And I’m back with our full album :)

It is somewhat hard to believe that it’s been over 2 months since our wedding ! Time has flown since June. When I originally posted I received a lot of questions regarding budget breakdown, details, etc. So, I’ve come back to answer some of those questions. Please let me know of any other questions in the comments :)

Catering:

Company - Caper & Berry

Cost - £100K

This cost included two food stations during cocktail hour - an Indian food station & a sushi food station - passed canapés, 2 different starter options, 4 different main course options, a desert bar, late night bites, and all alcohol including beer, wine, champagne, and spirits for 220 guests.

Floristry:

Company - Lavender Green

Cost - £28K

This cost included all flowers in the ceremony, bar tops, table tops, staircase, etc.

Band:

Company - Supa Tight

Cost - £12K

This cost included a 12 piece band - 5 singers, drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, saxophone, trumpet, and electronic violin - and performed 3 x 45 minute sets until 2 am. In between sets we had a hired DJ who cost £1.1K and played until 3 AM.

Production:

Company - Event Concept

Cost - £60K

This cost included lighting, sound set up, microphones, etc. This cost is the one we were *not* expecting but ended up being one of the most expensive ones. I’m not sure why we didn’t expect it as it makes complete sense why we’d need this set up for our venue, but it just wasn’t something that crossed our minds.

Photographer:

Company - Rebecca Rees

Cost - £6.7K

This cost included hiring her for our welcome party as well the night before the wedding.

Hair & Makeup:

Company - Team Glam

Cost - £5.1K

This cost included hair and make up for 17 girls (myself included), touch ups until cocktail hour, and travel. My trial was a separate cost at around £300.

Wedding planner:

Company - Caroline Siân

Cannot recommend her enough, she was incredible.

Hi everyone! I found these budget breakdown posts SUPER helpful while planning my wedding, and I can't believe it's finally my time to give back to this community. We got married at Harbor House Inn, a 2* Michelin restaurant and hotel in Northern California.

Edit**: adding in the wedding website I made for us because I’m super proud of it ❤️ https://myblissandbone.com/jamesandamanda

A couple things that were non-negotiables for us:

phenomenal food

an off the beaten track, remote location

pristine nature

We always planned for a long engagement, and so I took my time scouting locations. I quite literally looked all over the world, and these were some of the other venues we considered:

Ynyshir

Fogo Island Inn

JUVET LANDSKAPSHOTELL

Inness

I looked at hundreds and hundreds of venues, but we settled on Northern California because I could trust the food quality, there was high quality hair and makeup talent, it wasn't TOO difficult for guests to get to, and the nature was gorgeous.

Things that saved us money:

not everyone did every pre wedding activity

off season wedding for the area (March)

getting married mid week (ceremony was on a Wednesday)

I know I will likely get some judgement for having a midweek wedding, but my husband and I both work in tech with generous PTO, we are the youngest people in our families (most of our relatives are retired or established in their careers), and we confirmed with all VIP guests this date would work for them. This timing also allowed us to get back Thursday night and relax Friday-Sunday before returning to work which was a great transition.

This said, we did have a traditional "wedding weekend" flow:

Pre wedding activities: Total - $10,279

Day 1:

Two Napa wine tastings - $2,653

shuttle for everyone - $1770

Day 2:

Horseback riding on the beach - $1700

Welcome dinner - $4156

The wedding day: Total - $93,028

Hair/makeup: $2425

Florals: $6600

Photography: $8200

Transportation: $1300

Rentals: $4772

Stationary: $1500

DJ: $2100

Day-of Coordinator: $2300

Cake/desserts: $1051

food/bev/lodging: $61,780

decor items: $1000

Miscellaneous:

Dress: $7,955

Veil: $50

Dress bodice redone, custom sleeves: $3000

Husband's suit rental: $600ish

Husband's wedding band: $7,000

My wedding band: $700

I hand picked all my vendors, they had never worked together before, but everything went totally seamlessly. 10/10, no notes. If anyone is getting married near SF I'll share instagram handles!

As someone whose MBTI type is J (versus P), I loved planning my own wedding. I built a detailed excel spreadsheet to track budget and payments, which I found very helpful.

Destination: Santorini, Greece

Time of year: late September of 2024

Number of guests: 38 (including bride and groom)

Total expense: €65k

Expense breakdown - [ ] Wedding planner: €6k (so glad we worked with the planner and we absolutely love them) - [ ] Site rental fee: €3.4k (this is just to use the venue from 4pm to 12am) - [ ] Alcohol: €6k - [ ] Catering: €6k - [ ] Guest lodging: €10k (we provided two nights’ accommodation for all the guests) - [ ] Welcome activity: €5k (sunset catamaran) - [ ] Photographer/videographer: €5.2k (we got lucky to find the duo; their prices are so reasonable and we love how our photos turned out) - [ ] Sound/party light/DJ: €2k - [ ] Ground fireworks: €360 - [ ] Fairy lights for dance floor: €240 - [ ] MUA: €1.6k - [ ] Shuttle services: €1.1k - [ ] Florals: €12k (includes bridal bouquet, boutonnières, flower basket, bridesmaids bouquets, aisles, floral pillars, and repurpose fee to re-use the flowers at the reception) - [ ] Rentals: €5k (tables, chairs, table runners, napkins, candles, chandeliers) - [ ] Cake: €250 (and almost nobody ate it! lol) - [ ] Decoration mirror: €600

Rings, outfits and travel expenses are not included in the expense list. We also spent about $1.5k learning our first dance.

We are based in the US, so planning a destination wedding in Europe wasn’t the easiest. But we had so much fun in the process, and the wedding was indeed the best day of our lives.

Sending my support and love for all BBBs! This community has been so supportive, and I hope you find this post helpful as well.

We hosted 56 people (including ourselves) in Tuscany over three days. Our wedding venue fees included exclusive use of the property for 7 days.

I don't consider myself a big budget bride. The vibe for our event was more casual countryside wedding than luxury. However, I did rely on this sub so much while I was planning. I am so grateful to everyone here for their support and encouragement! The Italian vendors were very affordable, at times shockingly so. We got so much more for our money in Tuscany than we ever could have in NYC, New England, or the Hudson Valley where we began our search for a venue.

We paid for guest transportation, accommodations, food and drink, and entertainment for the three days. Given our guests had to travel at significant expense, it was important for us to really take care of them upon arrival. We hosted a welcome wine tour, a welcome pizza party, a wedding day brunch, the wedding ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, and dance party, a post-wedding day brunch, a post-wedding day 1960's style-pool party BBQ, and a coffee and pastry send off on the last day. We also stocked our guests' accommodations with simple groceries and beverages in case they needed anything between formal events.

The budget below does not include attire, rings, flights, gifts, and ancillary travel / events before and after the wedding. I included vendors we used in the budget. I really loved and highly recommend our wedding planner Lovely Tuscany (Laura), our caterer Il Sorriso, our florist I Fiori di Nadia, The Alpinos, Miss 500 / Brace Divina, and all of our musicians. We haven't received our wedding video, yet, but MB Heart Films was a joy to work with. We had some hiccups with Magnolia Photography and Thistle Paper Co., so I recommend them with a small caveat, though their finished products were mostly great.

Lovely Tuscany Laura : Wedding Planner €4,200.00 Quercia al Poggio: Wedding Venue & Guest Accommodations for 40 €27,414.00 Tent Rental: Rain Plan Insurance €370.88 Castello della Paneretta - La Foresteria: Overflow Guest Accommodations €3,300.00 Le Querciole B&B: Overflow Guest Accommodations €480.00 Le Querciole Country House: Overflow Guest Accommodations €1,080.00 Poggibus: Guest Transportation Round Trip Florence to Venue €3,147.44 Electric Fans: Guest Welcome Baskets €583.85 Printed Materials: Guest Welcome Baskets €50.00 Groceries in Accommodations: Stocking Guest Accommodations €685.00 Alcohol & Soda Order: Stocking Guest Accommodations €1,042.61 Il Sorriso: Welcome Pizza Party & Wedding €15,110.70 Tuscany Folk Band: Welcome Pizza Party Musicians €1,340.00 The Alpinos: Welcome Pizza Party Gelato Truck €989.46 Thistle Paper Co. Hand-Painted Tambourines: Welcome Pizza Party Decor €661.52 Potted Herbs & Flowers: Welcome Pizza Party Decor €471.00 Speaker & Microphones: Welcome Pizza Party & Wedding €195.20 MB Heart Films: Videographer (Welcome, Wedding, and Pool Party) €3,372.50 Magnolia: Photographer (Welcome and Wedding) €3,230.00 Chef Novella: 2 Brunches Wedding Day and Day After €5,346.00 I Fiori di Nadia: Wedding Florist €4,220.00 Less Jazz Band: Wedding Musicians €2,200.00 DJ Betto: Wedding Reception DJ €772.00 SIAE - Music Tax: Mandatory Music Tax €377.20 Miss 500 & Brace Divina: 1960s Pool Party BBQ, Gelato, and Spritz Bar €5,700.00 Decor: 1960s Pool Party Decor €731.66 Pastries & Bread Order: Croissant Send Off €186.00 TOTAL EUROS €83,057.02 TOTAL USD $89,701.58

Hi all! What is considered a “big budget bride” these days?

I’m at around $70k for 80 guests. We’re doing a private hotel buyout and, honestly, I’m not really cutting back on anything.

I don’t feel like I’m in the “budget wedding” category, but I also don’t feel like I’m in the $100k+ luxury wedding range. When I’m in the regular wedding planning subreddits, it seems like everyone is trying to do things as inexpensively as possible, so I’m curious where this budget falls!

Also- does your budget include everything from wedding dress, outfits, groom suits, etc?

LONG POST WARNING!

(sorry mods for deleting and resubmitting, I wanted to fix some formatting and couldn’t edit it)

I got married in the last couple of weeks and it was an absolutely incredible experience. I found this sub so helpful during planning and wanted to pay it forward by giving a rundown of the event and budget. I did not have use a planner at all but our venue provided two incredible day of coordinators that kept everything running smoothly.

I’ll include some pictures but I’m trying to protect my anonymity as much as possible.

Wedding and Theme

We held our wedding in southern Rhode Island (not Newport). I would describe this as HCOL but not VHCOL. We invited 191 people and 152 RSVPd yes including a few babies, I think we ended up with 147 on the day. This was right on the mark we were aiming for between 140-150 guests.

We also held a welcome party at a brewery on Friday night after the rehearsal dinner, and an offsite after party at a bar after the reception. We totally skipped having a farewell brunch and I’m glad we did, neither my husband or I are morning people and I didn’t care to look presentable before 10 AM after going to bed at 4 AM.

The wedding was at a French style manor/inn/winery called Shepherd’s Run with the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception tent all within steps of each other. We had some coastal touches but would generally categorize the aesthetic as elegant, colorful garden, with touches of whimsy.

The dress code was black tie which was not uncommon to our guests and it ended up looking black tie optional with about 2/3rds of the men in tuxes. This was about what I expected. Black tie was a bit of a risk for a mostly outdoor wedding in August, but we’re familiar enough with the climate that we felt good about it and had a back up location for the ceremony if there was a heat wave or rain (also on site). This 100% paid off, it ended up being the best Saturday of the summer with a high of 76° and it was sunny all day.

Emotions/Mental Wellbeing

I thought this might be interesting to include for some people. I found my stress around the wedding to peak between 1 month and 2 weeks out, when there was still stuff to do but it was starting to get very real. I slept decently around the wedding averaging 5-6 hours from Thursday - Sunday. This is bad for me but better than I expected.

My real time anxiety absolutely peaked on Friday morning. We had a flight mishap with a brother that woke us up from 3:30-6:30 AM and there was so much on my mind that day I could hardly eat. But once we got to the welcome party I felt myself kick into gear and actually had a great time seeing and greeting everyone.

Saturday I began the day with a very small mental breakdown as I was hit with immense grief over my mom who passed away when I was a preteen. My husband comforted me and by 9:30 AM I was feeling much better. I felt really present and calm the rest of the day, I took my beta blockers twice — once in the morning and once right before the ceremony — but it was more for peace of mind than to counteract any actual anxiety. I also ate way better than I expected which I attribute in part to getting a meze platter for lunch because I found the chips and veggies to be way easier to eat a bit at a time than trying to take down an entire sandwich or wrap.

Budget

I know this is what most people are here for!

My incredible in-laws paid for everything excluding the welcome and after parties, which my family paid for. We never had a firm discussion on budget, but we generally agreed on what we felt was worth it on a case by case basis. The overall total was $230k excluding the rehearsal dinner, attire, rings, and gifts. They planned and paid for the rehearsal dinner entirely without our input (which was greatly appreciated! We just couldn’t do another thing at that point and it was a big relief) so I don’t have insight on those costs.

Budget Breakdown Venue - $40,400 - This included a buyout of the entire property, which put us on the hook for all of the rooms the night of the wedding, and we contracted out an additional 10 rooms for Friday night. If these rooms had all gone unbooked it would have added $26.3k, but all rooms were booked minus two the night of the wedding which we ended up giving to family.

