has a close relationship, loves to eat yogurts that come in small glass jars.

"She loves those, and she asked if I could put candles in them" for the wedding, Jess said. She, of course, agreed.

"For a whole year, my grandma saved all her yogurt jars," she said.

Once again, Jess found an accessible and sustainable solution for a decor option that would usually be pricey.

It was essential to Jess to find a sustainable solution for flowers, as many florists fly flowers in from overseas and transport them on buses, both of which have a substantial environmental impact.

Flowers are also usually one of the most expensive parts of a wedding, with the average couple spending $2,300 on florals, according to The Knot's Real Wedding Study.

Jess's mom, Elizabeth Kooiman, is an avid gardener, so she decided to ask her if she would be open to growing her wedding flowers.

"She was pretty nervous," Jess said, but Elizabeth agreed, working for a year to perfect her skills for Jess's wedding.

"She would have stuff bloom in September, and she would have stuff bloom in March, just making sure she could produce flowers," Jess said of her mom's work.

Jess and her bridesmaids all had floral bouquets, there were flowers as her centerpieces, and flowers decorated the altar for the ceremony.

"They were absolutely beautiful," Jess said of the finished flowers.

Elizabeth had such a good time growing the flowers for the wedding that she decided to become a full-time local flower farmer, retiring as a nurse to open her own business, which she named in honor of Jess.

"Poppies have always been my favorite flower, and that's why she named her business The Poppy Patch," Jess said.

Jess borrowed her tables, tablecloths, and the lights hanging above her reception space from friends.

Jess booked her catering for the wedding before she started her sustainability journey, so she couldn't make the wedding plant-based as she would have preferred.

But she was able to ensure beef wasn't served at the wedding, as it is "the worst meat for the planet," she told Insider.

Jess and Houston's cutlery and plates from Bambu were made of bamboo rather than plastic, so they were all compostable.

Jess also made sure the food and cutlery didn't end up in a landfill.

"We don't have a compost facility in central Arkansas," Jess said. "So my mom, since we have a lot of land, composted all of the food and bamboo from the wedding."

Jess said it was cool to see the compost changing over time.

Bridesmaids spend $130 on average on dresses for their friends' weddings, according to The Knot. It's also common for brides to spend between $20 and $100 on gifts for their bridesmaids to thank them for participating in their weddings, The Knot reports.

"I didn't want to support slave labor, and I didn't want to have them buy a new dress for them to wear one time," Jess said of her bridesmaids' dresses.

But Jess already had the bridesmaid dress she wanted in mind when she had her sustainability epiphany, so she wasn't sure what to do.

"I ended up going on Poshmark, and I started looking for the bridesmaid dresses I already wanted," she said.

She looked for three dresses in different colors and sizes for a couple of months and ultimately found a secondhand dress for each of her seven bridesmaids, which doubled as their gifts.

The couple encouraged their flower girls' parents not to buy them new dresses for the event.

One of their flower girls wore a dress she already owned, and the other got a dress secondhand from Poshmark.

By borrowing items from friends or enlisting their family members to help them bring their dream wedding to life, Jess told Insider, the wedding felt more communal.

"I had my grandpa make a wreath out of his magnolia tree because it's my favorite tree at his house," Jess gave as an example.

"People get invested in your wedding because everyone's helping, so it becomes an event for everyone," Jess said of why sustainable weddings can be so meaningful. "I think the camaraderie is really special. And I think that's why people should give it a shot — because it becomes so fun for people to come together."

"We were walking from my house to the wedding, and someone forgot to put up my dog," Jess said. "So my dog followed us to the wedding and walked behind us down the aisle."

For the Cliftons, having a wedding at home made the entire experience of getting married more meaningful.

"I just want people to know how much fun it was to have such a simple wedding in my front yard," she said. "It really felt like a movie. It felt magical."

Jess's parents offered her $10,000 for the wedding when she got engaged. They also said she could keep whatever money she didn't spend on the wedding.

While the average cost of a wedding in Arkansas was $17,200 as of February 2022, according to The Knot, as Jess planned the wedding, she decided she wanted to stick to a $5,000 budget.

She told Insider that she disliked the waste and commercialization of weddings, and she wanted to use the money for the early months of her marriage.

As she continued planning, Jess decided she also wanted to show others it was possible to have a low-waste wedding on a budget.

"People act like sustainability is very inaccessible," she said, noting that some people think you have to buy products specifically designed to be sustainable to decrease waste. "I wanted to show that it can be insanely accessible because a $5,000 wedding is way cheaper than any wedding I've ever been to."

Jess said that sharing details about her wedding online showed people they can prioritize sustainability with their wedding no matter their budget.

"I was so happy that the wedding was so affordable because I think that's why it resonates with so many people," she told Insider.

"Any time I had to make a new decision, I was like, 'What is the more sustainable option for this?' That is how you make you break it down, and it becomes really easy," Jess said of how she planned the wedding.

She always found a convenient, more sustainable option, she told Insider.

Jess also encouraged people to do whatever they can to embrace sustainability at their weddings, even if it's small.

"Sustainability is not black and white for anybody," she said. "All we can do is try our best and do little things to be eco-conscious."

"I remember when we first started dating, I just couldn't stop talking about how much fun we had together," Jess told Insider.

"It just felt like, 'Wow, I would like to have this much fun for the rest of my life,'" she said.

By keeping their wedding simple, the Cliftons were able to make their love — rather than the fanfare — the star of their wedding day, which was important to Jess.

"How much stuff is involved is so strange to me," Jess said of many weddings. "This is supposed to be the most beautiful day of someone's life, and there's so much consumerism involved. That was what I was trying to drive away from."