Ok. I’m going to do something exciting and terrifying today. We’re going to talk about money, specifically wedding budgets. I know! I’ve been avoiding the topic of real life wedding budgets with actual numbers for, ohhhh, two and a half years now. But I got this comment on Monday, after I said that while APW-ers could talk about parenting and sex without batting an eye or raising a voice, but we’d never been able to discuss wedding budgets calmly:
I know what you mean… the topic of money comes up and everybody starts feeling bad about themselves for one reason or another… but, I wish there was a way for us to become good enough listeners to have discussions about money without freaking out because I know that for me, money was the biggest stressor when planning our wedding. I think that one of the reasons I was so stressed was that I felt completely in the dark. The only people who talked about money and weddings online were people who were spending SO MUCH MONEY and people who were devoted to spending nothing at all. I feel like the majority of us, folks who aren’t millionaires, but do plan to spend more dough on our wedding than we’ve spent on almost anything before (whether that amount is 5k or 50k) were left to figure it all out for ourselves.
Reading the discussions in APW comment threads has really helped me to step out of my own shoes and see lots of different things from other people’s perspectives and I wonder if we’re not incapable of doing the same thing when it comes to money (although I know how hard that would be). I know it would have helped me.
And, well, I just couldn’t not take on the challenge. I love a challenge. It’s a character flaw.
So this is how we’re going to do this. We’re going to lay out cold, hard wedding numbers…. anonymously. You don’t have to be anonymous, but I’d encourage you to be, and here is why: People are more honest about money when they are anonymous. When you’re anonymous, you tend to not try to brag about how much you spent, or how little you spent, or how smartly you spent. And that kind of bragging and reverse bragging is what takes wedding budget conversations down. Plus, when no one knows who you are, you’re less likely to get in a fight with someone about how bad you think their spending choices were. As if you should be judging anyway, achem.So. Anonmously, I’d invite you to leave a comment saying:
- What you spent on your wedding.
- Where you live (Big city? Small town? Expensive area? Affordable area?) Because oh, boy does that change your budget numbers.
- How big your wedding was.
- How that budget roughly broke down (How much was food? Venue? Dress?)
- What your biggest challenge was.
- How you feel about your budget post-wedding (if you are post wedding. If your not post wedding, you might want to sit this one out and just read the comments. It’s hard to tell what the h*ll is going to happen to our budget and what you’ll learn from it mid-planning. Besides, if you pat yourself on the back too early, you’re just inviting disaster, trust me. Ack.)
Ground rules:
If you’re being anonymous and you have a gravitar (the little picture of yourself), don’t use your gravitar email address, use another one or a fake one, or your picture will pop up. Also, don’t put in your URL. Though, if you want to use a name that’s not your regular handle, go for it.
No judging other peoples choices. No judging your own choices. Try to be as nice to yourself as you are to everyone else. Money stuff is hard, and you deserve a break from beating yourself up, yes?
Annnndddd, let the knowledge sharing begin. I’m scared! And excited!
PS If you haven’t read it, I wrote a post about what I learned about money planning my wedding that might be helpful. I modified it for inclusion in the second edition of Ariel’s Offbeat Bride book (whooo!), but you can read it in it’s full glory here.
Spent about $23,000
Live in a city of about 200,000 people in an expensive area on the East Coast
120 guests
Food was about half our total, while dress was only $250. Venue and photography were big costs. Spent less than $500 on flowers (used potted, local orchids for centerpieces and then $100 worth of hydrangea bouquets)
Biggest challenge: trying to keep costs reasonable when my parents were willing to spend more
Post wedding, I still feel like it was a big number. However, I feel good about the things we spent money on, and I feel that it would have been difficult, given the fact that my parents could afford to feed our almost-all-out-of-town guests dinner, to cut costs any more than we did. I would have felt strange asking my friends to spend $300 to travel to our wedding and then ask them to buy their own dinner because of my discomfort accepting money from my parents. I wonder if it would have made sense, in my situation of having little time and my parents offering money, to spend a little more to coordinate less (for example, a venue with in-house catering). In the end, though, I feel a little uncomfortable with our total, but I know that we spent on things that required spending and saved on things that did not, for us. And the wedding was fantastic!
September 17, 2010 4:52 am
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I had similar conversations with my parents. I think, in a lot of ways, the wedding was also a reflection on them (or at least they felt that way), and they wanted to do extra things to make sure the people attending had a great time. I tried to keep this desire within reasonable limits. It was a constant compromise.
September 17, 2010 5:45 am
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I had a similar experience with my parents, too. They believed that this was a reflection on them (we DID have it at their house!), so I was constantly trying to find ways for them to spend less money and/or consume less (using real plates not plastic, for example), while they were not at all worried about the money or the state of the landfills. And I was constantly attempting to get them to compromise without them knowing it, since I didn’t want our wonderful event to turn into a struggle between my values and their desire to throw a great party for everyone we love in the only way they knew how to at the time. I think we all ended up sufficiently happy, which is really great, but it was definitely a struggle!
September 17, 2010 3:47 pm
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I had the same experience as well (mainly with my Dad). He was all about being a great host & wanting certain things because people would ‘know’ that he was putting on the shindig. Thankfully I knew this already from watching my sister plan her wedding a few years prior. His main thing was wanting an open bar for a majority of the night and enough food options for everybody… (because according to him the only thing that matters is that people are fed & drunk… which is pretty much true, I suppose). So I let him do what he wanted with that part of it… I figured he was paying for most of the wedding, so I owed him that at least. Right? Plus, I knew my poor friends would not complain about drinking for free all night… :)
September 17, 2010 4:07 pm
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I know what you mean about being uncomfortable even though you can afford it. For me, it’s not my parents, but my fiance who has plenty saved up, and I originally wanted to spend a lot less. But like you, we’re on the East Coast in an expensive area, and his family were all going to travel, so the idyllic (moderately expensive) venue that everyone would have to travel to ultimately made the most sense.
In fact, we have a very similar wedding all around, it seems, and I’d say, let go of feeling guilty. Weddings are expensive, and I think you’re right that it’s much easier (and I dare say, nicer for your guests) to have a fully catered meal and dancing when you’ve asked them to travel. It sounds like you did a great job of cutting what you could, and if the wedding was fun, that’s all that matters!
September 17, 2010 9:29 am
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I honestly don’t know what we spent in total on our wedding. I know that sounds irresponsible but my husband said “it’ll cost what it’ll cost and there’s not much we can do about it” and whilst that freaked me out (this was my biggest challenge), I went with it.
We got married in London and had a party at home for 40 or so people. Then we went to Paris and had a big reception for 120 people. Then went to Spain for a week’s holiday.
The Paris end cost about £12k (food, drink, music, flowers, a rubbish photographer etc) – 25% me, 25% husband, 50% husband’s family. The rings (engagement and wedding bands) were quite expensive – maybe £3k in total. I spent £300 on material for my dress and my aunt made it for me as a present.
I genuinely do not know how much all the other elements cost. Pretty much everything else came out of our joint account and just got spent as we went along.
September 17, 2010 4:54 am
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Yup. We’re the same. My mother contributed $10k (AUD), to do with as we please. We decided to use this sum (and only this sum) for the reception. We figured other costs were really treats for us (dress, suit, stationery, flowers, makeup) and we could cut corners there if we needed to, but that we didn’t want to feel we had to do that for guests.
We aimed to save up another $10k for everything but the reception. We actually exceeded that (woot!) through dint of hard work and some lucky timing, so have just spent what we want to spend on the rest. I have an inbuilt ‘that’s outrageous!’ meter when it comes to spending money. So when all the cake quotes I got were $500, and I didn’t want to spend that on cake, I did the ‘call a local bakery’ trick and got our cakes for $120 (I then spent the difference on amazing custom caketoppers from etsy and a kickarse DIY cake stand… but I’m happier about these expenses).
Anyway, the $10k was supposed to cover eeeeverything else. I would say it covers everything else except the honeymoon. Not too bad. We ended being able to pay for bridesmaid’s and best woman’s outfits, instead of asking them to buy, which I’m happy about.
So. I’m in Australia. Reception for 80 people (number selected by dint of our budget, which luckily coincided roughly with the number of people we really wanted there) is $10k. $700 on flowers for bridal party and family members (no other floral arrangements). $2500 on the dress, $800 on his suit. $3000 on photographer (we got an amazing deal, very lucky), $350 on attendants’ dresses… what else? $150 on fabric to make napkins. Centrepieces will be re-used jars with tealights, so free except for the tealights… since we had money spare and no energy for the ipod route $1000 for a DJ (expensive round our way, it seems!) $800 for our darling day-of coordinator… About $1000 for invites, rsvps, thankyou cards and order of service booklets, by a wonderful etsy person. Worth every penny.
We initially thought we wouldn’t have a honeymoon, but will have the cash for that. yay!
One thing I have kept in mind is that I bought a dress majorly on sale and did everything on the cheap for my highschool ball. And while I did like my dress, I do kind of regret choosing the cheap one over something I really, really loved. I’ve always, always been the girl that chooses the thing she likes on sale over the full-price thing she loves (even when she can afford the full-price thing), and I’ve made a conscious decision not to do that for the wedding.
September 17, 2010 4:48 pm
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Replying to my own post, having read some of the later posts:
i) We won’t have a rehearsal dinner. They’re not the norm here. We won’t have vehicles, because I just don’t care about them (and neither does my partner).
ii) I am finding our budget has enough give in it to allow me to, on the days when I am tired and frustrated and DON’T CARE to book the expensive, but very nice, vendor just to cross something off the list (my hairdresser is costing a bomb – I think in retrospect she expected me to haggle on price, but as she was the first of like, 12 hairdressers to both return my call and be available, I just didn’t care by then. She was friendly, sweet, and available. Sure I’ll pay her $400 to do three people’s hair).
September 17, 2010 6:40 pm
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You are making me feel much better. I have a very similar attitude to money as you, and I have around 50 guests – probably. Adjusting for number of guests our budgets are looking very similar. I have been quoted a bit more for photography by someone whose work I love, so I’m glad you felt yours was reasonable.
September 17, 2010 10:00 pm
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haha, I also have “an inbuilt ‘that’s outrageous!’ meter when it comes to spending money”, so I think your cake solution was quite perfect. We got past the cake thing by having my sister make 100+ cupcakes, the neighbours bring other desserts (peanut butter cheesecake, to name one!), and my cousin make one birthday-cake sized cake for us to cut.
September 18, 2010 9:48 am
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Okay I’m a total geek, I have coppied the list of questions into the box to help me get it all down!
First off we got married nearly a year ago, I live in a smallish city in quite an expensive area in the UK. I’ll give prices for things in $ but the exchange rate is about £1=1.6$ for those of you that can do in your brain maths of have a calculator to hand. for extra context a mars bar costs about £0.65, our weekly food budget is about £75 for two people and our house (tiny 2 bed terrace) cost £285,000, our household income is about £67,000 a year. We both have masters degrees, I’m an engineer and my husband is a games programmer.
Oh and i’ll tell you a secret – this is a guess! I don’t actually exactly know how much we spent in the end, it all got a bit scary.
We had 100ish people during the day and another 50-60 came along for the party in the evening. We spent ((or aimed to spend) about £6,500.
So big ticket items:
Venue – £500 (total bargin)
Dress – £650 for bride and bridesmaid
Groom’s Outfit – £350
Food – £1350
Booze/Drinks – £1500
Band – £800
Decorations and hire stuff – £500
Photographer – £350
Invites, thank you cards and postage – £150 (DIT)
Hotel – £250 (major splirge but it was so nice with a roll top bath looking out over the park – I still think about that bath every time i walk past it now – totally worth it!)
Thank you gifts – £150
Flowers – £125 (thankyou princess lastertron!)
Legal ceremony – £75
Celebrant – free (a very good friend)
bar – free because our friendas and family drank it dry and they let us off paying as they had made so much money!
Our biggest challenge was finding a venue we liked and could afford. We have some compleatly daft rules about where you can get married and who can do the ceremony in this country. A venue has to be licenced to have legal weddings which makes it really expensive. In my city is is also very expensive because most of the venues are owned by the same organisation and out of commission during term time.
How I feel about our budget? I’m happy about it, I don’t think we skimped on anything and I don’t think we went to over the top. It was about right. There are things we could have sorted out more frugally if we had more time, but we didn’t to c’est le vie. I don’t wish we had spent more money on anything really. I kinda wish someone else would make my wedding album for me becasue I can’t be bothered and it would be nice to have one.
We probably shouldn’t have spent so much on our honeymoon, but that’s a different story!
September 17, 2010 5:05 am
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I copied and pasted it too! Hooray for fellow geeks!
September 17, 2010 7:26 pm
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I will too, if I ever get to the bottom of these comments and can start my own!
Not only do I like to make sure I answer everything (there’s the geeky part), but I also have a bad memory and would surely get distracted answering one part and then forget all the others!
September 18, 2010 9:50 am
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Good idea Meg, as usual. I’m just going to go down the list.
- Spent probably 35K total. My parents, who are wealthy, paid for everything.
- Boston. Expensive.
- 120 people
- The vast majority of budget was spent on catering, which amounted to about 16K I think. About 4K for venues (church and reception site). Dress (plus alterations) was $805, bought at discount dealer. We also paid for little buses (that no one ended up riding!), $800; hairstyling, about $700; photography, about $2000; flowers, done by gifted family friend, about $1000. And a million other little things…
- Challenges and feelings:
I am a fortunate person in that my family has money (I am in a very unlucrative profession, so personally, I don’t ). My parents immediately offered to foot the wedding bill, and said I should spend whatever I wanted. They said that with the knowledge that I would be compulsively trying to keep costs low throughout. It was hard hard at first for my parents to understand how expensive wedding stuff is. I have a reputation for being stingy and ascetic, so when I would try to make money-saving moves, they would make comments to the effect that I should just let go and enjoy and spend. And then they would look at the actual numbers and be surprised at how much we were spending. I struggled to make them understand that efforts to control costs were not just me being anal and uptight, but rather me being sane and trying to fight a rotten, exploitative industry.
30K in Boston does not go too too far; my parents talked to friends and got 40-50K as standard wedding cost numbers. I feel like we did a lot of cost-controlling things, and we did not spend money on shit we didn’t care about. But it was still an expensive wedding. And that’s okay, because we could have afforded a much more expensive wedding. Spending less than we could have is consistent with the values that pervaded the whole event. In retrospect, I feel pretty good about the whole thing. Definitely it feels good to have hired vendors whom we really, really liked as individuals, and whose values (those values again) were consistent with ours.
September 17, 2010 5:08 am
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I am so glad you posted this. We’re about a year into a two-year engagement in Boston, hoping to spend about the same, and, yes, my parents are footing the bill. My fiance and I make almost no money, and my parents have it. They gave the same directive – spend what you want – and, as my fiance keeps pointing out, I’m the only one who is constantly stressed and ridden by guilt about how much everything is going to cost. Becca at A Los Angeles Love posted about money fairly recently, and several of the blog ladies I read responded with their budget numbers. I was shocked. From my perspective it seemed like everyone in the “indie” blog world spends $10,000 or less, no matter where they live, and it was really eye-opening to see that that just wasn’t always the case.
September 17, 2010 6:48 am
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I’m getting married an hour outside Boston and all my vendors are from Central MA. If you’re willing to go even an hour out of Boston, prices drop a whole lot. I know this isn’t feasible for everyone but thought I’d put it out there…
September 17, 2010 7:48 am
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I live about 30 miles south of Boston…close to Providence. I am having my wedding at my Church, and the venue at a historic site in RI. I will post all my numbers later….but honestly I think the total is under 10K or around 10K and I know my wedding will be wonderful….a little different on many levels, but very traditional on other levels….It can be done no matter what the budget! I believe that!