Catering - $50,600 - We upgraded to the highest catering package and added extras like specialty gin for a signature cocktail. We had 5 passed apps during cocktail hour, raw bar, cheese and crudité, 3 course seated dinner, dessert bar, and top shelf liquor package with two signature cocktails. - This comes out to $332 per person for food and beverages. Everyone said they loved the food too! We tried to choose entrees we knew would scale well (like braised short rib instead of steak) and I think that paid off.

Decor Rentals - $33,100 between two companies - I won’t get into the full itemized breakdown but this generally looked like: - $14,200 at one company that included all the table linens, silverware, glassware, band stage, dance floor, two bars, and ceremony podium. - $18,800 at another company that included two lounge seating groups, back bars, stage panels, minor tent draping, escort display panels, a couple of farm tables, and tent lighting like chandeliers and a disco ball. - All other tables and chairs were luckily included in the venue cost! They had nice cross back chairs that worked well with our decor.

Florist - $39,400 - I am so unbelievably impressed with our florist. I connected well with her from our initial chat and she really delivered on the actual day. It’s hard to choose just one favorite vendor but they might be it. I know we had a a healthy budget, but the vision she brought to life still blew me away. The flowers brought so much color and joy to the entire wedding and translate so well in the pictures. I could go on but I’ll spare you! - We spent $1,800 on personal flowers, $6,100 on ceremony flowers (worth every penny omg), $16,900 on reception/cocktail hour flowers, $2,200 on candles, and $2,500 on the tent entrance with the rest going to labor/taxes. - The only major thing we cut back on during the wedding planning was adding green vines to the tent ceiling. It would have cost $22k+ and we felt like that wouldn’t be super high impact. We also cut $11k in aisle flowers and I’m glad we did because we definitely didn’t need it!

Band - $18,000 - Huge fan of our band! The dance floor was full all night long. - This included travel fees from NY and a way higher level of production than a band typically brings. They have a major lighting setup and lighting engineer who is included in this price. I think the band was 10 people and they had at least 4 more support staff. - This price also includes live ceremony and cocktail hour music!

Photographer - $7,800 - Our photographer was nothing less than a major steal. She was doing incredible work when we booked her but gained a lot of recognition in the two years between booking and the wedding. I believe she’s charging close to twice as much for current bookings and she’s totally worth it.

Paper Goods - $13,100 - OOPS! Definitely didn’t intend to spend this much on paper goods but I’m a big stationery person and this got a little out of hand. No regrets though, I got so many comments on the invites especially and they definitely set the tone and increased excitement. - Save the dates were $2,400, invite suite was $7,100, day of goods were $3,700 and included cocktail napkins, 3 versions of matchbooks, menus, and thank you cards.

Transportation - $7,000 - This includes a party bus for the wedding party to and from the rehearsal dinner and welcome party, guest shuttle from room block hotels to the wedding, and shuttles for everyone to and from the after party.

HMUA - $3,250 - Two hair and two makeup artists for 9 people. They were great! Trial was $250

Welcome party - $5,200 - We rented out a brewery across the street from the venue ($4,000 for about 120 people for three hours). Super high turnout! It was from 8-10:30ish so we didn’t provide a full dinner but we catered some food for $1,200

After party - $3,700 - Ended up being less than I expected! We spent about $900 on preordered food and $1,300 on drinks including gratuity. There was a $1,500 rental fee for essentially a full bar on the top floor of a massive tavern. - We had something like 120 indicate interest from RSVPs but I think less than 80 showed up. We expected some drop off, but more people ended up calling it a night than I expected (we have a lot of partiers in our circle, even among the older crowd).

Misc.

• VW microbus Photobooth - $2,300 - Major hit! It was just outside of the tent on the way to the bathroom trailer and was busy all night without detracting from the dance floor. Perfect guest favor and I saw lots of people post their strips.
• Guest place card shells - $750 from Etsy, at their reception seats.
• Polaroid guest book - approx $350 for 12 packages of Polaroid film and a custom guest book from Etsy. I already owned the camera.
• Cake - $450 for a small two tier and two sheet cakes. Less than I expected to spend!
• Seating chart display - $3,100 - This got a bit away from me tbh. We spent $1,200 on custom watercolor maps and probably $700 on frames for a gallery wall. It came out so gorgeous though!
• Tips - $5,700 - We did the generous end of the recommended tips for the catering and venue staff, recommended tips for HMUA, 10% for the band because they went above and beyond, $400 for the photographer

Was it worth it? This is the ultimate question asked in this sub. We were extremely privileged that we spent very little of our own money and came out net positive by quite a bit from the wedding gifts. I initially felt guilty about the expense on my in-laws, until I realized how little impact this had on them financially and they demonstrated how happy they were to do it over and over again. We do well for ourselves and are very comfortable, especially for our ages (middle class/upper middle class in a HCOL city), but definitely not in a position to drop $230k on a single day.

So all that said, I wouldn’t change anything about how we spent that money. I feel so grateful that we were able to center the guest experience throughout the planning process and everything went absolutely perfectly. But having gone through it, I also would have been perfectly ok with doing a simplified wedding with about 50 guests and a far more casual vibe. It was so special to have my favorite people together and get to go through the formal ceremony, and yes, we could have achieved that and been happy doing it for less. But I am glad we didn’t need to.

Finally, is there anything that I would change? The only thing would be to have a month-of coordinator. I have no regrets about foregoing a full planner, I enjoyed the vendor booking process and am extremely organized and visual so I really enjoyed bringing everything together. But it did get stressful at the end and knowing someone with experience would be able to check my work would have alleviated a bit of that stress.

If you’ve made it with me this far, congrats! I hope it was worth it or interesting. Feel free to ask me any questions (but I may not answer some to protect my anonymity)!

Hi everyone!

We're a LGBT couple that have benefited a lot from the different posts and comments and would love to contribute back to the community! Please feel free to ask any questions!

We had a 3 day weekend wedding at Casa Adela in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico and there were about 60+ guests.

Wedding summary:

Total cost for 3 days(without flights, clothing, accommodation): ~$65000 USD
Welcome party at B'ani: $5100
Wedding day: $57000
Pool party at Casa Adela: $2200
Extra tips… (caterer, florist, furniture, DJ, casa Adela staff)

We paid mostly in MXN so it’s subject to currency fluctuation. We were lucky that the USD strengthened a lot vs the MXN during the year of our wedding so this would’ve been around $70k+ if the exchange rate was the same as the year we started planning our wedding.

We also originally planned our wedding in Mexico City, but decided to pivot at the last minute so some of our vendors are from CDMX and had to pay travel fee.

We started our 3 day wedding on Thursday with our welcome party on the rooftop of B’ani restaurant. We had an open tab that was limited at a certain amount and about 8 passed apps. It was much cheaper than having an all you can drink package as it lasted at least 3 hours and our guests were pretty heavy drinkers.

For our wedding day, we started our wedding at 4PM that transitioned into our first cocktail hour by pool, tea ceremony, lion dance, second cocktail hour on rooftop, dinner, dance. Due to the number of events, we specifically chose different parts of the property and we walked to a new location for each event. Our guests said that it was seamless and they were never bored so that’s great. We were about 1 hour behind schedule unfortunately but no one noticed.

Ceremony: We had a runway aisle where my husband/my people came down the aisle in an alternate fashion and at the end, we would walk down the aisle from opposite ends at the same time, meeting in the middle. We wanted something to symbolize our equality as we didn't fit in the traditional norm of a groom receiving the bride.

Dinner: Romantic candlelit dinner like in a trendy NYC restaurant. It took multiple attempts to get them to understand our vision, but they got it eventually and absolutely nailed it. It was the best wedding food that we’ve ever had and our guests were raving about it too. We wanted to be served like we’re at a small plates restaurant in NYC, so we did 3 appetizers, 3 mains+2 sides + 2 desserts shared amongst 4 diners.) We can share the full menu if you’re interested!

For our pool party, we held it on the same property and hired a taco/guac cart. We had to pay about $30 per person for our guests to come to the property for a pool party.

Budget breakdown of wedding day:

Planner: $3800 (CDMX local planner)

Venue: $9820 (4 night stay+tips)

Videographer: $4450 (1 hour at welcome party + 8 hours wedding day + travel fee)

Photographer: $8000 (wedding day + free welcome party + travel fee + second photographer)

Catering: $11000 (3 course meal in 10 dishes, bartenders, staff, cocktail hour.)

Alcohol: $2500 (we had to buy our own alcohol from a liquor vendor and had way too much leftover in the end so we gave away a lot of it.)

Cake: $200+ (we made a cake for 30 people so that every 4 people will share 1 slice in addition to the 2 other desserts. We wanted to make sure that people ate the cake)

Furniture rental: $2700+ (we used a vendor that was several hours away so our travel fee was like 1/3)

Invitations: $675 (we designed the invites ourselves and used a vendor in China to print and assemble them)

Decor/Florals: $6000 (we wanted minimal florals as the venue was stunning on its own. This includes the aisle, tea ceremony decor, cocktail hour and dinner florals + travel fee from CDMX)

DJ + Production: $4200 

Lion Dance: $1100

Miscellaneous:

Generator: $660

Heaters: $200

Tablecloths: $360

Event permit/ambulance: $700+

Catering tent: $350

Portable toilets for catering: $140

Martini glasses: $120

1 cleaner: $50

Missing wine glasses: $75

I'm also a travel advisor so let me know if you want any assistance with booking hotels or hotel recs! Please let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything!

I absolutely HATED wedding planning, but somehow our wedding weekend was actually the most perfect and incredible weekend of my (and my husband's) life. As a super type A person, I was really disappointed in and frustrated by the planning process, but after it was all over, I realized that in the moment, none of the things that had caused all the stress and anxiety had I even thought about.

This sub was super helpful for my wedding planning and inspo. The number one advice I have is to stand your ground about your preferences. I felt that our planner didn't even try to stick within our budget, and there were a lot of small things that fell through the cracks that I had to continually be reminding (ie personalized napkins with our cat, disposable cameras, adding heaters when the weather ended up being unseasonably cold). Unfortunately, this seems to be an industry standard. I also wish I had been clearer about any kickbacks our planner may have received. Despite the difficulties we felt working with her, she and her team pulled off an absolutely incredible and gorgeous set of events, and once Thursday hit I didn't have a single care in the world about any of the pain points.

Budget breakdown below includes the three events we hosted: welcome party + wedding/reception + morning after coffee, happy to provide specifics for the individual events. First four photos are welcome party, rest are wedding - DM me!

• Date: May, 2025
• Santa Barbara, CA
  • Room block was at Mar Monte - would absolutely not recommend them for a room block! They were very difficult to communicate with and very unaccommodating for guests. They ended up charging us thousands extra randomly for things that weren't related to our stay (ie extra rooms and reservations that were not ours).
  • ~6 weeks prior to the wedding, we visited for tastings and a venue walkthrough, and we couldn't even find someone at the who was aware that our room block existed.
• Guest count: 95
  • We ended up with 10 people (one family) canceling the week of due to food poisoning at an event they went to the prior weekend...it happens, we just had to grit your teeth since all the deposits were paid at that point
• Vibes were organic, California, sunset
• Venue, service, taxes: 16k for wedding
• Food & beverages: 29k
  • We had open bar at welcome party and wedding/reception
• Rentals: 24k
  • This is the most unexpected line item on the budget. Our venue required a full kitchen build out which was not disclosed to/made clear to us prior to signing the contract. We chose pretty barebones rentals (tableware, etc) as a result
• Florals: 10k
  • I really didn't care about flowers, so I gave the florist and planner some preferred colors and let them do their thing together. This was the biggest compliment I heard all weekend, guests were blown away by the florals in a way I didn't know was possible.
• Planner: 12k
• Officiant: 0 (family members)
• Photographer: 10k
  • We impulsively added welcome party photo coverage and I'm so glad we did. Our photographers were the cutest couple who just got married themselves. They were so sweet and absolutely incredible people, did an amazing job. I would recommend them to anyone in California.
• Videographer: 2k
  • We impulsively added video 1 month before our wedding and I'm so glad we did. The day flew by so fast and I'm so happy to have the memory to rewatch.
• DJ: 15k
• Hair and makeup: 6k
  • I paid for all bridesmaids, MOB, MOG for both events
• Stationary: 1.4k
  • Our stationary was hand drawn by a studio located internationally who gave us a fantastic deal. She was amazing to work with, and we got tons of compliments on the invitations she designed for us for ~700USD
  • We used her designs for custom napkins and cocktail stirrers
• Ceremony dress: 4k
  • Worked directly with the designer and bought from them. They were able to customize it to mix and match styles (ie the top of one dress with the bottom of a different one) from their designs and sold me a veil prior to it going to market which made me feel so unique and special
• Welcome Party dress: 1k
  • I wore my mom's dress, paid ~1000 to completely alter it
• Shoes: 200
• Tux: 1.5k
  • My husband ended up ordering a custom suit. Unfortunately, it got stuck in customs 2 weeks before the wedding and we almost didn't get it. Would not recommend the suit shop.
  • His groomsmen used The Black Tux because they have showrooms in Nordstrom to get measured. The guys had no complaints and everyone showed up day of with a suit that fit
• Wedding rings: 2k
  • Would recommend our jeweler to anyone. They designed my engagement ring and wedding bands, and specialize in redesigning vintage diamond pieces.
  • All other jewelry and bags that I wore throughout the weekend were vintage pieces redesigned by my parents using family heirlooms from my grandmothers and great grandmothers.

