Can we pull it off

My suggestion, before You start booking, planning, buying anything. You two need to be on the same page with the budget. Get a feel for what you both are envisioning for that day, and just do some preliminary searching of prices. Present those to your fiancé and then have the budget discussion again. Some can pull off 200 people with that budget, but they end up cutting a few luxuries with that, but it doesn't make less memorable or less beautiful. If you are a reddit person, there is a subreddit for weddings under 10k that may help with this budget. The biggest thing is you two have to be on the same page.

Show him two quotes for catering 200 people. One quote with inexpensive buffet and another quote with 5 course sit down. I think both you and your fiancé will be surprised at how much the inexpensive buffet actually costs.


Photographer, entertainment, officiant, flowers, open bar, etc. it all adds up. Good luck! Start getting quotes just to see how much everything is in your area.

In my opinion no it’s not possible .. I have a cricut and made most of my decor and stuff.. the food and venue alone was around 13k. We have spent close to 25k on our wedding that’s in September and our guest list is 110 people

I think it depends on where and when you do it. We’re having a guest count of 100 people, our wedding is on a Sunday and were paying a little over 7k. Our venue is all inclusive and we got free photography for 8 hours. But definitely talk first about a budget and see some things you’re willing to cut. What I’ve learned is the food is one of the most important things. It’s best to spend a little more to ensure you all have good quality food. Best of luck Traci!

I have a guest list of 110 and we are at about $20,000. Good luck with pulling that off!

Depending on what you guys are invisioning.....it very well might be possible.
We're getting married in October 2024 and I'm going through my cousins to see who has the talent and skills we need for certain things......
So it may be worth while for you to take a look at who you can use and be cost effective without sacrifice or settling

Honestly, I don’t think that’s doable. Depending on your location and all inclusive venue options your guest count may work for you though. Just married 4-29-22 and ended up around 12k. My original, unrealistic budget was 7k and the venue took half of that at the start. I found that I was being up-charged for having a small wedding. Our guest count was 44 including us. I had things on hand, borrowed and DIY’d my decor, etc, created our website on The Knot and sent invites/thank you notes electronically/by text, got my vendors as inexpensive as I could for a wedding, a baker friend made us our cake as a wedding gift, and our officiant was a friend. It was beautiful and more than we could have imagined but I don’t know what it would have cost without all the free things. Wishing you the best of luck & I’m sure it’ll be amazing!

View Quoted Comment Very good point made here....... I love your thoughts

View Quoted Comment Congratulations on your wedding.....
We're budgeting around $15K......so yeah, we're attempting to do the same thing as y'all did

There are many ways in which you can cut costs but I will admit that $10,000 is going to have to be stretched very far to accommodate 200 people.

One way to approach it would perhaps be to have a 'cake and punch' style wedding or a backyard BBQ style wedding as they can be more affordable than your run-of-the-mill dinner and dancing style wedding.

I got a lot of stuff off Amazon and being crafty. Walmart.com helps too. Every normal venue I've seen in my area costed a lot so I went with a fire hall. So far I've spent $2,000ish and that's with my dress. Also, wedding clearance sections work wonders.

Maybe on a public park you can.

Not possible, unless you find an all inclusive small venue that can accommodate 20 people or less and then do a backyard reception later on to invite more people. Our budget was 7K and so far we’ve spent 3.8K on an all inclusive elopement package with 18 guests and we are having an after party 2 weeks after at my house with over 70 confirmed RSVPs but expecting about 90 people. On the after party we are probably going to spend about 4K.

That’s impossible. You are talking about $50 per person which with today’s prices is unrealistic. You would have to DIY music and photos. Decor can be pricey to DIY. We are going to be around $24k for 50 guests. The best way to cut budget is to cut guest count.

It really depends on a lot of factors…your biggest are going to be venue, food, your dress, flowers, photography. There are a lot of things that also add up which can be shockingly expensive! Also be realistic! A lot of people get in trouble when they say, we’ll get food cheaply…really where? It is an enormous effort to feed a large group of people! Or they say, we are going to DIY…well diy can be more cost effective but DOES take a lot more time…like a part time job! Try just having a bit of time to be engaged & enjoy it! Then have a heart to heart with the budget & calculator in hand and discuss what is most important to the two of you! You can do it, but it won’t be easy!

View Quoted Comment Thank you! :-). Tips: Talk to friends & family & use them as resources! My niece loves to arrange flowers so I did a mix of real looking silks from Michaels (on half off sale) and real flowers & let her go to town. She cut the greenery for in front of the tables at the venue site. I got 6 dz roses with fillers from Global Rose for total $132 and added 6 bunches of different flowers/fillers from Costco for $85, so with the silks we used it was around $300 total for the florals. I overbought but I saved my receipts & took back what I didn’t use, which was half the silks. Found an amazing photographer through my baker friend for $900 all day. If you’re looking to do a selfie booth, definitely recommend DIY. I borrowed a ring tripod and bought some blow up and cardboard props, and foil fringe curtains From Amazon, and used cute patio lights I had on hand. Saved $650 on that and it turned out pretty cute and was easy to to use. Think out of the box! I used curtain sheers that I had on hand for the table runners. Adding some pics so you can see. Hope that’s helpful & best wishes on your big day!!

DIY selfie booth

It is possible, but for a specific kind of wedding. If you get married in the early afternoon and have a cake and punch reception, you can certainly host 200 people for $10,000. However, I would say that generally, a catered meal at any time of day is still going to come out to be closer to $50 per person. I got married in 2014 and had a brunch reception. We rented the church hall because it was incredibly cheap and included tables and chairs. Catering came to $60 per person for a buffet, not including alcohol. The food itself was billed at $31 per person, but once you throw in plates, cutlery, and the service fees for catering, it pretty much doubled it. One option could be pick up catering, but that would require having a way to keep food hot/cold and serve it to your guests, which would be pretty time intensive for food for 200. One thing to show your fiancé is this article from the website A Practical Wedding , which describes what they call the "Olive Garden" rule, that, essentially, you probably won't be able to pull off a standard catered wedding for less than it would cost to take people out to eat at Olive Garden. I would definitely say that you may not need to bump up your budget by a lot more than $10,000, depending on what choices you make for attire, venue, decor, alcohol, etc, but I would say at minimum for a standard evening reception you are going to need $5k to $6k more, assuming you do everything else with a very tight budget. Good luck!

My guest list is 100 people and catering alone was 8k… for a buffet..

When I told my wedding coordinator my entire budget for the whole wedding including bride and groom attire and everything was 20k… she was silent. After doing research and I started to book vendors I saw that was unrealistic. Our budget has changed several times. After going through so many vendors I just started to choose the best option based on price and package. I knew nothing on how much things costed on average but I sure did learn!