September 21, 2010 8:25 am
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We live in Boston, and I did not even consider Boston venues in my search, because I knew what the average prices were. I spent 2 solid months hunting for venues, from nearby suburbs and to 4 hours away in Northern New England. Then when we did find one we really liked, I negotiated further.
As a Frugal Yankee paying for the wedding ourselves (the groom & I), I had hoped to stay under 6K. Now it is looking like it could be twice that, which is sticker shock for us. I won’t know exact numbers until we are closer to our date next year, but I plan to keep my research & negotiating skills sharp, and continue to seek out the best fit for us, without breaking the bank.
There IS an option for a Budget Boston wedding — The Rose Garden for a ceremony, and a private restaurant room for the reception — if you can chance the New England weather, and have a guest list under 50. Anything is possible! Its a matter of what your preferences and resources are.
September 25, 2010 9:58 pm
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…actually, my twice the 6K estimate includes the rehearsal BBQ & Sunday brunch, so I should start to relax at some point, once it really hits home how much of a good deal this really is.
I do plan to ask family if they can chip in any way possible, whether that be for smaller items like stationary or cake, or bigger, more traditionally parent-funded things like the rehearsal dinner/brunch. The latter would cut our costs (and worries) considerably.
September 25, 2010 10:06 pm
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So glad my comment was helpful to someone! :)
In looking over all the other comments here, it’s interesting how much variability there is in how we define the “wedding budget.” Even aside from the variation in what we all choose to buy or omit in planning our weddings (for instance, we had no cake and no engagement ring, so obviously those items aren’t in the budget), there are differences in what we include when we make our lists of expenditures. My tally, just for the record, did not include honeymoon costs or all the things the groom’s family paid for, ie the rehearsal dinner. If you added those things, the total cost would be waaaaaay more.
Very interesting thread… I’m wondering too what the numbers here say about the APW readership–how do we as a group compare to regional and national averages? That’s interesting to think about too.
September 17, 2010 10:32 am
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- We are spending about 38K total. His parents gave us a budget of 40K and my mom gave us 5K
- Boston. Wow, expensive (especially to a girl originally from the Midwest do people not have just plan function halls in Boston proper?)
- 135 people – guestimate wedding is still upcoming
- Our budget went mostly to the catering/ venue
Venue – 5900
Food and drink – 22,000 this includes the cake. I had no idea cakes were so expensive but 7 dollars per person was what we ended up with. We tried someone who charged less. The taste difference was…astounding.
Dress plus alterations – 1100 (the dress itself was 800 just to give an idea of what alterations can be in Boston)
photography is 2600
flowers is 200
Dj 1200
hair and makeup 500 (paying for BMs and moms)
invitations printing (we designed ourselves) 900
- Challenges and feelings:
As I said before his parents offered us a very generous budget. I was totally thrown by the number at the beginning. There were ways we could have paid less. Our venue is very expensive (it’s the science museum in boston). There were venues that were less expensive but they either required waiting a full extra year or resulted in very close quarters for our guests. And we have a dinosaur at our venue! A dinosaur! (I’m a geek.)
Additionally, we’re paying for everything. Except for his uncle is marrying us, nothing is really DIY or DIT. I spent a lot of time wishing I could have a handmade wedding, like the one verhext spoke of quite recently. It took me a really long time to get over the fact that we weren’t going to be having that. Our families live very far from one another and Boston is very far from them. Many of our choices were made knowing that our guests would be traveling. A big one is that our wedding venue is accessible by public transit.
The other truth is, we’re busy. I’m a postdoc in a profession that expects work to be your life. Now that we’re getting close to the wedding I cannot thank his parents enough. In the last two weeks I’ve submitted numerous papers, a grant proposal, and have not been sleeping. I have to travel for work in a week. There are 3 more deadlines I hope to make before the wedding. It’s hard enough for us to just contact vendors that we are paying to check in. (My fiance has been extremely involved in the wedding. Vendors have been a bit surprised.) I can’t imagine doing any of this ourselves right now.
Much like Fleda, I too have a reputation for being thrifty. We aren’t spending money on stuff we care about. I’ll probably wear shoes I’ve owned for 3 years. I’m not buying a new necklace. He’s wearing his suit. We’re not doing programs. We picked vendors we liked, hope we can trust and hopefully it works well. I am still constantly astounded by how much things have been, especially since 3 close friends from the midwest also got married this year. We wanted to get married where we live and where gay marriage is legal so the decision isn’t one I regret but oof.
In the sprit of honesty: that number is for the wedding day. It does not count the “rehearsal” dinner that grew to be huge because out of town family and friends are invited. It does not count the brunch the next day. It does not count the reception being thrown by his family for friends and relatives on the west coast that could not make it out to Boston. I think these extra things are not as typical nor as necessary.
September 17, 2010 7:56 am
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What I mean by not necessary. Is not necessary for most people. Due to our far away families and such they were necessary for us but I think that isn’t the norm for many people.
September 17, 2010 8:39 am
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(This is a different Anon commenter) I think it’s interesting that people leave out the rehearsal dinner and brunch when they talk about wedding costs, because those things themselves can cost so much – if you choose to have them, which is not any less a choice than choosing to have a pro photographer or videographer or band or DJ or dinner or dessert or whatever else. We ended up having a version of them, but I was totally blindsided by how much we could have spent on them especially if we paid for a hotel brunch – which would have been $30-50 pp with tax and service charge at our hotel. What we did end up spending for those two additional wedding events I definitely consider as part of our overall wedding expenses.
September 17, 2010 8:50 am
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I didn’t include the rehearsal dinner because we didn’t plan it or pay for it, I don’t even know how much it was. If my in-laws weren’t volunteering to take it on, we probably would either have skipped it entirely, or done something extremely informal (read: cheap).
But generally I agree it’s funny to read all the “not including”s on here. For some, every penny spent on anything related to the wedding gets counted, and for others “wedding” costs are a very specific set of things, and “side items” (from shoes to rings to the rehearsal dinner) don’t get counted. interesting phenomenon.
September 17, 2010 10:36 am
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I agree. Totally interesting to see what people exclude.
For me I don’t include my engagement ring in the cost, but wedding bands ARE counted? Weird probably, but for some reason the engagement ring seems like it’s own entity.
Otherwise we’re including everything possible other thing in our “total”.
September 17, 2010 11:52 am
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haha whatever i didn’t include was pure memory loss. as i read these comments i’m like, “oh yeah! we bought rings! (80) and rehearsal dinner! (200)” i guess i just listed the things that were most memorable… and made my wallet hurt most haha.
September 17, 2010 4:44 pm
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It wasn’t my wedding, so I don’t want to comment total $, but that DIT wedding was not super super cheap either. Big tent rental (i cannot BELIEVE how much tents cost to rent) + wiring electricity to the site + semi-famous band = where all the $ went. But then they didn’t pay for food, dress, makeup and hair, photos, etc…
It’s so interesting how we prioritize!
September 17, 2010 2:23 pm
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Yes! Tent rentals cost almost as much as my rent. For my entire apartment. For A YEAR!!!!
September 19, 2010 7:49 pm
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OMG — tent/table rentals were what made me shy away from the original DIY everything plan.
We’re creative and have many resources at our disposal, but not a tent in our back pocket, and when I saw how much it would cost to just have a backyard cookout self-catered, thanks to the tent & equipment rentals, I ran away. Went with a catered venue with great atmosphere, relaxed coordinator, and decent prices instead, and have finally resolved that spending the extra money to have someone else take care of the main stuff (food, drinks, set-up/clean-up, etc), was worth it. And less hassle!
September 25, 2010 10:14 pm
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We spent the equivalent of about $18,000-$20,000 (never actually calculated the final number)
I live in a big (4 mil people) city, expensive-ish (but in Africa)
130 guests (but planned around 150)
We originally planned around a rough figure that my mum had head of $135 per guest (average of all wedding costs not just food) and that worked out about right. Reception (food, waiters, venue hire, linens etc.) were about half of the total. I spent nearly $2000 on my custom made dress (store bought dresses imported from USA etc. cost at least that here). Photography was $2400. Flowers were about $400, but what suprised me was the additional expense of hiring other decor stuff (vases, candlesticks etc.).
We were VERY lucky – my parents very happily paid for almost everything. I covered hair and makeup and a few odd and ends and my husband’s parents paid for the booze.
The biggest challenge for me was weighing up the right amount of money to spend on something. Often I could afford to pay for something (even on my own) but it just felt like I wasn’t going to get value for money (hair!). My parents’ (especially my mum’s) attitude that it is a privilege to be able to host a beautiful wedding for her daughter eliminated a lot of budget stress for me. Lucky, lucky girl!
Post-wedding, I wonder if we would have chosen the same things if my husband and I paid for it ourselves. We could have, although it would have meant some more planning and some compromises and I think overall, I would have made pretty similar choices. Ironically one of the few choices I would go back and change is that I would have spent the extra money on one of those fancy wedding hairdresser types. I tried to find a discount option and I think the results show it. No major regrets about the budget, no major learnings either (I’ve learnt far more about money buying cars and houses and merging budgets with my husband).
Wait, on thinking about it, one learning – either do it right or don’t do it. Trying to do something on the cheap because you don’t feel right about spending more just didn’t work for me (see exhibit A: hairdresser, and exhibit B: favours – spent a tiny amount and it looked kind of ridiculous, going without would also have been perfectly fine!)
September 17, 2010 5:12 am
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“The biggest challenge for me was weighing up the right amount of money to spend on something. Often I could afford to pay for something (even on my own) but it just felt like I wasn’t going to get value for money (hair!).”
me TOO. we couldn’t afford things- but that was less important to me than the fact that i didn’t think it was worth it to throw so much cash at some things.
September 17, 2010 5:18 am
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i’ve talked about it before on here.
our original budget was $6,000. that was back before i’d actually checked into what things COST. when i thought, “this sounds reasonable enough.” we didn’t actually HAVE 6grand sitting somewhere- it was just a number picked from the sky because it sounded generous yet frugal and nice and round.
after finding out how much things cost, we let it expand as necessary- to $12,000, by the end.
we’re in philly, of course, so the giant lavish wedding is the norm. we had thrown a catering hall anniversary party for my parents the year before, and it was gorgeous, reasonable and all-inclusive. so we went back there. the word “wedding” made the price quadruple. literally.
photos were the biggest bulk at close to $3grand, dress was $800 (used designer gown), and food was around $2grand for the dessert buffet and another $2grand for an intimate dinner after (for family and travelers). we also paid $400 for josh’s suit- we bought the dinner jacket and pants, etc and had them tailored. venue was a church hall, so only $300 there. and maybe $600 for rentals. we counted the honeymoon in with the wedding expenses because it was a necessity, as far as i was concerned. that was $150. florals were fake and came to maybe $100. i took pin-up photos as a surprise for josh which were $300ish. invitations were on sale at target for about $100. two cases of champagne and a live band, both of which i can’t recall exact figures.
we had between 150 and 200 at the dessert buffet and about 60 at the “intimate” dinner (which i realize is funny to some of you who had 30 at your wedding. it gets hard when you both have giant families.)
the biggest challenge was knowing what to compromise. we wanted to have everyone there. but we wanted it to FEEL special. in a family where parties happen all the time, we wanted our wedding to stand out- and that usually requires cash. plus, everyone else had their own ideas of what should be dropped for the sake of the budget (my mom insisted on paper plates, but i was 100% opposed)
i also struggled with guilt over our spending choices. you can take a look at the numbers and see that a lot of money was spent on us- looking good, getting nice photos, going on honeymoon… i had a lot of trouble feeling okay that we only served dessert and champagne and were treating ourselves to brand new suits and designer gowns.
in retrospect, i’m happy with our choices- even though they resulted in taking out a small loan. $12,000 is a huge number to me, still. but i feel like we got what we paid for, and in many cases, more than we paid for. i’m most happy that we included everyone we wanted to- no skimping on the guest list. it was worth giving up a fancy dinner or beautiful venue to have everyone there.
September 17, 2010 5:16 am
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yikes- honeymoon was 1500 not 150.
haha.
September 17, 2010 5:21 am
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I think it’s so hilarious how wedding budget ALWAYS expand. My best friend and I got engaged at basically the same time. I remember our first conversation about money and weddings was like. “Neither of us are going to spend more than 3k… no WAY!” Well… that number kept getting slightly bigger and slightly bigger until I spent around 18k and she spent around 30k. Whoops. I guess I original guestimates were a little off.
September 17, 2010 12:05 pm
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I’m in the planning stages right now, but had also picked the number $6,000, also completely arbitrarily! I’m glad we’re not the only couple who found that we needed to expand this, considerably. Even though we’re not planning on including a number of “traditional” wedding items (dress, flowers, photographer, DJ, cake) our $6,000 budget inflated considerably as soon as we got catering estimates in. Yikes.
September 17, 2010 7:56 am
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I’m getting married in January, in São Paulo – Brazil. Quite a expensive city, more expensive than the city I live in.
The first hard decision to make was where to get married. I live in a small town and my fiance lives in SP. My grandfather lives there too, and he can’t travel. We knew, from the beginning, things were more expensive there. But it seemed important to have my grandpa with me on my wedding day.
My first budget was R$ 12k (around US$ 7k). My wedding planner told me it was impossible, and then I tried to make things possible in another way. I thought “I have 110 guests, that can’t be impossible.”
Well, it was. Until now, we’ve spent almost R$ 25k (Around US$ 12k):
- photos: R$ 6k (that’s my ‘luxury’. my photographer is great, i know that would be off budget).
- venue, caterer: R$ 15k
- candy (i don’t know how to say that in English. it’s this: http://www.lavieendouce.com.br): R$ 1,3k
- priest: R$ 1,8k (boy, that’s expensive)
- gown: R$ 1k
Still to go:
- booze: it’ll be around R$ 3k
- flowers: my family used to produce orchids, i know how much they cost. I thought i was going to spend around 2k, but I can’t find a vendor for less than R$ 5k. WAY off budget.
- hair/make: it’ll be around R$ 1k. I’m searching for alternatives.
My father is paying the bill for the party). He didn’t say a word about values, but some prices just don’t seem right for me. My fiancee is paying for the honeymoon and for the new house. That’s the plan. But many times I wonder if I’m doing the right thing (not by getting married, but by spending all this money in a single day).
September 17, 2010 10:15 am
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“In a family where parties happen all the time, we wanted our wedding to stand out” – exactly! My family is the party family, all my parents’ siblings’ and my friends spend most summer weekends and a couple major yearly blowouts at my parents farm drinking and swimming and dancing and I wanted our wedding to be one of these parties but the biggest and best of those parties.
September 17, 2010 9:34 am
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We spent around $17,000 for the rehearsal/ wedding day…. I don’t know the exact number because we (I) spent what I was comfortable with and went from there.
We had 80 people in attendance and the wedding was held in the Midwest….population somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people.
Biggest expenses were food/bar ($6000) and photography ($3200), followed by my dress ($2200). I thought I did great on flowers ($800) because we had a lot of flowers for what I spent, at compared to all of the other quotes I got.
The biggest challenges weren’t money related, but planning from a far and constantly being surprised at how quickly the little things added up at the end.
Post wedding- half way through the process, I realized I didn’t need to do the whole wedding thing like I originally thought I did. My husband wanted a party for our family to celebrate with us and so we moved forward. I couldn’t throw a half thought out party, so I spent money on stuff we really didn’t want or need but in my mind completed the look. I wish I could have found a happy medium and spent that money on furniture for our new house instead, but the pictures showing the love and joy in the faces of our family make it worth it.
