Setting a wedding budget is an extremelly complex task, believe me. I’ve written about the wedding budget breakdown before. You know, dealing with the overwhelming first step of this beautiful journey we call wedding planning.
And now that every single penny has been paid off, and I’m a married woman of a mere two months, I’m here to share with you our actual wedding breakdown. As opposed to how I orginially thought it would all neatly fit into a certain box. Oh how wrong was I?
THE WEDDING BUDGET BREAKDOWN
Below is a basic, run of the mill, budget overview. Basically what every bridal website, article, magazine, or planner will suggest for you to keep things into perspective. Note: you’ll go way over in certain areas and underspend in others. Totally normal. Even more normal? You’re going to go over budget. It’s just a fact.
- 40% Catering (food + beverages)
- 12% Photography + Videography
- 10% Ceremony + Reception Venue Fee
- 10% Florist
- 8% Music
- 8% Wedding Dress
- 3% Invitations + Stationary
- 2% Wedding Planner / Coordinator
- 2% Baker
- 2% Favors and Gifts
- 1% Officiant
- 1% Hair + Makeup
- 1% Groom Tux
= 100% of your wedding funds
OUR ACTUAL BUDGET BREAKDOWN
We spent $30,534.38 on our wedding. Holy f*ck. I know. Looking back, that’s totally insane. But hey, you only get married once, right? As much as I loved our wedding, and I’m so happy we had a traditional Jewish ceremony, the day we filed for our marriage license and obtained our marriage certificate was a bit more special to me. And that day, the day we got legally married in the Museum of Natural History eight days before our wedding cost us less than $750. I loved that simple day so much, that I like to celebrate both anniversaries. But alas, here’s the actual budget breakdown…
Our Arizona Wedding Day | 12-10-16
- Catering (food + beverages) = $11,587.20 ~ for 85 guests
- Photography + Videography = $2,908.60 ~ we didn’t have a videographer
- Wedding Dress = $2,847.86 ~ included all bridal accessories and alternations
- Florist = $2,740 ~ centerpieces, ceremony decor, cake flowers, birch poles for chuppah, and bridal bouquet (no bridesmaids)
- Ceremony + Reception Venue Fee = $2,500 ~ included most of what we needed
- Wedding Planner / Coordinator = $2,200 ~ waste of money
- Music = $1,475 ~ included live ceremony music, reception, and uplighting
- Accessories = $1,200.00 ~ kippahs, signage, ketubah, napkin rentals, etc.
- Invitations + Stationary = $840.19 ~ save the dates, invitations + RSVP’s, thank you cards
- Groom Ring = $710.20
- Officiant / Marriage Certificate = $561 ~ 2 roundtrip flights plus paperwork
- Baker = $490.62 ~ 4 tiered naked cake
- Favors and Gifts = $473.71 ~ we ordered one hundred 4″ potted succulents for our guests
= $30,534.38
THINGS THAT WERE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN I ORIGINALLY THOUGHT
Officiant. Remember that sweet family discount rate I spoke about for our officiant? Well, we paid for my cousins flight up to DC in October to ‘practice’ in person, and hammer out a few details. And then a week before the actual wedding, we flew up my brother so he could be a witness at the court house. And before I knew it, two roundtrip plane tickets ate up 2% of our budget. Wouldn’t change it for the world though.
Wedding Planner. We spent wayyyyyy more on a wedding planner than we should have. And no, she was not worth the money. We would have been fine had we simply hired a day of coordinator. Which we should have done. Hindsight.
THINGS THAT WERE LESS EXPENSIVE THAN I ORGINIALLY THOUGHT
Music. Our DJ was awesome. Not only was he a kick ass DJ, but he also played live acoustic guitar during the ceremony, and had music playing for our bedeken. AND as if that wasn’t enough, he also provided us with uplighting for the reception. And for 3% less than I budgeted. Heck yeah!
Baker. Our 4 tiered naked cake was actually marginally less than 2% and it made me oh so happy. Especially because she was such a pleasure to work with, and delivered the cake of my dreams.
Photographer. But only by a few hundred dollars. The photographer we ended up hiring was actually at the price end of the list, but she was worth every penny.
Venue Fee. And we actually got a whole lot of bang for our buck with that. The venue fee included 97% of the rentals we needed.
THE SWAPS
Grooms Tux. Alex had always planned on getting his own tux. So I allocated the ‘groom tux’ portion to pay for his wedding band. We definitely didn’t include my engagement ring or my wedding band into our budget. That was something that Alex had been saving up for since the day we met (or so I’d like to think).
THE THINGS I FORGOT TO BUDGET FOR
Accessories and the details! Wow, what a ridiculous oversight for someone to make. Of course decor needed it’s own category! The glass we needed for smashing. Kippahs. Napkin rentals. Wedding signage, table numbers, our ketubah. Luckily, even with a whole new category tacked onto the wedding, we had enough money left over from some areas that were less expensive than we thought.
All in all, I think we did a pretty decent job with our funds. There were a few things we had to cut out because we were getting kind of tight at the end. Like a videographer, or gold chiavari chairs (that would have been nice). I had a googledoc to help keep track of every single penny spent on wedding costs. It’s the only thing that kept me straight and focused.
Brides, how was your budget planning process?