My fiancee and I are currently planning to get married later next year, and have been setting a budget (about $15,000) for 200-250 guests. Her sisters will be paying for music, church, and photographer, currently leaving us to handle the rest. Both of us agreed saving $7500 each would be feasible. Being a very thorough planner, and having experience hosting/helping with big events my fiancee got right to work planning it out and looking at various costs/venues/options/etc.
Comparitavely, my best friend’s wedding was a mammoth $75,000 though his father-in-law paid for it entirely.
I was just curious how much people paid/are willing to pay for a wedding, particularly one of our size (200-250 guests).
I THINK our rings were $100/pair and the license cost $30. We went out to dinner afterwards, but we usually did that on the weekends, anyway, so I don’t know if it counts. That was under $50, I am sure. So under $200. No guests. We were poor as church mice and are pretty cheap in any circumstances.
$5000ish, just over 100 guests, in the late '90s in the Chicago suburbs. It didn’t hurt that my dress cost less than my mom’s did ($150 off the rack), and our wedding photographer was looking into breaking into weddings from doing other photography and needed help filling out his portfolio; he gave us the negatives and only charged a fee for his work and the film cost. Flower arrangements in the church were minimal (mums in the wedding color, in decorated pots, plus simple flowers for the bridesmaids and me).
About $1000, including fabric for my dress, suit for husband, cake from bakery I worked for, etc. Rings were $100 for him and $300 for me, I think. Our reception had over 100 people but was just cake and Jordan almonds and punch, and the venue was free (it was the church building for college students but had been a Hearst mansion in a former life and was still quite fancy).
We spent somewhere between $7000-8000, and had 450+ guests. We cut a lot of corners. I wore my mother’s wedding dress, she made our cake since she’s been making them for years, we cooked our own meal (I do catering), a friend did the video, we had Kroger do our flowers (they were just as pretty), the liquor for the reception was my aunt and uncle’s wedding gift to us, etc.
It was almost 11 years ago, and I still have people make comments to me about how much fun the party was. So, if you know anybody in any of the related industries, take advantage of it. I see a number like $75,000 and feel a little queasy inside. That’d buy you a decent house around here!
Where was your venue? Did they charge for bringing your own liquor? One thing that is killing us is that many of the nice quasai affordable places in the Bay Area either make you go through them for alcohol or charge a corking fee which gets really expensive. There’s also bartender, security, party favors, and a bunch of other things that really add up.
My friend’s wedding was done at Disneyland, as part of a wedding package which included a wedding rehearsal dinner for 300 guests, pre-reception cocktail hour and reception with an open bar and something like a seven-course dinner.
The largest expense was $300 for the venue. The DJ (a friend of ours) offered his services for free. Our cake (all five tiers worth) was a gift from a friend who’s also a baker. Another friend is a professional photographer. All we had to give them was a hotel room for the night so he and his wife didn’t have to face a 2-hour drive at midnight.
Some other friends who are caterers did the job (waiter-passed hors d’oeuvres) for the price of food. The waiters were more friends. There were also some other sweetheart deals with the venue’s beverage manager, security and whatnot.
I do wonder about people who spend that much for an event when it can be done cheaply. How extravagant are they with money?
If one is rich, fine.
I went to the justice of the peace and used a bars christmas party as the reception.
Slight thread hijack: How do people end up inviting 200 to 450 people at a wedding? Both families (parents, parents’ siblings, cousins) both sets of friends with some friends having a guest. How can that end up totalling 200 to 450 people? How wide a range of people do you have to invite to get several hundred people?
About $3000, IIRC, in 1983. I had a nice suit; the bride’s hat cost a bit more than the dress, which was really cheap (but very pretty). We had just enough flowers to get by. People wore their own clothes, except for the best man, who showed up in a rented suit about 20 sizes too big. I should have replaced him for being a dolt, the a-hole. But I digress. We had a maid of honor and a flower girl, but no other participants except the rabbi. The reception was at our apartment, and a guy we knew who ran a wine and cheese shop gave us a whole lot of food for free. We had wine, of course, and beer; I don’t think there was any hard liquor around. A friend did the photography.
We also flew in a friend to play violin, and we paid for a few rooms for out-of-town guests.
On the whole, it was a very nice, completely anarchic wedding. My only regret is that I never got a piece of the cake, as the guests devoured it before we could even get to it.
~3 grand. My best friend gave us an awesome wedding gift, and my grandparents helped us out, so we only had to come up with half that and my brother-in-law paid for our honeymoon (we went to Disneyland).
We had about 25 guests. For the reception we went to a restraunt and they had a wine cellar that we used.
My advice:
If I weren’t Catholic I would have eloped.
Spend money on the photographer. Ours, we found out this week, sucked.
Fine two items that you want people to remember. Focus on those, don’t stress about place settings or whatever.
Don’t get a “wedding cake.” We went to a small bakery and had them make us a regular cake, but had it two tiered and nice looking. It cost us less than 60 bucks and it was so friggin good. Everyone loved it. Yeah, it didn’t have all the fancy flowers on it, but it was one of the best tasting cakes I’ve had in my entire life.
I got a dress for $20, shoes for $20, rings were $30 each, and the license/ceremony was $40. So $140. My mom took us out to lunch afterward at Ruby Tuesday.
DUH-AM!! That must be quite the ring!! Does your wife actually wear it? I think I would be scared I would drop it down a sink in a lady’s room or something.