September 17, 2010 5:17 am
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Spent just under $20,000, maybe closer to $19,000.
Total guest count was around 130, invited just under 200. Our wedding was in New York state, not too far from NYC but not super close either.
Catering/reception was the biggest portion, coming to around 8,000. That actually doesn’t include alcohol (open bar), which came out to $2,000. Dress was probably about 1,000 with alterations (800ish before), and the biggest other expenses were DJ (2,000ish), photography (just under 2,000), and florist (around 1700). We kept it pretty reasonable on many other things, like invitations, which cost total under $300 because I did them myself.
Our biggest challenges related mostly to the guest list, not so much for cost reasons but for space reasons. Keeping the budget in check took a lot of research, some creative thinking, and some decisions about what to leave out (mainly, videography and a day-of coordinator), but I felt like it was a big game that I sort of welcomed, and perspective like that of my fiance (who is more the saver in our relationship and is good at telling me “Think about it, do you REALLY need that? Is it going to make a difference worth that dollar amount?” and the perspective from APW helped me feel like I didn’t NEED everything.
Post-wedding, I feel really good about the budget. Part of the situation to be honest about is that my parents gave us an amount they were willing to pay, which was very generous, and since this is anonymous, was $20,000. His parents then told us an amount they were willing to put toward our honeymoon, and we spent less than that (I am not including it in the above budget.) I feel great that I didn’t overspend my parents’ amount, and remain really grateful to them for their generosity. (For the record, one of their only stipulations about the wedding was “open bar”!)
The other reason I feel good post-wedding about the money is inspired at least in part by APW, which is that the largest amounts of money other than catering were paid to wonderful local professionals with small businesses, mainly our DJs (a married couple), photographers (another married couple), and florist. I did feel like 1700 for flowers was a lot, but I knew that DIY flowers would drive me insane, and I loved what she did, so in the end it’s not too upsetting. I feel like under 2K for our photography was a STEAL, and our photographers were nothing but wonderful to work with and produced beautiful photos – I congratulate myself regularly for finding them. And our DJs were amazing as well, they kept everyone on the dance floor and we got so many comments about how great the music was. They also took on the role of coordinating the reception events so I didn’t have to worry about the timeline during the reception, which I loved. At the end of the day, we paid above average for the music, but I don’t regret it one bit, because our DJs are wonderful people who are great at what they do.
Also, I was proud of myself for the creativity I found with things like invitations, card box, favors (and we used my MIL’s baking talents for personal cookie favors, which felt good too). I had friends act in a coordinating role during reception set-up and at the ceremony, and my trust in them was absolutely warranted. With everything about DIY and DIT on the internet, I felt that we made the right choices about what to take on (a few crafty type things, but not photography, music, catering, or flowers).
There is probably plenty more I could say, but I will leave it there since I’ve written way too much already!
September 17, 2010 5:18 am
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I don’t mean to hijack your comment but, just out of curiosity, would you be willing to share where you had your reception? I’m looking into a semi far-off wedding in NY, near NYC.
September 17, 2010 8:33 am
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I want to second the appreciation for APW’s (Meg’s) encouragement to consider who you’re hiring, and that it’s worth it to pay people what they’re worth. I feel there is a lot of discussion of getting the cheapest possible deals (necessary for some people), but I like the idea of mindful spending. When spending more than you’ve ever spent on anything before, isn’t it nice to know your money is going to an independent professional you trust or a company who treats their workers fairly? Again not judging those who don’t have many options. But it’s not something you even see mentioned in most mags/blogs/books on wedding planning. (And it helps me feel better about our spending – we might actually be helping the economy…!)
September 17, 2010 9:57 am
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Total: $16,000ish (not sure exactly, for the sake of my peace of mind)
Location: Kentucky, small town suburb of a big Ohio city
Size of Wedding: 220 guests (300 invited)
Budget Break-Down:
Reception: $9000ish. This price included prime rib dinner buffet and open bar for beer and wine (liquor available for cash)
Cake: $700
Dress: $866, with alterations bringing the total up to about 1050 I think. Veil was $130.
Flowers and decorations: $800ish
Honeymoon: $3000ish for 5 days in Mazatlan, Mexico
Rings: $3000ish for the engagement ring (he saved for 2 years and paid cash) about $600 each for the wedding bands. All of these bought in Tennessee, where we live.
Photography: $1800
DJ: $1600
Hair: $80 (including trial)
makeup: $120 (including trial)
My parents gave us my dress and $5000 and we paid for the rest. Actually I think they ended up paying for more than that, and I’m going to pay them back as soon as I can.
Challenges: I had a few moments of sticker shock and panic that I eventually had to just get over. I worried about transportation for a while. We finally decided that instead of getting a limo we’d borrow 2 minivans or SUVs from family members, just to keep everyone cool and together. But one of the vans we were counting on broke down and we had to rent one at the last minute. That’s one of the expenses I’d like to pay my parents back for.
How do I feel about it now? I’m glad that none of it was paid for on credit (except what I feel obligated to give my parents). I think we did the best we could for our money and were able to throw a great party! The best thing was the value of our venue, which I’m convinced is a hidden gem in our area. We got a prime rib dinner there for less than what other places charged for chicken. And the service was amazing! The chef himself took my groom and me through the buffet line and they had been so thoughtful as to make cookies in the shape of animals my family raises on our locally famous farm! Other brides don’t get to eat at their wedding sometimes, but they made sure we did!
September 19, 2010 11:33 am
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Very helpful! I’m planning a wedding in Louisville so it’s nice to see a regional comparison. And a shout-out to another KY APW reader!
September 23, 2010 8:46 am
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OK: numbers. We thought we were just going to throw a party and we didn’t have a lot of traditional things like a guest book or professional flowers, so we thought that it wouldn’t be very expensive. So, while some of our main things were way less expensive than what you sometimes see, there were still a million small things that kept adding up, which I didn’t expect. We got married in a small town north of a big east coast city. Things are expensive, but we’re far enough from the city that bargains can be found too.
Guests: 100 (adults and kids)
Food: about $4500
Drink: Was supposed to be open bar (we calculated $1000, but because of miscommunication, it was on the guests).
Venue: $1000, which included wedding site: $300 donation (unconventional site: definitely worth it), reception hall: $500 + $200 for site-supplied bartender (before tip)
Speakers, soundboard, almost piano-worthy keyboard, and chairs: $400
Attire: $400, which included dress for me with alterations, shirt (custom-made by a friend) and pants for him, and shoes for both of us. Bridesmaids and groomswomen wore what they chose. There was a lot of not-matching going on.
Rings: $500, hello, Etsy.
Flowers: $100, local farmers market
Decorations: $100
Cupcake and Cookies: Provided by groom’s sister (we provided brother-in-law with a lot of local beer and the kids with legos—we were not above bribes!)
Photo: Free, provided by friend (we paid for her hotel room)
Hotel rooms for photographer, officiant, and college student friends who played music and did a reading for us: $450
Rehearsal dinner: $600
That’s $7650 before a bunch of incidentals, which include the cost of people staying with us, going out the week of the wedding, hiring a housecleaner before everyone showed up, makeup, gifts for everyone involved in the wedding (this was expensive but worth it—averaged maybe $30 per person), etc.
September 17, 2010 5:24 am
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PS We had a friend DJ, which ended up being a disaster—not his fault, but more of a logistical thing; i.e., people hijacking music at the end of the night—, but conceptually was sound. I also have a soprano, a pianist, and some horn players among my friends. They did the ceremony music.
September 17, 2010 5:29 am
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Still in the planning stages but I hope to spend under $ 4,000. We are having a destination wedding in driving distance from our home in the Northeast. We are driving to an area that is cheaper to help the budget stretch. We are only having 7 guests. Most of the budget is going to the inn we are renting out for the family. I got a dress for under $100 on ebay which is to PERFECT for me. We won’t be doing a lot of the traditional “wedding stuff.” No decorations, tables numbers, bouquets, etc. so that saves a lot. I hope it will be more of a vacation for our families who could not ordinarily afford one. My fiance and I are paying for the whole thing and that amount of money, while not much by wedding standards, still makes me want to throw up. We are really looking to buy our first place, too!
September 17, 2010 5:25 am
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I’m envious of your seven person wedding! We were aiming for 20, ended up a bit over 100, which was a compromise with our parents.
September 17, 2010 7:43 pm
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Our wedding was in a city in the southern U.S. and cost $25,000, not including the rehearsal dinner or honeymoon. We had about 60 guests that we served a sit-down dinner to. The food cost $1800 (the venue would never send me a bill for the alcohol for some weird reason, and they also didn’t charge a room fee), I borrowed my dress, the flowers cost $1200, a wedding planner (my husband insisted we get one because we didn’t live in the area) cost $4000. The wedding venue cost $2000 including the organist’s fee. The live music at the reception cost $900. We spent $4500 on photography. Our cake cost $500 including the rental of the cake stand and its pickup the next day. Our budget also includes some flights taken to the city we got married in for planning purposes, and hotel rooms.
September 17, 2010 5:25 am
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We spent about $10,000 on our wedding, from start to finish (thanks in large part to my parents!).
The wedding was in a smallish town (about 80,000 people live there), which is generally rather affordable.
Total head count — 58 people.
The most expensive part was covering half of everyone’s hotel room (about $4,000). This was something we really wanted to do, since travel costs were pretty high for most of our guests, and the hotel we chose, while fabulous, was a bit on the expensive side at $200/night. Most people stayed two nights. The food was actually pretty reasonable (around $1500) and the photographer was a sort-of a friend ($1,000). The dress budget was blown at $700. But I LOVED it and so did he, so we were okay with it. Other expensive things were the boat we rented out to take our guests on the night before the wedding and the tents, tables and chairs. The venue was free, as it was my grandparents’ cabin. And flowers were downright cheap! We paid $45 total, for my bouquet, 4 bridesmaids’ small bouquets, and table flowers. It was a steal– and we picked them ourselves.
The biggest budget-related challenge was covering part of the hotel rooms– mostly because we felt that was important for some of our guests, to whom travel costs might have been prohibitive. However, it was also a huge chunk of our budget, which ended up sending us over budget… In the end, though, we decided to do it, since we wanted our friends and family to be there with us without having to feel like they were emptying their pockets to do so. (This makes the decision sound very clear-cut, but in actuality there were months and months of deliberation that went into it between myself, my now husband, and my parents. Hoo Boy.)
Post-wedding? The whole month that it’s been? I feel great about it. We had a kick-ass time, and we’ve heard from lots of our guests that they did, too. And even though we went over budget, that dress made me feel like a million bucks, and the food was unbelievable, and all our friends and family were able to be there and celebrate with us. Every penny was worth it, just for that. (Side note: the pennies spent on the boat were NOT worth it, as the boat broke down at the dock. Luckily, we were able to develop a quick alternate plan, thanks to some wonderful cousins!) Throughout the entire wedding process, money was one of the biggest stressors– for everyone involved. However, at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. As I ate the food, I wasn’t thinking ‘how much did this cost?’ I was thinking ‘wow, this is the tastiest brunch I’ve ever had in my life!’
September 17, 2010 5:26 am
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umm… I can’t get my picture to not show up. I didn’t realize I was so computer-illiterate. What a blow to the ego this morning!
September 17, 2010 5:28 am
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don’t use the email you always use if it is a gmail account. You’re dealin with cookies. :)
September 18, 2010 10:40 am
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i know we were told to sit this one out, but i have to put in our anticipated budget…
we plan on spending between $25,000 and $28,000. We live in the DC area and it’s uber expensive in all wedding categories (can i tell you that i nearly lost myself when i got pricing from a wedding photographer whose packages STARTED at $8,000 for 6 hours of coverage??? because i did. and then i laughed. then felt completely overwhelmed at the entire concept of a wedding budget…but, i digress…). we’re planning on moving the festivities to the Shenandoah area, because we can’t afford to do what we want, as we want it, in the DC metro area. We’re planning on 120ish adult people, with a few kids thrown in because most of my friends are married with children and I want them to be at my wedding more than I want their children to stay home ;)
From the pricing we’ve seen so far, and with the venue pretty much squared away, the break down is this:
Venue Rental $1,800
Food and Drinks $14,000
Photographer $3,000
Dress $1500
Paper stuff (save the dates, invitations, thank you’s) $1,000
Rabbi, Chuppah Rental, ceremony odds and ends $1,000
Flowers $800
Rehersal Dinner $2,000
Sunday Brunch $1,000
God willing, we will make it all work out without spending my entire life savings and that of my parents (my fiance is bound and determined to be debt free by our wedding day – he’s getting closer and closer with each passing month, for which I’m very thankful! That said, while I have the mindset that the wedding expenses should be somewhat split between bride, groom and parents of both, especially when the couple getting married are 30 year olds, he’s not biting…it makes for some interesting conversations in our home!).
September 17, 2010 5:26 am
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The first photographer I contacted was $18000, so compared to that $8000 doesn’t sound so bad! I was shocked, to say the least. I think photography is the one budget item I was totally unprepared for. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the going rate seems to be in the $3000-4000 range. Not that I begrudge them, living in the Bay Area is expensive and these are all great photographers, but yeah I was surprised how big a chunk of the budget photography will end up being.
September 17, 2010 8:44 am
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This is precisely why we decided to skip the professional wedding photography thing all together. The photographer would have cost at least as much as everything else we spent combined.
September 17, 2010 11:11 am
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For you DC brides – my dad is actually a wedding photographer in Richmond, VA (about two hours south of yall) and does weddings in the DC area. He charges roughly $2000 for the full day of pictures – no time limit. Similarly the photographer for my wedding (to be held Oct 2011) – a photographer picked by my dad – charges $1400 (I think) … anyway generally there is a charge of $50 per HOUR of travel time but with the prices yall are quoting I think it’s totally reasonable and the work is phenomenal. Both my dad and my wedding photog also include engagement photos in the cost! Sorry to be somewhat self-promotional, but unless you are getting massive, matted and framed portraits or thousands of prints you can totally find someone outside the DC area who will do great work for a bargain price.
September 17, 2010 8:14 pm
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I’m actually looking for a wedding photographer right now, does your dad or your photographer have a website?
September 19, 2010 6:43 am
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I am also in the DC area and am totally terrified by the mere cost of living in the city, much less getting married! My fiance and I are thinking of exporting the wedding to West Virginia, where we can have the outdoor country wedding we’ve imagined, and MUCH
September 21, 2010 12:02 pm
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sorry, I accidentalyy posted my comment without finishing but don’t know how to go back and edit it. I was saying West Virginia (close to DC) is much cheaper and still only under 2 hours from DC, so that’s where fiance and I are thinking of having out wedding. Our wedding isn’t for a while yet, at least another year, but I’m already getting soooo stressed out about money. Where do you find a dress under $1,000 in DC??? Any suggestions?
September 21, 2010 12:20 pm
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I am still pre-wedding, but our wedding is three weeks away, so I have a pretty good idea of the budget.
What you spent on your wedding: It will be approximately $14,000.
Where you live: Washington, DC—which is very expensive for weddings (and everything else!)
How big your wedding was: SMALL. 35 people.
How that budget roughly broke down (How much was food? Venue? Dress?):
Venue: $700
Food and Drink: This is the one thing we are not positive on, because we will pay for the bar per drink rather than per head—but probably $7,000 (so half the budget!)
Photographer: $2,000
My Dress: $600, plus $200 for alterations.
