Our Wedding Budget - Total Budget $25,000
Currently at: $24,048
Reception: $12,000
Church: $600
Pastor: TBD, probably $500 (friend's father)
Marriage License: $64
Total: $13,164
Clothing and Accessories
Bridal Gown: $840 (includes paying $120 to have gown made to my height, but it is still 1 inch too long)
Other Alterations: $25
Veil: $0, borrowing from sister
Hairpiece: $110
Jewelry (earrings only, already had necklace): $30
Shoes: $90
Wedding Bands: $2000
Hair & Makeup: $820
Tux Rental: $0 (free with a certain number of wedding party rentals)
Pre-wedding pampering: $100
Total: $4015
Cake: $410
Chair Covers: $550
Total: $960
Flowers: $100 (a florist friend is doing the flowers for free, so we are probably going to spend $100 to buy him a gift)
DJ: $400
Photography: $3650
Total: $4150
Invitations (we made our own)
Paper (for invitations, programs, save the date cards, thank you cards: $50
Ribbons $55
Envelopes: $30
Postage for Invitations: $140
Postage for Thank you cards : $65
Postage for Save the Date cards: gift from bridesmaid
Accessories to make invitations: $20
Total: $360
Gifts for Bridesmaids: $310
Gifts for Groomsmen: $250
Gifts for other ceremony participants: $270
Favors: $410
Total: $1240
Flower Girl Baskets (2): $14
Runner: $20
Guest Book: $0, made by sister
Paper for Pictures: $100 (we are going to have a digital camera printer so we can print pictures at the wedding to put into the guest book
Money Box $0, made by sister
Books and Magazines: $25
Total: $159
We saved money by:
1. Being really good friends with a florist. I've been friends with him for about 7 years. I would help him for free when he was busy while I was in college for 3 out of my 4 years (e.g. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, college graduations) and he always promised he would do my wedding flowers.
2. Not having a videographer. Two friends are going to tape it and then I'll see if I can get someone to edit it.
3. Driving ourselves during the wedding (the fiance and I had some disagreements about this, but I won).
4. Using a semi-professional DJ. He's done many weddings and other events, but it's not his main occupation.
5. Going to a Chinese Bakery to get our cake. We figure no one really cares about it.
6. Making our own invitations. I like doing paper crafts, so this was fun, but time consuming.
7. Having other people make us stuff. My sister made us a really nice guest book. To be honest, the materials alone probably cost about the same as a regular guest book, but ours is super nice.
Some items are still estimates, but this is pretty close to final. I'm sure some other small costs will come up, so we still might go over $25,000, but I'm trying my best to keep us under budget.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
A Detailed Wedding Budget
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3 comments:
holy cow!! This is why I dearly wish my family would let me elope.. ;) You're cutting back in lots of places and not having anything stupid like pomegranate martinis and ice sculptures but it will STILL cost a lot of money. Oy, I guess you just can't do it without spending a lot! Good luck!
Our wedding isn't coming up until April and already the budget has spun out of control. I think initially before I knew what anything really cost I thought we could do it for 15k the way we* wanted it done (*my preference was actually to do a destination wedding but I lost that battle). After actually researching prices and vendors it looks like its going to be closer to 30k =(
Fortunatly both of our parents are contributing some funds so that has helped out tremendously but it still will be quite a chunk out of our pocket, that I'm sure we are lose money on. But its a (hopefully) once in a lifetime event, and we are doing faily financially for our age, so I figure she deserves the wedding she's been dreaming of.
I sort of wanted some sort of signature drink, but it was too hard to plan one more thing. I thought I could have the wedding I wanted for less, but once we really started going through it, it was difficult to decide where to cut.
Chuck, I definitely recommend Bridal Bargains - there's a link on my main page on the righthand side.
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