I’m in the midst of planning my daughter’s wedding (18 days away) and while I don’t have final figures, we are looking at roughly $4000 for 50-75 guests. This includes a four-day stay at a good hotel in downtown Cleveland for the couple ($448) and the dress ($275 at Nordstrom…NOT a wedding gown) We are having it in the party room of a sports bar and the photographer is a cousin who is a professional and doing it for a bottle of Patron. Girls get to wear whatever black dress they want. Flowers will be about $200, invites and favors and postage and table decor about $200. We would have to rent tablecloths or provide our own…it was cheaper to buy some that we will donate to our church afterwards,so we bought a few more than we needed…$168. Cupcakes instead of a cake got a bit more expensive than I planned…$300. But that includes the stand rental and a cake topper to cut and an anniversary cake in year. Music will be our own CD’s, and we are providing a keg of beer, the champagne for the toast and wine…everything else is a cash bar. Room rental is $100, 2 bartenders are $100. Don’t know the food cost yet, but his parents want to pay for that as well as a “rehearsal” dinner the night before. Officiant is my daughter’s good friend, doing it free. Guys are just wearing suitcoats they own and matching ties.
We didn’t invite all my cousins. Since my mom is the last of her siblings, we just didn’t see the need. If my aunts were still alive it would be one thing, but my daughter doesn’t know my cousins or their kids, and they don’t invite/inform us of half of their events these days. My daughter insisted I invite my closest friends, and my family is small. In fact, my sister is coming in for the wedding, but not her husband or their kids (and boy, is my daughter upset about that!) So with my mom, my brother, his wife, the nieces (who are flower girls at age 19!) my son and his girlfriend, me and my friends, that’s 20. The bride’s father and those relatives are out of our lives. The groom has more family, but even with them, their friends and their dates, we are still struggling to hit 75. So it’ll be a nice, small, workable group in a very eclectic room with some great buffet food.
I did want to cater it myself at the VFW hall or my brother’s backyard, but my daughter wanted me to have less stress. Right! She left the state and I’ve been doing most of the organizing. And the backyard didn’t have airconditioning or enough bathrooms!
When I worked at the Westin downtown Chicago, the average cost of our weddings was $21,000 and I was there from 99 to 03. It didn’t change much during the years.
And that was a good range. I was rare for a wedding to go over $30,000 or under say 10 or 12K
Bar Mitzvah’s were a good chunk of change, they’d average about $15,000.
So you can imagine if you had the wedding at the Drake or Four Seasons or Ritz, you’d easily double the cost.
Ha. We (my mom and I) made all of the food, and the day of the reception we had a few of the church ladies and some of the 8th graders who needed to make up service hours (my mom is a Catholic school principal) there doing the running around and refilling (it was a traditional Polish wedding dinner, buffet style). I’ve actually catered larger–650 was my top job–it just takes a lot of organization and a little bit of insanity.
We had our reception at a community hall at a local Catholic school. It wasn’t super-fancy, but it had a great kitchen, a big dance floor and with some twinkle lights and tulle it looked perfectly lovely. There was no charge for bringing in our own liquor, and we had another friend-of-a-friend do the bartendering on the cheap.
As for the large guest list–I have a huge family. I’m one of 6. My father is one of 9, my mother one of 7. All of those aunts and uncles have spouses and 3 to 8 kids of their own, and some have grandkids. That alone took us to nearly 200. My husband’s family is almost as large. Add in my friends, my husband’s friends, my mom’s rather large group of friends (I was the first of her daughters to marry and it was a big deal) quasi-family, and the whatnot and we had to pare down to get it under 500. We had a blast, large crowd and all, so invite who you want and don’t listen to those saying it’s too many. You only get married once (hopefully), and as long as you can swing it your loved ones should be there to help you celebrate.
I don’t consider them a sham so much as just a very, VERY expensive party. I think if I had it to do over again I would do it for next to nothing and truly make it just a party - buffet-style dinner, nice dress from a department store, suits on the guys, flowers and cake from Safeway, etc.
We had a small wedding (30 people) - close friends and family. We were looking to get married in a hurry and on a budget, so I found an off-strip chapel in Vegas that offered a fun inclusive package for 3,000. For 3K, we got:
Food (was actually very tasty, all my guests raved over the vegetarian lasagne we ordered especially for one vegetarian guest) - we got to pick 3 entrees, 2 sides, appetizers and there was a chocolate fountain
Open bar (I hear we drank them out of Baileys)
Cake(wasn’t very pretty, but was decorated with fresh flowers and tasted divine)
Bridal bouquet, bouquet for my maid of honor, corsages for the mothers (I ordered extras so my grandmother and stepmother could have one), boutonieres for my husband, my dad and the best man
My dresscost 600.00 (on sale at David’s Bridal) with 200.00 of alterations. I paid for hair/make up/manicureat the Bellago Salon the day of the wedding - 350.00. It was totally worth it, my hair and make up were gorgeous and I loved all the pictures. I got my shoes totally cheap (little beaded Indian dancing shoes) and I paid about 60.00 for sparkly gee-gawsfor my hair.
