What's Your Order of Importance?

My number one thing that I wanted was an excellent photographer because I want to be able to have all of the beautiful little moments from the best day ever. We went with a venue really close to our hearts, where my mom and dad got married! And, luckily their food and bar is fantastic. Gosh, everything seems so important to me (no one finds your wedding as important and amazing as you do, though!). I guess we really are going simplistic with decor for cost-cutting!

Food and venue were important to me! I don't care much about the little details either. I'm using basic white linens provided by my venue, and my centerpieces are from the venue as well (branch things with lights on the ends).

Food & drinks decorations, then trying to fit every guest in my guest list. I've always know where I would get married and who would marry us.

1. Getting married in front of my kids.

2. Getting married at his parent's property as its very special to both our families.

3. Wine

4. Good photographer

5. Yummy delicious food

Skimping on fancy invitations, kept the guest list down , doing wine and beer only, and no photo booth. Also cut down on my flower budget.

No limo, no photo booth, a nice dinner and delicious cake (also grooms cake), but we aren't having a pile of desserts and food galore. Everyone will have full tummys, but there's not the space nor budget for excessive food. Our wedding is at a plantation with a gorgeous garden, so we don't have to have tons of flowers either.

DJ

Uplighting

Open Bar

Everything revolves around the party. I even bought my "reception/party" outfit before I bought my wedding dress. I'm like you OP. I don't know why this wedding is costing us so much. Because I skipped on a lot of things. I just wanted to create a club environment lol.

With you on most of it. Cared about- venue, food, dress, photos. Fiance cared about invitations, tuxes, food and cake. Didn't care about- dj, decor, programs, favors

FH, son, officiant, marriage license, food, photographer, dj, open bar, venue, decorations

At the end of the day if I am marrying my best friend and my son is with us, then I'm the happiest women alive. That's what truly matters the most me.

My wedding isn't a big traditional wedding, I'm having it at a statepark and its beautiful so no decorations. Because it's an incredibly small wedding we aren't having a traditional reception just inviting everyone to dinner with us after. The things that were important to me were flowers, dress, and having the out of town family make it.

Well besides the food & beverage, photography was easily our next biggest ticket item. After that it all kind of just follows. The one thing I pushed for finally was videographer. We are skipping favors, programs and menus, and doing a cheaper DIY selfie booth!

1) FH

2) Officiant

3) Venue

4) Photography

5) Catering/Food/Beverage

6) Day of Coordinator (I don't want to run around like a crazy person on the day of the wedding)

7) DJ

We are skipping excessive paper goods and wedding favors. FH and I have a system set up for less consequential decisions such as flowers, linens, etc.

My friends and family NOT working during my wedding. I have been to several weddings where my family & I were all the sudden serving at the reception when we were supposed to be guests. Based on that, that raised our expenses so we picked a venue that would take care of all our needs & services the day of the wedding.

Food and drinks

Most important: food, drinks, photographer, music, dress.

Cutting out: favors, programs, videographer.

This was a lot harder for me to prioritize at the beginning of planning, because I wanted everything! The planning process makes it much easier to prioritize as you go though

Most important: band, venue (location and layout of space), videography, decor (flowers and linens)

We "cut out" a lot of "cool wedding ideas we always wanted to do" that aren't really necessary at all like photo booth, extra desserts, late night snacks, etc. We don't care about having custom cake cutting knives or toasting flutes, so skipping those as well. We're going pretty bare bones with the ceremony because the church is already lovely, and only doing 2 floral arrangements up front that we will re-purpose for the wedding. We also opted to use their in-house organist who was very cheap!

The rest of the stuff was kind of scaling back and compromising on! Like we knew we'd definitely have an open bar, but couldn't handle the top shelf liquor pricing so we went a tier down there.

Next on the list to potentially get cut are send off items, welcome bags, any rehearsal dinner decor, and basically anything I haven't purchased yet All the accessories and little decor things are closer to getting the chop as we run out of time and money!

Honeymoon!!!!

DJ

Food/venue

open bar

Photography/Videography

Everything else was if we have it. We will get it.

Definitely cut favors, chair covers, and programs. We skimped on table decor(used what the venue had) We really focused on overall experience instead of look. The wedding price tag is so expensive.

Band instead of a DJ

Good Food/Drink

Amazing Photographer

Because those were the must have items and we knew we would blow the budget on those, we booked them first. Then, added "want bad" items like photo booth and videographer with what we had left.

Food and drink

Photographer

Hair and makeup (I want to look good)

We are not doing favors, DJ, limo, excessive flowers or decorations (our venue is gorgeous and doesn't need decorations)

Food and drinks/control over venue was the most important for us.

Venue (comes with on site catering) and Photographer are top two on the list! Then DJ and videographer, and then the dress. Heck everything is important but I guess this is my list if I have to have one haha. For some reason flowers are pretty much towards the bottom for me. I love flowers, but I just cannot see spending SO much on flowers for one day that will just die and ultimately get thrown away. I will have some, but not going to go ALL out with flowers.