Gulp!! Getting Married: How Much Did You Spend? (1 Viewer)

[Buzz Foster]

Exchange sage leaf rings at dawn in the backyard.

Cost: $0, if you have sage growing.

 

[ChrisMatson]

I got married in 2003 in Washington, DC. We had decided that we wanted a traditional wedding and reception. My wife researched vendors and we met with several caterers, florists, DJs, photographers and musicians.

A wedding can be as expensive or as cheap as you want. We wanted our guests, most of whom had to travel to attend, to enjoy themselves, not set up tables or pay for drinks.

We wanted professional photography with pictures that we could cherish--the day goes by quickly and it is hard to remember the details. Some people are fine with amateur photos and drug-store prints.

My advice is to think about what is important to you, be realistic with the guest list, and spend only what you can afford.

We spent near the "average" price for a wedding and paid for over half ourselves. Our parents helped with the rest.

 

[Arthur S]

Jassen M. West

My fiance and I loved your post and the pictures...my best man is married to my niece...he helped me install a new and excellent sound card...SoundBlaster Audigy 4 with a nice remote control...including a built in 7 band Equalizer. Like it so far...you should check out www.slickdeals.net for some very good deals on all kinds of things...clothes, gifts, electronics, computer gear, toys, food...liked your pics a lot...and my best man thinks he was at the site in your pic...something about pines?

Thank you much from me and my fiance

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

Happy New Year

 

[Paul D G]

I cant give specifics but we paid about $4000 total for ours. We would have preferred just driving to Vegas but we needed the ceremony thing for her Dad's sake.

We hired a Justice o' the Peace (non religious) and had everything in my parents back yard. Rented everything from the party store a block away. My wife bought a cheap dress and tore it apart and did it the way she wanted. I bought a suit. No one stood up for us but we had my young nieces and nephew carry the rings and flowers. My sis-in-law made the dresses for the girls. Caterer was a friend of my parents, as was the videographer. We found an excellent photographer who was so cheap we were expecting a disaster but he turned out very competent and even gave us the negs. I did the music myself - burned eight hours of music onto cds and set up a multidisc player, with a backup PC loaded with mp3s of everything. The reception was really more of a party. None of that hokey throwing the garter crap for us.

My wife and I both used to work in hotels and man, we've seen a lot of weddings and have seen the bills. There's no way we were doing that and putting our friends (that is, people we LIKED) thru all that!

-paul

 

[Jon_Are]

More appropriate than you might think.

Just kidding - best of luck.

 

[Francois Caron]

Out of curiosity, how much does a Vegas organized wedding and reception cost? They probably know the entire procedure inside and out by now.

 

[Eric Samonte]

In the Philippines, its the other way around, the guys pay for the wedding which I did. We however r not required to give an engagement ring. My wife has always bugged me about this. I just tell her, pay me back for the wedding and I'll get u the ring....

 

[DonRoeber]

Have you been to any weddings where you liked the music? That's how we found our DJ; my cousin got married, we were impressed, so we took his card and booked him a few weeks later.

We spent about $1500 on the photographer, and that was the most expensive thing that we paid for ourselves. My wife's parents paid for the reception (about 100 people, $60ish per head, included the cake and centerpieces).

 

[Randy Tennison]

One other thing. Get a photographer. A real wedding photographer. Someone who does it for a living. Not your brother's buddy who has a nice digital.

Why? Because after the wedding the cake will be eaten, the tuxes go back, the decorations come down, and the dress goes in a storage box. But, you will look at those photographs for the rest of your lives. A good wedding photographer can make your special day look magical. A bad photographer can forget to change his batteries, and get nothing.

And no, I'm not a photog, or anything near it. I've been married for 14 years, and occasionally will still look at our album.

 

[nolesrule]

I'm going to agree with what everyone says about the photographer. And don't just use one you find at a wedding show...even they can be amateurs. You absolutely must get a professional.

My cousin's wife found their photographer at a wedding show, and they have no pictures from their wedding except those from family APS cameras.