I made the wedding favors - CDs burned with our wedding playlist. I used stamps and glitter to decorate them. I probably went a little overboard with the arts and crafts, I would estimate total cost was 75.00?
My dad did take the wedding party to dinner the night before the wedding atLe Cirqueat the Bellagio. I don’t want to know what that cost! He also paid for our room at the Bellagio (which was a huge treat for me, I’m too cheap to pay for a hotel that nice). The dinner and our hotel room were our very generous wedding gift from my dad!
My engagement ring is very very very nice. I don’t really want to know what it cost! Jason got a simple wedding band and I opted to use my engagement ring for my wedding ring.
About $7,000 for 85 or so people. My mother works in the events industry and so we got our wedding linens free, got the employee rate on the venue (golf course) and the head of the floral design department at a local college did all of our flowers for just the wholesale cost of material. I think the only thing we paid full prices on was the photographer, DJ, dress and rings… and my ring was bought online for some pretty low price.
Hmmmm…Less than $500 bucks. Most of that was for the dress, the rings, and the groom’s suit. My aunt made a cake, and we had the reception at my dad’s house were we cooked buffet style snacks. There were around 30 guests, not including the wedding party. I had 3 bridesmaids and they each wore a different sundress. All in shades of blue, but different, and they were ones they already owned. Well, one was mine that I lent to one of my bridesmaids. My dress was probably the most expensive thing at $100 bucks. Of course this was all back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (late 70s :D). We got together at the church and did hair and makeup in one of the Sunday school rooms with our own makeup and hair stuff.
And even THAT was way more than I wanted to do for a wedding. What I wanted was to get married out at “Montana Creek Falls” a popular family camping and boondockin’ hangout around 2 or 3 hours north of Anchorage. I wanted to wear blue jeans and a veil as my “dress”. It was my parents that insisted upon a traditional wedding in the church.
I was 19, and even then I didn’t have that hunger for “I’m the BRIDE! it’s MY Day!!! and it has to be PERFECT”. I’m astonished at how some young women react to the wedding. It’s no longer a ceremony and has turned (for some women) into some sort of validation for the bride.
Glory, I would have loved to be able to purchase a package deal for my wedding and not deal with all the stupid, trivial details. For it to be reasonably priced would have been AWESOME! Your cake looked lovely in the picture, by the way. And so did your dress.
Brain storming currently for a wedding two years down the road. We’ll have the entire schmozzle at my parents farm outdoors, it’ll be a potluck – food type assigned in the invitations, open bar provided by us (pour your own drinks TYVM), honeymoon will have been before hand as a roadtrip across Canada, and the ceremony will be squeezed in between dinner and dancing. 70 guests.
ETA: Hoping for $4000, half of which will be a photog (she insists).
About $4000, 1995, 99 guests, including a choir. We served no alcohol but had a very nice meal and hors d’oeuvres. One matron of honor, her daughter the flower girl, one best man. Other “attendants” were guests we asked to generally get people to sit down, and one to escort my godmother. My late father’s brother-in-law was my only relative to show, though I had invited cousins. My husband had his parents, brother and his family, two sets of aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, cousins once removed, etc. I had sorority sisters, though.
We are getting married on Saturday and all told we are spending somewhere between $3,500 and $4,000 for 75-80 people. If you include my engagement ring we are spending somewhere between $4,500 and $5,000. Instead of a veil (seriously, $140 for 18 cents worth of lace and a hair comb?!?) I got a tiara for $6 from Sam Moon. Our cake is being used as a model cake for The Excalibur brochures (they have a new bakery apparently) so we are getting a full three tiered wedding cake for $120. My dress was on sale at David’s Bridal. We are doing a full buffet with no dance floor for the reception. A Las Vegas wedding ended up being perfect for us because it allowed us to have the big celebration with our friends and family at a fraction of the cost of a standard wedding. We would have been happy to spend $100 on the license and dinner for ourselves and called it a day but we didn’t want to listen to our parents complain for years about how we didn’t have a wedding (“There are no pictures!” “I didn’t get to walk my daughter down the aisle!” “I can’t believe I didn’t get to go dress shopping with my daughter for her wedding!” “I wish I could have danced with my son at his wedding!”) so we’re doing the next best thing and hauling everyone to Vegas.
