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

[DonRoeber]

Not really an expense, but something I'd recommend: get a wedding handler. On the day of our wedding, my brother's girlfriend was standing around with nothing to do, looking bored. Suddenly we realized that she can be the person who makes sure that everyone is where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be. With everything else going on, and all of the groomsmen and bridesmaids also busy, her help was invaluable.

With regards to the bar, we found it was cheaper to have an open bar than to serve only soft drinks and such. My wife and I don't drink, and there is at least one alcoholic in the family, so we didn't want to serve alcohol. I'm still not sure why, but the way the package worked with the reception hall, it would've been substantially more expensive to serve only soda, coffee, and tea. The cost of all of the alcohol was included in the reception cost, and we got to choose two or three brands of beer that we wanted to be served.

 

[mylan]

Yes, i'll second the wedding planner. The shop were we got my wife's dress and our tuxes throws planning in for free. The owner and his mother come to rehearsal and the ceremony and staged everyone and told us where to move and when. It really made the day less stressful for everyone. Her dress was imported from France and cost $1,000 and tuxes were $100 each with mine being no charge.
We were married at her church so the venue was free but we did pay the minister a small customary fee. The reception was held there so no booze was allowed but that was just as well due to many of our families probable opposition and a band would have been a waste since many of our guests wanted to eat and watch us leave before departing themselves ( no, not a lot of partiers at a Baptist wedding!). One cool thing we did instead of birdseed or rice was to hand out bottles of bubbles and as we made our way out we got a nice and soft bunch of bubbles in place of being pelted with birdseed.
This was in 1996 and, all in all, not counting rings, cost around $6,000 with professional photographer and video, catered finger foods, flowers, and singers. We keep saying we could have gotten married on the beach in Hawaii for what we spent but the day was really something we'll look back on forever.

 

[BrettB]

My daughter is recently engaged and this thread is depressing as hell.

 

[Mike Frezon]

For you and me both, Brett!

Honestly, I've been holding back....but I just want to say I think this is just another example of what a terrific community the HTF is. A bunch of home theater enthusiasts engaging in well-thought-out and informed conversation about interesting topics (but another topic certainly not limited to HT!). Many of the remarks made here have been extremely helpful...even if just for "peace of mind's sake".

I've even got my wife (who is our wedding planner in my daughter's upcoming nuptuals) monitoring this thread!

 

[andrew markworthy]

I tell my daughter (aged 11 at the moment) at regular intervals that I'll give her five grand to elope.

 

[Greg_R]

I agree that you should have someone with professional experience. _However_ there are a lot of professional photographers who work Mon-Fri (graphic art dept., etc.) and do wedding stuff as a hobby. The ones with experience can take excellent photos (and have all the gear and multiple cameras required). Before booking anyone, look at a couple of sample albums (not just a few shots)! You want to check out the style (formal? funky? both?) and quality of the photos. I've checked out some $5k photographers and did not like their photo style at all.

The formal photographers that I've checked out so far cost ~$1500 and that gets you 4 hours total at 2 locations. You also don't get the negatives... a wedding album with 24-36 pictures can easily run up to $1k!!! With a pro who does weddings as a hobby you'll typically get all the pictures on a DVD (touched up, cropped and color corrected) and you can make your own prints and album. Costco uses the best photo printers that are made and they charge ~$1 for an 8x10. Compare that to $30 that a wedding photographer charges! The cost of albums and prints are ridiculous and can drastically over-run your budget.

As mentioned above, many tux/gown places as well as caterers offer a "greeter" (mainly to count the number of people for the bill ) who is very good at getting people into seats and directing the flow of traffic. We are employing my fiance's brother to help with introductions of the bridal party and to run the show when the best man is not around.

 

[nolesrule]

The person doesn't need to be a full-time professional wedding photographer, just a professional photographer who has experience doing weddings. The photographer I recommend actually limits the number of weddings he will do in a year because he says it is the most difficult of all the types of photography he does because of the demanding nature of the job. He owns his own studio and does portraits, architectural photos, commercial photos and also photos just for the sake of art.

He also tells me that the work required for a wedding contract requires approximately 40-50 man hours (and people wonder why it's so expensive)... transporting equipment, setting up, shooting the event, tearing down, relocating to the reception hall and doing the same there, selecting the usable photos, photo touch-up and cropping, presenting proofs to the client, helping with the selection, and, finally, creating the prints and album(s).

Fortunately, this photographer has an all-digital setup. There is no need to print proofs. They can be selected using a projector in the viewing room of his studio. And of course, there is no film cost anymore.

 

[Justin Lane]

I forogt a couple additional expenses... I may have not gotten off as cheap as I thought in my original post....

Flowers -- My wife works with a lady whose husband owns a nursery with floral shop. The flowers ended up running us $300-$400 if I am not mistaken. We used potted plants for the table centerpieces and perennials in bloom for additional color at the reception. We had traditional flowers for the ceremony and for my wife, groomsmen, bridemades, parents and grandparents. The nice thing about the perennials is that after the wedding we took them home and planted them in one of the perennial beds I have at the house. There was no waste and they will serve as a reminder year after year of our wedding. Also wedding goers got something to take home as keepsake and plant in their gardens.

Bridal party gifts -- One other expense I forgot to mention was gifts for the wedding party. We kept our party small to avoid headaches we both experienced as being part of larger parties at previous weddings. I ended up buying my groomsmen decent swiss army watches which were not exactly cheap. My wife gave her bridesmades jewelry which I have no idea what it cost.

J

 

[Mike Shellito]

Here's an idea: get married in another country. I'm posting this just so you can see the crazy prices of weddings in America. We got married in France in 2001 (my wife is French). We paid about $7000, I think, which is not considered an expensive wedding by American standards. But by French standards, this was a very expensive wedding.

