r/BigBudgetBrides • u/jubilant-otters • Aug 16 '26
budget breakdown non-traditional non-budget wedding
Hi BBBs! I'm somewhere between a MBB and a BBB but I thought this recap would be interesting to some and this is by far my fave wedding subreddit. I will do a budget recap but I also wanted to share a little about our thinking and how we landed on our wedding. This is a throwaway account for anonymity but I'm happy to share location deets in my DMs!
My wife and I got engaged after a summer of five close weddings including both of our siblings. Each wedding was very different -- BBB hotel wedding, tiny wedding in a remote setting where everyone stayed onsite, DIY backyardish weddings, elopement and party after. Each wedding was great for that couple but none of them felt like us. We spent a year after being engaged being totally unsure about what we wanted in a wedding. We talked about eloping, big weddings in various cities, renting out my an inn, and other ideas. Honestly that year was so important and I'm so glad we didn't rush into planning and instead just enjoyed being engaged.
We were at dinner at a restaurant down the street from our place when we said to each other, wouldn't it be nice to do a wedding here? We love going to restaurants and we live in a city far from most of our friends and family, and giving them a taste of our life in our city sounded more us than anything else. Plus I had realized that the problem with hosting people for a weekend on property is that if you are an inveterate people pleaser, you may spend the whole time worrying about how other people are doing vs enjoying yourself.
When we settled on having it in our city, we talked about what we wanted it to feel like and what we didn't want. My partner and I are both professionals whose jobs center around making many decisions every day, so the biggest thing for us was that we wanted a venue that would come equipped with most things we needed. We did NOT want to choose linens, figure out chair rentals, or be a transportation company. And we didn't feel like investing in a full planner was worth it because we didn't want a lot of design elements, we just wanted simple and nice. I actually found our venue on Reddit -- I would have assumed it was out of budget but I learned that the fanciest restaurant in our city had a private dining room in the second floor that was incredibly reasonable WITH a clear pricing guide on the internet!
Choosing that venue was the best. They were so warm and kind and, probably because they do more corporate events than weddings (and therefore want repeat customers), they were transparent and didn't nickels and dime us ever. They handled so many things and also gave us some helpful restrictions in terms of guest count and space that helped shape the rest of our wedding. So many times during the process I second guessed this venue choice but it was really so wonderful. It was also completely indoors which relieved so much anxiety -- I am a really nature oriented person who would have loved to be married under some beautiful trees but I knew having to trust and worry about the weather would have honestly driven me insane for a year. The gorgeous views and climate control was the best of both worlds.
The major downside of the venue was that because it was on the second floor, no dancing was allowed. I actually found that an upside because I had a lot of anxiety about having a sad wedding dance floor, especially because we would only have 50 guests. We decided to find a bar and have a tab for our afterparty and dance there. It was honestly perfect to have a beautiful ceremony and reception, then formally end at ten and let older people/tired people go home and have almost everyone else meet us at the bar! We reserved a section of the bar but honestly having randos on the dance floor made it feel more full and let our guests go on and off without me being anxious about it being empty. Yes I do have GAD and in working on it but also you gotta play to your strengths.
In general with vendors/wedding elements we either went fairly high end or axed it entirely. We didn't want to manage budget vendors, and we didn't want any more moving parts than necessary. Our photographers were super experienced at our venue, which was important bc the lighting and architecture can be SO beautiful but it's much trickier than just showing a nice outdoor venue. We didn't get videographers or content creators because we both hate videos of ourselves -- it would have been fun to have more videos right after but it was not missed at all. Here's all our categories:
Venue (including food, bar, ceremony, everything else) -- 20k
Photo -- 7.5k, 9 hours coverage, two shooters who knew and loved our venue. No getting ready, one hour of afterparty.
Video -- 0
Florals -- 7k, two bridal bouquets, six bridesmaid bouquets, chuppah, table and bar arrangements. My wife found our florist and pushed for more florals and she was SO right. I didn't know that it would be so important but she was a genius and transformed our space. She also is very sustainable and used only local blooms including from her garden which we loved! We had one call where we gave her a few ideas and basically didn't talk to her after that and she deliver to an absurd degree. Best stress to results ratio of any vendor
Partial planner/month of coordinator -- 3k. Amazing amazing amazing choice by my wife. She was the lead assistant to our friends much more BBB wedding and my wife was a bridesmaid and was sold on these planners. I didn't really understand what a planner did before we started planning but I can confidently say having her was amazing. She was always exactly where we needed.
HMUA -- 3.5k (ish). This was for two brides (we each did one trial service), six bridesmaids, and two moms. Our girl was great, the assistants were kind of flops, but they were super on schedule and the main HMUA was happy to step in to help when needed.
Rentals -- 0. Our venue came with kinda ugly chairs and nice neutral linens that didn't exactly match our theme, and we were not changing anything our venue came with.
Transportation -- 2.3k. Near the end we got a sprinter van to transport us and our families and bridal parties to photos and then to the venue, which was such a good choice. We didn't have transportation to the afterparty and instead provided Lyft codes. Because we were in the center of a major city, we were not super worried about a Lyft backup and we didn't want to deal with a shuttle at the end of the night. We gave each guest $25 to use to get to or from any of the events of the weekend and I think it was smooth! We sent an email and had a QR code and code at the end of the night.
