Budget

This is going to be highly dependent on location and how many people you have. Food is one of the biggest costs associated with the wedding and definitely made up about half of our budget.

We went into planning thinking we were going to spend about 20K tops… we are now at almost 40k in total. There’s a few other things we have to get, but no major expenses unless we think of something else.


We also live in a very high cost area for weddings, and our venue was one of the more expensive ones, but it was the only place we could see ourselves getting married. so depending on where you live, this may be ridiculously high.
My advice would be to just pick a time line that you wanna get married by, and then factor in each month how much you can definitely put aside to save. Multiply that and then you’ll know how much your wedding will cost.

Honestly, there are so many different factors that go into how much someone spends on a wedding including location, number of guests, what vendors they hire and their vendors experience. For our wedding, we budgeted $20,000. However, I believe we spent between $23,000-25,000 which didn't include my wedding dress or veil, our rehearsal dinner or flower girl dresses. My mom bought my wedding dress and veil and paid for my dress to be altered. My mother-in-law paid for our rehearsal dinner and she made the flower girl dresses. We bought half of the material for the flower girl dresses only for my mother-in-law to realize she needed more so she bought the other half. Somehow she read the pattern wrong.

My initial budget was $20k, but we're going to end up around $28k when everything is done. As previously mentioned, it all depends on location, number of guests, and how "simple" you're willing to get. You can definitely cut corners to meet your $5,000 budget, but it will take some creativity. You can try looking at parks for your venue and get catering from a local restaurant. Anything that's advertised for a wedding will be up-priced significantly

I think all-in everything was ~15k. Medium cost of living area, 175 attendees. We did catering through a grocery store that was ~$15 pp for fantastic hot food and had beer, wine, soda, water.

Most of your budget for the actual wedding ceremony/reception will be food/drink. Some easy ways to limit that cost are:

- have your wedding at a non-meal time: early afternoon ceremony with reception ending by 6pm does not require a full meal to be served. You could get by with cake, some munchies, and lemonade.

- have a small guest list

- don't serve alcohol: It's rude to have guests pay for anything at your wedding, but it's not at all rude to only serve non-alcoholic beverages.

All of this really depends on what you specifically want for your wedding and what parts are important to you!

It depends on so many factors.

Several years ago I listened to a morning radio show where they talked about wedding budgets one day. It was so fascinating to hear what listeners prioritized either from their own weddings or those they attended. They were proof positive that a budget of any size can be done regardless of guest count.

One caller said they only paid for cake for 200 people from the grocery store, the marriage license and invites, all for under $500 in a very high cost of living area. Wedding was at their church.

Most guests only care if the food is good, the entertainment is good, the hosts/couple is hospitable, and no one has to open their wallets. The couple focuses on photos to remember the day. The rest is optional.

Go for an unconventional venue. All inclusive will be triple the cost because they have 5 figure food/drink minimums you must meet. Look on eventective.com for warehouses or parks dept event rentals.

Get corporate catering from your favorite restaurant for pennies. The same menu that caters most offices for Casual Friday. Get a cake from a grocery store or Costco.

Avoid the word "wedding" and you will cut costs dramatically and end up with a higher quality product/service, contrary to popular belief.

Sit down with fiance and figure out what is important to you and completely toss out the rest.

Depends where you live and the number of guests. We budgeted $20k and spent closer to $30k in a high cost area with very few guests.

You're going to get extremely different answers here because everyone's financial situation is different and budgets can vary wildly.

We spent $100k on our wedding for 120 guests (we had a very formal wedding and our parents paid for the majority of it). My best friend had a micro-wedding with 17 guests and she spent $3000 total. Both were tons of fun!

I think everyone has a “learning curve” when it comes to wedding budgets. We planned $30k max... we are now over $40k

There's definitely some sticker shock when it comes to the price of weddings!! Like the previous comments all mentioned, it all depends on where you live and what you are looking to do with your wedding, as to what the cost will be. There are definitely ways to have a beautiful wedding for $5000 or less! Typically, the more guests, the higher the cost. If trying to cut costs, one of the quickest ways to do so is by cutting down your guest list. Check out non-conventional wedding venues: an aquarium, a local park, a party room at a restaurant, etc. For food, look into catering from a local restaurant instead of a wedding caterer. For dress, check out Poshmark or eBay or Facebook Marketplace or a secondhand dress shop for like-new dresses that are either gently worn or may even still have the tags on them.

Spending $5,000.00 would be such a great price for everything! But for me that doesn't even cover photos/videos :-( We have estimated the wedding to be about $40,000.00.

Outside of location and number of guests, a good way to establish your budget could be by percentage! Sometimes seeing the cost broken out this way helps realign expectations and what you're willing or needing to spend on.

*Typical* breakdown for weddings with you $5K budget:

Venue & Catering - 40% ($2,000)
Photography - 15% ($750)
Music/DJ - 10% ($500)
Flowers - 10% ($500)
Décor - 10% ($500)
Attire - 5% ($250)
Transportation 3% ($150)
Stationary - 3% ($150)
Favors 2% - ($100)
Cake 2% ($100)

If the categories seem too low of a % (or you want to put more money into, say your dress/attire) then you can bump that up or adjust from there.

This could be a super great budget if your guest count is low, or perhaps you have some really great connections with a bunch of vendors, or like someone mentioned above you choose a non-conventional venue (like a park, or beach?)

I would highly recommend if you go the DIY route, definitely stick to a budget and do research on your crafts before you buy. I opted to make a bunch of my decorations and am ending up spending more money than I would have if I just rented or ordered. :/

How many guests are you hoping to invite?

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Yep.

DH and I got married in NYC. We had a 'budget' wedding for NYC, and ... well, let's just say our photographer ate up most of your budget.

You CAN do a wedding for $5k, but it depends on where, and how low-key you are willing to go.

Hi, it depends on the area and where. We started at 20k and now we’re at 35k not including my dress invites save the dates and other little extra things

Whether you are planning for simple wedding or something else, still there are many things to be kept in mind like your dress, caters, your guest, photographer, venue etc. all are expensive things. But if your budget is low then you can plan accordingly. It depends on you how many guests you invited or your venue etc.

Our budget was 10k but we went over a bit. We ended up paying about 14k for 170 guests. The key is to find unconventional places to get married. We lucked out and got a golf course banquet hall for $900 for the whole weekend because it is not marketed as a wedding spot, we are actually one of the few that will have a wedding there. It is mostly for corporate retreats.