The morning of Jasmine Nash and Sirmetrius I. Hill’s wedding started badly.
They were over 1,100 miles from home, in a city they didn’t know, and things went sideways before they even got out the door.
“The morning itself was complete chaos,” Nash said. “There were a lot of common wedding day mishaps that happened while we were getting ready.” None of that is unusual for a wedding morning, but what was unusual is that the whole thing cost them a whopping $100. Yes, you read that correctly.
When they got on site, thankfully the day completely changed shape. “Once we arrived at Morenas Event Venue everything felt surprisingly calm,” Nash said. “There was no rushing between events or worrying about timelines.”
The Hills got married through Mini-Mony Day, an annual event created by Detroit entrepreneur Britney Hoskins, founder of The Top Pic Collective, the largest Black-owned event space in Michigan. The idea grew out of her event planning curriculum. Hoskins runs classes for new and aspiring event planners, and rather than use models for staged portfolio shoots the way most planners do, she began inviting real couples to step into those designed spaces and actually get married in them. What her students get out of it isn’t something you can replicate in a classroom: the experience of managing a real wedding, with everything that comes with it. Couples get a professionally designed ceremony, with florals, a bridal suite prep, a first dance and a cake cutting, for $100. The event went viral, and it has kept growing every year since. People started traveling from across the country just to attend.
This year, interest had grown enough that Hoskins expanded from five couples to twelve.
This isn’t happening in isolation. The average U.S. wedding now costs around $36,000, according to data from Zola. A 2025 LendingTree survey found that 67% of newlyweds went into debt to pay for their celebrations, and more than half said they regretted how much they spent. For a long time, the wedding industry has had couples convinced that how much they spend and how much the day means are the same thing. They are not.
Nash and Hill weren’t buying it either, though the decision was also just practical. A traditional wedding had been the plan for years, and it kept not happening. “After being engaged for several years, we were exhausted trying to make the ‘perfect’ day happen,” Nash said. “Big weddings can quickly become about logistics, expectations, and pleasing everyone else.” Life also kept adding to the equation. “With our 4 children and everyday lives, having a wedding seemed like a day we would never make it to,” she said. And then they saw Hoskins’ post. “In the midst of planning for a 100+ person wedding, we came across Britney’s post advertising a $100 Mini-mony and decided to take a leap of faith,” Nash said.
What they didn’t expect was how the day would feel once it was actually happening. The décor had been designed by Hoskins’ students and sourced largely through Temu, which allows her to achieve a luxury aesthetic at a fraction of what traditional wedding vendors charge, and pass those savings directly to couples. “The decor was breathtaking and way more than we could have ever imagined,” Nash said. The team running it, strangers to them just hours earlier, felt like family before the day was over. “We left our families at home but felt like we gained a village with Britney and her team,” she said. “Instead of being nervous and uptight, we laughed and cried together like we were old friends.”
Nash doesn’t describe the day the way most brides do. “We remember feeling present, emotional, and incredibly grounded,” she said.
What Nash is describing is exactly what Hoskins is going for. She thinks most people spend so much time and money managing the performance of a wedding that they miss the wedding itself, and Mini-Mony Day was built as a direct response to that. “The biggest thing I want couples to know is that affordable doesn’t have to equate to cheap,” she said.
Hoskins has heard every version of couples insisting they had no other choice, and she doesn’t really believe it. “A Tuesday evening wedding with 40 guests opens up far more flexibility than a Saturday with 150,” she said. Most couples treat the Saturday date, the 150-person guest list, and the formal plated dinner as the baseline of a real wedding. Hoskins would call them expensive habits that nobody ever thought to question.
“Save your coins and stress,” Nash said. “You can still have it all without breaking the bank.”
The post Forget The $36,000 Wedding. This Couple Paid $100 And Says It Was Everything They Wanted appeared first on Essence.
Author: Kimberly Wilson
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