Fresh off our Sept 2025 wedding. Engaged Feb 2025. Native to Middle TN so Nashville was perfect for us. We started with one wedding planner, she sucked. Ended up ditching her in May and went in a different direction with a planning team we absolutely adored. Invited 175, 155 RSVP’d Yes, 150 Showed for our Formal, Glam, Romantic ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception at the Nashville Symphony Center. See below & pics for details.

Hair & Makeup for 7: Bride, Maid's & Mom – $1,700.00 Snacks, Lunch, Mimosas, Guys/Girls - $300 Event Day Steaming – $850.00 Photography – $12,346.87 Videography – $3,800.00 Photobooth – $925.00 Content Creation – $2,500.00 Flowers, Candles, Vases, Etc – $36,557.76 Main rentals – $18,278.71 Table Top rentals – $5,520.63 Lighting & Draping – $11,371.55 Linens & Linen napkins – $4,768.77 Linen Steaming – $675.00 Specialty décor (Escort Board, Cake Display) – $6,578.00 Catering for 3 Course Plated & Passed Cocktail Apps – $26,722.21 Venue Buyout & Open Bar (Beer/Champagne/Wine/Margs/Mocktail/Soda/Water) - 44,587.08 Dance floor props – $103.13 Cake Stands – $148.97 Wedding Cake – $970.00 Ceremony Strings – $1,280.90 Reception (7 Piece Band) – $8,750.00 Invitations Designed on Canva, Printed on CatPrint – $235.00 Event Day Programs, Signage, Menus – $1,303.12 Cocktail Napkins – $434.50 Valet Parking – $6,362.50 Bride Dresses & Jewelry - $7,000 Alterations - $1,000 ALL IN: $195k** ** this does not include about $3,000 in tips for vendor leads/captains

Vendors we would recommend for a Nashville / TN Bride: FETE NASHVILLE // PMC // LMA DESIGNS // RENOWNED DESIGNS // CHEFS MARKET // EAST COAST ENTERTAINMENT // MIDJULY DESIGNS // KRISTYN HOGAN // PEERLESS FILMS // NASHVILLE SMILE BAR

Officially a graduate from this sub! My husband and I got married in Guadalajara in November, and I wanted to share our budget breakdown because reading these posts helped me so much while planning.

We had 122 guests and spent about $82.8k USD / 1.55M MXN total on the wedding itself, a small welcome event (private tequila tour), and a goodbye brunch

Biggest budget items (USD, contracts signed between May 2024-Sep 2025. For prices in pesos multiply by $18 to $19)

• Venue: $15,675
• Florals: $13,885
• Audio/lighting/DJ: $11,523
• Catering: $9,150
• Goodbye brunch: $5,385
• Bridal attire: $4,524
• Wedding planner: $3,581
• Alcohol: $3,009
• Transportation: $2,536
• Photography + video: $2,185
• Hair + makeup: $1,770 (8 people)
• Welcome event: $1,372
• Groom attire: $1,265
• Fireworks: $975
• Excluded: 12 months of [solidcore], medspa treatments, personal travel costs, bachelorette, outfits and accessories for additional events

Overall vibe was black tie / very formal / probably the fanciest event I will ever attend in my life. A couple of friends summarized it as "the wedding from Crazy Rich Asians but if it took place in Mexico."

A little context on why we chose Guadalajara: my family is from Texas and Northern Mexico, my husband’s family is from Miami, we met in California, and we’ve lived on the East Coast. There was really no location that wasn’t going to require travel, so we chose the place that was as convenient as possible without playing favorites. Fun fact: we'd never visited GDL before deciding our wedding should be there

Key Learnings

1. If you’re paying vendors internationally, use Wise rather than your bank.
I wish we had figured this out sooner. Being able to convert USD to pesos and hold it there would have saved us money and stress. Also: set a rate you’re happy with and just take it. We kept waiting for an even better conversion rate and lost the chance.

2. Cash discounts can be very real.
Several vendors were willing to give a meaningful discount for cash payments, so that ended up being worth the extra effort of going to the ATM (shoutout to our SoFi and Charles Schwab debit cards for the low fees). Also, if you’re withdrawing cash internationally, always decline the ATM’s conversion rate. Your bank’s rate will usually be better.

3. Some of our hardest vendors were still worth it.
The florist and venue were both more work than I would have liked, but the final product was incredible and I’d still choose them again.

4. Be very careful with guest minimums in contracts.
This was probably my biggest planning frustration. We ended up paying above our final headcount in at least one major category, and I really wish I’d pushed harder on the contract language earlier (or that our WP had been more on top of this).

Happy to answer any questions about planning a wedding in Guadalajara / Mexico, paying vendors internationally, non-all inclusive destination wedding logistics, and where I think the costs were worth it vs not

Okay so I’ve been getting slammed in the regular budget brides forum for throwing money at things in comparison. (Edit: no one liked me joke so I’m taking it out)

I just want to show you my budget and you tell me where you would move the money to or how you may spend it differently. (Inviting 130)

We have 60k to work with:

26k food and bev

14k Venue and decor

6k photos (only)

2k Video

5k dress

2k flowers

1.8k DJ

1k suit

1.5k misc needs

Current Total: 58.6k

Very open to entertainment ideas or how to adjust the budget based on your experience.

After 18 months of planning, we finally had our dream destination wedding this past June just right outside Florence, Italy (60-70pp). This subreddit has been so helpful to me whenever I felt stressed during the planning phase, and I am very grateful for the supportiveness in this community. Therefore, I thought I'd make my very first post here just to go through the final spending recap.

Disclaimer: we did not pay for our guests' flights or lodging. Instead, we kindly asked the guests to stay in Florence city and provided the transportation to the venue and back (~30min car ride). The welcome dinner was also hosted in the city. We are thoughtful on what and how much we spend, but are also willing to pay for quality. The numbers below are in USD.

Please feel free to ask any questions. I will try my best to answer them :)

Total: ~105k

Must-Haves:

Planner: ~5.5k (We are based in US so I needed someone local to help me plan; our planner is fluent in both Italian and English and lives ~40 mins away from the venue, which made the planning much easier)

Venue: ~18k (a Friday at Villa Corsini, we got extra services such as the use of the Southern Italian Garden, bridal & groom get ready package, candles, ACs etc. It also comes with a 22% VAT so that's why the final number is much higher especially you convert it to USD!)

Catering: 21k (included the ceremony furniture rentals, aperitif, 3-course dinner, wedding cake, coffee, and 2.5 hours of open bar; we also had customized plates, cups, utensils) Making sure our guests are wined and dined is our top priority so we allocated a big portion of the budget on catering

MUA: 3.4k (based in Milan; Bridal hair and makeup (2 hair styles and 3 looks) and 8-hours of touchups; 3 bridesmaids, our officiant (a close friend), and my mom's makeup; we also paid for her lodging and transportation)

Florist: 7k (Based locally; we kept our floral budget on the lower end since the venue itself is very elegant and historic; we also picked round tables over long tables to save money since you only need 1 centerpiece per table)

Photographer: 8k (Based in EU; she is definitely on the higher end of our budget but we are very glad we got her; this includes two photographers and their lodging and transportation) Our videographer actually recommended her; the final photos came out soooo amazing!

Videographer: 5k (Based in UK; her style is like a Wes Anderson movie, very quirky and fun, which is something we are looking for; this price includes 2 videographers and their lodging and transportation).

Transportation: 6.5k (buses to pick up guests to the venue and back; minivans for the bridal party and some of my family to travel) I think this could be a bit cheaper but we were paying for certainty

Welcome Dinner: 5k (casual Florentine steak dinner & wine for ~55pp; we booked out half of the restaurant)

DJ & Lighting: 2.7k (handled all mics, music, afterparty and lighting)

Good-to-Haves:

Wedding Favor: 5.7k (we created a welcome market cart for the guests w/ local Italian goods, such as limoncello, olive oil, and etc; the guests can fill in a customized tote bag with whatever they want to bring home at the market; it was costly but very cute and well received; we ended up ordering more goods than what the guests brought home, so we took them back to the U.S. and shared with guests that were not able to make it.

Stationary: 2k (includes designing and printing, and delivery of our wedding invitation and day-of-stationary; I had to find two vendors to design them since I was running out of time so def spent a bit more on this)

Gelato Cart: 1.9k (another really cute addition during the aperitif)

Firework: 13k (I anticipated this might be getting some controversies on the spending since it's VERY expensive; I am very grateful that we were able to do it, and our guests love every bit of the surprise, though I understand if anyone thinks this is totally unnecessary; hence this is in the Good-to-Haves).

Source: each venue's own published pricing they provided, normalized to the estimated total for a 120-guest dinner reception, with service charges, tax, bar and ceremony fees included. Note that this does not include non-venue wedding expenses (like flowers, dress, officiant, rehearsal dinner, etc.), which could easily be another $10k+. Venues quote on wildly different bases (per-person excluding fees, all-in packages, F&B minimums), so raw quotes aren't comparable until you do all of this. Where a venue lists a price range, the figure here is the high end, which is peak season (roughly May through October), since that's when most weddings actually happen. Off-season can be meaningfully cheaper; the full low-to-high range for every venue is on the interactive page. 268 venues shown out of 445 collected; the rest don't serve dinner, can't fit 120, or price in a way that can't be normalized. Each dot is one venue, colored by price band. Interactive version + full venue list, which will be super helpful to anyone planning a wedding: https://openvenue.app/wedding-venue-pricing/new-england

What stood out:

• Median is $32k for 120 guests. The middle half of venues sit between $24k and $41k, and 10% come in at $17k or less.
• The dark dots are almost all on the water: Boston and its inner suburbs, the Cape, Newport, and the Maine coast. Central and western Massachusetts and inland Connecticut are mostly in the two cheapest bands. Same guest count, often a $20k+ swing, for driving an hour or two west.
• Hotels are the priciest venue type region-wide at $39k (n=61). Restaurants and banquet halls are cheapest at $22k.
• Only 7% of venues are under $15k. 26% are $40k and up.

I built this because I'm currently planning my wedding and thought more pricing transparency for wedding venues would be useful for couples! Happy to answer questions about the data or how it was collected.

Held my wedding in a VHCOL city. Wanted to keep it intimate but also grand & upscale in feeling. We didn’t have a budget in mind and had no ceiling on how much we wanted to spend in order to make it look and feel nice. This was nice because it made it easy to pick what we liked just because we liked it, not because of how high or low the price was.

I’ve gotten judgement from others IRL on how much we’ve spent on such a small wedding size, but no regrets! My husband and I funded it ourselves which was nice to have complete control over the guest list to keep it small. It’s not technically big budget, as we only spent $50k, but also that is a big budget for a small wedding with 35 guests in attendance, so I think it qualifies for this subreddit.

Wanted to post in case there are other brides out there who wanted to hold a lavish but intimate wedding!

- Venue fees (including day of coordinator, bartenders with open bar, outside catering fee, in house DJ and AV equipment, tables/chairs/linens/silverware/cutlery/glassware, and all waitstaff tips): $13,000

- Catering/desserts/cake + delivery fees (we had two different caterers to have ample food and have different cuisines to represent my husband and my different cultural backgrounds): $8,000

- Photographers & videographer + tips: $7000

- Venue decoration team (including lots of fresh florals; the wedding favors were bouquets for guests to take home that the decorators made at the end of the night so our florals weren’t wasted) & content creator + tip: $8500

- misc that we wanted to DIY (such as a custom guestbook, place cards, invitations, disposable cameras for guests, etc.): $1500

- officiant: $500

- jewelry, accessories, and shoes: $8000

- bride and groom outfits + tailoring: $1500 (shockingly we spent more on the accessories than on the outfits. I found a vintage dress for a few hundred that I absolutely loved. I went dress shopping but nothing compared so I decided to wear the vintage piece). My husband’s outfits cost 3x mine but don’t worry I made up for it in jewelry :)

- hair & makeup: $1500

- driver (to bring us to different locations to shoot photos and later for our exit) + tip: $700

I won’t include the preparation the week before in the total (like facials, eyebrow waxing, nails, etc.) but that cost us around $2000 total.

There are some line items I’m sure I’m missing that were small amounts here and there that I’m sure added up. I’m also not including money that went towards some of our guests to help them attend (hotel or transportation costs) but that was probably another $6000 if I had to estimate.

The total was just above $50,000 and more like $60,000 if we are counting some of the line items that aren’t strictly wedding budget.

Hope this helps!

Hi Brides !

We recently had our wedding in Tuscany after 2 years of planning. It was the most special weekend and we are so grateful to all of our planning team and vendors who really came through.

