What has been the most surprisingly expensive part of wedding planning?

Cocktail hour didnt realized that appetizer were so expensive. But we wanted them anyways.

Flowers, they die I don't get it???

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Ditto on flowers!!

Flowers, photographers, and videographers... I mean holy crap! I knew it would be somewhat expensive, but it is so darn expensive.

Oh, and I completely forgot to mention alterations!!!

Invites! I love stationery and wanted really fancy invites, with calligraphy and envelope liners until I started pricing everything out. It was crazy ridiculous...one place quoted almost $400 for 20 invites!

Thankfully, I'm fairly crafty and I made my own for about $30 instead. I love how they turned out and FH told me they look professional so, I'm putting that in the win column. Took forever to make them though...

Definitely invites. I didn’t realize they were thousands not hundreds. And I know you can order cheap ones online but I wanted nice formal invitations.

The flowers! Who knew a sunflower and purple lizzy bouquet and matching boutonniere would cost so much!

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Yes! Invites can be crazy expensive!! I knew my invitations would be one of my "splurges", but I quickly realized there's many levels of "splurge"! I was willing to pay way more than most, but was still having to do the trade-offs between letterpress and extra inserts and envelopes!

For me the most surprisingly expensive part was guest transportation! The shuttle buses we got for our guests were thousands and thousands of dollars! There's no Uber or Lyft (and not really cabs either) where we got married, so we felt like we needed to provide guest shuttles - but that cost was brutal!

The catering bill I knew was going to be costly. But I didn't expect it to be over half of my budget. Hence I am looking for a new caterer.

Definitely transportation. I hate the hourly minimums for buses and shuttles!

I never expected to pay $5,400 for an open bar especially when food for olated service & apps is only a thousand more. I would rather do beer/wine to make it cheaper lol smh but FH is being stubborn about it.

Photographer decorator and food/open bar

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I've never been to a wedding where guest transportation has been provided, and we aren't providing it at our wedding either. Usually everyone just drives/carpools to the reception venue...is this more common in bigger cities? (I'm from the Minneapolis suburbs).

I can't really say that I'm surprised about the costs because weddings are notoriously expensive, but I can say that I never thought I would spend $3,500 on a DJ.

Flowers and invites! I ordered my invites REALLY early to use a coupon that got emailed to me that knocked half the price off, and I was STILL shocked about what it came out to lol

The freaking cake and flowers! A dozen cupcakes for $30 and a bridesmaid bouquet for $45 is crazy! Get your desserts or cake made from a local grocery store and pick up flowers from a wholesale or in - bulk store. They will look and taste just the same.

Venue site fees!!!! In Napa, $5K-$10K...just for the site fee (no food/drinks). WTF?! After many tears and more research, saved a bundle by 1) cutting guest list 2) weekday wedding 3) off-season. BAM, dream wedding at a fraction of the cost.

Flowers. But that's mostly because I originally wanted no decor and only bouquets--and then I went NUTS and tripled my budget just for simple reception decor.