We had an open bar from 5 - 7. We were able to buy booze ourselves to supply this open bar period. The meal started shortly after that. By 1:00 AM, the dinner finally ended and we brought out the cake. We had several courses of some of the best food I've ever had, with breaks between each course where there was dancing. We had appetizers, break. Soup and salad, break. Fish and veggie, break. Main meal (couple different meat options), break. Any booze that was still left over from the open bar period was still available to any that wanted it, but most drank wine for the rest of the night. My dad and his friend are bourbon and ginger ale drinkers, so we bought a bottle of good bourbon for them, and it just sat at their table so they could make their own as they needed it.

With the cake, full dessert and coffee was served, along with champagne for everyone. (We had about 150 people there, and managed to get about 30 fly over from the states). There was red and white wine available for the entire evening, provided by the caterer, and any leftover bottels were given to us (I still have a few bottles stashed away).

Our DJ told us he'd play until the last people went home. Where we had the reception - told us they'd stay open until the last person went home. The person in charge ended up giving me the key and told me to lockup on the way out the door.

I left at 6:30 AM, so it stayed open, with the DJ, until 6:30 AM. To this date, still the best party I've ever been to (even though I'm biased as it was my wedding).

Here's the biggie: we got the reception hall and caterer 2 1/2 weeks before our reception. The original hall told us they could accomadte up to 200 people. When my wife got to France, and went there, they told her they could only accomdate 100. We thought "we're screwed". But we found an outstanding caterer that had the date open, and a hall. Both of them could have screwed us financially if they wanted to, given our situation and time frame, but didn't.

Get a good photographer. Ours wasn't so good, pictures are so-so, but the memory is still in my mind, anyhow.

Just wanted to throw this info out to let people know what kind of a racket the wedding business is in the US.

Mike

 

[nolesrule]

The memory is the first thing to go.

In all seriousness, what's fresh in your mind now won't be in 5, 10 or 20 years. I got married in 1998, and while a few years ago I could remember the details, I can't anymore.

 

[Todd H]

Like I stated earlier, we paid $1000 for our wedding (not including dress and tux costs). What we did is found a wedding chapel in a small town in the mountains of Georgia. Our $1000 covered everything, including pictures (which turned out very nice), a video, and the reception (including food, cake, etc.). It turned out much better than we expected.

 

[Arthur S]

A little update...my wedding is starting to look like about a $20,000 proposition...I was hoping to keep it down...but I have been convinced that this should be her day...so we are going pretty much with her plan...however, I am trying to convince her that we should skip the open bar and save about $18 per person...

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.

 

[Tony Whalen]

Open bars can quickly get very expensive. I know my brother had one, and it ended up being one of the most costly items for their wedding.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I don not remember exactly how much we spent 17 years ago, but my wife and I did pay for most of the wedding ourselves. We kept it simple to keep costs down, since we also were buying our first house at the time. Getting a home was more important to us than spending a lot of money for a one day event.

 

[Arthur S]

Hi everyone

We have picked the location of our wedding reception...this place is brand new and a little on the elegant side...they gave us a pretty good price on an upper middle package...and it was significantly nicer than the other places we looked at...thanks to my niece who dragged me out of the house to look at 3 different places.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this post...any and all comments and suggestions are welcome.

 

[BrettB]

Daughter's wedding is 15 months away;

$1,000 - 1 wedding dress & 1 bride's maid dress

It's gonna be a long 15 months.

 

[Arthur S]

Hi everyone...a little update...I got my fiance another engagement ring...this time it is exactly the same as the one my niece has...we are having some difficulty dealing with photographers...one has given me a quote of $3,800 for a still and video package...we think this is way too much for photography...having a lot of difficulty getting a reasonably priced photo package...we could live with as little as 1 hour of video...we would like to keep the entire photo and video package under $2,000, however, it seems that a lot of the photo studios are already booked up...additionally, the music situation is not going very well...we have to decide between live music or a DJ...I don't really know how much difference in price or quality it makes between a DJ and live music...thanks for your contributions...please continue to contribute your thoughts and experiences...and please feel free to make suggestions...our wedding is on June 23, 2007. Thanks again.

 

[ChrisMatson]

We spent closer to $3,800 than $2000 for photography--no video. We thought it was worth it. We got the photographer plus assistant for 8.5 hours at multiple locations--getting ready, ceremony, nearby park, and reception.

We also opted for a DJ over a band for personal preference. We met with several DJs and chose one that had many years of wedding experience and was very thorough with asking what we wanted and did not want. He even had back-up equipment and a back-up tuxedo in case of any accidents (he said that he once ripped his tuxedo walking under scaffolding at a location that was undergoing remodeling/construction).

 

[Arthur S]

Thanks Chris

That really helps.

 

[Tony Whalen]

Chris pretty much nailed it. I don't know how well you'll do getting professional photography AND video for under 2000.

Don't be afraid to shop around for both. Just because someone is a photographer does NOT mean they are a good VIDEOGRAPHER. Sure, they'll understand shot-composition and lighting, but will they understand editing? Music? Graphics?

I made sure our videographer covered the wedding ceremony AND the reception. I also wanted "credits" at the end that listed everyone in the wedding party, as well as those people we wanted to personally thank. Plus I wanted a bit of an intro with music... almost like an invitation. Some video packages will do a photo-montage at the top that show you and your bride growing up. (I didn't want that... but it's a cool choice.)

Check out all your options... don't throw the video on as an afterthought.

Plus.. yeah... see my previous comments about DJ's. Go with a good one, and make sure they're fully prepared and able to provide you with the entertainment YOU want.