We’ve been engaged less than a month and I’m already emotionally done with our wedding. Especially when it comes to the money. Based on initial back of the envelope calculations, our modest park wedding for 65 plus a casual second reception for 35 friends who don’t make the cut for the main event will cost around $5750.
A part of me thinks that’s just ridiculous. We could do a lot with that kind of money. We could travel internationally for a month. We could donate it to help 2000 people get malaria nets. We could invest it in our future-children’s college fund where, twenty years from now, it could pay about a semester of tuition, room, and board.
But on the other hand we want to have a nice outdoor gathering for our friends and family to celebrate this occasion with us (Fiancé welled up in tears when he saw the intended ceremony site). We want there to be music and good food and dancing and possibly a scavenger hunt if we can manage to plan that too. So the best I can do for the moment at least is project and cost management. At which, luckily, I’m decent.
Here’s the breakdown of our wedding budget (total of $5750):
- Venue, furniture rental, decoration – $1000
- Catering, beverages, cake, utensils – $2350
- Clothing, makeup, rings – $925
- Labor: officiant, photographer, attendant – $525
- Music, ceremony only – $250
- Stationery – $100
- Flowers – $100
- Casual second reception – $500
The biggest cost, by far, looks like it’ll be the catering. Who knew feeding a tiny village would be expensive? This number is based on food truck catering. It can go up if we use a real caterer and go down (slightly) if we self-cater. If we can get Fiancé’s father to grill up some burgers and bring crudites and other appetizers from a local mediterranean restaurant, we can probably cut that number by around $500-750.
After that, the biggest monetary gains would come if we nixed the park reception altogether and did a restaurant reception instead. We’d have no reception venue cost, no need for attendant, and it’d be much easier to coordinate food. But that would entirely change the feel of the occasion, which we want to be more activity-filled, outdoors, and family-oriented.
Sigh, this all seems like a lot of time, energy, and resources for an event nobody will remember a month afterward.
How much is too much to pay for a wedding? What was your budget for the big day?
Yet Another PF Blog 
I decided to take a look back in our budgeting from the year of our wedding to see what we spent, just to compare… And apparently we spent over $30,000 on our wedding… That’s bonkers! I didn’t realize we had spent that much… Or maybe I was just pretending I didn’t know so that I didn’t have to admit to it… We did have about 200 people at our wedding, and it was held out of town… but ugh… Anyway, good luck with planning your wedding. If you can do it at around $6000 that’d be amazing!
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200 people is a lot! I’m not sure we even know that many people (yay, introversion?). At least the expense and stress is over and done with, and I’m hopefully you got some fond memories from it.
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Yes, 200 people is a lot. That’s what happens when you have big families, a very social husband (well fiance at the time), you live in the same city for pretty much your entire life, and you both play on a variety of sports teams… But yes, it was an amazing day. I had a blast, and people are still talking about how much fun it was to this day (it was 2 years ago now), so I would say it was well worth the cost.
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