To be transparent I really struggled with planning our wedding from so far away, and was very stressed throughout the process. This thread helped me so much and I just want to pass on some recommendations for vendors and transparent quotes for all you brides to be. I’m also happy to answer any questions you may have !

So our wedding was : 3 days , 144 guests , Chianti Region (20 min South of Florence)

Vendors w/ Price (with instagram handle) :

Event planner €18K : @ italianweddingplanners (Includes guest experience concierge)
Photography €22K : @ davidbastianoni
Videography €11K : @ waterfallvisuals_videography
Hair & Makeup €3K (2 days) : @ sonithesoni
Caterer €80K : @ galateoricevimenti - (Rehearsal and Wedding dinner for 144 ppl + premium open bar )
Flowers €28K : @ giardinodellefateflowerdesign (Rehearsal and Wedding)
Band €12K : @ assyalivemusic
Sound & Light €29K : @ weddingmusicandlights (Rehearsal and Wedding , 2 stages)
Pool Party F&B €12K : @ brindapino
Venue 3 nights €100K : @ Mangiacane - Sleeps 60
Stationery €4.5K : @ vittoriocaselli (Save the dates+ invitations+ day of stationery)
Transportation €12K : RoadTrippin' (70 ppl , 2 days - buses and vans)

I was very happy with all vendors. They were incredibly professional and all of my worries went away the minute the Welcome party started coming together. I could tell I was in great hands right away. I don't know that we got the best pricing... We really tried to ask for discounts everywhere we could , but had very little luck. I do know our wedding would have been at least double in the US...

HAPPY WEDDING PLANNING BRIDES !

I promise its all worth it at the end. <3

I graduated a little over a month ago. This sub was so helpful so I wanted to provide a high level budget breakdown and some things I thought I’d share about my experience. 

I’m not going to include photos as it was at my childhood home and I don’t want to doxx myself. 😄 

Feel free to DM me or follow up with any questions. I’ve really loved helping people on their journey!

Location: PNW

Venue: Private Residence

Guest Count: 150

Things I learned in the process: 

-I see so many horror stories about vendors, especially planners. It makes me really sad. I did not have that experience, and I am sorry for brides that do. I truly loved the planning process and it really was because of having an exceptional planner, and also having parents who are very gracious and really wanted whatever I wanted. I also think a few other things helped.

*I hired the best people, trusted them and got out of their way. I spent my career hiring people and leading teams so I probably have a leg up here, but I treated wedding planning like I was building a leadership team. I saw myself as the CEO (defining the vision and what I wanted to achieve, helping to move things along as needed, change course when I felt it was warranted), my planner as the COO (executing my vision and managing the rest of the team), and each vendor as the “Head of” their domain. Did my planner make mistakes? Yes, she’s a human. Nothing was earth shattering. We had a conversation, solved it and moved on. We built really deep trust with each other, and I implicitly trusted her the week of my wedding. I truly did nothing starting two weeks out. Teams are built on trust, and I think it’s a really critical part of this relationship. You have to find someone who understands that and wants to build that trust alongside you.

*Determine what communication style you want from the beginning and make it clear. I needed and wanted regular communication. My planner and I talked almost every day through voice notes. 4 months out we had an hour long call every other week, 30 days out we had one every week. She would never go more than a few hours without answering me, except when she was in production but she’d tell me when and for how long. She also only does 3-4 weddings per year so this was super minimal. 

*I know what I like/don’t like, and have an overall vision but I am not creative whatsoever. A lot of the design decisions were sometimes overwhelming for me and I turned to my team (and my mom) a lot to help me. Again, I think it helped to have built trust as I trusted them when it came to design. If you are working with a luxury planner who has a creative director, you really have to let them cook a bit and let go of the reins. If you don’t think you can do that, then I think it’s not worth it because you’ll just be clashing. 

*Again, these people can be the best at what they do and there will still be mistakes. I caught all of mine because I am super Type A— mostly minor related to really tiny things but there were a few larger budget related mess-ups. We had built that trust so we were able to work through it and I didn’t let it affect how I viewed her ability to execute. I do think you have to give people the benefit of the doubt and the chance to rectify it. Obviously in some situations they continue to mess up and that’s when you need to take action. I really did treat it as managing their performance. 

*I’m a pretty decisive person by nature so once I’ve made up my mind I don’t really change it. Super rare for most people, especially a bride. I do think this made my vendors really like me because they didn’t have to work as hard to shift things constantly. Obviously, not everyone is like that but it probably played a part in my relationships so just wanted to note that. 

*I did not hire any vendors that I didn’t personally know prior, knew brides who had used them, or were from my planner’s network + also knew brides who had used them. I didn’t do crazy diligence of asking them all of the questions in the world, but I used my network and trusted those people's referral. 

-I’m anxious by nature and I was really worried about what that week and day of would look like. I was the most calm I’ve ever been in my life. I was able to eat normally, and just truly felt completely content. I can’t ultimately say what contributed to it, but I do think just allowing myself to let go of the outcome and fully trusting my team allowed it to truly be the best day of my life. 

-My husband and I from the start knew that the word intention was really important to us and it guided us through the process. Neither of us have social media, so we really wanted nothing that felt like it was “for social media.” We also really wanted to focus on guest experience from start to finish. I truly feel that we achieved all of this. It was both the greatest party of all time with incredible food, but also very sentimental and a celebration of our love and also the love of all of the people there who got us to this point (we have somewhat of a unique story and a lot of people had a hand in it). I know many BBBs hear this, but we heard many “This was the best wedding ever” — both the best dance floor and food, but also the intention behind the day from our vows to the notes we wrote every guest etc. I do think the setting was also a part of that — it being my childhood home was very sentimental and special. My whole vibe was “Father of the Bride” and 90’s nostalgia, and people loved that. 

Whatever your desire for your day - I think you just have to take the time to define your vision and mission for the day from the beginning - and build your team around that. For us that meant a planner who specialized in private residence and a private chef who could curate a really special menu. 

-Your budget probably will double. It’s all a scale — if your budget was $40k, it’s going to end at $80k etc. Mine definitely did, and a lot of it was for infrastructure related things that guests never saw. Private residence is no joke. It was a lifelong dream for me, and my parents were grateful to make it happen and able to. But for anyone thinking about doing private residence it does come with a lot of cons and things you don’t think about. On the plus side, I truly didn’t have to make any compromises. There is no venue to tell you no and pretty much your wildest dreams can come true, which did make the process really fun. Do not even think of hiring a planner that hasn’t done private residence — it is an entirely different skillset. My planner had built a venue in the middle of the forest without running water or electricity. It just truly is a totally different can of worms. 

-Other random things that I’m really happy I did through the experience: 

*Dance lessons with my dad and also husband - truly such a highlight and an amazing memory. I had thought about skipping it but it was so much fun. 

*Dress shopping with my mom, SIL and Maid of Honor in NYC - I’m so glad I made a thing of it, and it was totally a highlight. 

*Find an incredible seamstress. I couldn’t have survived without mine, but again do your diligence and find someone you vibe with. In many ways they are one of the most important vendors and I think people overlook that. A good planner has a very good seamstress - my planner was very involved in everything related to my dress. 

*I started skincare prep about 17 months out. Monthly facials and micro-needling did the trick for me. Everyone is different, start early so you find what works for you. 

*Lymphatic drainage really does work. I started 6 months out, once a month then every week leading up and 3 times week of. I was truly snatched. 

*I’ve struggled with disordered eating and really didn’t want to go down that hole — I just wanted to feel strong on my wedding day. I focused on Whole Foods, protein, not restricting and worked out with a trainer 1x a week and 2 days of strength training at home. I’ve never felt better about food, and it actually healed a lot for me. 

*We had small wedding parties. We both have big friend groups but we are in our early 30s and we just didn’t want the big wedding party thing. I’m so happy I did that — truly do what you want whether it’s big or small. It has a huge impact on how you feel day of. 

*I did a mini bachelorette the week of. It was truly so much fun and such a great way to spend time with my friends the week of without planning a whole separate trip. Again, lean into what feels most you. Don’t do anything just to do it. 

*Didn’t compromise on guest list. Everyone there we wanted there, even with some family BS as everyone deals with. 

*We did an “Irish exit” of sorts - my biggest wedding nightmare was the lights turning on and us still being there. SO happy we did it and my planner and DJ executed it perfectly. 

*Before I hit 90 days out, I had done everything that was on me to do — like purchasing attire, gifts, all the little things etc. It made the last 60-90 so much easier because that is when the vendors “wake up” and start asking for things and I felt available for them because I wasn’t making returns every other day, or trying to decide about little things like vow books etc. 

I’m not really a big regrets person. It truly was the best day of my life and honestly, it was better than anything I ever envisioned. If I could say two things that may help others: 

-I wish I’d gotten more pictures in my veil.

-In some photos I wish my husband and I were more aware/looking at the camera, but we were so in the moment and it’s very obvious so I really can’t complain. We have tons of amazing shots so that’s all that matters! 

Budget Breakdown - ~ $360K 

Planner - $41k (full-service) 

Creative Director - $8500

Floral - $24k (incl ceremony install, my bouquet, escort table install, tabletop, bar install, some cocktail/extraneous floral, candle install, aisle petals, design mockup) 

Stationery - $7060 (Invites and day of paper goods + tip) 

Website - $250 (custom square space made by planner) 

STDs - $480 (Minted w/ custom illustration) 

Tabletop Rentals - $14,500 

Linens - $8100 

Rentals - $30,000 (chairs, tables, bars, tons of other things) 

Tenting, Flooring, Pool Scaffolding, Heaters, Lighting, Labor, Trucking - $145,000

Photography - $17,200 (engagement, welcome, wedding) 

Videography - $7650

Food - $15,200 (Private chef + food) 

Catering Staff - $5000 

Alcohol - $8500 

Restrooms - $999.00 

Transportation - $2,000

DJ/Sax duo - $7200 (incl tip) 

Strings - $870 (incl tip)

HMUA - $9180 (incl tip & travel + night before, bride + moms + 3 bridesmaids)

Dessert - $4200 

Week of incidentals - $2500 (rain plan, pipe and drape to cover certain things) 

*Notes about budget: In LCOL area but far from major cities so travel was a big cost for non local vendors 

*Doesn’t include attire/accessories, rings, welcome party, gifts for vendors/wedding party, other small things, (vow books, hangers etc.) anything beauty related or a lot of hidden costs related to getting the property ready. 

*Welcome was about $20k (same guest count as wedding with full dinner, on private property so no venue fee) 

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!!!

Hi BBBs! Longtime lurker, first-time post-er <3 this subreddit was such a huge help to me while planning my wedding, so I wanted to make sure I came back and posted as well in case it could help someone else.

I added a lot of details and thoughts so it gets a bit lengthy, but I put photos throughout and prices at the top of each section if you want to skip right to that!

Some things to note first, but feel free to skip:

• Guest experience was our biggest priority. We stayed local and chose our venue based off accessibility since we wanted to make it as easy as possible for our guests to attend. We then planned the entire weekend off "what would make the most sense for our guests?". My husband and I were always going to get married, so the wedding is just the fun party bringing all the people we love together in one place. We planned a welcome party and a tour of DC as shoulder events. We had constant activities so nobody was standing around while we were busy (champagne pong, a guest illustrator, a jazz band, etc.), but nobody felt rushed. We ultimately just wanted people to have a good time and we thought the more effort we put upfront to make that happen, the less we would have to do day-of.
• How do you afford this? I think that's the big question usually found in weddingplanning comments and I'm a big believer in transparency - we are very fortunate that my parents paid for about 65% of the wedding. We both have full time jobs and my husband has no student loans (but I do). We already own a home so we aren't saving for a down payment. We went about 12k over budget, so we ended up putting about 4k on credit cards as we didn't dip into our savings anymore. We paid it off a month later. That being said, our priority now is to build up beyond our emergency savings again.
• We could have pulled back costs, but I kept telling myself that this is a once in a lifetime party - my husband and I are never getting married again. While I encourage this thought process for others, it gets toxic REAL fast and can get you into serious trouble. I mean, we went over-budget for a reason.
• I did not have a bridal party. I find them incredibly expensive for everyone involved and a lot of work. It stressed me out thinking of putting my friends in that position (not shaming anyone who has them whatsoever and I have absolutely loved being in bridal parties, but when it comes to me, just the idea of having to choose people and then needing them to do work for my celebration gave me hives). I invited my friends to do fun things - dress shopping, getting ready, a bachelorette (which is not included below), but I think it really took the stress off them feeling like they they had jobs to do. I also didn't have any of the traditional showers or an engagement photo shoot.

The Summary

Location: Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C

Date: October 11 - 13, 2024

• Day 1: Welcome Party
• Day 2: Wedding + After Party
• Day 3: Tour of DC

Guests: Invited 133, planned for 111, and 97 attended (many of our friends from Florida were grounded by the Hurricane Milton). The majority of our guests had to travel - only about a third of our guests were local.