A pro photographer has redundant equipment and often an assistant, so if something goes wrong with a camera, you aren't SOL. A friend of mine is a professional photographer, and we recently used him for some maternity photographs. He was telling me that when he does a wedding, he shows up with $35,000 in equipment and an assistant. Of course, his philosphy is he's preserving memories for his customers, it's not just a job, and you only have one chance to get it right.

 

[Justin Lane]

Just got married this past Summer. My Wife's family picked up the reception food, inviatations/favors dress and half of the photographer. I picked up the DJ, Hall Rental, Bar Tab, Tux Rental (for myself and best man), rings, other half of photographer, church/organist donation. My family picked up the rehearsal dinner. We had about 125 guests and the breakdown was as follows:

Food -- $3500 (My father-in-law's cousin has a catering business so this included prime rib, seafood, catered hourdourves, salad, cake/deserts, linens, china/settings, tip/tax, etc.)

Bar Tab -- $1,000 (I feel I got off cheap on this one, especially with the quantity of consumption by some of the guests)

Hall Rental -- $400 (Local Club on a lake which my parents are members)

Photgrapher -- $1500

DJ -- $350 (Friend from High School did the honors with his family business)

Church/Organist -- $350 (my wife's Uncle is a minister and married us without any fees, though I gave a dontation ot the church)

Rings -- $500 (I got a cheapie titanium ring, my wife got one with Diamonds/Saphires)

Dress -- ~$750 (Wife got it on clearance, dresses can go as high as the stars)

Tux Rentals -- $200

Invitations/Favors -- $400

Rehearsal Dinner -- $1000 (Had alot of family in from out of town and at a higher end local establishement)

There were probably some other expenses which I am missing, but I have captured most of the biggies. We didn't rent a limo from the Church as the reception was literally 5 min away, and we figured it was not worth the hassel/expense.

So out of pocket I ended up dropping about $3500 and my wife's family spent about $5500, and my family spent about $1000 on the rehearsal dinner for a grand total of about $10,000. It was more than I planned, but not too unreasonable for the number of people (125) which made it to the wedding. In comparison, when my wife's sister got married, they only invited about 80 people and spent $10,000 just on the reception/DJ. We could probably have done it cheaper, but I figured you only get married once and I already owned a house so putting the money towards a downpayment was out for us.

J

 

[Neal_C]

We are getting married at the Mandalay Bay on 7/7/07. This is what we get from them for $3200:

Wedding Ceremony
Bride's Bouquet and Groom's Boutonniere
Maid of Honor Bouquet and Best Man Boutonniere
Twenty-Four-4x6 in a Wedding Alblum
Twelve-8x10 Photographs in a Personal Leather Album
Plus Twelve-5x7 Photographs and One 11x14 Photograph
Photography with Complete coverage of the Wedding Party
and Immediate Family
Video Recording (DVD) with Custom Case
Unity Candle and Service
Custom Wedding Certificate Holder
Deluxe Fruit Basket
Bottle of Champagne and Mandalay Bay Champagne Flutes
Champagne Dinner for Two at Shanghai Lilly
Breakfast in Bed for Two from Room Service
Facial at Spa Mandalay Bay (50 minutes)
Pianist- An Additional 5 Songs
15 minutes Prior to the Ceremony as Guest are Seating
Honeymoon Suite for One Night*
Minister Fee

We plan to get one of the bigger suites and have our own reception. The wedding chapel can only hold 50 people, but it is Vegas, so more than that will probably show up. The cheapest I could find reception dinners was about $60/person. At only 50 people, thats $3000 just on food.

I'd rather get a $1500/night suite and just have everybody up there to hang out and drink, maybe bring in some food trays or something.

We haven't finalized the final expected expenses but we are aiming to keep it around $10k if we can.

I think we are also going to pay the $30 fee and let everyone back at home who can't go to Vegas watch the ceremony on the web. Seems like a pretty cool idea.

