Budget for wedding

It may be difficult to stay under $10k if you want an NJ wedding, as weddings are very expensive in NJ (along with everything else over here). Having a small guest list definitely helps. I would also recommend you check out state parks for venues (maybe island beach state park or something). A park permit may be a lot cheaper than an actual wedding venue. When planning my wedding, I looked at a few venues by the shore, and the cheapest was $100 per person (before taxes and service charges), and the place was kind of dumpy. Other places were around $150 per person. So nontraditional venues will probably be the way to go.

I'm not familiar with NJ, but for the guest list I say stand your ground. If you and FH want a small guest list, that's completely fine!

My husband is from New Jersey and I'm from Pennsylvania and we chose not to get married in Jersey because it is very expensive to get married there compared to Pennsylvania. That being said I think you are going to have an extremely difficult time spending less than $10,000 unless you forgo a lot of thinks or have it somewhere nontraditional. I know my sil (who lives in Jersey) got married in her yard with at most 50 people and she still spent over $10,000 because she had to rent a tent, tables and chairs. She also hired a DJ, photographer and florist. She also had her wedding catered.

I would say it’s gonna be difficult to nearly impossible to stay below 10K in NJ... sadly everything is just so much more in these parts. My fiancé lives in Essex county. I live in NYC, we opted to do a DW in Colorado.

View Quoted Comment DW is also another option we're considering but is it hard to plan DW? Like you have to go back and forth to see venue, tasting etc.?

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Angela I made a trip to Denver back in April which was an overnight trip that was jammed packed with activities. I got on the Red eye from New York. I toured 3 venues one of which was actually the hotel where I was staying(which is the venue I ended up booking) not the ones I spent months obsessing over. I had my tasting with the bakery I picked, I met up with my florist. Did a boudoir session with my photographer. I've known her for 8 years. The food tasting for the wedding I'm opting to her do in place of me. Sounds crazy, but it will save me the airfare and hotel stay. Also the catering company is this fantastic New York based company, all the food is to die for. I ended up finding my dress on my 2nd bridal shop appointment. An incredible experience every step of the way.Then I flew back home. Since the trip I've used WW and word of mouth recommendations to find my officiant, H&MU person & most recently my DJ. It takes a leap of faith at times...but I'm super organized and love doing the research. So yeah that's the scoop.

View Quoted Comment Our venue was approximately 3 hours from where we live so we would plan multiple meetings within a day for instance, we did cake tasting in the morning at the bakery, about 2 hours later we toured a few places for our rehearsal dinner, then we met with our florist to tour the venue then had our tasting at our venue after the tour. This cut down on having to travel back and forth numerous times. You just have to plan out your time beforehand. Because you only want to spend $10,000 which is hard to do anywhere and likely impossible in Jersey I would definitely consider having it somewhere besides Jersey. Not sure where you live, but we had our wedding in Scranton, PA which still isn't cheap since it is a tourist area but it was cheaper than having it in Jersey. We also looked at venues in Easton and Bethlehem, PA. If you really want to have a beach wedding in Jersey I think you are going to have to reevaluate your budget.

I can only tell you our experience since we are now only 11 days away from our wedding...

We were going to get married at the court without spending anything at all, and we decided that if we could have something very small, for around $5,000 we would do it.

So we continued with planning a wedding ceremony and reception, we started with 35 people and ended up with 50, and our final cost is right below $7,000. We are getting married at a local garden (Hamilton Township, NJ) which costs only $550 for the ceremony and 4 hours reception, our catering is $40pp, which after tax and gratuity is around $2,700. With everything else we took some risks.

We came to the conclusion that it will be better for our budget to hire individuals instead of "teams". Our photographer is kind of new to weddings but we think she is very talented, and was really affordable. Our florist works into every single arrangement by herself without any employees. If you really want to keep it low, my best advise is to hire local people, new people or individuals, it really lowers the price when you don't have to pay someone who also has employees.

Best of luck for both of you!