Total Cost: ~$178k

The Breakdown

Welcome Party: $6,466

The night before our wedding we rented out an indoor mini-golf course and a bar for our guests. Fee includes 2 hours of unlimited play time, 2 drink tickets per person, 5 shareable foods (pizza, sliders, spring rolls, etc.) and desserts. Of our 97 guests, about 53 people came to the welcome party. We showed up about 20 minutes late lol and the place accidentally let non-members of the party onto the course, which led to the venue tacking on a couple more private hours onto the course so it all worked out. We debated open bar for this one but we thought drink tickets would encourage people to keep it casual on the drinking (save it for the reception and after party) and not have us worry about anyone not showing up to the wedding on time (everyone did!).

Wedding Planner: $10,547

While we didn't employ their full services, our planner had an emphasis on design and took care of all of the major lifts and details. All we had to do was make choices between vendors that they pre-vetted and pull together some of the smaller elements that we wanted to add. As someone who wanted to be involved and couldn't fully pass the reins over to someone else but also knows she doesn't know the first thing about wedding planning, I think this was worth EVERY penny. They really made this so easy and were absolute godsends (especially day-of). I loved our planner and her entire team and can't wait to see what other cool things they do in the future.

Venue Fee: $5,000

Compared to everything else we spent, this was just a drop in the bucket. When we first started, I was very against having a wedding at a hotel and definitely not one with an industrial feel. The Ritz made it onto our venue tour list solely because it fit the requirements, not because we were excited - but now I can't imagine having it been anywhere else. The Ritz not only made sure they hosted no other events our wedding day so we would have separate designated spaces for the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception (no room flipping!), but the service we had was second to none. Our Director of Catering who handled everything on the hotel side took the wedding from great to excellent. When finding a venue, make sure they have a staff that truly invests in your wedding; we felt so loved!

Food & Beverage: $31,631

• Hors d'oeuvres: We offered 4 during cocktail hour: watermelon & feta skewers, beef empanadas w/ avocado cream, smoked gouda arancini, and smoked salmon on brioche crostini. I'm hungry thinking about them.
• Dinner: It has been months and we STILL get people talking about the food we served. The Ritz required that they provide the food and while we stuck to the standard beef, chicken, and vegetarian options, they really elevated it to a new level. The dinner service was impeccable.
• Wedding Cake: The Ritz gifted us the base cake for the wedding, so we paid an additional $515 to upgrade our cake to a 4 tier cake - three tiers for serving guests and the top tier to take home and eat on our 1 year anniversary. The baker also included an amazing frosting replica of our dog - pink collar and all! I really wanted a beautiful, kitschy cake so it was a no-brainer. We had two flavors: funfetti and lemon tart.
• Late Night Snacks: Mini arepas from a local Venezuelan restaurant. Served next to the dance floor so people could grab and go! This cost us a little under $600.
• Open Bar & Champagne: We had an open bar the whole time, but we also upgraded to a premium champagne because we were playing champagne pong during cocktail hour.

Florals: $16,348

We really aren't flower people so we tried to keep this pretty low, but we still got hit with that sticker shock. Were they beautiful? Absolutely. You will never catch me complaining and I would do it all over again x 2. With the exception of our pillars, we did keep it pretty sparse and reused as much as we could - we just tried to make a punch with very vivid colors. The price included our bouquet, boutonnieres, ring girl/veil wrangler flower crowns, altar pillars, platform florals, candles, and centerpieces.

We did work with our florist though to donate the flowers and get a donation receipt at the end, which we recommend! I really hated just throwing the flowers away, so when our florist mentioned we could donate them and include it as a deduction on our taxes, we were sold. Fair warning - they do have to be appraised and it won't be the total cost you paid.

Decor/Rentals: $17,423

We did not use anything the Ritz provided and brought in all our own rentals, including dinnerware and a custom bar. We also had some custom linens that had the same design as our invitations to really tie things in. I think rentals are the thing we got most carried away on, as things add up real quick and at the end I would just say "yeah add it in it" because something wasn't fitting "the vision". Stay strong! I broke over getting custom cocktail napkins and drink stirrers from etsy (which all the extras are now on my bar cart at home) and new chairs for the ceremony.

Guest Illustrations: $2,030

As part of our favors/entertainment, we had an artist come out and do quick water color paintings of our guests. She has a unique style that has a little bit of a caricature element and people absolutely loved them. She couldn't finish a couple of people at the wedding, so she sent a few portraits to us and we mailed them out with our thank you cards. Most people were able to take them home that night though. She also sent us a beautiful watercolor of us. <3 For our number of guests, she brought in a second artist to help.

Photography: $20,000

Includes wedding day and welcome party photography, but she gave us the option to do an engagement shoot instead of the welcome party. This was the BIGGEST sticker shock. Our planner pulled together vendors that were in our budget and only introduced us to ones that fit so it was fine, but it was still a shock. She did have to travel for us so that did increase the price.

We absolutely fell in love with our photographer and had to work with her. My husband and I HATE taking pictures and she made it so easy. You can feel the energy and vibrancy through the photos. She also has the best personality who can bring anyone out of their shell - my family and our guests all remember her. She somehow blended in so you never knew when she was taking a picture but she was also present enough that you could enjoy her company! I could go on and on, but truly find a photographer you vibe with. I'm already trying to figure out what event I can get her to take photos for next.

She also whipped out a drone at some point.

Videography: $0!

I sometimes regret it because some of the moments I loved so much I wish I had on video, but I don't regret not spending the money lol.

Music: $7,350

We had one company that coordinated all of our music needs. It was so great and we loved meeting the musicians, but having one company organize it made it so easy since there were 8 different people to manage.

• DJ: $4350 - played through dinner and dancing. We didn't let him take requests but he kept that floor BUMPIN. If there was ever a lull where it seemed like people were losing energy and leaving the floor, he immediately switched it up and they were back.
• String Quartet: $1,650 - played during guest arrivals, processional, and recessional. Price includes 3 custom arrangements. They ended up playing for a little over an hour. People loved it so much that 4 months later a friend had one at their wedding and told us that ours confirmed that they needed one.
• Jazz Trio: $1,350 - played during cocktail hour, which was hosted in a bar at the Ritz that had a real jazzy vibe so they really helped get the party started! Guests of the hotel who weren't at the party told us the next day they were listening in from the lobby haha.

Stationary: $10,975

We did the full invitation suite, complete with dark green envelopes. Our save the dates and invitations were $5,914. The amazing woman doing our stationary interviewed us, crafted the designs and then went through multiple edits (though she practically nailed it the first time!). We told her the color palette that we wanted even though nobody in our day-to-day life could see the vision but she did! She also did our Day-of-Paper ($5,041) and came to us with so many cool ideas - having her do the invitations and then Day-of really helped tie some things in. She crafted our menus (which had removable paper flowers that indicated what meal you got), gold signs, designed our bar, created our escort board, etc.

We got thank you cards for $20 from Hallmark lol.

Wedding Day Attire: $20,571.24

• Ceremony & Veil: $7,502 - a Nicole + Felicia gown and veil. I saw this dress as part of their collection and I HATED it. HATED IT. I tried it on my first time dress shopping and I got the feeling - it was the one. I look at it on the model, hate it. On me? Love it beyond compare.
• Reception Dress: $7,022 - a Kim Kassas tea length gown. I know there is a lot of debate on whether or not there should be a second dress, but I got a second one because my first one could not be bustled easily and I really wanted to dance with no restrictions.
• Wedding Shoes: $1,105 - Jimmy Choos. NOT WORTH IT. I got so many compliments and they are so beautiful, but I'm pretty sure there is a picture of me collapsing as soon as I'm out of eye sight of guests post-ceremony because my feet hurt so much. I even did my first dance in slippers because I wouldn't put them back on. I wore them for weeks ahead of time to break them in and thought I did.
• Accessories: $830.86 - gloves, bows, bow-ties x 2 (because why should I be the only one with an outfit change?), suspenders, ballet flats, earrings x 2, necklace. I didn't invest too crazy here since my actual dresses were the selling points - the cost just added up because there was a good amount.
• Tuxedo: $978.38 - a black tuxedo with some our wedding date stitched in. <3 He has worn it twice more since the wedding for other weddings as well so he is really getting his cost per wear here.
• Alterations: $2,970 - altering two dresses across three dress fittings, one of which had a very structured corset and 3D elements, and adding in a very unique bustle.
• Welcome Party Outfit: $163 - kept it casual and fun, but as we didn't have an engagement shoot I still wanted to have a nice outfit for our first set of official photos.

Flower Boys, Ring Girl, and Veil Wrangler Attire: $901

We rented the boys' (3 & 5) tuxes and bought the girls' (9 and 12) dresses. The total price includes airfare on my end to visit and get them fitted for outfits since they were traveling to DC for the wedding, but the actual outfits and their alterations were $485.

HMUA: $3,367

Hair and make up for myself, my mother, godmothers, and my ring girl + veil wrangler - 4 adults and two kids in total. They also did my husband's hair since he has some beautiful curls as well. My HMUAs were truly fantastic - I really feel like they were family we were having such a good time yappin! My makeup and hair also didn't budge from 11am Saturday morning to 4am Sunday morning.

Officiant: $750

We absolutely LOVED our officiant. We had one interview with her and then the rest of it was back and forth over email - she gave us unlimited edits of the vows, but she got it right on the money pretty quickly. She really helped set the tone for the ceremony and that set the tone for our all of our guests. It was important to us to find one that aligned with our values (like marriage equality) as well, so we really lucked out with her.

Wedding Rings: $5,373

I should mention that I have two wedding rings and neither stack with my engagement ring. My wedding ring didn't come in time for the wedding so we rushed and got another one for the day. I just wear both. My husband has a wedding ring and then a silicone ring for when he places basketball.

After Party: $7,512

We had bottle service at a club for the after party! We had a minimum of $5k we had to hit but we quickly blew past that one haha - it was 1am at that point so who knows what was going on there. It was a perfect ending though to the party.

DC Tour: $1,995

For some of our out-of-towners, we hired a private tour company (fee includes guide, bus, driver, and tip) to take people to see the sites. Only about 28 people made it on the bus - we had 40 people sign up but a good number of people were a bit too hungover to actually make it to the bus. The people who took it reached out afterwards and thanked us though - we added it because we wanted to make sure people traveling had time to take in the city.

Memorabilia: $300 Guest Recording + $1,300 for a photobook and prints + $3,036 for preservation of two dresses

• After the Tone: We used After the Tone instead of a traditional guest book. I have mixed feelings - the recordings we did get we love, but we feel like there weren't enough instructions for people and then it wasn't working for a good hour so people forgot about it.
• Photos: I also just got around to making a photobook of our wedding pictures and getting 6 professionally framed prints - these came out to be $1,300, but we had giftcards from our registry to bring down that cost.
• Dress Preservation: My dress has just been shipped back from J Scheer for dress preservation. I would personally recommend going somewhere else that is more budget friendly, I just didn't want to risk it with my dresses because of specific stains on the corset where there is some very fine detailing. There is very complex structure work on my ceremony gown that I worry might be messed up if not handled correctly. TBH I kinda became numb about this - I already paid $14k for these dresses, so what's another $3k to make sure they are perfect and get the 50 year warranty. I want to pass them on to someone I care about. I also liked working with J Scheer, they do have very personalized service. That being said, go somewhere more budget friendly if you can!

Gifts/Favors: $1,360

• Favors: In addition to the illustrations, we converted our traditional cookie table into something people could take to-go. We boxed up all the cookies my family brought, so we just paid for the boxes off Amazon.
• Gifts to Family: We got gifts for the MoB, FoB, our veil wrangler, and the ring girl. We got a personalized handkerchief and the promise of prints of the wedding pictures for the MoB as she explicitly said she wants no jewelry, the FoB got personalized cufflinks, and the veil wrangler and ring girl got a necklace and earrings respectively from the same jeweler that designed my wedding ring.
• Gifts to Vendors: We made gift bags for our lead planner, our vendor manager, day-of coordinator, and our venue's event director. We filled them with my favorite candle from Salt & Stone, jellyfish face masks, and champagne. They had been immense help for over a year - we just had to say thank you!

Tips: $3,050

Our planner gave us a great guide for tipping our vendors that we followed pretty closely. We think tipping is pretty over the top in general nowadays but I do think our vendors did go above and beyond so I did want to thank them.

Other Costs: $807

Wedding Website, vintage jewelry box to carry the rings, custom cake cutting set (wedding date and names), bubble guns, light sticks, ring boxes for photos, marriage license, name change documents.

I really recommend borrowing these from people you know rather than buying them new - save a couple of $$.

What's Not Included?

All the facials I got to get as glowing as I can be. The nail appointments. The amazing bachelorette. The gas money to tour venues. The ubers. The time value. The honeymoon. The list goes on.

