All Inclusive OR Seperate Vendors

I have found inclusive to be cheaper- and easier- time IS money. The "inclusive" venues I have seen include- venue, linens, tables, chairs, catering, bar, set up/tear down and cake.

We went with a venue that wasn't inclusive. They only provided the space for the ceremony and reception and tables and chairs for the reception. We had to hire all the other vendors separately. It ended up being much more expensive doing it this way. The rentals alone (linens, china, flatware, ceremony chairs, etc) all really added up. We loved our venue so we are glad we did it, but it would have been cheaper and easier to go with a more inclusive place. However I would never go with an inclusive package that includes a photographer. I would want to hire them separately based on their work, not be stuck with the person the venue hires.

It might depend on your location, and the specific venue. Especially since what is included with each venue may vary. One venue may include everything alietta mentioned, but another venue may only include tables, chairs, and linens. Sorry if that is not terribly helpful!

My venue includes the items mentioned in alietta's comment, but it's also a resort hotel in a small beach town; so, I think it ended up being more expensive than if I had gotten separate vendors. On the other hand, a barn, airplane hangar, or similarly empty venue may be more expensive than going more inclusive because you have to set it up from the ground up and include every detail.

Your best bet may be to narrow down the type of venue you and FI are interested in (do you want a vineyard, a modern space, a rustic space, etc.), then look around for those types of venues in your area in order to compare specific venues.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond to me! I really appreciate your input. I'm still early on in the planning so Thank you!!

I'm in southern California and the cheapest all inclusive I have found so far is approx 17,000 for a barn in the mountains. Its nice, but a little too out of our budget. I will keep searching.

Personally, I've found that venues that don't include catering make it cheaper. The included catering is upwards of 100 pp vs catering I've found for less than 60 pp.

P.S look for food trucks that have done weddings and will set up a buffet bar. I just found one and their price for dinner and desserts with staffing is 18 pp including tax! Now I just gotta go try out their food lol.

Wow 17k! It totally depends on your area, and CA does tend more expensive.

I'm in SoCal, ours is all inclusive, and it did end up being less for us. All we had to bring in was personal florals, photographer, and officiant. I found that while the itemized price for each piece might not be too high, all venues have minimums which priced them out of our budget. We ended up on a Sunday for the lower minimum because we aren't going to have enough guests to meet the minimum for a Saturday. We were even able to upgrade our linens and add a s'mores bar to meet the Sunday minimum.

We're at a Wedgewood - there are many throughout CA and with different styles of venue (country club, garden, rustic, etc).

I prefer separate... the "all inclusive" isn't always all inclusive... 20% gratuity. . Tax.. (that can be 3k alone) then any upgrades would be more... with wedding planning I've leaned EVERY LITTLE THING COST... smh.. so just have a contingency budget and factor in alll cost (honeymoon, rings, dress, transportations, hair ... make up).

I went with all inclusive. It was the best bang for our buck. It includes everything except for the officiant, photographer, dj and we rented a photo booth. We will be adding our little extra touches to personalize it to how we want it.

You'd be getting what they give you, not the best fit for you. Do your research on them.

It really depends on the venue. Your doing your wedding "offseason" so that may help with cost. It's hard to say

@ jomobago I never even thought to bring in a food truck!! Some of the ones they have around here are like 5 start restaurants without the 5 star price! haha Might be a fun to run that by the S.O!!

Tha'ts one thing that worries me that the all inclusive will just be the same generic wedding someone else had...I would like it to be somewhat what I have in mind for decor etc. Also I do see at the bottom of these price sheets that there is a 20% charge of something and then I would have to tip obviously..and then the tax jeeze!! Im not trying to go broke here. lol Thanks for the info!! greatly appreciated!!

One compromise might be a restaurant wedding. Then you could have venue, catering, bar service, tables, chairs, and linens taken care of, but could still have your own photographer, cake baker, etc. (A restaurant will usually allow you to bring in your own cake, although they may charge a fee if you want them to slice and plate it.) I've actually had restaurant receptions for both of my weddings (taking over the whole restaurant for the first, using the private dining room for the second). It's saved me a lot of time and effort. The food is often better than that of a caterer that has to bring things in from another location and keep them warm with chafing trays. And often, the cost is less than that of a traditional wedding venue, if only because a restaurant can make a profit every day of the week, while a wedding venue typically has to recover its costs and make a profit while being used only on weekends.

I'm having two food trucks and I couldn't be happier about it. The best part is my price is fixed with my estimated guest count. If I had done one truck my per person would have been around $11 a person, but with two (and the secon having more expensive hibachi options) it will be closer to $28 pp. I'm totally fine with that!

I found an all inclusive venue and only paying 3500. They include everything minus photographer and Master of Ceremony.

We chose to find our won vendors and saved a lot of money. I personally didn't like some of the vendors our venue used especially the photographer so we did our research and got exactly what we wanted.

Shop each vendor for cheapest deals!

We got our linens from one and our room decor from another.

We used an iPod playlist and a rented sound system for the music instead of a DJ.

We made our centrepieces ourselves with large cans, ribbon, and bought flowers.

Use family to decorate where possible.

Make a fake cake ($ store sells the pieces, roll on fondant, decorate) and buy a slab pound cake from superstore or sobeys! Saved us a ton of $.

Musician students can be great and much cheaper.

My venue is $75 per person with a $1,500 room rental fee. This includes food (minus cake), full open bar, set up/take down, linens, tables & chairs, champagne toast, a basket for the restroom, an amazing venue coordinator, and probably some other things that I am forgetting. My outside vendors are photographer, DJ, florist, and bakery. I liked this set up because I was free to choose my own vendors in areas where I would like that freedom, but I didn't need to worry about figuring out rentals for tables, chairs and linens.

We were between two venues, one was all-inclusive and the other allowed us to pick our own vendors. The all inclusive had some decent prices on some things (for example, the venue rental cost was little over half of the cost for the "separate vendors" venue), but since we were required to use them for everything we were much more restricted.

For example, the price for the cake at the all inclusive place was $1,250. Which was over double what we were planning on spending. Same with the flowers. Their cheapest flower package was $1000, and I didn't want to spend that much money on flowers. With the "free-choice" venue I was able to get my cake for $300 by shopping around. Also, the all-inclusive venue was in the process of getting their liquor license and wasn't able to tell us at all (even ballpark!) what the open bar would cost. That ended up being the deal-breaker, because we simply could not afford a potential $6,000 "surprise" closer to the wedding. The free-choice venue allows us to bring in all our own alcohol, so we can shop around and get whatever we want.

I find that all inclusive is the way to go. Set up and tear down is done by them and that is enough for me to give you all of my money lol.