Unexpected costs

What?? You got charged that? Why? Is it their fee for renting chairs or what o.o

Um I think for me it was mostly just not expecting to need to buy certain things like I didn't expect it in my planning.

Wow!!! That’s kind of ridiculous!!! First time ever hearing that issue... my most unexpected is photography and videography

I think My most unexpected expenses are the little things that are adding up to equal big expenses.

I never heard of being charged for that. My unexpected fee is signs. We are DIYing then.

Ours was the ketubah (formal Jewish wedding contract). I'd seen a lot of inexpensive ones on eBay, etc. But it turns out that the standard language in Hebrew is all bride and groom, and can't easily be modified for two brides. And most of the standard ones don't even have an option for language for two brides. We ended up having to pay the artist for custom text as well as the cost of the ketubah itself, and then get special permission from another artist to use her text. So instead of being about $50, it ended up being $500.

It was worth it to us for something that will hang in our home forever. But it was definitely unexpected.

Catering/bar. Booze isn't cheap!

DIY supplies and trips to hobby lobby for sure! It adds up

Mine are vet bills coming up a week before my wedding and last minute decor and stuff I didn’t think of ..

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Wow thats beautiful! I'm glad you were able to find artists that were able to work with you to customize it!!

That's insane. I've never heard of that before!

My most unexpected costs was the service and gratuity fees. I don't know why I didn't even think of those when searching for a venue and it's something that shocked us at signing of the contract.

Rentals. By far rentals. More specifically the fees for pick-up/drop off when the rental site was less than 1 mile away! I thought it was entirely ridiculous. I was going to upgrade to prettier linens and chairs until I saw about $600 tacked on for that.

Something we are salty about is that we are paying a $2,500 ceremony fee but in addition to that the stupid venue doesn't have appropriate chairs for outside? So we have to pay another $3.75 per chair for the rentals they will get through a company. We think this is idiotic because what really is the ceremony fee for then? Just to be on the property? And if we had our whole wedding indoors and flipped the room we wouldn't need to rent chairs technically? We think it's crap but she wouldn't answer my question when I asked this via email. She avoided it and just told me the cost.

Definitely didn’t think about tipping until I joined these forums. Thankfully my wedding is still a year away so not unexpected anymore but definitely not planned for in the original budget.

What? How do you charge for a ceremony, then per plate, then per person?

So far we've only had 2 small hang ups: reprinting my shower invites, and a veil I changed my mind on after the fact.

Dress and shoes 🤦🏻‍♀️ I already had a wedding dress from a previous engagement so I planned to wear that but it was much smaller than I remembered. Altering it would have cost more than I even paid for the dress and it wasn’t worth it to me. I bought a new dress and new shoes for under $300

Is that for the chairs? I have never heard of that. We have been so lucky in our planning by renting an entire house on the bay for ceremony and reception, working with a friend's son to cater, a friend of a friend is doing the photography, and our officiant is another friend of a friend so the fee wasn't too bad at all. But she still hasn't bought her suit so I'm nervous about that. We also really need to get hot on buying wine and beer for the reception but we have been spending quite a bit on little things that ended up being impulse buys like selfie station props, Mrs & Mrs signs, and since the place we're renting tables and chairs from would have cost another $150 for linens I'm going to have to buy those which will actually be a bit cheaper but since delivery AND pick-up are $100 total I'm biting the bullet and taking it all as a win.

The decor really adds up. I am choosing artificial flowers, which I thought would be cost effective, but it is still costly because you need more of it to make it look nicer.