Weddings cost

Yeah it can be really expensive! I find that you can still have a nice wedding though with a smaller budget but you do have to change up your vision a bit or be creative

We knew weddings were expensive, but had a major case of sticker shock when we actually got into the thick of planning. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a breakdown over cost more than once.

But we came up with a budget and a plan. If you don't have an unlimited budget (which most people don't, of course!), you're going to have to compromise on things.

My dream venue is a winery that costs $12k just for the space. Way, way out of our budget. Even with compromising on so many things, and adding in a pandemic, we are still going to have a beautiful wedding -- and you will too!

Don't look at Pinterest too much. It's great for inspiration, but it's not a realistic depiction of a wedding for most people.

That's only if you do everything the wedding industry pressures you into doing. You can have a beautiful wedding for 1/5 of that price. It's all about priorities and what areas you are willing to skip and what you scale back on.

It definitely doesn't help that a number of vendors raise prices the moment they hear 'wedding'. Our wedding is costing us $50,000 ($36,000 USD) because we want all the bells and whistles and I have very high standards so there isn't much room to wriggle the price down because there's very little I will compromise on.

In saying this, in Australia we have wishing wells, so a number of our guests (who want to give a gift) will pay their way, so the cost at the day will be somewhat less, thankfully!

That is entirely a regional thing, honestly, and the nation wide cost is dragged upwards by places like NYC and LA.

That said, I got married in NYC for LESS than that (not by much, but still less than half the "average" NYC wedding).

Take a look at the "planning tools" tab, above. That should have a regional cost guide.

Same...we live near Dallas and a lot of our possible vendors we looked at are in wealthy areas, while we don't have 10k to spend on the venue alone lol. Plus in my area, many vendors have to travel hours to get to the venue so travel costs can be really high. I got a quote from a florist only 30min from my house and 20min from the venue and she had a $200 travel cost to deliver the flowers... We are spending about 13k on our entire wedding, second reception in my hometown, rehearsal dinner, and mini-moon. According to my area that is low but for us that is more than we expected to spend. The biggest blows to our budget (so far, our wedding is in Nov) have been the hand sanitizer favors we didn't plan on buying, and the masks for every guest. (Thanks 2020!)

I think it really just depends on what you want for your wedding. Our destination wedding / reception and family-moon in the keys for 35 people including rehearsal dinner and another 2nd meal (TBD) - all inclusive will cost us about $12K.

I consider that a little more than I wanted to spend initially, but our family vacation last year was about $3k so, all in all - the total cost isn't so bad.

Honestly it's stick shock. And you realize when you are actually planning that every little thing is going to be more than you expected. I pre wedding planning I thought I could get by with a nice wedding for the price of 5k now that I'm actually planning I realized that we need to spend at least 10k. I don't mind putting in the time and work for my wedding, but I don't want to put in that much time and work that a 5k wedding needs.

My fiance and I will be 21 when we get married, that being said our budget is WAYYY tighter than any of you mentioned. The highest I'm willing to go is 8k. I did find a beautiful park venue in Maryland for 2000 with many things included. But it has taken me 1.5 YEARS to find it. You really do have to get creative and think outside the box. At one point I even looked into renting an Airbnb. I've gotten to breakdown points and wanting to give up more times than I can count. If you really want a "wedding", you just have to keep on swimming. Happy planning!

My budget was 6000 we are past that but not by much. Our venue cost the most 3,445 for the whole wedding weekend. Our DJ and photographer were less than 800 each. I am doing DIY for decor. I am really good at being frugal while still getting everything I want for my vision. I'm having so much fun planning. The most stressful part for me was making sure I locked in my vendors. Once I did that I was stress free. If I find something stressful I eliminate it. Bridal party not helping so I eliminated them and replaced them with my daughters.

Yea, I am from NYC and I paid well over 35k for our wedding. We spoke about budget before we started planning and after countless hours of research and calculations, we came up w/ a number that was right for us. We cut out expenses that we decided we didn't need and made sure to stick to our budget. I highly recommend creating a spreadsheet or finding a wedding planning spreadsheet online to calculate all costs. It was very annoying inputting all the numbers but totally worth it because it helped us stay on track and find the options that worked for us!

A good friend of mine was deep into the planning process of his wedding when I got engaged so I went to him with many questions about cost breakdowns. It's a 3rd wedding for him and a 2nd wedding for his fiance so they weren't trying to go all out. But for $7500 they were able to put together a complete wedding for 150 guests with vendors etc. So I was thinking I could get by with 10k... boy was I wrong. I wasn't taking into consideration the friends and family discount they were getting on ALL their vendors or the fact that they somehow found catering for $10.99 a plate... We don't have any vendors in our network of friends who would be available to DJ, Cake, Photography etc and the CHEAPEST I've found catering for is 16.99 a plate with crappy food. We're up to 15k with an unknown cost for an open bar.

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Margaret, what is the name of your venue? I have been searching for an affordable all-inclusive venue in the keys for months! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Yeah the costs are sick...they're killing the game lol! But then on top of the expense you have to hear all the people complain about how much YOUR spending but they want to come 🙄 It's annoying! If I want to pay $10, 2K, 10K, 35K or 100K I WILL, it's my life and my bank roll! We set our little hearts on 12K which was a joke 😂 but that was before we knew how much everything was...we're at about 35K total! Happy planning! 🥂

View Quoted Comment That's funny we had the same AirBnb idea...get one of those nice mansions and throw the reception in the backyard lol.