All-inclusive or Bare Bones?

I'm going bare bones. It's going to be cheaper for me and more my style. A lot of the all inclusive venues cater to large weddings, so that's something to consider as well.

My BM and I are getting married 2 months apart. She has an all inclusive venue and I have a bare bones venue in the same area (both weddings are 3 hours away from city in the mountains of NC).

Essentially both of our weddings cost the exact same! The only difference is mine has nicer and more formal aspects since we were able to choose our vendors--- ex: my flowers are more expansive, plated dinner, open bar all night vs. 4 hour open bar.

To be honest, it has been stressful visiting, meeting, comparing and booking vendors since it was not a one stop shop. I have a mom and FMIL who are obsessed with researching for my wedding and I have an amazing wedding planner that coordinates everything (and keeps the moms in line)

It all depends on how you want your wedding.

We did bare bones and I am perfectly happy with that as I didn't want a traditional wedding flow. I loved having control over who I was getting for vendors and the ability to find the perfect fit in personality. The only thing is you have to be someone who is a planner and very organized, or hire a very precise coordinator. And keep track of the budget for sure! The cost for ours when all is said and done is the same as if we did an all inclusive, but is different in that it's customized down to every tiny detail, therefore is completely personalized and unique to the two of us.

I skipped the all-inclusive, but only because we would still have to pay for things we didn't want to include (like a champagne toast).

Our venue had an ala carte wedding "package" where we literally only paid for things we wanted. It did keep the cost down for us as far as catering and venue went.

ETA: i wasn't completely barebones. My venue did the catering and supplied tables/chairs/dishes/bar/alcohol/DOC/centerpiece things (non floral). The little things I didn't want to fuss with.

We went for in between in the sense that what we did NOT want to deal with = staff, rentals, linens and decor was mostly already dealt with with the venue.

So we chose a restaurant with a minimum spend and had the entire space to ourselves.

We also like that we could customize the other things we wanted that was not included like decor and we had more flexibility with food and menu choices etc. We also looked at restaurants that do weddings regularly so they have event coordinators etc who do this all the time.

We did not want bare bones because the one venue we loved the most was a bare bone space but lovely on it's own. Included tables and chairs but had a large rental fee $5000 plus needed staff $5000 so that was $10,000 just for the space alone! So we passed on that.

We are doing all inclusive except for DJ, Florist and photographer. For us, our selling point was that we had never been in or helped plan a wedding before (were both first in our immediate family to get married) so for us, the all inclusive aspect helped us to relax. Also the bare bones venues we visited would've been around $5000 more than our all inclusive venue

VC damn how many staff members were they providing!?

@MFB - I think that's what we had concluded. The all-inclusive became more cost effective with more guests. We wouldn't have gone over 100 if we tried, so it wasn't as worth it.

We did all inclusive as well. We priced bare bones and it would have cost more than an all inclusive. We also looked into an in between space, but it wasn't big enough. Also, I didn't want to deal with a lot of different vendors or try to decorate from scratch so all inclusive seemed to be the best option for us.

I'm going all inclusive. But hired my own floral, DoC, dj and photographer. It came out to be a little tiny bit more money but I think we'll worth it.

@Chivy - Honestly it was fucking pathetic. I think it was like 1-2 managers, 10 staff, 2 bartenders and 2 security.

I think they were making like $20-$40 per hour and we needed them for like 10 hrs. Some bullshit.

I was like "sooo......what do I feed my guests???" How can I spend $10,000 on the venue and like $5,000 on food not including beverages??? Not like we had a strict budget but it felt wrong to spend $10k on the venue and then $5k on the food so we decided that the restaurant we would just spend it all on food and drinks even though the staff was built into the cost of food etc. But the food prices were not that far off at all when we compared venues!!!!

Like @vc i would say we also went in the middle. i didn't want a venue that i had to decorate extensively or bring in my own tables/food/bar/chairs/linens/staff etc. so we are getting married at a hotel venue that has a pretty space and handles the catering and bar. i watched several friends plan weddings at venues where they had to bring everything in themselves and the cost added up quickly, and it was also very time consuming for them to have to decide all those details.

we still booked our own photographer, band, flowers, and cake though, so i was able to upgrade the things i wanted to.

Like VC, Fall Bride, and Ella - I landed in the middle!

I 100% wanted a venue that could provide food and cake, drinks, staff, tables / chairs / silverware / linens, etc. All of the event "basics" if you will! However I was not willing to go fully all-inclusive and be limited in my selection of other vendors like the photographer, florist, and band.

My venue was bare bones but I hired an event planning company who provided the major things in one package - catering, floral and decor, DJ, and cake. It really helped having one vendor provide so much. Less people to coordinate with.

We decided on an all inclusive. However we didnt like their centerpieces, so we made our own. We are also adding a photobooth to the venue as a favor.

I went with an all inclusive venue, but will be changing some things. We didn't like the DJ, flowers or decor so we went with external vendors. We will apply the credit to food and drinks. I realized very early on I am lazy and didn't want to have to find vendors for every aspect.

We chose a venue that came with catering/bartending, tables, chairs, plates, silverware and linens. We were responsible for everything else.

@VC oh i think the fuck not! Even crazier that some people are ok paying that.

It honestly depends. My venue is "all inclusive" to an extent and are extremely reasonably priced.

I liked them because for a plated dinner and open bar, the price per head was not outrageous. Our package is able to be modified so if we wanted to take something out (i.e.: no fancy charger plates), they lower the cost per head by a couple bucks and we can use that extra money to upgrade elsewhere. They include everything apart from an officiant, DJ, flowers, and a photgrapher. Our venue gave us a list of recommended vendors, however, we were not required to book them. I have a wedding planner in the family and we were able to book her favorite vendors instead. For me, it was less stressful. They have great food and the most beautiful location and instead of having to price compare rental companies, caterers, bakers, etc., I only have to focus on a few key items.

TBH, we looked at one bare bones venue. The price was insane (hills of Malibu). But even if it wasn't, we would have skipped. We had to bring everything - tables, chairs, dishes, a dance floor, electricity generators, food, bar, bartender, servers, chef, water for drinking, water for washing dishes, lighting, soap and towels for the restrooms onsight, day of coordinator, security, valet, etc. etc. It added up so much quicker. If you do go with a bare bones venue, read the contract carefully. They sent us a contract early on and without carefully reading through, I'm sure many brides and grooms are unaware of how much they have to bring. (I'm sure this is venue specific - this particular one did a horrible, sketchy contract).

We went bare bones, and it is more expensive than if we would have went with our other top venue choice, which was just about all-inclusive. We knew going in to it that bare bones would end up being more, but we didn't imagine it would be as much more as it is. On the flip side, we've got to make our wedding exactly how we wanted, and that was very important to us, and we've been able to include so many distinct touches.