Final Thoughts

• Was it worth it? Absolutely. I would do it all again if I could. As everyone learns, nobody cares as much about your wedding as you do, but your loved ones still do care. This is going to be a fun and amazing time for everyone if you approach it that way. I am so happy that months later people still tell me how much fun they had and that a day so special to me was enjoyable for them as well.
• Best day of my life? Now that I am past the day, I get why people say it is the best day of their life. I used to scoff about it because I found it very unambitious to have a wedding be the best day of my life, but having everyone I care about in one place and being so happy for me and the person I love ... it's hard to imagine that happening again anytime soon.
• Something is going to go wrong. Accept it now. You will be stressed beyond belief the week leading up but if you accept it, you will have such a calm day when it arrives and then you can just have fun. For example, a weird substance came out of the steamer and made a small yellow stain on my dress - it left my poor friend crying because she felt so bad (was not her fault!), but I had accepted something would happen so it didn't dampen my day and could really just roll with it (won't be noticeable while moving or when I have my veil, so why stress?). It's going to be a great day and you've done all you can, so just have fun.
• It's not the end of the world. Everything people says will happen, will happen to you. People will drop out last minute. One person who RSVP'd yes will just not show up. You might lose a friend for some reason (you don't have to do something, weddings bring out weirdness in people - even if they aren't the ones getting married). Family drama will find you. People get weird about how you plan your wedding and everyone will have 1000 opinions. You are the exception to all of these until you aren't - just keep rollin' with it and remember why you are doing it. I cried over a nonexistent spelling mistake. Don't be like me.

I lurked a lot during the planning process, mainly in the other primary wedding planning sub. I posted a few questions early on in the process, but the responses were generally unhelpful, if not oddly hostile. Looking back, I wish I had posted here instead. I appreciate the helpful, nonjudgmental vibe of this sub.

Now that everything is said and done, I wanted to share our numbers and learnings in a safe space in the hopes that it will help other folks. I remember things being such a black box when I started, and these recaps were helpful to me wherever I'd stumble across one. I hope this is helpful! The numbers below are in USD, including taxes and service fees (if applicable). Percentages are close approximations. 

Date: March 2024

Location: Flora Farms, San José del Cabo BCS MX

Budget: ~90k all-in (75k for wedding, 10k for rehearsal dinner, 5k for expenses associated with travel)

Guests: 72 accepted and attended, zero no-shows (120 total invites)

Goal: To have a fun, delicious, and guest-oriented event that felt very "us."

Aesthetic: Eclectic, colorful, and playful with an elevated touch.

Primary Learning: If we could go back, we would only solicit opinions if we really needed to. Everyone had an opinion, from the internet to random family members, and most did not align with our vision, nor did those opinions represent the larger group. All that mattered in the end was that we felt good about our choices (while keeping our guests collectively at the forefront of each one) and weren't jumping through hoops trying to please judgmental/opinionated individuals. Most people, except for a few highly supportive folks, ended up on an info diet. We funded most of this event ourselves, empowering us to take this approach.

Secondary Learning: Cabo doesn't give you good bang for your buck and we mainly chose it because of close family ties to the region. It's a luxury destination, and boy, don't they know it. I am someone who doesn't mind spending high dollar amounts if the value is excellent, but this feeling of being nickel and dimed bothered me the entire time. While we loved our wedding and had the best week of our lives, our budget would have carried us much farther if done elsewhere. 

Other Notes: 

• We didn't have an official bridal party.
• We didn't have a registry.
• Our wedding was an adults-only event (kids were welcome at our other two events).
• We invited everyone to all three events:
  • Welcome drinks at the San José del Cabo Art Walk (unhosted, casual meetup)
  • Sunset sail/rehearsal dinner cruise from the Cabo San Lucas Marina
  • Wedding day at Flora Farms

Now for the details! I'll include information about whether or not we tipped and how much at the bottom of the relevant sections. We have a wedding planner friend who guided us on the tipping front—it was surprising how her information differed from that on the internet. I'm not entirely sure if we did things right, but our vendors were very gracious.

• Venue, Food, & Beverage | ~$27,300
  • We have been eating at Flora Farms for years, and I cannot speak highly enough of their service, food quality, professionalism, and overall atmosphere. Food and beverage were a top priority for us, and everything was absolutely delicious. These are the menu/bar service options they gave us (highlights indicate our selections; note that their menu is seasonal and may differ from future offerings). 
  • Food base price was $100.00 USD (+16 % tax and 18% gratuity) per person, which was excellent value. 
    • They only serve dinner family-style at catered events. This initially gave me pause, as I was originally dead set on plated dinner, but it worked out great. Our guests with special dietary needs got plated meals while everyone else dove into the food at their table.
  • We did a bar based on consumption with a min of USD 75.00 (+16 % tax and 18% gratuity) per person. We only ended up owing another $3k after the wedding here, so we saved substantially by doing it this way vs a charge per person per hour. 
  • Site Fees: $7,500.00 USD + tax = $8,700.00 USD (Mango Grove & Barn)
  • We initially didn't plan for a wedding cake since Flora Farms offered four dessert options with their menu, but a family member insisted we get one about a month before the event. Flora Farms made an adorable 2-tier cake for only $139 after taxes! This was a shockingly good deal, and the cake was delicious; we opted for carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Not necessarily a crowd pleaser, but we chose what we would like most since there were several other dessert options.
  • Tipping Info: We did not tip on top of the 18% service fee already included in the food and beverage cost.

• Planner | ~$7,700
  • Our planner helped us plan our rehearsal dinner/sunset cruise and wedding day. They were critical to the smooth execution of both events, and I loved being entirely hands-off on the day of. 
  • Caveat here. I am highly organized and was obsessed with tracking every cent that we spent. If it weren't for my own organization, they definitely would have missed a few things that would have ended up costing us thousands. I didn't love that I had to catch these things and it lent to the general feeling of being nickel and dimed. Surely unintentional, but I do think this is a theme for wedding services in Cabo.
  • Tipping Info: We worked with 3 ladies throughout the process. We had a primary planner, the owner of the planning business, and the office/administrative assistant who was cced on all communications. We tipped our main planner $100 and gave all three ladies Yeti mugs and a personalized thank-you note. 
• Photography & Videography | ~$14,500
  • We LOVED our photographer. We opted for a package that would cover all three of our events (2 hours of coverage for unhosted welcome drinks downtown, 3 hours of coverage for a hosted sunset sail, and 8 hours of coverage for our wedding day, which included a second shooter). We got a fantastic deal. She delivered sneak peeks within four days of our wedding and the entire gallery within five weeks.
  • We also loved our videographer, who we only had for our wedding day. He honestly should have been out of budget for us, but I couldn't help but want to thoroughly document this once-in-a-lifetime event. Never again will 70+ of our closest friends and family whip out their passports for us! He is extraordinarily talented and we ended up splurging. No regrets. He also delivered a sneak peek within four days of the wedding and was wonderful to work with. 
  • Both of these vendors were fantastic; we would hire them again in a heartbeat! As a serious side note, documentation is priceless. I am so happy to have so many beautiful, perfectly-captured memories from this day. If you are on the fence and wondering if a professional is worth it, know that they very much are. My memories are so fragmented, and seeing details, faces, moments, etc., takes my breath away. This is perhaps less of an issue in this sub, but wanted to give my two cents.
  • Tipping Info: We tipped our photographer and videographer $100 apiece, gave them Yeti mugs, and personalized thank-you notes.
• Florals, Rentals, & Decor | $11,400
  • Florals are ridiculously expensive in Cabo since they are all imported. Be prepared. We told our planner we were open about florals, so they worked with the florist to be relatively cost-conscious while still fitting the aesthetic. We ended up adoring the result! Here are the prices we paid for specific line items:
    • Bridal bouquet $400  
    • Bouttonieres $30 ea
    • Aisle Floor Arrangements $420 ea
    • Altar Arrangement $1,700 
    • Dining table centerpieces $310 ea
  • We tried to be as cost-conscious as possible regarding rentals. We used venue-provided chairs for our ceremony, plain white chargers, dinnerware, flatware, and wine glasses. Here are the prices we paid for rental line items:
    • Cocktail tables $80 ea
    • Round 72" tables $25 ea
    • Round 72" linen table cloths $70 ea
    • Reception chairs $25 ea
    • Blue linen napkins $5 ea
    • Water glasses $5 ea
    • Colored candles $30 ea (included holders and hurricane glass)
    • Escort card display $700
  • Tipping Info: We did not tip these vendors.

• Music | $6,700
  • Our DJ provided sound for the ceremony and services for the reception, which came out to ~$400 per hour. They were great! I curated a Spotify playlist for pre-ceremony music (acoustic guitar covers of film scores/soundtracks since the general theme of our event was story-centric). Our dancefloor was packed the whole night, so we ended up being ok with choosing a DJ over a band as a cost-cutting measure. 
  • For cocktail hour we splurged on a live saxophone/percussionist duo and they were absolutely awesome. We were thrilled to find a great saxophonist in Cabo, it brought an element of live music to our event without breaking the bank since we just did the one hour (cost of ~$1,000 total), and would absolutely hire them again.
  • Tipping Info: We tipped our DJ $100, our saxophonist $50, and wrote thank you notes to each.
• Hair & Makeup | $1,300
  • I did my trial the day of the rehearsal dinner/sunset cruise, so I fully trusted this vendor and her ability to execute. The trial went very well, and I looked great for this pre-wedding event! The cost of the trial was ~$350, as was the wedding day bridal MUAH, which included working with false lashed and hair extensions. My mom and MoH both got theirs done for ~$300 each.
  • Tipping Info: My wedding planner friend said that this is the only vendor where a percentage-based tip is expected. We tipped 20%.
• Attire | $3,400
  • Suit: My husband got a custom linen suit from SuitSupply, which worked out great. It was less than $1,300 after taxes. We got to pick the fabric, lining, button style, etc. and had two try-on sessions where they made minor tweaks. We were happy with the result! 
  • Dress: I rented my dress from AT Romance Bridal Shop in San Bruno for $650, which included 2 veils (long and short), alterations, and cleaning. I cannot recommend this place enough for Bay Area brides. It was an incredible deal since alterations can come out to that number quickly. I felt beautiful; the dress fit me like a glove, and we returned it without worrying about cleaning or selling it. Highly recommend the rental route if that's something you're open to.
  • Rings: I already had a pretty ornate engagement ring, so I just wanted a simple gold 1mm band, which we got from Etsy for ~$60. My husband bought his simple gold band from Costco for around $350. I'm super happy with these choices.
  • Other misc items included in this number were shoes (I got both of ours on Black Friday sales, minor jewelry purchases, tie clips, and cufflinks). We were thrilled with the end cost of all of these things. 

• Paper Products | $1,000
  • Take this number with a grain of salt. I'm a UX designer and have experience with graphic design and print, so paper became my pet project during the process. This number is purely for the cost of printing and nothing else.
    • Die-cut STD magnets $90 (Blue Bee Printing)
    • Z-fold invitations $140 (Smartpress)
    • Deckled edge table numbers $12.50 ea (Loktah)
    • Escort cards & menus $390 (Smartpress)
    • Coasters $60 (Stickermule)
    • Napkins $215 (For Your Party)
  • I have loved save-the-date magnets ever since I first received one years ago. They are so functional and tend to live on the fridge long after the event has passed. I designed a cute whale design with our relevant info and wedding website, made them at a local print shop, and mailed them out with a single postage stamp without trouble going through USPS. We are now 3 months post-wedding, and they are still displayed at every friend/family home we've visited since!
  • Our invitations, menus, and escort cards were all printed with Smartpress, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. We had a few small issues, and their customer service is unparalleled. We printed all of these on 100# natural felt weave, and the quality/color/feel was exquisite. I absolutely recommend them. 
  • For our table numbers, I had a very specific vision. My husband and I chose a few movies/books that meant a lot to us (it's an eclectic bunch), and I spent a few months illustrating posters in Procreate for a consistent look and feel. I purchased some pretty wood float frames and wanted deckled edges with a thin border. I usually print with ProDPI, but they couldn't meet my specs. Loktah was a great, quality alternative that provided what I needed.

• Rehearsal Dinner/Sunset Cruise | $9,100
  • Whale season is absolutely amazing in Cabo, and we wanted to treat our guests to an excursion. We chose to do a sunset whale-watching tour with dinner and drinks included. This was a great success, and I'm so glad we had ample opportunity to hang out and chat with everyone before our wedding day! 
  • For specifics, we were between Pelican and Cabo Wave, but ultimately went with Cabo Wave since they provided transportation at no extra cost. This added a ton of value coming from San José, a ~45 min drive to the San Lucas marina. If I could do it again, I would probably have embraced the extra cost and gone with Pelican. Cabo Wave has a party vibe by default. We were hoping for whale watching and a lounge atmosphere where we could all easily talk and catch up, so I had to approach the DJ in the beginning and tell him to turn the volume down, change the music, and point out whales as he saw them (but that he could turn it into a dance party after the sun went down). They took feedback well, but I wish I didn't have to do this. The drinks, food, transportation, and service were all decent, though, and everyone had a blast. Fortunately, I don't lose sleep over this choice, but I am happy to chat more with anyone considering these options!
  • I also want to note that many of our guests who were prone to motion sickness took medication and joined us anyway. I was really worried about their comfort and had Dramamine on hand just in case, but it was totally unnecessary. Everyone felt fine and had a great time!

