Wedding Budget of $10,000! where to start

Hi Chimara, welcome to WW!

You may want to check out www.costofwedding.com. It will give you a general sense of average amounts people in your zip code pay for particular parts of their weddings.

Your second most important thing is the guest list. Keep in mind that guests add to the cost - food, drinks, invitations, postage, thank you cards, table decor, etc. Then start thinking about your priorities. Is food most important, or the photographer...? Hang around WW, and you'll find plenty of ideas and insight into what's important to other brides.

happy planning!

Thank you for the info, i will def have to check out that website, and it's also good to figure out which things are important to me and my fiancee and we will just have to work from there, so far all we have gotten together is the budget and the guest list which we are working to keep UNDER 100!! It seems impossible(lol) but we have to cut somewhere and planning a wedding yourself is hard but i don't want to have to pay someone to do something i can do myself. Thank you!

It's doable, we have many brides here who have done it for less. What area are you in?

Also, could you please change your avatar under your profile because that way we recognize members more easily? Anything you like will do :-)

I live in Aurora IL, and I was wondering how to change that! thx if we could keep the guest list under 100 it would be really great and I was thinking about Fountain Blue Banquets I have heard so many good things about that venue, I'm also trying to pick a good venue that's afordable.

Welcome to WW.

I do not know what costs are, in Aurora, IL, but we did my daughters wedding, in Portland, OR for just under $10k in 2010.

It was held at a hotel, both the ceremony and the reception. It was an elegant style event. We used a professional printer, photographer and such. We did get lucky in that the hotel is one of my accounts (I sell wine), so they went out of their way to give us a good deal.

Also, I have friends who are professional musicians, so while we paid them for the pre-ceremony and ceremony music, it was a fraction of the cost (two of them are Grammy winners, so, trust me, I paid a fraction of their norm).

I am sure that you may know people who can help you stay within your budget too. It is possible!

Welcome! I'm a little less that 10 but I'm pretty clueless, stay plugged in here, these ladies have been angels in helping me and keep an eye out for crafty ways to keep cost down it can be done good luck, look forward to seeing you on the forum

This is my budget too. Best advice I have is to figure out the amount of money you and FH can afford to save per month for the wedding and open a wedding account. Since your wedding is 2015 you will be surprised what you can save.

I also saved a ton of money having a Friday wedding in April and used a all inclusive venue. The price was great.

That's about our budget. We're blessed to have a lot of friends and family that can help. Our reception is at a barn in a public park. We're planing on doing a lot of DIY stuff. Good luck.

This is what were sticking with. My advice see if you can find a venue that has the catering and everything there. We did and it saved us a ton of money! My reception hall doesn't charge for the actual use of building we are only charged with food catering and alcohol. Our linens are all included.

My wedding is being done for under 10k as well, it's totally doable. Keep in mind diy is not always cheaper! I have looked up costs of materials to do certain crafts, and the cost to have the florist do it was cheaper/less stress.

Very doable, especially in IL suburbs with a guestlist under 100. i had mine around that for a 120 guestlist in Ohare area so you are very okay. Just start with a budget then prioritize(what is very important and what isnt) and go on from there. WW is always here to help. Ways to cut down expenses are:

Guest list

Day of Wedding

Time of Wedding

Food served at Wedding

Same location Ceremony and Reception

And of course DIYs!

On the side, your name sounds Nigerian....am I correct?

I would LOVE to have a budget of 10K. My fiance and are doing our wedding on less than $2500 and when you consider that the rings are almost half of that, you get a sense of what we actually plan on spending on our wedding. It can be done and it can be beautiful. We have to keep in mind that while the memories of the wedding are important, they are not nearly as important as being joined with that person we love.

Congratulations on your wedding and best wishes for both of you for your futures.

I'm around 10K on the WW Budget tool right now, use that and it gives a nice breakdown of prices you should be shooting for.

- Marry off peak season or on a non-Saturday. I am getting married on a Sunday, so they knocked off $2K from my reception!! My vendors are offering discounts as well.

- Ceremony and reception in the same place = discount.

- Research prices and read reviews on vendors. I found my venue and photographer for half the cost of most other places.