Flowers: were not at all important to me. $170 for two bouquets and two boutonnieres.
Music: $35 to hook our IPod into the venue’s jack
That does not add up to $14,000, but there were other small things that had costs. We splurged on getting a hotel room for two nights, even though we live down the street from our venue–$400. I am getting my hair done by my normal hairdresser, whom I love, but her salon’s rates are expensive ($150 for the day of, $50 for the trial). I am wearing a hairpiece that cost $120. Officiant is $350. Invites were $160. Etc.
What your biggest challenge was: There were not a whole lot of challenges financially. We knew right away that we wanted a small wedding, and we knew we wanted to spend $10k-$15k. We are paying for the entire shebang ourselves, which I think was more of a blessing than a curse, because we did not accept any input from our families whatsoever (and they did not expect to give it, either). But because of that, there might be “weddingy things” that people normally expect that we are not doing.
For example, no rehearsal dinner. We made reservations at a restaurant the night before with our parents, but it has to be no host. Our wedding is so small and is at a place that normally does rehearsal dinners, so why should we host two of these things? And every time I hear someone say, “Oh, have everyone over to your house for a pizza rehearsal dinner,” I laugh. These people obviously do not live in the expensive city that I do, which means that I share a 1-bedroom apartment with my fiancé.
I would also say that a challenge for us is that we are not particularly into DIY. We don’t want to have to do a lot of work on our wedding day especially, which makes it difficult when you are trying to cut back on costs. I also don’t particularly like being put to work at other people’s weddings and events, so I am very hesitant to ask for help with my day-of things.
September 17, 2010 5:30 am
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I totally know where you are getting married based on the venue cost and the iPod rental and I have to say it’s a great location! Congratulations on your rapidly approaching nuptials. I’m all excited for you and I don’t even know you.
September 17, 2010 6:33 am
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Thanks so much! Yes, it is a venue that has already been featured in an APW graduate post. :)
September 17, 2010 8:06 am
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We got married there too (I’m not the bride from the wedding graduate post), and we have friends getting married there in December. Clearly its a great venue, you will have a wonderful time.
September 17, 2010 8:23 am
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I’ve looked into them. I wonder if they’re increasing their prices next year because the patio rental they quoted me was $1000. I’m glad to know you liked it there though — it’s definitely on the list. Thanks for spilling the beans :)
September 17, 2010 9:21 am
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They might have raised their prices. We got married this past May and booked in the July before. That said the $700 was for the two rooms upstairs, I didn’t ask about the quote for the patio, so maybe that was always more expensive. Good luck finding a place! I know it’s hard.
September 17, 2010 9:52 am
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Totally fine that you spilled the beans on the Tabard Inn! I’m not doing the ceremony on the patio, hence the $700 for just the two rooms upstairs. Their price per head for dinner has gone up to $55 from the $50 it was when I booked a year ago, but mostly everything else is the same.
I’m glad to hear that you had a great wedding there! Makes me even more excited for mine!
September 17, 2010 3:11 pm
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I wish I knew where your venue was! I’m currently on the prowl for affordable venues in the D.C. area and am having one hell of a time!
September 17, 2010 8:31 am
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The Tabard Inn (http://www.tabardinn.com/events/rooms) – very reasonably priced for DC (I thought), but it will only work for smaller weddings because the rooms are only so big. They were great to work with though – and the food is super yummy. I would definitely recommend them.
(Hope it’s okay I spilled the beans, Jess…)
September 17, 2010 8:42 am
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Anna,
If Tabard doesn’t work, try Darlington House in Dupont. It’s a restaurant but the upstairs room that they call the Library holds receptions.
I just got the suggestion from a co-worker today to do our rehearsal at Tabard Inn! That’s where I’m staying the night before the wedding and the wedding night so it might work out!
September 17, 2010 11:35 am
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We aren’t actually getting married until next year, but we do have a budget and have spent some of it already on deposits etc and we know the final costs for most things, although obviously we have plenty of time to go over. We live in the UK in a small city in the West of England. We’re very fortunate in that my father has offered us £5k towards the wedding costs and my future parents in law are covering the honeymoon. The rest is coming out of our savings.
Venue – Free!
Food and wine for 50 people £1750 – we’re having a delicious three course meal which will be organic and locally sourced – I think this is a very reasonable number at £35 per head
Champagne – £500 – sourced by my father from The Wine Soceity
Photographer £1200 – This is the second most expensive item in our budget, but we agreed that as we are both creatives, the photos were very important to us. We love our photographer, and this is in fact very reasonable.
Wedding clothes for bride, groom and attendants – £1700
Rings – £600
Flowers £250
Cake – homemade, free! My Leiths trained friend and bridesmaid is making this.
Invites – homemade, free! I work for a printing supplies company so all printing costs etc are free.
£535 – ceremony, legal fees
Band/DJ – a bit fuzzy on this one but about £500
Decorations – £300. A ceramic artist friend is creating the centrepieces as our wedding presents, so this is really just for extras
All in, plus our contingency budget we think we should come in at under £9k. I hope so, anyway…
September 17, 2010 5:31 am
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Total Budget: ~$4000
Location: Small Town
Guests: 75
Budget Breakdown:
venue – 350
music – 100
planner – 500
dress – 500
photography – 800
food + drinks – 750
invitations – 50
cake – 350
the rest goes to misc costs I can’t remember
Biggest challenge: finding a good photographer
I feel good about it. Got people together without breaking the bank and had a good time
September 17, 2010 5:32 am
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Thank you. My budget is also in the under/around 5 grand area and I really needed to hear that it can be done and people will have a good time with no regrets.
September 17, 2010 6:07 am
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I agree about the photography challenge! A friend of a friend is just starting to grow her photog business and she was the only person around to fit what I was willing to pay at the time. She ran $550 for 8 hours, but stayed the night before so we really had her for 24hours!
I “got what I paid for” and spent a few days lamenting over the shots not capturing the true awesomness of the day. BUT there were about 2,000 picture posted by friends on FB to supplement missed shots and my photog was so cool, we are now good friends, and that is priceless. She just didn’t have experience and I knew that going in. Now I love my pictures for what they are and don’t wish more from them.
In retrospect, I’m don’t think I would have shelled out more for someone else (i wasn’t about to beg grandpa for $$ so i could get more glamour shots), but I may have spent more time going over what shots were important to me and scheduling better.
September 17, 2010 6:51 am
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I’ve heard the suggestion that photography students looking to pad their portfolios might be an expensive way to get nice shots if you aren’t afraid of taking a chance with inexperience. Anyone have thoughts on that–that is, someone who possibly ISN’T setting off down the road of wedding photography with their ceer, but could use extra money and has a good eye ?
September 18, 2010 10:38 am
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I’m getting married in a week (!) in a very rustic outdoor ceremony outside of a big but pretty affordable city. We were planning for 100 people but it’s going to be closer to 85 in the end, and it’s likely to be around $18,000 in the end. (Though, maybe I should leave a follow-up comment next week to see if it actually worked out this way!).
Here’s how that breaks down, roughly:
$12,000 – reception (including what we think we’ll pay for an open bar)
$2,000 – photographer
$450 – cake
$300 – flowers
$900 – lodging for out-of-town guests the day before and the day of
$1100 – dress
$1200 – rings
The dress and a big chunk of the reception will be paid for by my mother and father, respectively. That leaves us taking care of around $8000 ourselves.
Despite that big number (and I am shocked as I write this), I don’t regret a penny. When I started planning the wedding I figured we could get away with the minimum possible in every category because that large number was terrifying to me. But I have just made sure at every step that the money spent feels good. So, we are really splurging on food and drink, and helping out-of-town guests with their accommodation. But we’re spending next to nothing on decor and flowers, handling the music ourselves, and getting a friend to officiate.
There are things that were expensive that I don’t even feel should be included in that total, because that falsely indicates it’s only associated with the wedding. Like the rings, that we’ll wear all our lives, or my FH’s suit which he’ll get tons of wear out of (I haven’t included it). Or even the photos that will help us remember the day.
I am of the same mental mindset as you, Meg, when it comes to money – an extreme saver who feels any excessive spending might lead me to the poor house – but the reality is, FH got a bonus this year, I had some money put aside, and we did what felt right and within our means at every step. I think that is what matters most, not just with weddings but with spending in general.
September 17, 2010 5:33 am
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Our budget (which did not include our rings/my dress [the total for those two items was $1000]) was $7000.
We got married in a small town in rural Indiana and had about 170 guests.
We spent about $2000 of that on food, and another $2000 on rentals: tent, chairs, tables, linens, etc. Our photographer was $1000, and the rest of the money covered our venue, flowers, etc. Honestly, now I’m wondering if my dress/rings IS included in that $7000. Getting married in a small town where we could use local vendors made our wedding incredibly affordable.
We honestly didn’t have that many challenges related to money. My husband’s parents had just helped with his brother’s wedding, so they had a clear idea of what they wanted to pay. Maybe the hardest was trying ask my parents to only contribute what they could without putting anything on their credit card. I know they are very responsible, but I felt guilty for adding any credit card debt to their life. They wanted to do it and assured me it was an amount they could deal with.
We are so happy with what we spent. We purposefully got married in a smaller town so that things would be more affordable. It also meant we could use businesses we worked for or enjoyed while we were in college. Our goal was to have a really fun beautiful day on a small budget and due to our location and the choices we made: simple food, inexpensive venue (our college’s cabin on a reservoir, etc, we were able to do it.
September 17, 2010 5:34 am
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You spent $2,000 on 170 guest? That means that the caterer or restaurant charged you $11.76 per person? You cannot even get that at Applebees. Please tell me how. So many of thebrides are listing such LOW prices on hear especially when it comes to food that it has me wondering if that includes a real dinner. Tip? I would just be careful when a restaurant or caterer offers you anything too cheap.
September 21, 2010 4:23 pm
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What you spent on your wedding: about $11,000
Where you live: Smallish mid-Atlantic city, probably high to mid-range cost of living. I read somewhere that the average wedding in that area is $30,000
How big your wedding was: 70 people
How that budget roughly broke down (How much was food? Venue? Dress?)
Dress: $300
Food & drinks: $3,000
Venue: free
Rentals (tent, tables, chairs, toilets, etc.): $6,500
Flowers: $300 (DIT)
Celebrant: $300
Invitations: $150 (DIT)
Random decorations, etc.: $250
Photography: $100 (mostly collected photos from guests, but we paid my little sister’s friend to take pictures of each guest; kind of like a photo guest book, but not so formal. We just wanted to make sure everyone there was in at least one photo)
Music: about $15 in new songs to boost up the iPod mix
What your biggest challenge was: My parents were paying, and while we were all committed to staying within budget, it was sometimes difficult to negotiate where the money was spent. For example, my mother thought flowers and other decorative elements were very important, while my (now) husband and I thought we could rely on the beauty of our outdoor location and that spending on food and drinks were more important. Somehow it all worked out.
How you feel about your budget post-wedding: I wish we could have spent less, but it was a wonderful wonderful day, and I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it.
September 17, 2010 5:37 am
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long-time lurker, never poster here, but I haven’t seen any small-town weddings listed so far, so here I go (caveat: the wedding is 29 days from today (!) so I don’t have the actual totals):
town: very small (population less than 1,000) but within 35 miles of a city with about 2 million)
guests: we’ve invited 230 but we expect to have between 140 and 180 guests (the place is hard to get to and most are from out of town)
expenses:
The reception venue included EVERYTHING in a per person price based on the food we chose for dinner. We are having a buffet with a chicken and cheese manicotti main entrees so the price was $45 per person after a one-time $200 deposit. This included all staff, tables, linens, and (this is the best part) an open bar for 5 hours with two beers, two wines and rail liquors. We expect the total costs to be between $6,300 and $8,100.
We didn’t hire a florist, but instead my mother and I diy-ed centerpieces and favors and a friends mom is going to make bouquets. The total flower expenses have been around $700.
My dress with alterations was $823. I’ve spent about $200 on other accessories (I made myself a velvet jacket and veil and bought some jewelry).
The photographer is $1,500. I was surprised at the price of the photographers even in my small town. I ended up finding a more talented one closer to the city who charged exactly the same.
Invitations I also made myself and they were a total of $260 counting the postage.
The DJ is a gift from my brother, so that cost is $0.
The cake will probably be about $525 (we haven’t given the final number to the baker yet).
I believe the total will be somewhere around $14,000 including other small expenses. I wish I had been able to do some of the diy projects for less, but I thoroughly enjoyed all of them (I don’t want to pressure anyone into DIY! I just actually enjoy doing it and did all the projects as a way to keep myself sane.) As you can see the bulk of the budget is in the reception, but it seemed like a good deal.
September 17, 2010 5:39 am
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umm, I made a typo…population less than 10,000!
September 17, 2010 5:39 am
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We set our budget goal at $15,000 to include honeymoon, ended up around $17,000 (I don’t know exactly). Paid for evenly among my husband, me and my parents. In the end, his parents also covered the rehearsal dinner. Coming from a small town, my oldest sister had a $5,000 wedding, so that’s what my parents contribute to each of us, no matter our situation. Mom deposited the money at the beginning and I never had to ask her to approve how we spent it – wonderful way to do it.
My wedding was in the Twin Cities metro.
The biggest items were:
$6,000 venue and catering, including drinks (included wedding coordinator, servers and bartender, centerpieces, and other things I didn’t have to worry about)
$4,000 honeymoon in Hawaii
$2,100 photographers (don’t forget to budget buying prints after the wedding)
$1,300 bride’s and bridesmaid’s attire, hair and makeup
$600 men’s tuxes
$600 cheesecake
$600 flowers
$400 church, officiant and musician
$400 invitations, thank you cards and stamps (don’t forget the stamps)
Plus a bunch of miscellaneous things
The hardest for us was agreeing on photographers and flowers, because we valued those differently. I could’ve gone with farmers’ market or paper flowers and been happy. My husband could’ve completely skipped the photographers and been fine. I tried to tell him, “That’s just how much it costs to get a decent photographer,” but it still seemed too expensive to him. I mostly handled the budget and had to make a lot of the tough decisions myself, but I’m normally frugal so I think we did a good job of balancing the pressure to spend a lot with throwing a party we could afford.
September 17, 2010 5:39 am
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Oh, and we had 150 guests and our reception was a cocktail hour and appetizer/mashed potato buffet. Saved on having a typical plated dinner there.
September 17, 2010 5:42 am
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whoops, just seen that us undergraduates were supposed to sit this one out. Sorry Meg! (I’m the UK bride getting married in the West of England)
I will just say that so far, that the biggest challenge is accepting that if we accept help from the parentals, we also have to be gracious about their input and and desired wedding guests. But we went into it with our eyes open, knowing that would be the case, and to be fair, my parents have been very hands off so far, only requesting a small guest list which turned out to include people that were on the main guest list anyway.
September 17, 2010 5:39 am
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So here goes-
we got married in a capital city in Western Europe. We had 45 guests for the day (wedding ceremony, small reception/drinks type thing, dinner) and then another 45 or so for the evening, so 90 in total (party with canapes and dancing/dj).
In total, we spent about EUR 13.000 on the wedding (so about 17000 USD) and another 4000 EUR on our three week honeymoon to south-east Asia.
