Wedding budget

West Virginia and yeah, that's for everything. We're about 3 weeks out now and we're still coming in under budget. We're pulling it off for around 3K!

When I got engaged, my budget was 10k. I had no idea the price of a venue, food, photographer, etc. So, we have adjusted our budget for 90 people to 15k. However, we could probably do cheaper if we wanted to compromise the venue and do more planning for the day. Our venue doesn't need decorations because it is already so beautiful, and the planning is a minimum because everything is included (caterer, bartender, linens, glassware etc). This was a priority since I am a full time doctoral student and my FH is a full time business student and we both work full time with 2 kids. I am doing a lot of DIY things, but the save on stress that comes with planning was worth the extra cost to us.

Who was your wedding consultant? What area are you in? My budget is about 12k total.

We are aiming to keep it under $20K for about 200 guests in New York City (where everything is sooo exorbitant!), though I think it may creep up to about $22K or so. We made a super detailed spreadsheet with our budgets, real-deal estimates, and actual costs, and as costs have come in. All budgets were based in real scoping (like, I made a rental list and sent it to a local company for a quote instead of taking a ballpark guess). We're also super lucky that we're being gifted all the catering and much of the bar (though not the service). We chose a Friday in March which has helped us negotiate generous discounts pretty much across the board. (Including 25% off our venue!)

We originally planned on 35K, but after checking venues by the beach in the Los Angeles area, we had to come up. We ended up between 45k-50k for 110 guests.