How many of you went over budget?

We had an idea of a budget originally but it wasn't until we saw what things really cost that we were able to sit down and make a realistic budget for our pricey area. Now that we have that budget, we are sticking to it closely!

@Realyz3 I feel the same struggle. Why is NY so expensive? :'(

We had more of a range, with a maximum that we didn't want to go over. As of right now it looks like we'll be more around the max number.

We've planned on 20k so far and don't want to go over 25k if we can help it. It's still the early stages of planning for us so I'm searching for sale items and deals every way I can. Someone also suggested to me that I can always return registry gifts if I need to replenish funds.

I'm really frustrated on how expensive this can get. This is the price of a car or a down payment to a house, and instead it's being spent on a glorified party. Sometimes I just want to ELOPE!

We'll probably go over by a grand or so. I hadn't budgeted for a videographer and have since changed my mind.

Our original/uneducated budget was $5k-10k. Ha! I wish! Photography was much more than we expected, but was one of my top 3 priorities. And my dress was $1k more than budgeted. Now we're just under $13k not including wedding bands or honeymoon.

Which budget? First budget set my husband was $10,000 with a 180 person list and he wanted all bells and whistles. After we looked at venues budget went to 25,000. I think we ended up at 24,000 including honeymoon expenses including clothes.

We didn't have a set budget but we were hoping to be under $25,000 and it's laughable to even remember. We probably doubled that and maybe more UGH we tried!!

Btw our florist was $4,500, that price shocked me too. Our splurge was a live band, which blew our budget to smithereens but will add a major wow factor. We paid cash for everything so no debt though

Totally. Our budget was originally supposed to be 20k....that quickly turned into 32k....LOL.

We never had a set amount. I started out wanting $10,000 and quickly realized that was not possible. I really don't know how much we spend but our venue (food and alcohol) alone was 15k, so I think we spent close to 25k. Everything is so expensive!

I'm definitely going over our original budget. Not by much, but there are rentals I hadn't thought of beforehand that I am considering. Everything is pretty much what I thought it would cost. Our splurge is probably music. We decided to hire a live band, which was about the same as our DJ budget, but clearly more than an iPod or something. And we want to also hire a brass band for a second line, but I am still trying to justify that.

Surprisingly, we are under budget right now. That may go up as we get closer to our date but we spend a long time budgeting and overestimating.

Our budget was flexible and we had a little family support. I knew exactly how much would be left after the wedding and that it would take me 3 more months of extra shifts to pay it off. We planned to honeymoon in February once it was paid off, but the mini moon in Jamaica was great and Barcelona is a little chaotic right now, so I will have a few months. We came way under for food and alcohol after our guest list decreased due to rsvps. I almost dropped the flowers but I used a little extra money I had put aside to splurge but kept it on budget. We planned to reuse the babies breath buckets from the ceremony for the cocktail hour tables. No idea if that actually happened but it helped the budget.

We starting thinking 15K, we're at 30K. Double or nothing.

We'll be way over the original budget but that was just unrealistic. I didn't want to spend a lot and I originally set it at 3,000 but quickly realized it wouldn't be what I wanted that cheap. I doubled it to $6,000 but it looks like we'll be coming in at close to $8,000 not counting the honeymoon.

I mean I was hoping to stay around 20k going into wedding planning since that sounds like a lot but I never actually set a budget, just made an estimate. I figured I would get a few quotes, pick the vendors I felt a connection with who had reasonable prices. I think excluding rings and honeymoon we probably came in around 30k. I decided ignorance is bliss and never added it all up after. If we didn't have money in savings I would have set a budget and stuck to it/found ways to do things cheaper.

Our budget was $10,000. We ended up at $11,000 but we splurged on photography and my wedding ring was more than I wanted to spend but DH insisted.

We had a budget breakdown in one of those planner books that we have tried to stay under in each category which has helped tremendously. There was things that we pulled funds from to put into other categories (for example, I did NOT need $600.00 on stationary and I only am spending about $200 for everything from stamps to thank you cards. The rest of those funds went to bakery section) The break down of categories has tremendously helped staying on track for us!

FH and I are close to $1,000 over

We first had a budget of 20K (laughing out loud at that one). Now with a realistic budget of 35K.