I renovated my backyard for my son's wedding. The $40,000 investment paid off when we sold the house years later.

• I spent 11 months fixing up our house so my son could get married in our backyard.
• We ended up spending around $40,000 to renovate the kitchen and backyard.

I walked in the door after work, and I got a notification on my personal phone, it was a Facebook alert. My son's girlfriend had just updated her relationship status to "engaged." It took a moment to sink in.

That's when the wedding planning began. Venues were too expensive for my son and his fiancé, and because I owned a large home, our home became their venue.

Planning a wedding can be expensive

We'd only met Mikayla a few months prior when she came over for dinner. I would learn on their wedding day that they'd actually been dating on and off since high school. We liked her from the beginning and grew to love her as though she was our own daughter.

Following the announcement, they began their wedding plans and a quest to find a venue. But after a few weeks, reality and despair set in. A venue in Southern California was going to cost between $30,000 and $50,000, money that a young college couple didn't have.

At the time, I owned a large home with ¾ acre of land in the community of Yorba Linda. Looking back, I don't know exactly how it happened if I volunteered or was "voluntold," but somehow, my backyard became their future venue.

Though I'd kept up on maintaining the property over the 20 years we'd lived there, the kids had ideas for their wedding and improvements to the yard.

We redid our backyard

As I pulled up in front of my house one day after work, I wasn't able to park in my driveway. That is because my camping trailer was now in my parking spot. Next to it was a roll-off dumpster. As I walked up to the house, a Bobcat tractor emerged from my back yard, my son at the controls, the bucket filled with brush from my back hill.

Gone was the overgrown sagebrush, replaced with all manner of drought-tolerant plants, including cactus, lavender, salvia, agave, and Italian cypress trees. The playground was transformed into a butterfly garden, and the basketball court was now a dance floor. An arch formed from Sage branches would serve as the focal point.

To save money, we would get truckloads of plants from Craigslist for free. Of course, we had to dig them out ourselves, but it was worth the tens of thousands of dollars we saved just on landscaping.

Over the next 11 months, the four of us worked tirelessly to create the perfect wedding venue. Whenever I wasn't at work or the kids weren't in class we were working on the yard and the house. It was exhausting, but it was a labor of love. We got to know our future daughter-in-law, and we bonded as a family. And the venue was beautiful.

They saved money with the catering because the bride's uncle ran a catering company and provided all the food. The only downside of that was having a trailer-mounted smoking oven in my yard and having to smell the meat cooking for three days.

The rehearsal dinner was held the night before on the dance floor. The next day, we were ready for the wedding of 150 friends and family. It was everything that the kids wanted. Everyone had a great time, and we got nothing but compliments on how great the house and yard looked. All the months of hard work paid off.

A few months later, my son received his commission as an Army officer, and the kids were off to Georgia.

The house sold immediately because of the improvements we made

Within a few years my son had come off active duty and settled in Washington state. Our granddaughter was born shortly thereafter, and my wife and I decided to move closer.

The listing agent said that everyone who came to see the house walked straight through to the backyard and stared in wonder. The house was beautiful, but the backyard is what sold it. We had an offer within a week of the listing and were under contract a few days later.

Being in construction at the time I can tell you that this job would have cost over $200,000 for just labor alone had I hired professionals for all of it. I spent $9,000 to have a painting company come in to do the inside and outside of the house, and I added $17,000 on a long overdue upgrade to the kitchen and downstairs bath. Plus, pallets of retaining wall stones, new grass, outdoor lighting, and everything else.

I spent some $40,000 in total. But instead of paying for a one-time event, I made an investment in my home, which paid off when I sold it.