Breakdown (I have no clue if the numbers add up, by the way, but this is what I recall. ):
my dress: 500 EUR
accessories, shoes and underwear: 250 EUR
husbands suit+ shirt+ sneakers: 700 EUR
photography: (LOVED our photographer) EUR 600 for the day + evening
dj: 400 EUR
invitations: 200 EUR
transportation for all day guests: 250 EUR
hair and make up: 180 EUR
wedding bouquet and 11 boutonnieres: 150 EUR
day venue: EUR 2000 (including decorations and drinks)
fee to actually get married (paid to municipality): 550 EUR
evening location: 7000 EUR, including dinner, decorations, open bar and huge amount of drinks
cake: 300 EUR
We were pretty fortunate in that my parents offered to pay for the evening part, so that took away a big part of our financial worries; if they hadn’t, we’d just have downscaled the whole thing. For us, there were a few things that mattered the most and they reflected in what we spent the most on. We LOVE food so we wanted all the food to be really great and lots of it there. We also live across a lovely park in our city, and were desperate to get married there, or somewhere else within walking distance. Both our locations were within a 10 minute drive from our home and that sort of determined where we had our day and as a result, how much things cost. Things like my dress didn’t matter as much – I knew I wanted to look pretty but wasn’t that particular about it and found my dress in an outlet, and ended up spending less than half of what I’d planned…
In hindsight, I would probably make the same decisions again. We just wanted a chill day with friends and family, wanted to keep it small so we wouldn’t spend all our time just greeting people we hadn’t seen for ages, and the food turned out to be amazing – so well worth it. Our wedding cake seriously was among the best cakes (wedding and otherwise) i’ve ever tasted :-)
Biggest challenge: we didn’t have a long engagement, and this meant we really had to be very frugal throughout our engagement and really think every expense over carefully because there was little stretch in terms of how much we could manage to save for our day. That made me pretty cranky sometimes and there were moments that I couldn’t wait to just be married already, even if it were only so I could stop calculating and budgetting. Also, my in-laws insisted on giving us a VERY expensive present that we didn’t really want, and wouldn’t consider giving us something else (that we wanted or needed more) or contributing financially to the day… That put a bit of stress on us as a couple, trying to communicate with my in-laws and each other, and eventually deciding to -more or less – give up and just be grateful for what they did get us as a present.
September 17, 2010 5:42 am
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oops, that was much longer than intended, sorry for that!
September 17, 2010 5:43 am
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I also had to think to remember what things were, and it was only 4 months ago. I’m sure mine didn’t add up to the total we spent. There are always little things that don’t get a line-item in the budget that end up getting purchased. An extra pair of shoes, all the undergarments, the make-up, the premarital counseling, etc.
September 17, 2010 9:18 am
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If I’m completely honest (and I’m trying to be) the total budget was about $55K
We got married in a popular vacation town near Boston, so pretty expensive as popular with tourists and now very popular for same sex weddings
We had 125 pple
My parents paid for the whole thing, which was incredible and amazing and for which we were totally grateful. and they only interfered in nice ways and didn’t hold it over our heads, which we were really lucky about.
If this number seems ridiculously high it’s because I really tried to make a budget that was representative of the whole process of ‘getting married’ rather than just ‘the wedding.’ So therefore I include seemingly more random things like:
- $1k = marriage visa
- $1K = both of our airfare
- $600 care hire for a week
- $500-600 money for a few things leading up to the wedding that I put on the wedding budget like ‘getting healthy money’ and ‘grilling with friends in the days leading up to the wedding’ money
- the subsidized accommodation we paid for for a few close friends who had supported us when we needed in the past but otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford to come
- 5K for wedding photogs who we loved and were worth every penny
- lots of money for DIY/crafts/website/beautiful vintage plates and bottles etc all of which seemed like it would be cheaper than buying mass-produced things but really wasn’t. but was still worth it anyways.
- $1200 for flowers even though we actually did the table flowers ourselves (florist did the bouquets/boutonnieres)
If you *just* looked at what we spent on the ceremony/reception/wedding day itself, I’d say it was probably about $27,000
Things that were stressful:
- doing the final budgeting with my divorced parents who were awesome and agreed to split everything 50/50 but still brought up horrible stressy feelings on my part that they would fall out over it, or that my dad would think i was incompetent for not doing the budget properly (which he sort of did, despite my many years of excel spreadsheet goodness at work as a project manager)
- wanting to spend the money ethically and responsibly so doing TONS of research to find independent artists and craftspeople to make things or work with friends. This was both stressful/time consuming and completely lovely and joyful and fun
- another thing that is surprisingly stressful is how bad I feel about how much money we spent, even though actually the wedding didn’t feel extravagant or over the top at all (in fact it was all kinds of crafty and lovely and communal and rough around the edges). Mostly I feel weird because, as others have said, whenever money comes up on blogs etc it’s always to say how little someone spent, or what a bargain they got on X. We spent shit-tons of money, for us, for my parents (well-off though they are) but did it in a way that we tried to feel was inclusive. But if ever a money conversation comes up on a blog or wherever I’ll always feel a bit like slinking away through the backdoor…
September 17, 2010 5:45 am
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I don’t think $55k sounds extravagant. I live in Boston, and I know how expensive things are here, even if you move out of the city to some of the more “resorty” places. As I think Liz said a few days ago, in a major city it’s not hard to reach almost $100k without an ice sculpture in sight. Of course, most people have to scale back a bit from there, but budgets are personal and all about what’s important to you, what you can afford, and what makes you feel comfortable. Thank you so much for your honesty (I know how hard it is when budgets come up!).
September 17, 2010 7:17 am
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We got married in a resort town not far from boston that is very popular with Boston and NYC couples . Where we got married many places had event minimums that were $20-40K.
Finding a venue was one of our biggest stresses. we knew we wanted a small 50-75 person wedding and man venues were ment more for 100+. Also added in the challenge of deciding in March we wanted to get married that summer (in a place where venues can book up 2 years in advance.) We ended finding a place available on a holiday monday. It worked out PERFECTLY. our venue is normally $5000 but we were able to get it for around $1500 by booking so late. We were able to have a lunch rather than a dinner (lobster rolls included!)
I don’t know what the final cost of our wedding was. My parents very generously offered to pay for anything related to the reception while my husband and I paid for anything related to the ceremony and clothing. I think I offered to save money by cutting down on alcohol… at which point my parents stopped giving me final number on how much everything cost. I think we ended up at around $10-$15k. That included everything but the honeymoon including a BBQ at my parent house after for around 60 people.
September 17, 2010 7:13 pm
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I don’t think $55k sounds as extravagant when you factor everything in like you did. I said our budget was $18,500, but I didn’t add in our flights back to the US from Australia ($3,000), events leading up to the wedding like bachelor/ette weekend or dinners (probably $500), our rings including my engagement ring ($3000), our second reception celebration thingy in Australia (probably $2000), rehearsal dinner ($3,000) or our honeymoon (probably $3,000). And I am sure I am missing more costs. That gets ours up to $33,000. Wow. I never did that calculation.
We were fortunate too, as the cost was split between my (divorced) parents, my husband’s parents, my husband’s grandmother, and us.
September 17, 2010 8:12 pm
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I love that you chose to be honest and I can tell you that 55k doesn’t sound like too much in a bigger city at all. Have you ever gone out to eat in a big group ? Just taking 20 people out to a nice restaurant can cost over $3,000.
I too am tired of brides almost competing to see who had the more frugal wedding. Who cares? If you can afford it, do it! Why not? If you had a great time and you spent the money like you wanted to, that is all that mattered. Also, at the end of the day, weddings support hundreds of local small businesses (cake makers, planners, photographers, florist) so you are helping the economy:). So everyone wins.
September 21, 2010 4:32 pm
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I got married weekend before last.
Total spent: ~$15000
Location: Asheville, NC
Size: 75 people
Budget breakdown:
-Venue: $2200
-Food: $5000 (all local and organic, and a family friend did the cake)
-Alcohol: $200 (my brother homebrewed beer, and we got a discount on wine)
-Dress: $2200
-Photographer: $1700
-Music: $1750
-Flowers: $570
-Invitations: $200
-Rental equipment: $250
-Officiant: $100
My biggest issue was finding an officiant, but it worked out just fine.I could have spent less overall, but I feel like I did pretty well not going overboard. It was a wonderful day, and I don’t think I would change much if I did it again.
September 17, 2010 5:46 am
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1. Budget total: (rounded up for incidentals and converted to US$) about $8000
2. We live in the biggest most expensive city in Australia (Sydney)
3. We had about 35 people for a full a la carte lunch, followed by a party for 100ish people (canapes and drinks)
4. Breakdown
- Food/drink: $5000 (amazing amazing food!)
- Photography: $700 (friend discount)
- Official things (marriage license etc): $400
- Rings: $500
- Attire (bride + groom): $200 (amazing sale finds plus things we already owned)
- Flowers: $400 (DIY)
- Invitations $50 (DIY)
5. Challenges? Not really. From the beginning we ruled out things that didn’t matter to us (favours, save the dates, bridal party, hair/makeup etc). This made things very affordable and allowed us to splurge on food and wine. We also split the costs between us and our parents so that $8000 became $2000 – 3000 for each paying couple.
6. How do we feel about the budget now post wedding? Fine, although I am bummed that my husband already lost his ring. But mainly, I am glad we didn’t go over the top and choose things that didn’t reflect us as a couple and therefore would have been an unnecessary expense. That said, I do have some complicated feelings about having a wedding, and therefore spending that money in the first place. I love my partner. Things between us are fabulous, and we are deeply committed to each other but it was like this before we got married too and I sometimes think the wedding (while super fun) was just an expensive party. It didn’t really adjust our commitment to each other. The ‘other side’ for us is wonderfully exactly the same. So sometimes I think, ‘why did we spend that money?’. At least we have no wedding debt so this thought is less financially painful than it could be.
September 17, 2010 5:51 am
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Husband and I got married about 18 months ago in the suburbs of a larger midwestern city. Our wedding was about $11,000 (I think…this is the first time that I’ve really added up the numbers).
Photographer – $3,000
Rings – $3,000
My clothes, hair, and makeup – $1,000
Venue decorations – $100
Catering – $1,500
Flowers – $1,000
Reception Venue – $500
Invitiatons – $200
Rehearsal dinner (for 35 people)- $1,000
We invited about 250 people, and had about 175 between the wedding and the reception attend.
We had a lot of help in making our budget. Husband’s family covered the rehearsal dinner; my parents paid for the flowers, reception, my dress, and the decorations; and Husband and I paid for the rings, photographer, and invitations. The biggest challenge was making the logical connection that we weren’t going to have a magazine worthy wedding with the money that we had. That led to a bit of arguing over how to spend the money (especially other people’s money) on things that weren’t important to us. (The 2008 Fight over Why The Bride Does Not Want Wedding Favors was pretty epic.)
Looking back, I feel really good about the budget for our wedding. Husband and I came out of it with no wedding debt, which made our first year of marriage so much easier.
September 17, 2010 5:51 am
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Am I reading this correctly? You spent $1500 on catering for 175 people? That is $8.50 per person for food/drinks, tax and tip? Was that perhaps a typo.?
September 21, 2010 4:35 pm
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Can I just say that I love that you’re doing this Meg – it really is the unspoken bit about weddings or so I have found. I’m either embarassed at how much or how little I’m spending depending on who I’m talking to and I don’t think I’ve told even my closest friends how much the final bill is. Sad, but true.
I’m 8 weeks away from the ‘i-do do’ but a massive geek so everything is planned and paid for and Meg, fret not, there’s money left for an ‘oh pants’ moment in the next 8 weeks just in case it all goes horribly wrong
Total spend £18k
Budget £20k (so that’s £2k worth of ‘oh pants it’s all gone wrong’)
City – London, UK, megabucks expensive
152 people
venue £3k
food and drink £10k
dress £1k
flowers and decs £500(all being homemade)
photography £300 (my friend is a wedding photographer and accepting only her travel and accomodation)
Invitations and paper goods £200
The rest is on accomodation for family and transportation
Biggest challenges
- being OK with the fact my Dad gave us this money to do as we choose. His justification was that he’d planned on buying 2 x weddings from the days my sister and I were born and he paid for hers so he’s paying for mine. Trying not to feel guilty that I’m spending more than I’ve ever seen on one day is not easy though and ‘thank you’ just doesn’t seem to cover it. I am fortunate that he has a good job and has the money, but even so, £20k!!!!!!!
- trying to explain to my Mum why I WANT to do the flowers myself rather than spend the extra £2k on them
- trying to figure out how to get LOTS of friends and family to share and be part of our day on what for London is not a big budget, the answer? get married in November and beg favours
September 17, 2010 5:54 am
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I just moved back from London in June after 2 years of living there, and after reading your post…I really miss hearing expressions like that :) And also the shocked expressions on some people’s face when Americans talk about pants NOT meaning undies :)
good luck with the wedding!!
September 17, 2010 6:09 am
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Ha ha thank you – totally forgot that for you Americans ‘oh pants’ probably means nothing ! For those unlike jenn who haven’t experienced our funny little British-isms it would roughly translate as ‘oh f**k’
but you’re all bright so you got that even if I do talk funny
September 17, 2010 11:44 pm
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THANKS EVERYONE – it is really nice to be able to talk about money in a safe place!
I’m an undergraduate as well, but most of our numbers are final(ish).
Budget – €22,000
Where – European capital city (v. high cost of living)
Who – 70 people (traveling from other countries)
On what –
catering and venue: €8,000 (which also includes most flowers & alcohol)
Photography: €2200 including albums.
Honeymoon: €3,000 on our honeymoon
welcome reception :€1,500 (instead of a rehearsal)
Music (band & DJ): €950
dress: €350
suit €240
Rings: €560
(cup)cake: €160 (i am so proud of this one.)
The rest of the stuff (as I remember it) was little things, that added up ridiculously quickly, but didn’t hurt as much coming out of the bank account. We’re paying for it about 50% ourselves, 50% parents.
We looked at a lot of places that were much, much cheaper per person, but we decided to choose a venue that we loved loved loved that had great character (and wouldn’t need much decoration or flowers) and really great, ethical, food (all organic & wild!). Plus it included a lot of other things (like centerpieces) that we wouldn’t have to worry about. Ease & convenience = key.
Spending this much money has hurt at times. We had huge discussions about spending this much on our venue/catering and photographer. In the end, it was okay bc those were important to us. I didn’t feel comfortable spending the money I originally had for a hairdresser, or a makeup artist though (which were waaaay more expensive than I thought they would be) so we nixed those. And spend the money instead on things I never expected to care about – like our cake topper.
September 17, 2010 5:56 am
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What you spent on your wedding: Everything together cost $28,000, of which $9,000 was our personal money. The rest was a combination of my mom (about half of the total), then pieces here and there from his parents, his grandma, and my dad. I am not counting the rehearsal dinner in this figure, as his parents hosted and I have no idea what they spent.
Where you live (Big city? Small town? Expensive area? Affordable area?): Annapolis, MD, where a $30-40K wedding is really standard.
How big your wedding was: 130
How that budget roughly broke down (How much was food? Venue? Dress?): I was real nerdy and kept an exact spreadsheet detailing what the budget was, what the actual costs were, and how it all broke down so I could keep track of our total wedding budget “footprint” as well as how much of our money was going into this thing.
About half went toward the reception, like all the wedding budget books say it will.
My dress was $2,000 — which I only got because my mom paid for it and insisted I not worry about cost but get a dress that I love (and I did).
Flowers were $2,000… and the only part that I regret because I unknowingly hired a wedding monster as a florist.
Photos were $3900, including a high-res DVD of images (but no album)
My ring was $800, his was $400.
