A wedding rant.....do they think I can just shit money out of my ass?!

The BBQ Pit
21

Giraffe has some really good ideas-- I’ll definitely second getting a temporary liquor license and finding a place that will allow you to supply your own alcohol. That alone saved is more than a thousand.

Another idea for flowers is to get them at a Farmer’s Market on the day of or day before the wedding. Depending on what time of day your wedding will be, and how formal, the flowers at Farmer’s Markets are consistently beautiful and varied. It’s worth checking out, anyway.

We also did our own invitations, which turned out beautifully, and instead of the traditional cake, my mom and sister (excellent human beings that they are) made 140 Black Bottom Cups, my very favoritest cupcake in the world. We stacked them at the reception in three tiers, so it looked cake-ish. It was cool, if I do say so myself.

I’ll also second Chef Troy’s advice to double-check every bid you get from caterers. While you’re talking to them, explore your options of sit-down vs. buffet vs. food stations. By setting the food up in different ways, you get a range of options and thus a range of prices. We opted for food stations with lots of appetizers and two pastas. It was damn tasty.

22

If you can I have laxatives.

23

Where in NJ are you? Or rather, where in NJ do you want to have the wedding?

24

Top 10 Ways to Save Money on Your Wedding

25

10, 000 for a band? Is that a joke? What band, the Ozzfest?

Holy shit!

Zette

26

I’m with **Zette[B/] here… I’ll gladly bring a band, chauffeur your asses to the airport, do your taxes and take care of the pets and laundry and dry-cleaning bills. If you have any varmint critters in your basement, I’ll eradicate them while you’re gone. I’ll also clean your gutters and re-wire your house with 3-prong plugs.

I’ll resist the urge to link to my former (on the charts, successful) band out of modesty, but $500-800 for a BIG out-of-town festival was an awesome payday. I’m getting married in October… I shall follow this thread.

27

Another thing you might want to do is look into more creative weddings. My uncle recently got married in a local zoo. They set up chairs in a nice bit of garden near the giraffes. The food they provided was not upscale by any means- we’re talking cornbread and baked beans- and the music was provided by a homeless blues musician, but it was all a heck of a lot more fun than any other wedding I’ve been to.

28

Wow. And we thought we got bent over a barrel for our wedding.

I mean, who pays $800 for flowers?

$1700 for a photographer?

$73 + 20% “service charge”+sales tax for a cocktail reception, not including alcohol (although the booze was at less than minibar prices)?

$700 for an obnoxious DJ? The guests loved him though, thought he was a total kick in the pants, I loved my purty bouquet, although it was kind of heavy and unwieldy so I foisted it off on a young cousin who was thrilled to babysit it until I could throw it at some other cousin’s head. Everybody loved the food, people barely noticed the photographer, and there were only a couple times during the reception that I felt like kicking a member of the waitstaff’s ass (one, for being rude to my big little brother (he’s 18, no baby, but not legal to drink) and not letting him have anything to toast with [what, no sparkling cider?] and slopping champagne on him [great, he can’t drink it, but now he’ll reek of it] and another for walking by, hooking her foot through my dress’ bustle, and ripping it loose. How she managed it, I don’t know.) I’m actually a really “laid back” person, but I didn’t pay $5,037.44 to have a bartender who disappears and waitstaff like that. So that part, the part I least expected to have problems with, wasn’t “alright.” Oops, I don’t mean to co-opt your rant.

I guess I should try and offer some constructive advice, but I’m not sure I have any except remember that having a good day is the thing. If we had it to do all over again, we might have made it a potluck at Coronado’s dog beach, but we had planned the whole thing around my elderly grandparents being able to attend.

Screw the $10,000 band. Nobody’s that good. (Unless it’s U2 or Robert Earl Keen Jr., and if it is, can we come? We’ll cover our costs of course, and get you a hefty Home Depot gift certificate, or whatever your local hardware store of choice is ;))

29

Have you tried hotels? I helped my SIL plan her wedding a year ago (for ~125 people) and it was way cheaper to have it at a hotel – over 60% cheaper-- vs. a banquet hall.

See, the only way banquet halls make money is by charging facility fees, usually about $5-10,000. Hotels, however, will waive the facility fee because they make their money on room rentals. And weddings = room rentals. So SIL just had to pay for the food (done reasonably through the hotel for ~$12/head), the florist, the cake, the photographer and the band.

Since they had a beautiful atrium filled with ferns and trees (it was an Embassy Suites) at the hotel, she had her wedding ceremony there for an add’l $100. That saved her the cost of limos, etc. and the headache of moving from one location to another.

As a bonus, they kicked in the bridal suite all weekend for the couple, saving them the cost of the room.

Good luck. And if all else fails, have it in another city. :slight_smile:

30

$10,000 for a band that will play for a few hours max? I am sorry but you must be looking in the wrong places. I know a few signed, successful bands that occasionally play a local music hall and they don’t even clear that much! Don’t want to get into how I know how much they got paid, but I know for a fact that Sevendust got paid a little less than that to play a local festival because I signed the check.

10K. Thats insane.