- BUNDLE your vendor services if you can! I am using a company that will DJ, do videography, and my ceremony music for the price that just a videographer begins to start at.

- Buy your dress off the sale rack. I haven’t bought mine yet, but I have seen absolutely gorgeous dresses for $99 (normally $1K)

- DIY your decorations

- use a flower package at the florist

- Use Walmart or online websites for Save the Dates and Invitations, not a fancy printing company.

- Skip wedding favors, they are unnecessary and often go to waste

10K is a good chunk of money, if you use it wisely, you can have your dream wedding. First, you need to determine what is most important to you and your FH. Then use that and make a budget. Take you time to make a budget - research, call vendors for price estimates. It took me more than a week to make my budget and now I have no problem keeping it. Some people use tools (like the one on here - which is great) but they fail to research and then have budget categories that are hard to stick to.

The biggest chunk of you budget will be food and drinks, so trimming your guest list will be key to reducing budget related stress.

Welcome to the WeddingWire Community @Chimara! As you can see, you've come to the perfect place to get all the advice, support, and wedding planning tricks of the trade that you ever thought you'd need!

I look forward to hearing more about your plans as they progress!

Hi Chimara and welcome to WW. Fountain Blue in DesPlaines is wonderful and all inclusive. If you keep your guest list under 100 shouldn't be a problem for that budget. Also, my friend says that Pesche's in DesPlaines did her daughter's wedding for a really good deal. They were real touch flowers, but I know from experience Pesche's has a great designer for fresh flowers.

I do recommend that you save some money in your budget for at least a Day Of Coordinator because you, your bridesmaids and your family will appreciate enjoying the day with you and not setting up any venues if needed. I found mine for $450 which is nothing out of that budget.

DIY what you can and since you have plenty of time, use it wisely. Good luck and congratulations.

Hi Chimara,

I understand where you're coming from. My budget is higher than that, but my wedding is going to be in Dubai where the average wedding is $92,000 (much higher than what I'm spending) so I have the same feelings. My fiancé is Arab and their weddings are ridiculously over-the-top there so this is why the prices are so much higher. My dad is not too happy about this :-)

Don't stress out though, because $10,000 in the states is definitely doable, especially if you're in a smaller town or city (not New York, LA, etc.) I would say that the most important part of the wedding budget-wise will be the venue and food as this will take up the largest chunk of your budget. I'm not sure where you are located or how many guests you are planning on, but I would estimate that you could easily have a very nice venue and catering for $5,000 for 100 or so guests.

Continued...

Also, I had a photographer friend do our engagement photos here in the states and for just a disk with images and a one-hour shoot it was $200. So you can definitely find amateur photographers that will probably charge $500 or maybe a little more for a few hours.

We are sending our invitations through a website that creates them and e-mails them as the countries overseas where most of our guests live do not deliver mail to private homes. This actually saved us A LOT of money as the cost for this was $10 for 250 electronic invitations. They will RSVP on our wedding website so they don't have to mail anything back either.

Good luck with your wedding planning. You can definitely have a nice celebration for your budget, so don't worry :-)

The weddings in Poland seem though to be more expensive, we had a budget of 6000 euros without my dress, which means something around 10000 dollars, and we had only 60 guests max. We paid the hotel rooms for everyone, we had a decorating company but kept it simple. though we spent at the end 300 dollars for the decor. The most expensive part was the restaurant and the food- Polish people like to eat a lot lol. The music costed us around 700 dollars as far as i know... are you people paying as much as we did? i mean we did have a party the second day too,everybody woke up at 11 and the party continued till 3 pm. If it was my choice, would totally go with a Dj instead of singers, but couldn't go over the tradition

My advice? Get creative and DO YOUR RESEARCH! And I mean everything. Because one thing might seem like a good deal but if something else that's more important to you ends up being more $ than you though then you'd immediately be over. You have to balance it all out and take from the things that mean less to get the things that mean most to you as a couple before you put any money down to ensure you stay in that actual budget. Ours is $12k in key largo on a SATURDAY for 120 guests. Believe me when I tell you we've had to compromise some things to splurge on others. The first 6 months of my planning were me doing tons of research!!