 

[DonRoeber]

Oh, one more thing. I'm not sure how your fiancee will feel about this, but a growing portion of women are selling their wedding gowns on ebay after they wear it. If she's okay with it, she can always get her dress there.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

We paid for our own wedding and kept it pretty simple. As big a day as it is its still only one day and we didn't feel it was worth going into debt over. We splurged on some things and kept others in check and had a great time. Looking back there's things I'd do differently if I were getting married now but at the time it felt right and this summer we'll be celebrating our 10 year anniversary

 

[Dave_Brown]

I'm getting married 10/13/07, been engaged since 9/06. Her and I are paying for pretty much the whole thing ourselves and while I'm trying to keep things on the simplier side, it is a battle I am slowly losing. Once everything is said and done on our end, counting the honeymoon I figure we will spend between $15 - 20,000. The latest deceision she made is we can't use a simple sound system/organist for the wedding, she wants a 4 string quartet.

I told her from day 1 that it is her day and she can have anything and everything she wants, but my resources are limited. I told her my portion of the event is $5,000, that's all I can comit to financially. Anything beyond that is up to her. We've been together for over two years now, so I felt pretty safe laying it out that way. Plus, I figure $10,000 would be a decent event and if I paid 50%, she can match it.
Neither one of our families has offerend much help, but that is actually not such a bad thing. Now everytime her mom or my mom tries to offer "suggestions" I shut them up by saying "you want some say, offer up some pay, otherwise it is all being done how WE want it."

 

[Todd H]

The wife and I spent about $1000 for our wedding. We paid for it ourselves. We didn't want anything too big and decided to spend the money we saved on a nice honeymoon. We ended up spending 10 days in Vegas.

 

[andrew markworthy]

About $500. Details are given below if you're interested. What I would like to add is that in our circle of friends and relatives, there is what's known as the Curse of the Big Fussy Wedding. Of all the bride in white and big reception type weddings my wife and I have attended, only one out of twenty or so hasn't ended in divorce (or in one case death of the husband) within a couple of years. On the other hand, all the cheap and cheerful weddings have resulted in happy marriages. My wife and I are fond of quoting the line in Friends - 'I want a marriage, not a wedding'. Please note this only applies to my own circle of friends and relatives, and I mean nothing but well to anyone on this forum!

UK weddings are slightly different from the USA that you cannot have your wedding ceremony anywhere you like. When we married (1990) you had the choice of church or (civil) register office (and unless the church was Church of England, Roman Catholic or Jewish, then you had to have a register office ceremony as well). As my wife's an atheist and I was in an agnostic phase at the time, we had a register office wedding (cost about $50). With a register office you have to be married in the one in your administrative region. The one we had was tiny and so we were limited in the number of guests. By the time we'd squeezed my wife's immediate family (circa 20) into the place, this left room for my immediate family (my parents) and eight friends.

For the reception afterwards, we chose a quiet country inn where we knew the food was good and where I knew the landlord. We basically booked the place for the afternoon, paid for everyone's drinks (admittedly, neither side of the family has any heavy drinkers) and had a superb buffet. We also had a strict rule of no speeches, no vote of thanks, etc. People were 'ordered' to treat it like a normal party. I've got to say that it went really really well.

 

[Paul Padilla]

First of all... Stacy...I'm in love.

But seriously folks...I wish the marriages in this thread the best including the OP...I really do...but I feel like passing out when I see the number of decimal places in some of these weddings. I'm about as far from a cheapskate as you can get, but jeesh. It was a different age, granted, but my parents spent $20 for a justice of the peace and they just celebrated their 52nd anniversary. I would agree to not skimp on the photographer, though.

As much as the wedding is the bride's day (except Stacy ) it also starts to be about everyone but the bride & groom. Anxiety about not forgetting your Great Aunt Gertrude because she gave your mother the heimlich maneuver when she was little, without whom your marriage wouldn't be taking place...that kind of thing. Parents who have their own idealistic opinions or could be trying to make up for not having a fancy wedding themselves. It's amazing how even distant family members can begin feeling a sense of entitlement to your day. First and foremost, the wedding is about your union. My advice is to really get things crystal clear between your betrothed and yourself as to what really matters, and what is just about aesthetics. It truly isn't about the money...it's about who you're trying to make happy and why. Yes, there will be plenty of items that you'll want to keep simply because they make your wife-to-be happy. That's par for the course from the "I do" until the " til death do..."

