A SELF-CONFESSED cheapskate who refused to spend a penny over $700 (£500) on her daughter’s wedding has revealed she gave her second-hand lingerie for her wedding night.
Shelley Watson, who appears in the new TLC series So Freakin Cheap, has been penny pinching for years.
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And she wasn’t prepared to budge an inch when it came to her daughter Brittany’s wedding, much to the bride’s horror.
As the 23-year-old prepares to say her I-dos in the office of a chiropractor – her mum presents her with a few tokens of love and luck for her big day.
In line with tradition, Shelley gives her daughter a necklace as her something borrowed and something blue, with Brittany’s veil being her something new.
But the something old was perhaps a little bit less traditional.
“This is the lingerie that I had on my wedding night, I figured you didn’t have anything,” Shelley says, handing Brittany a well-worn corset.
“It’s been washed,” she reassured her, but Brittany is less than impressed.
She gags: “That’s my mom’s, I don’t wanna wear something and think about my mom and dad.
“I’m genuinely traumatised by that lingerie.”
But super saver Shelley can’t see anything wrong with it.
“Being cheap means a lot of sharing, basically we share everything, including underwear sometimes,” she admits.
This isn’t her first time organising a wedding on a budget, having previously organised her daughter Ashley’s wedding for just $1,000 (£700) but this time she is determined to do even better.
Speaking on the show, she says: “I am beyond a bargain hunter.
“We did Ashley’s wedding for $1,000 and we want to beat that record.”
“I will find a bargain and then I will bargain for the bargain.”
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But the underwear is the least of Brittany’s worries with Shelley’s youngest left horrified when her mum announces the venue.
She tells her: “We’re going to have your wedding right here in a chiropractor’s office and it won’t cost us anything.”
Unsurprisingly, Britney is less than thrilled with the clinical setting for her nuptials.
“I am tired of not having an opinion of my own wedding,” she tells older sister Ashley.
“I don’t want Shane’s parents to come and see that this is how my family is.”
And if anyone can understand what she’s going through, it’s Ashley who endured her own budget nuptials a few years ago.
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Shelley, who appeared on TLC’s Extreme Cheapskates, was determined to cut the cost of her eldest daughter’s wedding to Colby Cosgrove.
Rather than splash out thousands on a grand country house Shelley took her daughter to the local school gym.
“The best part about it is it’s free because my friends work here, it’s the perfect place to get married” Shelley said.
However, not everyone was convinced.
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Denise, Colby’s mother, said: “I thought it was a f***ing joke, nobody in their right mind is serious about having it in a gym. It’s ridiculous.”
“This is going to be the cheapest wedding ever,” Ashley agreed.
When it comes to flowers, Shelley came up with a budget solution, heading to a holiday warehouse
Shelley explains: “It’s a seasonal distribution company that would have flowers and those flowers are out of season right now so they would be cheaper.
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“They could have Christmas flowers.”
The mum bagged an entire box of festive poinsettia for under $10 (£7) dollars, much to her delight.
When the mother and daughter visit a local bakery, Shelley was horrified to hear the sky high costs of a wedding cake.
Shelley said: “I think spending $400 (£285) on a wedding cake is ridiculous, that is wasted money. It costs $2 (£1.40) for a cake mix.”
But the thrifty mum soon came up with a solution.
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She baked a cake to give out to guests and they simply borrowed a display cake from the bakery.
“I think the display cake was the better option for their wedding because it didn’t cost us anything, it was free”, she added.
While Ashley was dreaming of picking out her dream wedding dress at a boutique, her mum had other ideas, taking her to a pawn shop.
Ashley had the choice of three dresses, and miraculously she finds one, but sister Britney pointed out it was covered in rat urine.
But that was music to Shelley’s ears as she is able to shave off even more from the cost, bagging the dress at a bargain $75 (£53).
When the big day finally arrived Shelley’s friends were roped in as caterers, preparing burger cheese sandwiches and serving them on school trays.
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Shelley added: “We actually have more people than we thought and they’re all bringing their BYOB and they’re also bringing their food and they seemed very happy to do it.”
Groom Colby, who got ready in the boys’ loos, said: “I’m not totally psyched about where and how we’re getting married, but I am excited to make that commitment to Ashley.”
As the organ music was played through a laptop, Ashley made her way down the aisle only to be met by Shelley at the end.
She said: “The biggest secret about this wedding that I have not told anybody yet is that I am an ordained minister and I am going to officiate this wedding.”
In a final money-saving move Shelley saved another $300 (£200) by officiating the wedding herself.
In other wedding news, this mother-in-law wore an identical dress to the bride.
And this bride asked for wedding ring advice online – but gets savagely trolled for the ‘horrifying’ state of her nails.
Plus this bridezilla DUMPED her sister from the bridal party after she gained 1.5 stone during lockdown.