Wedding/honeymoon budget - whaaaaaatttt?

When we got engaged I said 10k, now it looks like 17k.

I get you completely. When my then-boyfriend and I discussed a future wedding I really thought $8,000 was a good and fair budget in Philly area. HA! Thankfully my brother got married soon after we got engaged so I was getting all the low-down on vendors, costs, little details. It helped so much to get a realistic idea before we even started looking into venues ourselves. We increased our targeted budget to $15,000 which doesn't include using our month-to-month salary, so I know we have a little wiggle. I felt like my brother's wedding was my dress rehearsal.

Budget isn't including honeymoon (since we'll do it the next summer), our rings, gifts to each other, or FH's suit because we would rather pay for those things separately.

Im there with ya, lol. My fiancé and I didn't think that it would be this expensive at all...especially for a smaller more intimate wedding. We've decided to go with more diy stuff and finding a beautiful family backyard that we can decorate really well. At the end of the day I guess its just keeping in mind that we get to marry the person we love and it'll all work out, lol. We can do this ladies! LOL

Yes! Our $20k destination wedding cost us $30k. Yikes! We did have some help from parents and it was well worth it, but no new car for a couple of years!!

What venue did you choose? That is a great price.

Our budget is ballooning too, largely due to external pressures. My fiance is pushing that everyone gets a "plus one" on the invite, the wedding planner made a strong case for why we need a videographer, my mom is convinced that we needed to rent better table linens than our venue provides. $$$.... $$$$.... $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Totally a slap in the face for me when we set the budget for $10,000 for our wedding and ended up near the $20,000 and for our honeymoon we planned for about $3,000 with flights and ended up around $5,000.

You are not alone!

We live in WI and were planning on keeping our budget between $5-8k for 75 guests.

When we saw how much things were going to cost, we knew we would have to increase it.

All things said and done, we will be paying around $20k when you include reception costs, attire, transportation, honeymoon to Italy for 1 week, hair/makeup, bridal suite, gifts for bridal party/parents, rehearsal dinner, etc. Thankfully, our families have been helping a lot (although we had 0% expectation of them helping, they graciously offered)

Its a total racket for how much venues and vendors charge. Seems like if you add "wedding"
or "honeymoon" to anything the price tag just gets marked up high!

FWIW, if the ever-growing budget is a concern, really look at postponing the honeymoon. We wanted to do a two week trip through England and Scotland but there's no way to fit it in as far as time off from work or the budget. We're doing a short trip to New Orleans and will then gift each other with paper plane tickets for our one-year anniversary.

We're getting married in Chicago like someone else who posted upthread. Most venues we saw started at 10K - and that's for a blank, quasi-industrial brick room. Our 100 person wedding will come in just over $32K - we also decided to host a reception on Friday night for our out of town guests and a brunch on Sunday for close friends and family. Those extra events are not helping our budget in the least!

I am right there with you with the sticker shock and the budget increase as the planning goes on! We set a budget for $15k and we luckily found a great venue that meets all of our needs for the max of $18k if all 150 people come but we realized that that's ONLY the venue!!! So yeah - sticker shock is my current struggle but we're still hoping to stay under $30k all in all, including our honeymoon to NOLA.

I think it is really expensive where we live and where we are getting married (Fairfield County, CT), so that does not help with our small budget either!!

Yes, definitely! I think right now we are at $15K and that's not including the bridal shower, rehearsal dinner or honeymoon. It's crazy! I wanted to keep it at $10K; I also wanted to elope. But, FH did not. Luckily my dad is paying for the food, FH's parents are paying for the open bar. We did splurge on the photographer/videographer, which was around $5K. It's hard because everything gets so out of hand so easily!

I think it happens to all of us. We set budgets with the best intentions, but wedding prices are outrageous, and we all want our dream weddings. We started with a $20,000 budget. I thought that would be more than enough to get the wedding I had envisioned. I though "for that kind of money, I'll have money left over!"... I was wrong lol. After all was said and done, we ended up around $25,000. So not terribly over budget, but still over. We chalked it up to at that point we had already spent $20k, whats another $5k . One thing I definitely learned during my wedding planning process... there is A LOT of money made in the wedding industry!!!