My wife of 18 years and I were po....po..po....po when we got married so that certainly sets the stage. (Woo hoo....10 for a dollar ramen noodles!!) We probably spent less than $1000 including her dress...which was $500 IIRC. My grandmother volunteered to pay for the invitations. Various members of my family cooked. I hauled in my stereo for the music (I.e. mix tape) My father threw in another $200 to donate to the church. A family friend threw in a 10 day stay at a condo they owned near a ski resort. (Too bad it was off season, but we were ecstatic to get it.) I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but it was a lovely day. My wife and I will both tell you today that even that meager amount of money would have served us better by augmenting the honeymoon.

The less you worry about trifles like napkin patterns or cream vs. white orchid center pieces the happier you'll both be. None of that matters...and those who obsess about these things can make what should be the happiest day of your life the most stressful one.

Best Wishes

 

[Tony Whalen]

A couple of thoughts for you.

First off, as others have suggested, go with a PROFESSIONAL photographer. Don't scrimp, and get Uncle Bob to do it with his digital, or your best man... Get a pro. We spent about 1200 bucks on our photographer, and he was worth every penny. The shots were fantastic, and the albums (3 in total... one for us, one for each set of parents) were just astounding. Naturally, he maintains the negatives, but ANY professional photographer legally owns the copyright... I've got a great proof-book of all the photos that were taken... get that included in your package, if at all possible.

Regarding DJ's. Do *NOT* get a friend/best-pal/best-man or anyone to operate an iPod with an amp. No offense intended towards the person that suggested that, but I've seen this done... and it is amateur and just not a lot of fun. Get a pro. Get a GOOD DJ. Do your research. Interview them. Get referrals. A pro will listen to your likes and dislikes and create an appropriate playlist. A pro will be more than simply music... he'll provide a SHOW. Our DJ was instructed "no polkas" and "no chicken-dance". He was also instructed to play a mix of older dance music (big band) and modern stuff. Something that would appeal to the wide-range of ages that comprised our guest list. He did a terrific job, and the light rig he had was great too. This is a once-in-a-lifetime party.... to me... setting up an iPod doesn't seem appropriate. This isn't a frat party. It's a *WEDDING*.

Lastly, if you are going to get a video done... AGAIN.. go with a pro. Interview them. View samples of their work. Be certain that they understand concepts like shot composition. Make sure they have pro-level equipment, and that they aren't some college-kids showing up with a DVD handycam. (Sure, getting Uncle Bob to do it would be cheap, but it would also be shaky, dark, unfocused, hard to hear and more.) You want at least a two-camera shoot. Three is better, but usually quite a bit more expensive. A pro should have a reasonable package that will include the ceremony, the reception, the dances and maybe even the pre-wedding prep. A pro will use wireless lapel mics to capture the best sound they can. (You'll wear the mic... not the bride.) A pro will dress appropriatly and be unobtrusive. (If they spend the entire day with you, they *may* request to be fed at the dinner. Not unreasonable.)

Phew! That was long-winded.

My wife and I had about 80-100 guests. We spent around 7000 bucks. That was eight years ago. Professional video, photo, DJ and catering. My wife only spent about 300 bucks on her dress. It was a used one that she had re-done with an excellent seamstress. (Add another 200 for the alterations.)

Also, we had a buffet with finger-foods and NOT a sit-down dinner. Not as formal, but cheaper and allowed for some delicious foods that were far tastier than a bland sit-down menu that would have cost the same.

Plus we had a beer & wine bar that we paid for. (We had a friend that owned a liquor store... so we got stuff cheap.) If you want to pay for the bar, do beer and wine only. Get inexpensive stuff (not the super-cheap crap) at somewhere like Costco. Most liquor stores will allow you to return unused stuff. If you MUST have hard liquor, then do a cash bar, as the costs can mount up quickly. (Of course, I'm basing this on my experience with 100 guests. If you have many more... you may want a cash bar anyway... whether full-service or beer/wine only.)

Okay... I'm done blathering. That's my two cents. (FYI, some of this advice is stolen from my mother, who is a long-time JP with more than 2000 weddings under her belt. If you have any other questions, feel free to PM/email me.)

 

[nolesrule]

Keep in mind that some reception halls will have restrictions on booze that you must go through them. That route is very inflexible and usually pricy and effects everything from bar service to the brand of bubbly that is used for the toasts.