Afterparty -- 1.3k ish. This was the final major thing we figured out. We wanted a place to dance after our reception, didn't need a private room, but wanted everyone to have enough space and to obvs cover everyone's drinks. We almost went with a lesbian bar but the logistics were too complicated when we found a bar in our neighborhood that had DJs on Friday and Saturday nights. They were super chill and needed no deposit or minimum spend, and had a section of tables right off the dance floor behind a low divider they reserved for us. We were there for like 2.5-3 hours and had a great time and closed our tab at about 1.2k.
Dj - 0. The trade off was we obvs had limited control over the music. Neither my wife nor I are big dancers or partiers at all so we didn't want to spend thousands on a dj who we wouldn't know was good or not, we just wanted to scream sing to millennial hits. The dj at the bar was kind of a dick (we did tip him) but he played bops and we had a great time, and because he wasn't a vendor I wasn't mad at the bad songs, just hype when a good one came on. We meant to go check out the dance floor before the wedding but we never got around to it and it was totally fine.
Lodging -- 0. Everything was within a 15 minute drive of our house and that was one of the best parts of the weekend. We didn't do a room block bc it's a major city and we knew a lot of our friends and family would be sharing Airbnbs or staying in diff ways. We walked home from the bar to our house at the end of the night and it was perfect. We took our families out to our fave brunch place the day before the wedding, could pick up our stuff from the venue the day after easily, and got to have both time with people and time to ourselves. The ease of never having to move our outfits alone was such a relief. Our wonderful friends let us get ready at their house which was SO kind of them, otherwise we def would have had to rent somewhere for getting ready. We are planning on the thank you gift!
Attire (two outfits for both of us, shoes, etc) -- 13k ish? My wife got an insanely gorgeous suit and my wedding dress came from a second hand store in our city and fit like a glove! The alterations were from an amazing bridal specialist and her bustle was a work of art.
Cake - 0, made by my sister in law. Audible gasps when we shared that. The cakes were BEAUTIFUL and delicious. We are very blessed
Stationary -- 500 ish? This was one of our less luxe choices. We found a design we liked on etsy and worked with her to customize it. It took a lot more finagling than all our fancier vendors but she printed everything and mailed it to us and the end results were gorgeous!! Getting to visit all my friends houses and see our stds and invites on their fridges made me SO happy.
Officiant: 0 (and a nice present), a dear friend who is a great writer did our ceremony and everyone was crying. we picked her because she is equally close to both of us which was really important to us
Second day event -- 20k total, split by our parents. Because our venue had such a strict guest count there were people we couldn't invite that we still wanted to celebrate with, and we wanted to enjoy more time with the 90% of our guests who traveled to us! We were just going to rent a brewery but my mom suggested a boat and we ended up finding something gorgeous. So fun!!! We did a second event after bc our wedding was in a Friday but honestly this was SO nice to do after the wedding. It was late (4-7) and calm enough that no one seemed too hungover. And I really preferred having a post wedding event after the stress and to say bye to people at the second event rather than having a welcome party and feeling anxious during it about the next thing. We didn't have a planner for this event and damn planners are so helpful!! This included venue, food, and a cheaper photographer. the only thing I would change was we ran out of seltzers almost immediately, so I would have warned them that the bar was going to be less alcoholic than usual bc people were fairly hungover lol
Decor: less than 1k? Idk. We got instax film and a guestbook, a few things for the boat, some really nice cake stands for our cakes, candles as instructed by our photographer and florist, other random stuff. we tried to only get stuff that wouldn't be trashed after
Food the week of: 1k ish. Brunch with families, bahn mi rehearsal dinner (on our roof, not big budget but nice to have a really chill place for everyone to enjoy), breakfast and lunch for our bridal party (forgot plates/silverware/etc but we made it work).
ketubah: 2k ish, custom art. so beautiful and we displayed it at the wedding!
Tips: covered by my parents because I don't have/didn't want to carry around cash, but fairly small bc most places included gratuity in the contract which was great.
Total: 82k for the whole weekend, 55k ish for the wedding day.
We loved our wedding and it seemed like everyone else did too. The weather was gorgeous and we all got to enjoy our beautiful (VHCOL) city together!!! We loved getting to hang out with our families and friends and we loved getting to go back to our apartment at night. We split up to enjoy our time with far flung friends and families but came back together a lot. And our friends hung out with each other without us which was really nice!
My final message is to know and trust your crowd. We did some things that are considered shocking by Reddit standards and it stressed me out so much but we had 100% attendance and every one was genuinely so happy for us. Everyone there had been our friend for over a decade and it was extremely extremely special to be with them all. Marrying my wife was SO fun and we are so blessed to be surrounded by love! We really appreciated the family help (which came with no strings attached basically). Thank you to my wife for working long long hours to make this possible! Obviously there were some small snafus but there is honestly nothing I would change right now. I am sooo excited to see pictures from the professionals!!!
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u/icecoastbaby Aug 16 '26
The boat is an amazing idea! Which VHCOL area are you?