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I've always found budget posts really fascinating, with a huge range of numbers, geographical locations etc. But, is the range similar if a couple is paying for everything (and I mean everything) themselves? Apparently it's quite common now, so I'm curious :)
What's your budget?
Where is your wedding being held?
How many people are you planning on having attend?
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending?
To answer my own question:
$15,000 (so scary!)
Western MA
75-100
Combination of savings and purchases as they come up
out of checking
Ok, so we have a little bit of input from our parents, but mostly for the rehersal dinner (his, of course) and an open house by my parents. They are also buying my dress (which is about $600)
Budget: $25,000 (w/o rings and honeymoon)
Wilmington, NC (destination wedding)
~75
Savings and incremental spending (my fiance has been saving for awhile) No credit cards or loans or anything like that.
We are also buying a new condo in the spring.
$5,000 or less (I know we're crazy)
WV
100-175 Reception will be held from 2-5 so just a light lunch will be served. Then an after party held later in the evening for close friends and family only (40 people max).
Savings and incremental spending.
The vast majority of the money is for the reception and after party. We want a very simple wedding, no flowers or bridal party. We plan on begging and borrowing everything we can.
$15K. Held in Napa Valley. And incremental spending (which I think has worked out the best for us). We are hosting anywhere between 50-65 ppl. My parents (we weren't anticipating helping- but I am in grad school so I guess they took pity on me/ really want to expediate things to have grandchildren) are assisting with my dress and the initial deposits.
$5,000 or less. His parents have offered to chip in $2,000 but my parents cant afford to help out. So our limit is $7,000 total. We're nowhere near that yet.
Upstate, NY
~70 people (thats if all singles on our list bring a guest)
Savings and incremental spending.
We are paying for everything ourselves, in cash.
Naperville, IL
40K
160-180 people.
$45,000 We are paying for everything
Miami, Fl
180 people
Using savings & incremental spending( NO loans or credit cards)
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What's your budget? ~$32,000 (excluding honeymoon and engagement ring)
Where is your wedding being held? NYC
How many people are you planning on having attend? 100-110
How are you funding? A combo of incremental spending and savings.
This could all change though if FI gets laid off, which is a distinct possibility.
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We are getting a little help, $1,000 from my p's and his parents are going to cover their guests & rehearsal dinner. But the majority is coming from us.
$26,000
Quad Cities, IL
380 on the guest list but I hope no more than 300 (I know terrible, right??)
Incremental spending and savings.
Great question!
All ourselves except for Rehersal Dinner and my mom insisted on buying my $1200 dress
Budget $50,000 (including honeymoon to Croatia and Czech Republic)
Wedding held: Cape Cod, MA but we live in So Cal
Attendees: Approx 150-180 (we'll see when the rsvp's come in)
When: June 09-Sat night (cause I think that helps with understanding peoples budgets too)
Savings and incremental spending: no credit cards or loans
Pretty Kitty,
That's a good point. I am having a daytime wedding, which reduced the price considerably.
Our parents each contributed around $5,000, but that went into the downpayment savings for the house we just moved into, so our budget is $7,000 of our own savings (though I guess you could say that OUR money went into the downpayment, and our parents are paying, but that's not the way we're looking at it, and our parents are THRILLED to be helping with the downpayment b/c we lost $25,000 when we moved out of our last house and had to pony that up as well).
$7,000
Minneapolis, MN
120 people -- no "and guests" invited
Saturday night in May, 2009
Incremental spending and draining that wedding savings account.
Budget - $50,000 (not including honeymoon or e-ring)
Wedding - suburbs of Chicago
Attendees - approximately 200
Day - Saturday, June 09
The money is coming from savings.
It may also depend on how old you are. Some of my friends got married straight out of college which limited their budgets and spending considerably. My fiance and I are older and have had the time to save throughout the years.
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Good point about the time of day...ours is taking place in the afternooon.
Age is also a huge factor I meant to ask about...we're 23 and 24 respectively.
Budget - $6,000 but we're trying to get it down to 5K or less. (The FI made me write the "or less" part. LOL.)
Wedding - Seattle
Attendees - 150-175
Day - May 2 2009 (Saturday afternoon)
The money is coming from savings and checking. No credit cards. No parents. No debt.
What's your budget? $65,000
Where is your wedding being held? NYC, NY
When? August, Saturday night
How many people are you planning on having attend? 125 guests
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending? Savings, including a 12 month CD
Age? I'm 24 and my DH is 26
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What's your budget? $5000 to 6000. We're paying for everything except my dress- my family all pooled together and gave me $300, which covered my budget-friendly dress.
Where is your wedding being held? Denver, CO
How many people are you planning on having attend? 60
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending? We're using what little we have in savings and incremental spending.
$10,000—Our parents have both offered to add $ to the budget, but we're trying as much as possible to keep it low key, and even spending that much on one day seems like a lot. (And not taking parental money ideally means we can do whatever we want!)
Washington, DC area (=expensive!)
120-150
Savings
We paid for everything ourselves....we're both in our mid 30s and felt that our retired parents shouldn't be burdened with the cost of our wedding.
What's your budget? $60K (not including honeymoon - his gift to me; and rings - our gifts to each other; and my dress - I paid for that myself)
Where is your wedding being held? SF/Bay Area - we held our wedding during peak season on a Saturday evening.
How many people are you planning on having attend? ~250
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending? We were engaged for 24 months and we both put in $1000 each into a joint bank account each month for 2 years. We put our money into CDs and would continue to reinvest them into another CD each time the first one would mature. The extra money that was spent was paid for as they came up. We did receive a lot through monetary gifts as we've been living together for a few years and didn't need any homeware or the usual registry items.