31

Where in NJ are you? If you’re in the south of Jersey I’d say try somewhere in Maryland. Or if you’re in western Jersey, there is a Shawnee country club type place right over the PA line, I’ve been there it’s really nice. Can’t have been too expensive because my cousin rented a really nice room for a christening and for a first communion, a year apart from each other.

BTW, when I got married, my husband got a great deal because he grew up with the GM’s son. It was $50 a head (open bar). Yes, that was a great price compared to the other halls, they wanted $75-125 an head, for nothing quite spectacular. We also cut our guest list to 100, I borrowed the dress, and we all did the flowers. The DJ was a relative's boyfriend, but if I could have burned a CD back then, I would have. You may be able to save on the limo by just renting it for the ride to the church or just to the reception hall.

32

I feel your pain. I got married last month. All our savings are gone, and our credit cards are maxed. It’s RIDICULOUS!

Advice (that I should have taken myself): swallow your pride and ask for money as gifts.

33

There’s really no earthly reason to spend that kind of money on one day. After all, is it the wedding that’s important, or the marriage? The two things you can do that will make the biggest difference in your wedding costs are to go with a slightly non-traditional wedding, and to seriously cull the guest list.

As has already been pointed out here, non-traditional weddings tend to be a lot more fun, and way less expensive. You don’t have to get way out in left field; but before you do something because it’s always done at weddings, ask yourself if it really means anything to you. There’s no point shelling out for something you really don’t care about. Also, with nontraditional weddings you don’t have to shell out major dough for a dress you’ll never wear again; you can find a beautiful formal you can wear on other special occasions for a fraction of the price.

With the guest list, I’m firmly in favor of only inviting people that you can’t imagine getting married without them. Of course you also have to invite their spouses or SO’s, but that’s still a pretty limited group. This way you get to spend a lot more time with the folks you actually want to see, and you can usually find a nice restaurant to accommodate the smaller group.

Of course, you could always just elope. :slight_smile:

34

CrazyCatLady has the best advice in the thread so far (including mine! :eek!: ). Figure out what is important to both of you, and do that. Examine why you’re doing everything for the wedding, and if the reason for things is only “because that’s what people do at weddings”, figure out if you really want to do it or not. Jim and I are having two bridesmaids and one groomsman, cause those are the people we want to stand up with us. I’m having a very simple wedding dress because I’m not a frou-frou person, and would feel foolish in a puffy, glittery dress. We’re having Italian food rather than a beef or chicken dinner because Jim loves Italian. To heck with tomato sauce stains, I say! Make your wedding yours.

35

Stupid-ass smileys.

36

I don’t know, my roommate from college had his wedding at the Manor in West Orange. That place was probably at least $100 a plate. Good food though.

And for $10,000, I bet you could get a real band. Like someone you’d hear on the radio. Seriously, anybody that will play a venue that holds a thousand people max and charges less than $20 a ticket isn’t making that much from a real concert.

37

Have you considered asking Ukelele Ike to play? I’ll bet he’d do a whole set for well under five grand.

38

You have to decide what you really want. A restaurant may be less expensive, but most of the parties I’ve been to in restaurants didn’t have room for dancing.Not having an open bar is less expensive, and Friday night or Sunday afternoon may be less expensive than Saturday night.Something I haven’t seen mentioned is renting a hall from an organization (VFW, Knights of Columbus, etc) and using a caterer That avoids renting tables and chairs. BTW, $65 doesn’t seem all that expensive for a wedding to me, Of course, I’m in NY, where the least expensive catering hall I found 15 years ago charged $40 per person plus tax and tip for a Saturday night in November. But $5500 for a DJ? That’s gotta be one of those deals where the DJ comes with five other people throwing props around and teaching dances, right? You might be able to find a lower priced DJ if you don’t look at the wedding places. Schools and organizations having dances don’t pay that much for a DJ. Maybe someone in one of your families has a connection to such an organization and can get you a recommendation.

39

Pay the $10,000 for the band.

Then relocate the wedding/reception to a big field, sell tickets for it, call it Wedstock, and make money while getting married.

40

Wow. I guess I did get off cheap. I had the good fortune to be marrying a 5th child of 7…who had in his family a professional chef AND a cake decorator AND some darn good cooks.

We had two large flower arrangements, $65 each;
Rented the local park amphitheater and hall, $100;
cake provided by my dear sister in law as a wedding gift (and it was delicious);
Stereo, speakers, and CDs provided and managed by my father in law;
catering was a potluck of barbecue, pot roast, and a huge ring loaf of homemade bread that my new husband and I cut with his sword and then served to everyone;

Dress, $70 for the fabric and $40 for a local seamstress to make it for me (very simple pattern, and she was a family friend). Shoes, $20.

The groom’s suit was borrowed from a friend who had worn it to get married in the same park.

We decided not to have alcohol because my family doesn’t drink; they also don’t dance (Pentecostal ya know) but we did have an awesome good time.

Oh, yes, I did have to buy some hair accessories and the cake topper, but I don’t think I spent more than $50 on everything else. The only thing I regret is not getting better shoes. Life’s too short to wear shoes that pinch.

Corr