What your biggest challenge was: I was determined to not ASK anyone for money, but was absolutely willing to graciously accept if anyone offered. At the beginning, my mom kept saying that “maybe I can help pay for that” without being specific at ALL in terms of dollars, and it was very stressful because it felt like a total power play on her part. I knew that if I went along with what she wanted, she’d be willing to put in more, but that was unsaid, as well as ALL the dollar amounts. She just said I shouldn’t “cheese out on things”– which, what does that mean when I have no idea how much I’ll need to personally pay for?!?! Eventually, I got her to give me a solid number ($10,000 plus the dress), which eased my mind a LOT and made me feel like I was back in the driver’s seat. The number didn’t matter, just that I knew what my wedding budget was.
How you feel about your budget post-wedding: I feel good. Our plan all along was to spend less than $10K of our own money on this thing, which we did. We would have gladly thrown an entire wedding for $10K, but were able to have a much more expensive wedding with input from our families. Sometimes I think they were horrified into contributing, when, say, his grandma learned that we’d be doing our own flowers to save money. So she decided that she wanted to pay for a florist. And that was totally fine with us.
September 17, 2010 5:59 am
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The wedding was in upstate New York.
We had 54 guests.
We spent about $9,000.
Honestly it’s hard to remember the breakdown of costs, but I think it’s something like this: We spent about $3,500 on catering (buffet-style dinner and cake and all catering rentals) and an additional $800 on alcohol. We got an incredibly talented photographer who undercharged us at $1,000. We spent about $1,000 on clothing. Venue fee, rental car, and rental apartment came to another $1,500. Invitations were about $250. Rings were $800. Flowers were $200. Rehearsal dinner was $250.
All in all I’m very happy with what we spent and how we spent. We had great wine and great food and supported local businesses we really love. My only budget regret is that I spent very little on my dress, and I didn’t love it. If I had not been so strict about my budget on that point, I might have allowed myself to find something I loved more.
September 17, 2010 6:05 am
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Oh, I forgot to add that the greatest challenge was negotiating budget priorities with my husband. There were tears. And, as I mentioned, my focus on the bottom line put me under unnecessary stress. What can I say, I’m my own worst enemy.
September 17, 2010 6:27 am
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This post comes at a great time for me, because three months after our wedding, I still feel that we didn’t handle the budget right and it bothers me, a lot. I expected to have to pay for the wedding ourselves, and wasn’t unhappy about it. My mom has been the main breadwinner in my parents’ household for the past fifteen years, and she was laid off (twice!) in the last year. My husband’s parents have six kids, one of which they are current putting through college and two more still in a rather expensive private elementary school, which they sacrifice a lot to be able to afford. In addition, they are also a one-income family without set paychecks, so they can’t plan too far ahead on big purchases. I liked the idea of a small wedding. I wanted to do my own flowers, thought about self catering desserts and coffee, had no high expectations for my dress– I was ready to spend maybe 2 grand and be done, and do without whatever we had to.
My mother’s ideas on this were quite different. She wanted to pay for the wedding- she had a 401K that she had never really used, and didn’t have enough money in it to bother saving for retirement. She told me it was “3 or 4 thousand dollars”. I never got more specifics than that. We’re in the suburbs of Atlanta, so not the cheapest area, but not super-expensive. My husband’s parents also told us they would like to contribute $1500 to catering.
Mom couldn’t imagine doing anything herself that couldn’t be done before the week of the wedding. That meant no self-catering, no doing our flowers. I couldn’t do it without her support, and I wasn’t going to get it. She was willing to do DIY projects– and in fact threw together a couple of things that I didn’t even plan to have, like programs and a guest book. And she did make my dress ($600 on supplies for that). Overall, I felt like because she was holding the purse strings and refused to give me a definite number on how much she had, we ended up spending more than we should have. It made it really hard for me to budget our contributions, and in the end, I felt like we spent money on things that we didn’t need, invited more guests than we could afford, and generally lacked communication.
Overall, I would guess that we spent between $6000 and $10,000. That’s still a low number for our area. As close a breakdown as I can give:
Venue: $1000 (a historic plantation house owned by the county)
Photography: $1200 (my father is a photographer and one of his photographer friends gave us a GREAT deal)
Catering: $2700 dollars, including linen rentals
Flowers: ???? More than I would have paid, given that we were supposedly not charged for labor by the friend who did them. She does floral arrangement professionally, and I think there was still a large mark up from what we would have paid had we bought the flowers ourselves. Mom “couldn’t remember” the final total, but the deposit was $800. Plus they had those stupid sticks in them and if there had been time I would have redone them myself anyway.
Dress: $600 and hours and hours of Mom’s time
Groom’s Attire: $350
Bridesmaids’ Dresses/Groomsmens’ Ties: $200- our friends are poor, and I know it.
There were a lot of other incidentals, like the cake topper, the programs, the guest book, the flower girl basket and ring pillow- most of these were bought as needed and the money came from our bank account, but I never added it all up, and I’m sure there are things I bought that I’ve forgotten about completely because they were last minute must-haves.
We spent much less than average. We still spent more than we could afford, especially at the end when my mom ran out of money and we had to pay for the rest because she hadn’t budgeted, and refused to give me a solid number that I could budget with. Given the chance to do it over, I think that rather than going through the hassle of dealing with it, I would have turned down the money and planned the wedding without her– I would have felt much better about our choices and it would have been a lot more “us”, because as it was I let my mom railroad over me because I felt she was the one footing the bill.
September 17, 2010 6:09 am
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Wow, that sounds like a tough and frustrating situation – that you hndled as well as any person could given the circumstances. It’s hard when someone is trying to help and it just causes frustration and stress.
I’m sorry you’re feeling uneasy about it, because there really wasn’t anything else you can do in a situation like that other than what you did. Seriously though, at this point, it’s money spent. You can’t get it back, so try (as hard as it may be!) to just put it behind you and enjoy being married!
September 20, 2010 8:30 am
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Oh, this is a good exercise – I admit that I haven’t officially added everything up because I was a bit scared of the total. Originally we were hoping to spend $10K – $12K, but we went quite a bit over, about $17K or so. That said, each time we knew we were committing to go beyond our budget, we talked through the reasons why and made sure we were comfortable. We had 165 guests and live in the DC area (which can get expensive fast when you’re planning a wedding!). The break out is below, but I want to answer the question about the challenges before that:
One of the hardest things when it came to money was not spending more than we planned but was that my parents were unable to help at all. And I want to be clear – it was okay that they did not help pay for our wedding. Initially, early on, my husband and I spoke to our parents to see if they could each help with about $3K. From the beginning I was worried about financially burdening my parents, but I also knew that they would want to help. I made it very clear that they didn’t have to commit anything, that I’d rather they just be upfront if they could contribute financially, that I knew they would/already had supported us in so many other ways. (And, though my husband lost his job and things were tight for a little bit, it soon because clear that we’d be able to handle the wedding expenses, though it would keep us from saving too much). Still, they said they could help. Then 3 months in, I could tell that it wasn’t going to happen, and we talked about it, and I just felt so so awful for so many reasons. I felt awful for having to push them on it (but we needed to know so that we could plan accordingly), though at the same time angry that they weren’t upfront with me; I felt awful for my husband – it was okay for me to be affected by my parents, but it was hard to invite him into this dynamic (especially when his parents were contributing), and on and on. But, the good news was, that after we were all on the same page about their inability to help us financially, all was okay. We moved on, and they contributed in other ways, my husband was nothing but completely supportive and understanding, and everything was paid for (without having to financially burden them).
Okay, this is way too long. The break out is below, and I think I feel great about it – mostly because we had wonderful vendors, and I was so happy to support them!
(in fact, after looking at it all broken out, I think we did pretty well – if only we had known someone with a house and back yard that could have accomodated, and we would have been pretty close to budget),
Okay, so here are the basics: Bride Attire $850 (includes dress, alterations, shoes, jewelry), Groom attire $1000 (he’s fancy), Venue $2600, Tent and sound system $1900, Caterers $6700 (includes tip), Alcohol/drinks $400 (we could bring our own and we just had beer and wine), Rings $1650, Shuttle $450, decorations $150 (mostly just candles and mason jars, include bouquets that my sisters made), cakes and cupcakes $270, ceremony music $150 (friend), photography $550 (we totally lucked out, super talented craigslist find), invitations/paper $250 (printable press! that includes stamps, envelopes, etc), favors made by my sister $200, other gifts $250 (officiant was free but gave her thank you gift, etc, Rehearsal dinner $400 (for 55 people, rented a room in our apartment building for $130 did food ourselves with a lot of help from friends and family).
September 17, 2010 6:10 am
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Can you give more details on your beer and wine selections? We’re looking at a place that lets us bring our own and I wondered if you had suggestions for reasonably-priced wine or bottled beer vs. kegs…? Thanks!
September 17, 2010 8:54 am
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It was great to read this post! I’m in the process of trying to find a DC area venue for our wedding, and am seeing some pretty huge (and super scary) numbers. Do you mind sharing your venue? And I would love the name of that great find photographer if possible!!
Thanks so much!
September 17, 2010 9:52 am
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Sure! The venue was the Hendry House in Arlington, VA. I know it felt super affordable when comparing to so many other DC places for more than 100 people, though it definitely added up (tent fee, plus have to provide a tent, rentals, etc), but they’re wonderful to work with AND they let you find your own caterer, etc and the atmosphere was just what we wanted (outside). You can find my photographer, Jen Cui, here: http://www.jcuiphotography-blog.com/ (which is giving away my identity a bit, if you’re savvy!). I strongly recommend her!
September 17, 2010 12:42 pm
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Hi! Saw the mention about DC – yesterday I was getting our car fixed in Alexandria and the mechanic started talking about his wedding (I’m getting married in 3 weeks and therefore tried to talk down car expenses). ANYWAYS, he told me how they found a great deal at the Hilton in Old Town – great location for guests since it’s near the airport. What was more interesting was how the deal was because of Memorial Day – the three-day federal holiday somehow prompted deals since everyone splits town. You’d never think it for a long weekend, but something to explore!
September 17, 2010 1:50 pm
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I’m queen of the spreadsheets, so I still have all the numbers…
We ended up spending more than we initially intended, we paid for the wedding ourselves, but his parents threw us a rehearsal dinner and I don’t have the numbers on that. I’ve included everything becuase we went over our initial budget by around $4000. When we made our first budget, we didn’t think about all the little things that add up.
■What you spent on your wedding: $12,901.92
■Where you live: Richmond, VA, medium city, but not overly expensive
■How big your wedding was: 120 guests, 4 hours, outdoors in the evening in a garden behind an historic house/museum in the middle of the city
■How that budget roughly broke down:
•Catering: $2961 (very heavy hors d’oevres, but substantial: shrimp and grits, a couple types of mini sandwhiches, pasta, veggies, includes tips for staff)
•photography: $1575 (lucky to have a close friend who’s an excellent wedding photographer, his regular rate would have been $5000)
•Location rental: $1200 (7 hours, because you have to pay for set up and clean up time too!)
•tables, chairs, linens, string lights:$1169 (guess what! when you have a garden wedding you have to rent all this stuff)
•wedding planner: $1100 (should have just recruited a friend to keep things rolling the day of)
•dress and alterations: $550 and $320
•flowers: $699.55 (bought some potted flowers ourselves to keep prices down)
•DJ: $625 (for ceremony and reception music)
•cake: $525.68
•groom’s suit: $450
•alcohol: $400 (beer/wine, lots left over)
•Officiant: $350
•invitations and postage:$200 (we made these ourselves)
•attendant/parent gifts: $195
•acrylic glassware with personalize labels: $100 (we made these ourselves)
•centerpieces:$20 (made these ourselves)
■What your biggest challenge was: Convincing the planner that our wedding would be beautiful even if we didn’t spend alot of extra money on things like sparkling table cloths.
Actually, the only thing I would really change is that I would ditch the wedding planner. We’re both creative people and were able to make alot of things ourselves which didn’t go over well with the planner and I hired her before discovering APW and didn’t really know at the time how to verbalize the simplicity we were going for. If I hadn’t been in a panic to find “help” I would have researched more and either realized I could do it myself, or interviewed to find a planner who fit our personalities better. Most of my pre-wedding stress was created by the planner, and that should be the person who’s reducing stress!
■How you feel about your budget post-wedding: we had an amazing time celebrating with our family and friends and I wish I hadn’t spent so much time stressing and thinking about how much money we were spending. However, I am very happy we kept prices as low as possible and did not put anything on a credit card, so it was all paid for and done.
September 17, 2010 6:11 am
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I noticed that you and someone else said they spent $400 on beer and wine. Can you tell me how you broke it down and what kinds of beer and wine you got? And maybe if you had kegs or bottles of beer? We can bring our own alcohol and are planning on just beer and wine and I’m not sure how to budget for it. Thank you!!!
September 17, 2010 8:49 am
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we were originally going to bring our own booze, and found it EXTREMELY helpful to just go to a beer/wine distributor and have a sit-down. we told him what the majority of our friends like to drink and he was able to give us an estimate of what to buy. really, really helpful.
September 17, 2010 9:02 am
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We spent around $400 on beer and wine for 165 people. We didn’t do anything extravagant (which was hard because we love beer and would have loved to splurge here, but as you may have found, it’s all about compromise, especially when it comes to the things you personally want!). It was about $120 for a keg of Yeungling (which we didn’t come close to finishing), and then the rest on Trader Joe’s bottles of wine that ranged from $4 – $6 each (can’t remember how many we got – 3-4 cases). Oh, and the $4 bottles went towards a low maintenance sangria (just strawberries and mint) – no one minds cheap wine in sangria! Our reception about only about 3 hours long, which probably was a factor in how much/little was consumed.
September 17, 2010 9:03 am
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just jumping in here – we found sites like this Sort of helpful: http://www.thatsthespirit.com/en/drinks/party_calculator.asp
it at least gives you a ballpark. If you’re just doing beer and wine you can put 0% for spirits.
We also had a hard time figuring out how much red vs. white vs. sparkling, and what types of beer to provide – didn’t find as many resources getting that specific online, but Total Wine staff helped a bit.
I wish I could remember the exact breakdown of what we bought for ours so I could actually be helpful, but I know for our wedding, the white wine was more popular than red, and sparkling wasn’t much at all (we didn’t do a champagne toast, it was just there if people wanted it throughout the evening). We picked all regional microbrews for the beer and had a ton left over – probably if we’d gone with something lighter, the beer would have gone faster (lots of our friends that were expected to drink a lot of beer, didn’t drink as much because they’re used to drinking a ton of Miller Lite, not Starr Hill Amber Ale or whatever).
September 17, 2010 9:15 am
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We spent more than $400 on booze (we really really like wine), but we had several cases left over. For better or for worse it was our favorite wine that was mostly left so we had a bottle on our one month-versary the whole first year. Yum. So we overspent I guess, but it worked out just fine.
Anyway, we bought at the Bevmo $0.01 sale, where the second bottle is essentially free. I don’t know if we saved money that way, but it let us buy nicer wine, which was our priority.
So, to calculate, the event planner guideline is 6 glasses of wine per bottle, and calculate one drink per guest per hour(ish). We found people drank less because they were flying home/ it was the early afternoon/ it was hot/ they were busy talking. But s’ok, we decided we’d WAY rather have too much booze than run out ;)
September 17, 2010 10:42 am
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We had SEVENTEEN cases of beer left over. SEVENTEEN. My in laws supplied the wine and beer and my parents paid for the hard stuff, and I think the in laws calculated the wine and beer as though wine and beer were the only offerings. We will be drinking wedding beer for aaaaaages. At every family gathering we drink our wedding beer.
September 17, 2010 11:43 am
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lucky for us – the place we’re getting our booze/beer/wine from will let us return it if it’s unopened (and it wasn’t held in water damaging the labels.) They even come and pick up the extra from the venue for a charge and you don’t ever need to think about it again except for the refund to your card.