We got married a little over a year ago. It cost around $5000. Details:
100 people
Had ceremony and reception in a rented park facility
Bought soul food from two local restaurants; friends delivered it
Served cheap beer and boxed wine… no bartender
Hired two family acquaintances to do the heavy lifting, food and setup-wise
Hubby bought a suit, I bought an Anne Taylor dress off eBay
Non-denominational ceremony performed by an ordained friend
Hubby and audiophile friends handled the audio
I made the favors… English crackers filled with little toys. Big hit, especially with kids.
Table dec was placemats cut from cotton fabric, the crackers, and candles in vintage blue jars
Plastic picnicware, paper plates. It was a picnic wedding.
Only one attendant, a flower girl to hold my bouquet
Two shutterbug friends took photos and sent us CDs with the raw pictures
We did spend about $500 on professionally printed stationery
We did spend nearly $500 on a wedding cake and cupcakes from IGA
The ceremony lasted five minutes
A bit over $10k for 125 guests. We used a local country club for both the ceremony (outside) and reception (inside). We also did a lot of the decorating ourselves (well, okay, my wife did).
I think the only thing we really went all out on was a string quartet for the ceremony, which was about $2,500 (we got a really good one).
We also had a Hindu ceremony two weeks later, which was much cheaper - about $2,500 in total - since it was at a business my parents own.
$3k in 2006. We got deals and discounts on a lot of things. I was a catering delivery driver so I got half-off the catered food. My grandparents paid for the cake. We had the wedding at the property of a friend of my MILs (a *beautiful *property, and the lady planted flowers ahead of time to match my wedding colors.) We let nature do most of the work on the decoration front.
I thought it was pretty classy for $3k. Many people told us it was the best wedding they’d been to. Our reverend (who officiated at a wedding we were at recently) told us it always stands out in her mind. Even my very wealthy in-laws were impressed. I would say it was one of the most successful projects I’ve ever pulled off – and I did do most of the work.
The rings would have been more… my wedding ring and engagement ring were about $1000 combined and Sr. Olives’ was about $500.
Under 5k but we had an advantage in that we lived together for 22 years before getting married. We had the rings already from way back and did a more casual ceremony and reception for say 150 than we may have done had we been younger.
I don’t know how much my parents spent. Not a whole lot, but that’s all I know.
I wanted to elope. My mom wanted to pay for a big to-do. I said I’d be willing to do a small to-do if she insisted. She did. Only about 25 people at the ceremony (immediate family only), then a huge honking reception. My family is numerous.
Mine cost 12K in 2004. 100 guests (and it was hard keeping it to that). I had a wedding planner for the running of the reception and ceremony (held in the second hall at the same location). My parents gave me 11K of that since that’s what they spent on my sister’s wedding.
It was in January (yeah, it was cold) which got me more bang for my buck. Yeah, I paid more because I didn’t want to do much. Everything was either handled by someone else or ordered (I did nothing myself except make sure we had it all).
It was still brutally stressful.
The wedding I wanted was a 4K destination wedding at the Paris hotel in Vegas. Would include 20 people and a nice 4 day honeymoon and dress rental, tux rental and flowers. My husband wanted the big bash with all our friends and family. We both regret it but live and learn.
Somewhere in the 10-15K range, counting rings - 150 people; we rented a hall that allowed us to use our own caterers (a Persian restaurant, Noon O Kebab, yummy) and bought booze in bulk from a liquor store - they let us return the unopened bottles, aside from some champagne whose labels had been water-damaged. We didn’t bother with a wedding photographer; as it turned out there were more than a hundred photos up on Facebook within a week.
In 2000, my wife and I had a very nice destination wedding for 120 guests that cost us $25-30k all told (rings, clothes, etc…). We then spent an additional $5-6k on our honeymoon (2 weeks in the Cook Islands).
I was not very happy about this (though not upset either, don’t get me wrong), I come from a very modest family and think big weddings are a scam, but my wife comes from a pretty wealthy family (at least some of them are, we are not) and she made it clear to me that this is what she wanted (anything for my love!). Among all her cousins, she was one of the oldest and among the first to marry. In the decade following we went to a bunch of her cousins weddings, and damn, those people can throw a party! One of her cousins had a wedding in Chicago that I would estimate cost at least $150k.
Regarding the money, we were both professionals in our late twenties and were able to come up with the money without too much of a problem, but it sure was a lot of cash in my opinion. Still, if I had to do it over, I would probably do it again.