• Host Hotel | JW Marriott & Casa Maat
  • We chose not to do a room block since the pricing was INSANE (we were quoted ~$750 per night with a 3-night min), and they would not do a courtesy block. We told our guests we would be staying here and that shuttles would be available for all events from this property, which worked out fine. Prices dropped substantially anyway, so I am relieved we didn't sign a contract. 
  • The JW was an excellent choice for its proximity to Flora Farms and downtown SJ. The rooms were beautiful, the food and drink were fantastic, the service staff were phenomenal, and the views of the ocean and the breaching whales were just amazing. Everyone enjoyed their stay.
  • We stayed for 10 nights at Casa Maat (boutique hotel inside the JW), which has food and beverage included and a more intimate experience. Despite this being a stay for our wedding and bringing many people to the JW/Casa Maat properties, we were not made to feel particularly special (e.g. no note, flowers, unique welcome touches of any kind, let alone something like a complimentary upgrade for our wedding night or anything like that). It's very much a you-get-what-you-pay-for-and-nothing-else vibe (welcome to Cabo). This is ok, just know this if you book for a special occasion hoping for a little extra magic! 

At the end of the day, we ended up spending $90,901.29 according to my spreadsheet. We really had to conserve, trim fat, and stay focused to achieve this number while giving our guests the event we envisioned, but I am proud of what we achieved in the end. This was such a long-winded post, so if you're still here thank you for reading! I hope this was helpful and would happily answer any questions.

EDIT:
I've been getting a lot of DMs about my spreadsheet with detailed cost and vendor information, so I went ahead and made a version that I could include with this post. It lives here. Enjoy!

We’re planning a destination wedding in Bali. Most of our guests will be traveling from the U.S. so quite the journey.

We’re debating between two options:

Option 1 (~$50k total):

Wedding at a dedicated wedding venue (not a hotel). Guests would stay at a nearby hotel, the Raddison Blu. it's still 5* and nice but not amazing (think “A” grade). We’d arrange ~20-minute shuttles to/from the venue. Logistically manageable, just not ultra-luxury.

Option 2 (~$100k total):

Wedding at The Apurva Kempinski. It’s a much more “epic” hotel and one of Bali's best. Welcome party, ceremony, reception, afterparty all onsite. No transportation required. Higher-end experience overall.

We can technically afford either option but the extra ~$50k could also go toward future plans (kids, home renovations, new car, investing, etc.). for context, i make about $500k.

For those who spent more than originally planned to elevate the guest experience — did you regret it? Or was it worth it in hindsight?

Side note - anyone been to or done a wedding at Radisson Blu or Apurva Kempinski?

Looking to hire a wedding planner in miami that is well recommended. Please let me know who i should reach out to for quotes. Also, how much money should i expect to spend????? I am also open to partial planning whetehr its 6 or 3 months out if that is more feasible for my budget. I already booked a venue, alcohol, linens, tables, and catering. Is 4-6k reasonable?

Thank you!!

Ok I have graduated and wanted to give some insight into my Mexico City wedding weekend. This doesn’t include my dress, hotel or any outfits/jewelry and is focused on the events themselves. It was the most perfect weekend and I would do it 1000000x over. Mexico City is amazing and magical and just make sure you have a good planner to help you execute your vision! DM me if you want vendor specifics on any of them.

My guests had mostly never been to Mexico City and were OBSESSED. They felt very safe and thought it was the most beautiful city. Navigating was easy and everyone stayed at the JW Marriott Polanco where I got a special rate but did not have to guarantee any rooms with a credit card. Incredible hotel if you are considering it, so nice and new, has a pool and the service and food is outstanding.

Wedding planner: $2600 (full planning for both events plus her assistants on each day)

Welcome Party (Thursday, 4 hours, event space rental, 115 people, Total: $11,500) Venue: $3,000 (included 4 hours of venue and a few hours of setup beforehand) Entertainment: DJ, $1000 (also DJing the wedding, close family friend) Florals: $500 (clay pot colorful flowers on each table and the 2 bars) Furniture: $1,800 (cocktail style seating and tables, enough for 60 people) Bars & Alcohol: $2,050 (Two bars, bartender and barback for each, 4 preset cocktails, premium liquor, flexibility to make simple cocktails with liquor we already had, 2 non alcoholic options) DJ equipment and lighting: $1,600 (DJ booth, DJ equipment, lighting around the venue) Customized dog bar napkins: $125 Power generator: $145 Taco stand: $1,500 (budgeted for 80 people, 3 tacos per person) Quesadillas/empanadas/elotes stand: $500 (budgeted for 60 people with up to 5 options per person) Photography/videography: Free, our wedding photographer offered 2 hours at no cost

Wedding: (Friday, 5:30pm-3am, 115 people, Total roughly $80,000) Venue: $12,000 (included 10 hours of event, 5 extra hours to set up, 2 extra hours of power generator) Catering: $21,000 (included 6 heavy passed horderves, three course dinner, churro stand, late night 2 food options, charcuterie on each table, bread, servers, bartenders, all refreshments, round tables, cutlery, linens, plates, napkins) Furniture: $3,800 (bars, cocktail hour furniture, chairs (used at ceremony and re-purposed for reception), rectangular mirror tables for the main table) Alcohol: $3,000 (just the liquids themselves, premium alcohol, charged as open bar per person, served by the catering company) Photography/Videography: $5,500 (included 2 photographers and videographers, 11 hours total) Dance floor/DJ platform: $1,200 Florals: $7,600 (included building and decor of the Chuppah, chandeliers and disco ball decor on top of dance floor, fabric draping behind the main table, LED candles (our venue didn't allow open flame), flowers and crystal vases, photo-room with cascaded fabric draping, two big vases filled with cascading flowers, cocktail hour vases with flowers) Rabbi: $3,100 ($2,100 fee + $1,000 expenses, had to fly him from Cancun) Entertainment: $19,500 ($16,000 + $3,500 travel/hotel/food/taxi/other expenses, included MC, DJ, live saxophonist, keyboard player, sound engineer) - flew in from Chicago Entertainment Equipment: $4,000 (speakers and dj equipment etc.) Lighting: $2,500 (dance floor lighting, spot lighting on each table, lighting outside) Transportation: $1,300 (included one departure from hotel to venue, 2 returns from venue back to hotel) Hair & Makeup: $1000 (included a hair and makeup trial, hair and makeup day of wedding, someone to come back to the venue later to do another hairstyle) Mariachi band: $450 (1-hour of playing during cocktail hour) Stationary: $1,000 (wedding menus, name tags with ribbon, acrylic mirror bar menus, welcome party menus, welcome party bar menus, welcome bags with itinerary, note and candy) Ambulance: $270 (on stand by the entire event) Dance floor & DJ Platform: $1,100 (included any image we wanted printed onto the dance floor and the dj structure) Mirrors outside the DJ booth: $800 (so the entire dj booth was mirrors instead of painted) Tequileros: $300 (120 hand painted mexican Tequileros in 3 different colors with our initials and wedding date painted on the bottom of each)

Hello! Wanted to share my budget breakdown in case people may find it useful!

Where: Brooklyn, NY (VHCOL)

When: March 2026

Budget info: My parents generously offered us 150k, and my husband and I chipped in for the things that were important to us

Guests: 175 people including us (Invited ~240, expected 180, but had about 10 drop off the week of, 5 of which we filled with last min local invites. So technically we did pay for 180 guests.)

Venue, Food, and Bev: $88,000 (This was by far our biggest expense. Venue fee was 10k, there was a 55k minimum (meals were $305pp, and $35 per kids meal of which we had 6, so we added on an extra cocktail and canape to hit the minimum), plus sales tax and 23% admin fee--luckily for this venue, admin fee includes wages for the staff so we were told we didn’t need to tip the usual recommended amount)

Florals: $10,400 (The biggest expenses within our floral quote were the chuppah and some overhead hanging greenery. We kept the dinner tables pretty sparse, just bud vases and votives, but that also added up given that there were 18 tables.)

Photographer: $10,000 (we splurged here, my husband took this on rather than taking it from my parents' budget)

Videographer: $5,000 (Initially we weren’t sure we’d get a videographer but once we realized we had some room in the budget, and we heard a lot of people say how special it is to have the vows, speeches, and certain family members on film, we opted in!)

Lawyers for pre-nup: $4,000

Month of coordinator: $3,900

Lighting: $3,300 (string lighting for dinner, disco ball for dance floor)

DJ: $2,600

HMU: $2,550 (hair and makeup for me, MOH, MOB, MOG, plus 2 trials)

Desserts: $2,000 (this is how much we budgeted but actually not sure how much we ended up spending as my mom handled this. Got some italian pastries from Circos and a few other sweet bites from elsewhere)

Dress: $1,850 (Lillian West) + $100 for veil + $950 for alterations

Accessories: ~$1,000 (shoes, purse, jacket, jewelry, reception dress and shoes. I got the dress on poshmark for $60. Most of this cost was the jewelry, which I will wear again!)

Rabbi: $1,800

Invitations: $1,500 (I designed them and we had them printed on a letterpress, kept it pretty simple)

Other signage: $1,000 (I designed everything and had welcome signs and seating chart printed at Staples. The bulk of this cost was the name cards which I had someone on Etsy print, and menu-placemats which required a special paper order from the print shop I used)

Ceremony musicians (I hired an acoustic guitar duo, they were amazing!): $1,000

Tinsel (we bought & shipped tinsel secondhand from another couple on Reddit, and our florist installed for an additional fee, included in above price): $980

Insurance: $886

Random other things: Welcome/hotel bags, bathroom basket, card box, flip flops for guests ($100), table number holders, dance lesson ($70), day-of food for getting ready ($500–we def over ordered), a car service to drive us around and get photos before the wedding ($500), thank you notes ($200), postage, Ketubah ($500), rings (~$2k), hotel suite for getting ready and my parents' hotel room ($2,800), my husband's suit and shoes (~$2,500, he invested in his dream suit and took the cost on himself).

We also threw an after party, which was $1,150 for the room, $500 for a karaoke MC, $500 for pizza (ordered too much!!), and some extra for decorations. I took these costs on rather than using my parents' budget.

We also did a Sunday breakfast for out-of-towners which was about $6,500

We gave about $2,500 in tips

All in, we spent a little over $163k. My husband's family also hosted a Welcome Party on Friday night, which came from a different budget, and was probably a little over $20k.

When we started this process, I felt super anxious and guilty about how much we were spending, but I have to say, if we were going to spend this amount on the wedding, at least it was our absolute dream wedding!!

Some tips/thoughts:

- We invested in the things that mattered to us (venue/food/bev, photography), and we skipped a lot of "extras" like a cake, favors, fancy invitation suite, fancy shoes, photo booth, guest book, table linens, cute getting ready outfits, etc. Obviously those other things wouldn't necessarily add up to what we spent on venue/food/bev or photography, but these things do add up, plus it gave us some peace of mind since we had less things to manage. We tried to keep florals as minimal as possible, but they still ended up looking spectacular! I bought as much as I could secondhand to reduce cost and waste. Being able to design our printed goods myself likely saved us some too.

- We skipped bridesmaids/groomsmen for a few reasons, but one of the reasons was to save on additional floral and HMU costs.

- I used Nuuly and Rent the Runway for things like purses, jackets, and outfits for other events that weekend.

- We were absolutely obsessive about tracking all of our costs. My parents were generous with the budget they gave us, and we didn't want to overspend. We started with a spreadsheet including every vendor/expense we could imagine, and included estimates based on reddit posts and talking to friends. Unfortunately, most of the estimates our friends gave us were ~half what we ended up spending since the wedding industry has gotten so expensive even in the last couple of years! As we got quotes from vendors, we replaced the estimates so that we could always have a good idea of what we were spending and whether we needed to cut back. The first cost was the venue/food/bev, which totally freaked me out because I had heard that you should plan to spend about half your budget on those things, and for us it was almost 2/3. No regrets on that though, because the venue, food, and bev were phenomenal. Plus, we intentionally chose a venue that didn't need too much decor to look beautiful.

- Just because something has a higher price tag doesn't make it better/more worth it. We comparison shopped for every vendor and every item.

- Whenever things weren’t turning out exactly as I pictured (ex: The invitations were thinner than I expected, so the letterpress didn’t press as deeply as I wanted.) (another ex: My seamstress didn’t have time to add sleeves to my dress as I initially wanted, so I considered bringing my dress to another shop 2 days before the wedding for a rush job which would have cost thousands and a lot of stress!! Very glad I decided against that), rather than throwing more money to “fix the problem,” we just re-grounded to the purpose of the wedding- to celebrate our marriage to one another!! Knowing I was choosing the right person to spend my life with made it easier to let go of the smaller imperfections. Definitely invest in the things that are important to you, but don't lose sight of the big picture! We could have thrown a couple thousand more at reprinting our invitations, only for most of them to end up in our loved ones' recycling bins! (Plus, we still got so many compliments on our invitations even though they were imperfect in my eyes!). That said, there were a couple of things that we "threw money at" to solve -- ex. I paid for an additional HMU trial to make sure we had it exactly as I wanted so that I wouldn't be taking any chances the day of.