So yes, plan to overspend and not run out of booze.
Huge perk. Though surely we will keep some bottles of wedding beer and wine :)
September 17, 2010 12:57 pm
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I second trying to find a liquor store who will let you returned unopened wine/beer. I had to plan an event for work and we found a place that did that. If you’re going to make a pretty decent purchase from them most of them are pretty accommodating if you just ask. Or perhaps they’d allow you to return up to 10% of it or something… it never hurts to try to work out a deal with them.
September 17, 2010 2:33 pm
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Our wedding booze was through the caterer, but we bought WAY too much beer for our rehearsal dinner. We were carting it around in a cooler all weekend and drinking in our hotel room with our friends after every other wedding event. It was kind of fun.
September 17, 2010 12:11 pm
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I have the spreadsheets going too. Everything is recorded as the money is spent. Thank you for that $1.92… makes my heart happy to know there’s a kindred spirit out there ;-)
September 21, 2010 6:26 pm
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$42,000 for 200 guests in the Chicago suburbs. In June. My parent’s paid for everything. Not included are the rings and honeymoon (which we paid for) or the rehearsal (which the groom’s parents covered).
Food: $22,000 – This was Hors D’oeuvres, a sit-down dinner, 6 hours of open bar and dessert (mousse, no cake), provided by the venue
Decorations and Favors: $3000 – Chocolates, Centerpieces and an arch for the ceremony
Taxes: $3000 – The sales tax rate in this area is 9.22%. When you are spending like we did this became a pretty major expense – our 3rd highest. Luckily we noticed early enough to budget for it. You’re welcome, Illinois.
Venue: $2600 – Ceremony and Reception
Photographer: $2400
Dress: $1300
Invitations, Programs, etc: $1200 – Etsy
Floral: $1000 – All our “floral” items were made of feathers. They’ve been repurposed as home decor.
DJ: $700 – We made our own playlist and paid a friend for the use of his equipment.
Beauty: $500 – Mani/Pedi, Make-up and Hair for Bride and Maid of Honor
I’d say our biggest problem was finding less expensive options for things we didn’t care much about and didn’t want to slurge on. Obviously we spent a ton of money but there were things (like placecards) that we just didn’t care about and refused to spend a lot on.
Post-wedding I feel pretty good about our budget. When my mom first floated what she called “a reasonable number” I choked and freaked out and couldn’t imagine spending that amount, but she promised me that they wanted to spend the money, wouldn’t incur any debt over it and still had enough cash on hand to take a 2-week cruise to Hawaii the month after our wedding. Which they did. And they totally deserved it. So there were certain things we insisted on paying for ourselves (like our own transportation and hotels), but in the end my parents were *so happy* to do it that it was fine.
Since we were so lucky to be lavished on this way (and our honeymoon was more than covered by cash wedding gifts) we resolved to buy everyone who gets married for the next ten years really, really, really nice wedding gifts. That’s how we’re paying it forward.
September 17, 2010 6:12 am
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The sales tax rate in this area is 9.22%. When you are spending like we did this became a pretty major expense – our 3rd highest. Luckily we noticed early enough to budget for it. You’re welcome, Illinois.
I smiled at this. Our sales tax is 12% (and that’s down from the 14% it’s been most of my life!) Different places, different expectations!
September 17, 2010 8:36 am
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I live in the south now and they tried to raise sales tax from 6.00% to 6.25% and there were practically riots. This may or may not be related to the deplorable condition of public education here. Just a theory.
September 17, 2010 1:55 pm
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Haha I’m from Illinois too… can’t wait to make my donation to the state!
September 17, 2010 2:34 pm
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We are a short period of time before our small city wedding on the East Coast, and here’s where we are now:
$1900 venue
$4200ish food
???? alcohol (open bar billed by consumption)
$3200 photographer (cheapest package)
$500 invitations, save the dates, & thank you notes
$445 florist
$1000 rings (metal is EXPENSIVE right now, even if you have something handmade)
$300 band
$1000 suit (invested in a new one to last for 10 years)
$525 dress
$600 gifts for parents & wedding party
$200 at least in additional things I’m not thinking of right now
Total ~$16,000, about 6k more than we were originally planning for, and for under 100 guests. Notice we completely skipped things like favors, welcome bags, shuttle buses (this may prove to be a mistake, but…hopefully it’ll all work out), professional hair or makeup, etc. Of course, I invested in a lot of stuff to be able to do my own hair and makeup, but since I’ve used it since the moment I bought it and will far into the future, I’m pretending that’s not wedding-related.
Biggest challenge – jeepers, everything about it has been a challenge, despite turning to untraditional places and friends for help. At every turn, family encouraged us not to DIT or DIY or get friends to do it given most guests do not live in our city to help. Many things we looked into doing ourselves regardless, and decided to skip it (a year before, the October farmers market flowers were surprisingly hideous, for example). And frankly, we weren’t that psyched about DIY anyway – planning together was stressful enough (it’s the first major ‘thing’ we’ve planned together, and whoa baby do we have different planning styles). When we made the mistake of asking for opinions, we got opinions like “that invite doesn’t look formal enough, too much like one for a dinner party.” Now we’re pleased with our choices, but still feeling guilt over whether people will be ok with our untraditional modifications in order to save money (we hear you exactly, Liz). Then again, (after agonizing over every decision for months) we always went with more expensive choices to support local businesses that were interested in sustainable ‘green’ options or who were personally important, and we feel REALLY good about using our money to support our values and these vendors. We claimed all along we were paying for it ourselves in order to keep creative control, but our parents have helped significantly, which has been a huge relief. This doesn’t count the rehearsal dinner at all, which one set of parents wanted to cover & plan, and though it makes me uncomfortable to have someone else do so much fussing & spending over us, I’m trying to sit back & enjoy and ignore my anxiety.
We’ve really struggled with all our decisions, and that hosting the wedding in the city where we live has resulted in at least 50% of my family (all of whom I love and adore, and luckily no one in the immediate family) choosing not to attend. We’ve done a lot of “in retrospect” thinking as a result, debating if we should have done our original plan of a backyard wedding at my mother’s, but concluded that while that would have worked fine, it would have been more about where I came from and my family/community, then it would have been about our life together and the new family we’re creating. It bothers me that the family assumes we should have the wedding in the bride’s hometown, which seems archaic and arbitrary (except in our case it also would have been the hometown of 70% of the invitees…and somehow I still feel guilt that they now have to travel, but I’m trying to let that go). Any other location would have been a destination wedding for us. And realistically, almost every wedding is a destination for some of the guests.
Hrm, it seems I’m going to have to use the last few weeks before our wedding to work on acceptance and letting go of guilt. If they agreed to come, they’ll love it, just because it’s our wedding.
September 17, 2010 6:12 am
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I had similar thoughts about what city to have the wedding in. My home town represented my past (and my parents’ present), my city at the time of planning was my present, and the city we had it in was my husband’s hometown where he lived (and where we live now), so that was my future and his only place of community. And each location meant different people could come and different people would not come. It was such a painful decision and it took various spreadsheets, conversations with my partner, my parents, friends, and many tears to come to our decision. And I am thankful with the results. And still a little sad that no one location could have sufficed to include everyone we would have liked to include…. :(
September 17, 2010 9:56 am
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For absolutely everything we spent about $12k. The goal was $10k and we planned to fund it ourselves. We had a bbq for 120 guests at a venue near Boston.
So, the breakdown:
Dress & suits, accessories, and getting pretty – $750
Venue with beer/wine bar – $7.5k
Photographer (cousin) – $900 including the album
Invites & postage (made myself, so $80 of this is stamps alone) – $120
Flowers (if you live in the Boston area, go to stop & shop) – $250
DIY Favors & place cards – $150
Gifts – $250
Church fees – $750
DJ – $650
Honeymoon (2 nights away) – $600
Transportation – We got rides, so this part was free.
Thinking about how much money goes into weddings gives me mixed emotions. We all read APW because we believe in marriage, not weddings and certainly not the wedding industry. Thinking economically, I know that I could have used twelve thousand dollars for many other things that may or may not have been worthy purchases. And, even now, I know that I could have found a cheaper venue/caterer. However, the emotional side of me thinks that every single penny was worth it. My husband and I put together a celebration completely reflective of us and that is something to cherish. Seeing all sides of our personalities reflected in the party and all the people there was priceless. For us, the wedding brought our families together. Smiles were shared, generational photos were taken, past wedding stories were told, and memories were made. From that perspective, $12k seems like a bargain!
September 17, 2010 6:13 am
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Trader Joes also has great flowers. They were our backup florist :). (Our primary florist was the flower lady at our local farmers market.)
September 17, 2010 6:34 am
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Would you mind sharing the name of the venue too? I am so curious to know, and this thread is extremely helpful. But I don’t want to jump all over the posts on this chain!
September 18, 2010 3:00 pm
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We spent about £13,000 including the honeymoon (I think). But I actually have very little idea about the exact figures as we just spent what we felt was reasonable for essential things.
We lived in London, UK, but our wedding was in our old university town in the West Country. It was a split venue wedding, with the ceremony at our university chapel, the reception out in the countryside.
We invited about a 100 people. No children. A lot of friends who eat and drink a lot. We paid for everything for all our guests save their accommodation/arrival costs.
Budget: Venue (we hired a country house & then hired a marquee) – £4000
Food: £1000 inc main meal, tea, coffee and cake (local supplier, hog roast)
Crockery/linens: £500? I honestly can’t remember but we bought/collected it all (vintage) ourselves. We still have it (some divided amongst family)
Drinks: £1300 (husband is a wine merchant, we supplied all champagne, wine, beer, soft drinks – we did not have a ‘bar’ so this included all drinks for all people for the entire day)
Clothes: £500 (bride’s dress, shoes, accessories etc), £200 bridesmaids, £150 groom’s shirt and shoes. He wore a vintage suit which my sister-in-law tailored to fit)
Car: £500
Photographer: £950
Flowers: £100 (wholesale peonies we arranged ourselves
Stationery: £100 (we made invites, programmes and thank you cards ourselves using basic Smythson writing cards)
Church (inc hiring chapel, Archbishop’s Licence, organist fee, choir, & chaplain’s time) £1000
Rings: ? (my husband paid)
Honeymoon: (£600 accommodation costs, misc other costs) total unknown – we honeymooned in Cornwall, went to a festival and so perhaps spent £1000 – 1200 in total.
Other costs: £1000 (presents, petrol, taxis, various family accommodation costs, generator)
Music: DJ and band were friends who played as our wedding present.
The two hardest things about the budget were:
1. My parents and husbands parents each contributed money. My parents expected to have more say over what they contributed than husbands did. We funded the rest.
2. I was made redundant a month before the wedding and then was out of work for 8 months afterwards. We had not budgeted for this as I was expecting to be earning for the time we were away (3 weeks).
I was comfortable with what we spent as we felt it was not excessive but allowed us to have an excellent day. The only thing I would change is more budget for a better photographer.
September 17, 2010 6:15 am
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What we spent: $9,000-$10,000ish, split three ways between us and each of our families. We tried to be conscious of our spending without budgeting every dime and making ourselves crazy.
We live in an affordable area in Upstate NY.
125 guests, home ceremony with a buffet country club reception.
It still feels like a hella amount of money but I’m not missing it and it was the kick@ass party we dreaed of!
September 17, 2010 6:18 am
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My parents paid for almost everything. While my husband and I would have been happy to have a much more modest affair, this was a great source of joy for my mom and she had a lot of fun planning it. This is in the Northeast where shit’s expensive. The wedding cost a staggering amount of money but it didn’t FEEL like we were burning wheelbarrows full of cash the day of – it felt like a wedding, an awesome wedding. And my parents swear they don’t regret a cent of it.
$5,500 – venue (ceremony and reception) at historic mansion. I totally hated saying “mansion” – it felt so icky to me – but the spot was beautiful. Was it worth $5,500? Probably not. Would I have been just as happy at another spot? Most definitely. But it was beautiful and it was convenient and it was handy to have a place that specialized in weddings. We paid a premium to not have to worry about some things.
$150 – music. Rented equipment for a sound system that we hooked up to a laptop. The sound was bad (a flukey thing that should not discourage you from going this route), but the price was right and greatly pleased my father.
$5,000 – flowers. I KNOW. I know. Totally not my doing.
$3,000 – photographer, including a small album but excluding prints. My mom is planning on getting a more expensive album that will add $1,000 (!!!) to the cost.
$15,000 – catering for 120. The food was delicious and was some of the best wedding food we’ve ever had. Again, could have been less and no one would have minded. But hiring a caterer is expensive.
$1,000 (estimate) – wine and beer.
$400 – makeup. I KNOW. Don’t get me started. Totally could have gone without this.
$200 – my hair, including dye job.
$1,200 – my dress. It was custom made and silk. FWIW my friend looked at it and thought it cost five times that.
$1300 – my engagement ring, custom made. We paid for this.
$2300 – wedding rings and my jewelry. The jewelry thing was cooked up by my mom. The price of gold freaking killed us – it was triple what it had been before the financial meltdown.
$700 – calligraphy for a thing for the ceremony including $500 for framing.
$2,500 – husband’s suit (estimate, as my mom wouldn’t let me know what she paid). Custom made, Italian wool, I KNOW, but at least unlike me he can wear it again and amortize that over the years.
$1,000 (estimate) food and drink for brunch the next day.
$500 – miscellany crafty shit I did at the end, mostly to calm my jangled nerves and channel nervous energy into productive pursuits.
$300 – invitations, including postage. Printable Press FTW.
$50 (estimate) – cake. Homemade.
$1,000 – week long honeymoon aka the best money we spent.
September 17, 2010 6:19 am
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I had a custom made silk/lace dress for which the supplies alone cost $600. If you were paying for the labor as well, $1200 is still a very, very good price! I’m sure it was lovely, and in some cases it’s totally worth it to pay for exactly what you want.
September 17, 2010 6:33 am
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Yes, I think it was a very fair price for the labor involved. We did go with less expensive silk dupioni which helped. (My mom’s dress cost almost as much as mine, because she went all out with lace.)
One thing I’d note is that in nearly every case we worked with people we really enjoyed, some of whom were longtime family friends, and spending money to support them was often a joyful thing. Like it was our own little stimulus package.
September 17, 2010 6:41 am
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i am SO behind the custom italian suit purchase. we buy designer gowns and expect our poor men to wear chinsy and ill-fitting clothes. good for you!
September 17, 2010 10:12 am
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Oh man, I WISH I could have gotten my husband a custom suit. He said, “Why do I need another suit? I have 8. And I’ll never get to wear a tux again.”
Now he really wants a tux of his own.
September 17, 2010 11:33 am
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good man!
try old man stores- we got josh’s tux from jos. a bank. they have half-price-tuesdays or something where everything in the store is half off. so the dinner jacket was like $300. still some cash. but not as much.
soon after, we read an interview with the costume director for mad men that said, “a REAL man owns his own tux” and josh gave me a smug grin.
the only problem with old man stores is they have old-man-cut clothes. so you just need to make a stop at a tailor (which is recommended anyway)
September 17, 2010 4:28 pm
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I love you that you use the word chinsy. <3
September 17, 2010 4:49 pm
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Total Spent: a little less than $10,000
Location: Washington, DC
Guests: 35
Breakdown:
$5,000 for food/drink (sit-down dinner, beer and wine) and the location rental
$1,600 for wedding rings
$1,000 for the most awesome photographer
$750 for our wedding outfits
$350 for a sign language interpreter (my little sister is deaf)
$225 for invitations and a Quaker wedding certificate
$75 for flowers (which we bought at Whole Foods and a friend arranged)
The rest was miscellaneous stuff – our marriage license, favors, getting my hair done, etc.
