My Budget Friendly Ohio Wedding Weekend Getaway



This past weekend we had the wonderful privilege of being guests at a wedding reception in Ohio for my wife’s cousin. The reception was wonderful and the newlywed couple looked absolutely amazing and they were filled with a beaming joy. But the event also provided me with a, “good practices” approach in frugality as we budgeted $300 from our travel budget for this affair, so away we go:

Getting there

As we are car-less in Chicago whenever we travel out of state our method of transportation is either train and ride share or a car rental. For this trip we went with a train ride and carpool. On our way out of the windy city we grabbed a few veggie sandwiches at Subway and used our monthly entertainment budget for dinner that night. Our train tickets ran us $22 thus beginning our travel deduction for the weekend ($278 remaining), and we stayed over night with my in-laws in Michigan having breakfast there the following morning.

For the car ride to the venue we carpooled with my sister-in-law. She drives an excellent Ford vehicle that gets wonderful gas mileage. On the way we stopped off for lunch when we crossed into the Ohio state line. It’s in places like these that make Mid-West travel destinations so alluring to me. We stopped off at a Mexican restaurant that was genuinely authentic, implemented the meat side of our flexatarianism and for $20 ($258 remaining) ate to our fill.

Arrival

Our accommodations were at a hotel literally within walking distance of the reception venue. Total cost for the night stay was $110 ($148 remaining) which included a hot tub we got to hang out in and complementary breakfast in the morning.

Departure

My sister-in-law and her husband were so gracious to help give us a ride back into Chicago during NATO weekend (big-ups to them by the way), so we chipped in $40 for gas **it took $45 to fill up at this point** ($118 remaining) and started to make our way back home. We did take two stops along the way: (1) for a late lunch that was $22 ($96 remaining) and (2) to grab cheaper groceries in Indiana using our grocery budget.

So overall we came in almost $100 under our allocated travel budget, used the Hoosier state to buy groceries and come in under our weekly grocery budget and I got to hang out with my in-laws for the weekend. So there you have it, my budget friendly Ohio weekend getaway!