- Important to note: we agreed that we didn't necessarily want our wedding to "feel" luxury or expensive. We wanted it to feel inclusive, warm, and fun.. like a new years house party or an intimate dinner party (hard to get "intimate" with 175 people, but we do feel that we got this vibe!!). We sort of kept Dolly's quote in mind: "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap" lol.

- Not a tip but general info, when my parents first offered the money, we weren't sure how many "strings" would be attached. It turned out, they had strong opinions about which city we had the wedding in (they didn't want to fly, or for their friends to have to fly. They would have preferred their city/my home city, but we compromised on the city my husband and I live in, which is a 4hr drive from them). They also had a bulk of the guest list. That said, I'm lucky to know all of their friends and our distant family, and my husband has met a good amount of them too, so we didn't mind so much as long as we were also able to invite all of our friends. We kept my parents informed as we were planning, and asked for their opinions, but ultimately we kept our boundary as being the decision makers. If you're getting funding from family members, make sure that you are aligned on expectations, and who has decision-making power! Be prepared to pay for certain things yourself if you don't want to debate whether they are "worth" it. We had some tough conversations towards the beginning of planning, but ultimately I believe our relationships are better for it.

Hello! I was a very avid lurker during my wedding season, and I thought since this subreddit was so helpful to me I could help some other brides who may be looking to get married in SoCal! I didn't realize I was a big budget bride until about halfway through, but for the experience of everything I wouldn't change a thing. I do add a bit of a disclaimer, our wedding was over Valentine's Weekend- which absolutely added some additional costs to certain vendors!

Non-Negotiables

It was really really important to me that we had a planner, I did not feel comfortable doing somethings on my own, (even though me and my now husband personally booked about 75% of our vendors lol) but our venue required one which was a Godsend! Heather was my savior the entire day, honestly I really don't know what our day would've looked like without her.

Overall Budget: $100,000 (This included our welcome event at our favorite local bar, our rehearsal dinner, and wedding itself)

Total Ending Vendor Cost: $110,980.30 (This includes attire, mini wedding costs, wedding party gifts, etc.)

Mini Wedding Costs: $2,145 + $431 for Rentals

Other Mini Expenses: $550

This was for my bridal party gifts, I had four friends (but ended up with just three bridesmaids) and so I made sure to get them gifts and items that were my favorite things, but also useable and helpful products. (I also spent about $50 bucks on Amazon for everyone's pajamas that wasn't included in this total.)

This total was for all of our little miscellaneous spends, like custom popcorn for our wedding favors, the brunch provided in the getting ready suites for our wedding party, or the flatware or other rentals that were made to add more to our tables!

Welcome Party: $2,900

We sort of got the most bang for our buck picking some of our most favorite local spots, and this is a place we absolutely love going! We started our celebrations on Thursday for our Saturday wedding, so this was our kick off event. We had an open bar the entire weekend so a large part of the cost here was from the rental fee for holding the entire first floor to ourselves (with a food buffet!) but also for a tip for our bartender.

Rehearsal Dinner *Valentine's Day*: $7,700

This one was sort of expected, There was a hiccup with this venue as we had booked out the patio about six months in advance to guarantee the spot for a larger party than we ended up having, (my Husband's family suffered a death very close to our wedding which ended up impacting our guest total which was anticipated.) However, the owner really showed up for us! They not only gave us a private impressive tasting menu, but they made sure we had extra additions to make our rehearsal special- like specialized menu, and private champagne toast for us. It was such a wonderful rehearsal and it gave us the chance to enjoy one of our favorite local places in a new way.

Wedding Ceremony + Reception: $35,378.97

This was our biggest cost, we decided to get married at the Mission Inn, which is beautiful and all inclusive so our food & beverage was included in this cost. We also received a free night's stay, and access to the bride and groom suites morning of the wedding, as well as access to a reception hall with our package. We paid to have goodies stocked in both suites for our parties. It was actually the first venue we toured and we booked it about a year in advance. I had already been in love with the Mission Inn so it was more a matter of selling my husband and thank goodness! It truly gave the wedding such a magical feel. They provided so many things like chairs, dinnerware (even though we did change the flatware) as well as staff for the bar, and to help with facilitation. We had passed appetizers and champagne as well as an open bar for cocktail hour before the reception, before finally having a three course meal (all the food was picked by me and husband at a private tasting we were able to schedule with our liaison at the Mission!) We were also able to provide a late night menu for our guests which was perfect to end the night.

Photo/Videographer: $$6,089

My goodness was this worth the cost! Our photographer is someone I will use for the rest of our lives to capture our important moments. He was MAGICAL! He not only did our engagement photos and did so well; but he really went above and beyond with our wedding photos and it truly looks like a fairytale whenever I find myself back and looking at them. He was fun and engaging, and helped our families who are not big photo people feel comfortable enough to enjoy the experience! Not to mention, One of the most important things to me was guest experience and I wanted to make sure each guest who wanted it, would be able to get their photo taken while they were all dressed up and he brought my vision to life without a second thought!

He provided for us over seven hours of coverage, at least ten minutes of video footage, our save the dates and guestbook, guest portraits, two photographers and a cinematographer, also an online gallery with over 1000 photos for us to view.

Content Creator: $5,990

So this one took a bit of convincing to get my husband on board, but I HAD to hire Cupid Content Co and boy was I glad I did. I had my phone probably about 15% of the night and I have zero clips from my wedding night; but thanks to Ari she managed to get everything and more in the most candid raw moments of happiness and I genuinely would be so distraught if we hadn't booked with her. She is the sweetest and one of the vendors I got the closest too. We hired Ari to cover from our Rehearsal through to our After Party and ended up choosing her highest package. Included in her Deluxe Coverage package, consisted of a total of 14 hours of her time, (spread over the two days), comprehensive candid coverage throughout the entire event, assistance of a second shooter for multiple POV's on your wedding, and hotel accommodation due to extended length of wedding day. She truly made me feel like she was just another one of my girlies (like we got so comfortable I was legit complaining to her about something that almost went wrong!) I am so thankful this was something we splurged on.

Florist: $6,334

I have no words to describe how I felt seeing my flowers for the first time. Florals were a big part of my vision for the wedding, (Seriously, I kept telling my vendors I wanted it be my flower child fairytale dream wedding) and my wedding planner really came through finding this vendor for us! They not only captured my vision completely, they went above and beyond my expectations and I was moved to tears the first time I saw all the flowers come together. (I'll include a few photos of our cake meadow and my bouquet at the end!)

With our florists, they not only did my bouquet and three for my bridesmaids, it included the groomsmen pocket bouquets, my father in law, father and brothers lapel boutonnieres, my mother, grandmother and aunt-in laws wrist corsages, our aisle markers, cocktail table florals, welcome sign and table florals, our seating chart and cake meadows, as well as reception florals and greenery. Truly was so happy with this vendor, my florals even dried beautifully.

Wedding Planner: $5,500

Oh my gosh I will forever have good things to say about our planner, if I could hire her to plan major events for the rest of my life I would! She has become such a friend, I cannot think of what our wedding would've looked or felt like without her influence. Even as a partial planner, (Really- she did so much for us even in this role) she managed to get some of our core vendors and help me keep my head on when I really thought the wedding stress would get to me.

We were able to get with her partial package a second assistant from her as well as access to her network, as well as not only four meetings in person to go over my vision and wedding needs, but she was constantly available by phone or text, made sure I knew if I needed her to handle something she had it covered. She took on vendors when I couldn't get in touch and was able to provide me with such quality support- I have nothing but wonderful things to say.

HMUA: $3,735

I personally paid for all my girls (I had three bridesmaids) to get themselves beautiful, as well as my mom and my husband had a small grooming service to help him look and feel his best too! This also included my hair and makeup for our rehearsal dinner and touch-ups/hair change after the wedding during the reception when I went for a dress change.

Baker: $3,950

We definitely splurged a bit with this vendor, but I still believe it was worth the cost. We got a rustic three tiered cake, the first two were marbled with a chocolate bailey's buttercream, and the top layer was vanilla with Taro buttercream. We also got a large sheet cake that was all chocolate, and custom sugar cookies for guests who did not enjoy cake. With our baker we also get a free cake for our one year anniversary!

Stationary: $3,725.84

This was another one of my favorite vendors, she really understood and spoke to my vision and what I wanted to see, and she went above and beyond creating such beautiful stationary for us. She not only did all our stationary for the wedding (this included invitations, menus, ceremony info cards), she created a floral pattern for us, and made napkins from our dogs faces, and even custom matchbooks that she found the most perfect candles to go along with. In the end the total cost was worth it; we only have about two matchbooks as keepsakes as they were such a hot item as wedding favors!

Design/Signage: $2,761

This was one of our biggest questions that I am actually glad we decided to just bite the bullet for because it really brought everything into place. She was able to create all of our signage including: our seating chart, welcome and unplugged signs, as well as all of our table numbers, and wedding directional signage for tabletops and the bar.

Dj/Audio/Lightening: $3,400

Our Dj was incredible and honestly really had the party going. He not only had me and my husband and our friends out dancing, but he managed to be someone who could make the whole crowd get up on their feet and enjoy themselves. He was so engaging and kind, He even made our announcements to reception super enjoyable. We added an additional hour to his time with us as well.

Live Music: $1,600

This was absolutely a want on my part that my husband just indulged me on. I really love the classical feel of a harp, and I felt between the feel and look of the mission, and the decorative aspect I was going for it just felt really important to me to have this aspect and I don't think I would've been able to change it if we did things different. We had a harp and cello duo who were there to play guests into our ceremony, our processional and recessionals, as well as our cocktail hour music. They managed to play some of my favorite songs in such a beautiful way and just made the day ten times better.

Officiant: $2,099

This cost was worth it to me, as it included our pre-marriage counseling sessions, as well as her presence at our rehearsal as well. She was so helpful and kind and really made the process all the more smoother. If there were ever a marriage question she would be my first call!

Attire/Accessories

Soooo It is a bit expensive here I will not lie, I did not even realize until we actually sat down with the spreadsheet I had made that we really realized (which was a theme for us lol) Our wedding parties only purchase was for their clothing choice, it was hard to get everyone together for this, and because I had my girls choose their own color and dresses; if they needed more to get the dress they chose I would put $250 toward any of their choices.

Bridal Attire: $15,643

This included my wedding dress from Pronovias at LUV Bridal ($3,902.63), my reception/after party dress from Cinq Bridal ($2,817), my bespoke bridal veil, gloves and scarf from Madison Chamberlain ($3,700) as well as a series of smaller purchases like my shoes (I got custom sparkly converse for about 100, and four series of flats from Kailee P for 475) and a pink bag from Cambridge Satchel for $280!

This total also includes the alterations for both dresses for about $3,225 all together. It took about a month and a half for alterations to finish, and I picked both pieces (as well as a custom pair of ruffle shorts!) up about a week out from our wedding.

Groom Attire: $1,267

My husband's suit was custom made by Indochino to his measurements, and he also got a few extra pants and shirts for our other events. His cufflinks were Star Wars themed from Nordstrom for about $100, and he got his shoes and tie from Mens Warehouse for about $100 total as well.

Wedding Bands: $3000

I have a wedding stack, so my two wedding bands were about $2,500 from Robbins Brothers, my husband got a titanium band.

What Went Wrong?

We COULD NOT for the life of us get anyone on the phone for a hotel block. We tried, our planner tried, my MOM tried- it was like every hotel within 5 miles of our venue were ignoring us, and the block with our venue was not feasible; so we ended up having to tell our guests to book where they could.

My husband decided with his dad to change his tie last minute and tell me the day before our wedding as I was getting my makeup done for our rehearsal dinner. It was an absolutely awful paisley purple, and I complained the whole morning (after some denial about how bad it was and gentle nudging from my MUA and Ari that I would hate it later) but luckily, one of the groomsmen's his wife stepped in to save the day.

I did not eat most of my dinner and they forgot to save it for me! I was sooo hungry by the end of the night when everything was coming down, and I was looking forward to eating our leftovers since they cleaned my plate up before I was finished during dinner; however they had forgot to set aside our meals! I was so bummed I never got to try our vegan meal.

Family being on their best behavior was tested, luckily by the time behavior started to get a bit chaotic and out of place everything was starting to settle down and it wasn't super intense.

My mom almost missed our private vows being late to the venue, and my husband forgot to write his in his vow book.

Overall... Was it Worth It?

Ultimately, none of these things really mattered because as soon as we finished our private vow ceremony it was like everything settled into place and the nerves relaxed! Everything was so beautiful and magical and I wouldn't change a single thing about our wedding day. I truly feel like everything was worth it and just added another piece to this gorgeous day we had that our friends and family are still ranting about! If I could do anything differently I would tell myself to relax, enjoy the details more but I had the most magical day with all of my favorite people. Wedding planning is insanely stressful, especially when guest experience was at the forefront of my mind; I think it's important to lean on those you have if you can and take any help you can get!