Biggest challenge? Getting okay with the budget growing. I had originally hoped to do the whole thing for $7500, but it just became clear that we weren’t going to be able to do that without cutting things that were important to us.
I still feel good about what we spent. We were lucky in that our families helped – the split was about 40% family/60% us. I didn’t want to go into debt for our wedding, and we were able to pay for everything as it came, so I feel good about that.
September 17, 2010 6:19 am
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Also, we spent another $2500 on the honeymoon which we paid for ourselves. Definitely the best money we spent. :)
September 17, 2010 6:27 am
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Wow, any chance you’d be willing to share your photog’s info? That price is ridonk for this area!
September 17, 2010 1:24 pm
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Of course! I would love to send folks her way. Her name is Eva Russo and her website is http://www.photoladylove.com/. I found her through another photographer who was way out of my price range (I got the price list and said, oh, that’s my whole wedding budget!). When I emailed nicely to say she was great, but we couldn’t afford her, she said, well what are you looking to spend and hooked us up with Eva. She’s Richmond-based, and was looking to get into the DC market, which I think helped with keeping the price down. She was great to work with, I would really recommend her.
September 17, 2010 7:22 pm
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I just checked her site and her pricing is higher than that now, but I think she would definitely work with you to figure out coverage that’s in your price range. We didn’t get prints or an album, for example, just the images on DVD.
September 17, 2010 7:26 pm
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We had a sign language interpreter too! Our best man’s parents are hearing impaired. I have no idea how much it cost because the best man took care of it. Having the interpreter at the ceremony was actually one of the things I was most excited about.
September 20, 2010 8:15 am
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loving this.
Ok. I’m still pre-wedding, but I’ve got a pretty good handle on what it’ll be. (Did I just curse myself? I’m hyper organized and intent on checking in on my budget weekly)
Total: 35k. (28k from my parents, 3k from his parents, rest from us)
Peeps: 175
Locale: Super duper expensive Central Jersey Shore.
Break down:
19k on food and venue.
4500 on photog
2000 on church
1500 on dress
1200 DJ
600 on paper
500 on flowers
Biggest challenges: Finding a church that would have us Lapsed Catholics and that has heat. And rationalizing per head costs for venue & food when $110 was the cheapest we could find. At the beach. In December. Yeah.
September 17, 2010 6:21 am
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my math does not compute. can i have a do over??
September 17, 2010 6:27 am
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So I’m being naughty and not posting anonymously… just because I recently wrote a whole post that discussed our budget with actual numbers (!), esp. how we felt about, before and after… also includes some side tangents on why money is such a tricky topic to discuss… and my general wedding-budget-confusion, as well as the lessons I came away…
http://silver-sandalled.blogspot.com/2010/08/our-wedding-budget-touchy-subject-alert.html
September 17, 2010 6:28 am
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1. Budget= $5,000
2. Location= Orlando, Fl
3. Guests= 60
4. Breakdown:
Venue: free (in-laws property)
Food: $1000 (BBQ)
Wine & Beer: $400
Photography: $500 (recent graduates found on craigslist)
Attire: $400 (Davids bridal)
Rentals: $500 (the downside of a free venue! ;) )
Vintage plates and mason jar glasses: $200
Flowers: $300 (ordered from Publix grocery store and self-assembled)
Rings: $200 (engagment ring is a family ring, wedding rings from overstock.com)
Invitations + Save-the-dates: $50 (created on 123prints.com)
Wedding night hotel room: $100
Officiant: free (uncle got notary license)
Cake: fee (sister-in-law made cupcakes
We came in around 4,000 (not including rehearsal dinner or honeymoon), which I (and my Catholic and Jewish family) were very happy with ;)
5. The biggest budget challenge for me was one finding catering for under 20 dollars a person, which I thought would be easy. I can go out to eat with my husband for 20 or 30 bucks no problem, but multiply it by 60 (or 100 or 300!) and ppl think you’re crazy. We were able to come have a local BBQ restaurant we love to do on-site catering for around 10/person. The second thing was trying to nicely turn down all the I’m sure well-meaning suggestions from mom, mom-in-law, aunts, grandmas about what I “needed” to buy to make the wedding legit. But somewhere between letting my mother in law hang giant jars of flowers above people’s heads and turning down an ice sculpture of swans for the 3rd time, I found a happy medium (or wedding zen perhaps). :)
September 17, 2010 6:29 am
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I love this one. It’s really inspiration to see what you did with the money!
September 17, 2010 4:54 pm
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$12,000 (honeymoon included)
Medium size town Pennsylvania
Church ceremony, reception hall reception
85 people
The most expensive items were the honeymoon and the reception food/rental, both totalling around $3500.
Dress $200
Flowers $400 (centerpeices and bouquets)
DJ $1000
Photographer $1500
Invitations $100
My parents don’t have a lot of money and gave us $2,000 to use however we wanted. My mother-in-law has more money to throw around and she paid for the honeymoon, DJ, and photographer, equaling about $6,000. We put in the rest ourselves.
The biggest challenge was finding a venue that we could afford. Our area is filled with a lot of hotels and ski resorts that hold many, many weddings that cost more than what they are worth. We finally found a beautiful, new reception hall that was family owned. It was a lot more traditional than what I hoped for, but it fit within our budget and everyone there was very nice and accommodating.
Wedding budgets are the most stressful and awkward things to talk about and to be involved in. It really creates a crash course in dealing with your parents, dealing with his parents, and dealing with your seperate values concerning money. Sometimes I wonder that if we were millionairs, with buckets of cash to burn, if the experience would have been less stressful.
September 17, 2010 6:29 am
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probably not, because then we’d be wondering which ice-sculpture drink-luge to get and how many limos we’ll need. ;)
September 17, 2010 8:32 am
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Actually, my parent’s paid for the wedding, and are pretty wealthy so we didn’t have to stress over the budget much. Partially, this is because we did it in the Midwest, which is a very affordable area. We didn’t have ice sculptures or anything particularly fancy, and I refused to anything that felt wasteful (i.e. refused to spend more that $1000 dollars on a dress because I just couldn’t have lived with myself). However, we had a very nice wedding and it was really great not to have to worry about the money aspect too much because my parents could afford it and they wanted to do it for us. On another note, I’ve been trying to add it up and I think we came in around 20K, but it could have been a few thousand dollars more. I don’t know how much the florists cost, and I have no idea how much my parents tipped. This is not counting rings (we paid for), rehearsal dinner (his parents paid for), brunch the day after (my parents paid for) or honeymoon (his parents gave us money for as a wedding present and we used some wedding gifts to cover the rest).
September 17, 2010 12:48 pm
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I guess my main point is that easily being able to afford what you’re doing does make it a lot less stressful, though it’s still upsetting to think about how much you are spending on one day. However, not having major budget restrictions but just doing what you think is reasonable does cut down on the stress tremendously.
September 17, 2010 12:50 pm
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Hooray for this topic! Wish it would’ve come up a year ago when I was beating myself up about our ever-expanding budget. We tracked our expenses throughout the process, but we didn’t do a final accounting. The money has been spent, and though it probably ended up in the neighborhood of $15K-$20K (or more than twice what we had hoped for in the beginning), looking back, we can’t really think of anything we wish we had spent less on. We spent money on the things we cared about and vendors we loved, so that made parting with so much of our savings easier. The only huge surprise was how much I ended up spending on my own appearance for the day – I didn’t quite realize how insecure I was until I found myself willing to spend any amount of money in order to feel beautiful for a day. And I did, though in looking at the pictures, I think the happiness I felt that day combined with the overwhelming sea of love I was swimming in did more to enhance my appearance than the false eyelashes.
But that’s an entirely different discussion. Here are the hard numbers for our 40 person wedding in Boston:
Ceremony $1,550 (chapel + officiant)
Reception $4,000 (held at a restaurant, includes site fee + food + booze + gratuity)
Photography $3,200
Invitations/StDs/Programs (DIT) $300
Flowers (2 bouquets, 3 boutonnieres) $400
Transportation $600
Dress $1,100
Accessories (the most beautiful shoes I’ll ever own + veil + jewelry rental) $1,300
Hair Styling for Me + Make Up for Three $500
Rehearsal Dinner for 18 $700
Day After Party $1,000
My family probably ended up paying for around 30%, his for around 15%, but they very kindly gifted us the money ($8,000) for our 16 day honeymoon. My family also gifted us with an amazing suite at a luxury hotel for two nights ($2,400) , so we were able to have everyone over the following day to celebrate the 4th of July.
While we’re certainly not thrilled with the balance in our savings account, we enjoyed the hell out of every. single. second. of our weekend celebration. We spent a lot per person, but every person there was vitally important to our lives, so it felt like a privilege to be able to show them a good time. I feel like we got a million dollars worth of memories for a steal.
September 17, 2010 6:30 am
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Even though we had originally budgeted 6k we actually spent 10k on our wedding.
We held our wedding in our hometown, a small and affordable city where 2 sets of couple friends of ours had previously gotten married on the cheap for 6k so we thought we could do it too no problem.
We had 68 guests, so fairly small I think.
We spent roughly 4k on food/reception (we had a cash bar)
More than 2k on apparel for both of us
Even though my in-laws paid for our honeymoon we still had flights to cover to get to our hometown and incidental spending on the honeymoon which totaled to more thank 1k
We spent $800 on gifts because we love to be generous to those we love.
Misc. costs: $700 (e.g. ceremony fees, salon appointments)
Music $400 (my brother played for free and we splurged on a karaoke dj)
Photography $250 (a friend of ours)
Flowers $200 (we only got bouquets for the bridal party, and they were small, using cheap, in-season blooms)
Stationary $80 (we sent out e-StDs and e-vites for the most part)
Decorations $70
The biggest challenges were how much all the small things we hadn’t counted on adding up. You can never do too much research ahead of time to find out that a license costs $120 rather than $80. It’s silly, but all of our over-spending was due to items like this. Also the fact that even though we had budgeted $0 for decorations, I figured buying some cheap fabric and coloured rocks would not change our budget much, but these sorts of things really added up.
It grew so gradually that we didn’t realize it was out of hand. And where we still had so many ‘friendors’ and ‘DITs’ it was hard for us to understand how it ballooned. Luckily the glow of happiness that surrounded us on our wedding day has (mostly) allowed us to forgive ourselves for spending so much on it. Although I wish we didn’t feel that we had to forgive ourselves in the first place…
September 17, 2010 6:30 am
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What you spent on your wedding: Probably about $9,000
Where you live: Well, the city we were married in is about 150,000 people or so; but the city we’re living in now (we just moved) is about 12,000 people when the University is in session, about 8,000 when it’s not.
How big your wedding was: We invited about 200 people, and about 135 showed up.
How that budget roughly broke down:
- Venue: Including the food, we spent $3K of our budget here. Well worth the money.
- Dress: $800…my parents purchased it for me.
- Photography: $850, and a total steal…our photographers worked SO hard for us. We were one of their first weddings, and they did such an unbelievable job.
- Invites: DIY, but they ended up costing about $340. I’m sure we could have gotten a better deal, but we made them together, and honestly, that experience was so much fun that it was well worth the money.
- Cakes: We paid like $100 for sheet cakes, and my parents made us a tiered cake of rice krispies. It was awesome.
What your biggest challenge was: Living with my parents to save money for the wedding/honeymoon, and keeping my DIY urges in check. Looking back, I’m not sure if it was less expensive to DIY, but it sure kept me occupied (and therefore sane) while my now-husband and I were living apart for 9 months!
How you feel about your budget post-wedding: Relatively good. We didn’t use credit cards for any large purchases, but when it got down to 3 weeks before the wedding, and I still didn’t have a dress or shoes to wear to the rehearsal dinner, or pretty girlie undies for the wedding day, I will say that those purchases went right on the plastic. So, not sure how I feel about that. Our honeymoon was rather disappointing as well, so I’m not sure I would have allocated funds towards a trip abroad; we probably would have rather stayed domestic and returned to Florida instead.
September 17, 2010 6:39 am
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We kept ours around $4,000. We got married in a small town, outdoors with about 80 guests and luckily, had wonderful friends to help.
Venue – $100 (thank God for outoor weddings)
Officiant – $100
Photos – $500 (we got a deal through a friend)
Dress – $200
Grooms clothes -$60 (no tuxes)
Food and drink – $400 (catered by a friend with wine, champagne and kegs)
Cake – $200 (made by a friend)
decorations, flowers – $200 (we made most ourselves)
bride’s bouquet – $200
mother’s flowers – $75
honeymoon – $2,000
Hair – $50
Music – $60 (buying from iTunes for our playlist)
September 17, 2010 6:41 am
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I guess after I broke it down, we spent less than I thought.
September 17, 2010 6:46 am
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the little things add up. i didn’t count in every cake plate i bought or the few bunches of fresh flowers, etc. i just assume they’re tacked on the end of the rest.
September 17, 2010 8:35 am
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This sounds a lot like what our budget was. I’m really enjoying reading all the comments on this post, and I’m not seeing very many like ours.
September 17, 2010 12:28 pm
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I live in an expensive area in a big city. We had a very small wedding (36 invitees with 30 arriving) at a restaurant near to where we lived that we ate at frequently and loved. Because of job & schooling issues we ended up planning our wedding in less than a month which meant we had very little time for shopping around. We got married in December of 2009. This is the breakdown of our budget:
- $750 for shoes, dress & alterations (jewellery was borrowed from my mom, all gifts to her from my late father)
- $35 for blow out at the salon (winter wedding with closed toed shoes – no pedi, mani done by mom, makeup done by me)
- $1200 for suit, tie, shirt & shoes for husband
- $300 for officiant and use of chapel at city hall
- $550 for wedding favours
- $550 for wedding flowers
- $600 for hotel costs (our quickie honeymoon for 2 nights after our wedding)
- $60 invitations & postage
- $125 cake (made by my sister’s best friend & we received a fair discount)
- $3700 Meal (included hors d’oeuvres, salad, pasta, main dish and desserts) & drinks
- $1100 for the rings
Grand total: $8970, for which we paid approx. $3500 out of pocket.
We received about $1000 from the groom’s parents, my aunt paid fort the flowers, and my mom paid for the dress, wedding favours and half the dinner. The remainder was paid by us. We were grateful for the amount of cash gifts we received, and used this to pay for a belated honeymoon.
Ultimately I am very happy and fortunate we got a lot of financial help which made a fast wedding easy. We had both been prepared to spend the money out of our own pocket so were pleasantly surprised and instead put our savings toward a downpayment immediately after the wedding. Had we not received such help, I think I would have needed more planning time to cost-cut more effectively, but with a month to plan you do what you can. Because we had the money set aside already, planning wasn’t hard, just time consuming and we were so busy already. I spent the whole month up to the wedding sick like a dog.
My only regret was not getting a professional photographer, but with a wedding right before Christmas I was being quoted more than the meal cost and could not spend the time to find someone to work with me and not against me. Everyone took pictures but they just aren’t at the level of a pro. I guess next time I just need more creative family & friends ;)
September 17, 2010 6:42 am
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don’t fret.
we shelled out for an awesome photog and our pictures are gorgeous. but. i’m not really sure what we’re going to do with them… we have two in frames in our house and some on facebook, etc. and. that’s it.
September 17, 2010 8:36 am
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You know, I never thought about that. I mean, obviously down the road, the photos will become even more special, but… what do you DO with the wedding pictures?!
September 20, 2010 5:15 am
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