Every years for many, many years, I would get manure mulch from our local fair grounds. I would borrow a truck and trailer and get several loads of mulch to put in my yard.
Each year I would add a few inches of mulch to the flower beds and it would keep the weeds down and the moisture in as well as fertilizing the beds. The worms love the mulch and irrigate the ground and it makes the soil so much better.
A few years back, we got some biting bird mites and I wasn't sure if they came from the mulch we got as it hadn't had time to mulch much as I got it just after the fair, or if it were from birds nests on the house.
When I put the large play area in the back yard, I wanted to put something down that would be softer for the kids and keep weeds from growing. I checked into gravel but it was expensive and I didn't want it in the grass and house and it isn't soft. 
Because of that, I looked at wood chips but when I helped put them in my sisters yard, I got lots of splinters and didn't want that for the kids feet. (See here for that post.)
Since I had been putting this on my garden beds, I figured it couldn't be bad to put in the back beds and it would be free. It was GREAT for the play area and I figured if I ever wanted to make it a garden area, the ground would be better and more fertile than the red clay we have in our area that makes growing things hard.
When the phone company was fixing some lines in our area, they dug a hole in the play area and turned under what was left of my mulch covering on the play ground and that would leave me with lots of weeds in the near future. (See that post here)
My sister and I were going to use her truck and trailer to pick it up but her transmission in her truck went. After that, I called a few contractors I know asking them if they had a dump truck we could use to get a load from the fair grounds.
One had a truck and within twenty minutes, the truck was loaded and dumped and he was gone. It was SO much easier than having to shovel the load out of the trailer and truck backs.
After the many years of doing this, I learned it is much easier to put the mulch on a tarp so I can cover it in case of a wind storm as we have had a few and it ended up all over the neighbors yard.
Also, when I am shoveling it into the wheel barrels, it would get into the grass and edges of the driveway and sweeping made dusty stink all over. With the tarp, I can just lift it up and dump the last dusty mess into a wheel barrel and no sweeping needed.
You may not have access to fair grounds but many dumps have a mulching pit where you can go and get a load for not a ton of money as well. Here is a post about her getting them from the dump. Also, some tree pruning places also sell mulched branches as well.
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