What's your budget? $8,000-10,000, hopefully on the lower end. This includes our RT flight to Hawaii and hotel for 11 days.
Where is your wedding being held? Destination wedding in Hawaii, planned from the East Coast.
How many people are you planning on having attend? 20-ish
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending? Mainly savings and incremental spending. Our plane tickets were put on a credit card.
Our wedding was paid by ourselves. My fiance (back then, now husband) have been working for about 2 years at the time. I've just graduated college and worked for a few months during the wedding planning. It was tough, but we didn't want to burden our parents. They have paid for our college years.
What's your budget?$10,000 (without honeymoon which we haven't had yet, and without 3 airplane tickets from overseas for his parents and sister, each about $1500)
Where is your wedding being held? in a small chapel at Tulsa Oklahoma
How many people are you planning on having attend?100
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending?Mostly savings. We knew that we didn't want to start our life together with debts, so we wanted to have a wedding that we can afford. Also, we got engaged for about a year before the wedding day and we had a "wedding joint account" where we put money every month for our wedding expenses.
What's your budget? There is no firm dollar amount, but we're trying to keep it under $10k-and that includes honeymoon, but excludes rings since we've already bought them and are paying for them.
Where is your wedding being held? Suburbs of Baltimore, MD
How many people are you planning on having attend? Probably about 40.
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending?
We are not using credit cards for anything. We are using incremental spending for most things, we're booking vendors as we can afford to pay for their deposits. I also may dip a bit into my savings, but I'm trying to keep that to a minimum. Our parents are helping, but we're probably not going to get more than $2k combined out of them, but we're grateful for what they can help with.
We didn't have a budget as we decided to host our wedding in six weeks instead of the following spring. I spent $3500 out of pocket for our intimate wedding. We hosted 50 guests, close family only, and held the ceremony and dinner in one location.
Our location was in Northwest Ohio, at a local metro-park. It required a donation of $50. We had the park to ourselves from sun up till sun down. I hired a local cafe to make picnic boxed dinners and had a non-traditional yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Flowers cost me $250 which included my bouquet, a boutonniere and cake topper. Each table was covered in homemade linens and were topped with ferns and candle light. I also hired a harpist who played throughout the ceremony and dinner.
Our honeymoon to Key West Florida cost us $5000, which we charged to a credit card. I don't recommend this method, as we are still paying it off 1.5 years later. We spent one week at a bed and breakfast and then did two day trips - deep sea fishing and an ultimate adventure. This price included all meals and air fare.
With our wedding rings ($5500 for both his and hers - 12 months same as cash), ceremony/dinner $3500 and our honeymoon $5000 we spent a total of $14000.
Budget is $6000-$7000
Central Massachusetts - all in one location
60-65 attending
Savings and Incremental spending
I'm doing lots of DIY projects. Even though I could easily spend $10k on a wedding, it'd probably mean a 2 year engagement just saving the money which I wasn't up for. Plus anymore than $6-7k and I would seriously start thinking that I'd ditch the wedding, go to city hall and spend that money on fixing those last major projects in our condo to sell and get into our first house that much sooner.
What's your budget? $80,000 - This does not include rings or the honeymoon.
Where is your wedding being held? New Orleans, LA
How many people are you planning on having attend? Currently at 475ish - It's a circus I'm hosting... not a wedding! Well, it feels like a circus!
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending?
NO CREDIT CARDS - I think this is the hugest trap, ever! You end up having all these charges and the intrest rates are never reasonable!
We have/had a long engagement (14 months). From the moment we got engaged, I direct deposit all my funds into a seperate checking account that has a debit card that gives me continental air line miles. My hubs and I live off of his sole income alone (scary, but a good test in case one of us every lost our job... namely me since I sell a commodity!). At the end of the month, every penny left in our bank account is transferred into the other account my paycheck goes into. There's usually not much left over. We use the debit card to pay things for the wedding and we've just bought things as time progressed. If we could swing it on our operating account, we'd purchase wedding goods there. If not, we defaulted back to the wedding account.
Additionally, I have my bonus which brings me in almost another $10K. This gives us our $80K as well as some cushion room for last minute splurges (we're seriously considering more custom lighting).
And for the record, even though my hubs and I are paying for this, this wedding is ALL my parents. My parents are making all the decisions for this big soiree and although they wanted to pay for it, the hubs has too much pride and won't let them, thus we're paying for it, but letting my parents have the dream wedding they never got (because they did everything the way THEIR parents wanted them to do it. It's a vicious cycle, but it ends with me because my kids will do it exactly the way they wanted to do it.)
I don't recommend anyone having the budget like mine. It originally was NOT supposed to go a penny over $50,000, but things just rolled up because our wedding is on VALENTINE'S DAY! The worst day because florals and just EVERYTHING ELSE is way over inflated due to the holiday. I am having two ceremonies in one day (an American one and a 100% Asian wedding) so the day will be long and drawn out and end with a 9 course sit down dinner.
Budget: $13,000 Includes wedding bands (not e-ring), honeymoon, rehearsal dinner, ceremony, reception, dress, everything!
Location: Quad Cities, IL
Guests: 140-160
Payment: Savings and Incremental Spending
Date: Semtember 2009, 15 month engagement
Ages: 23 and 25
We're having a Friday night wedding and dessert reception.
Budget:: $15,000
Location:: Roanoke, VA
Guests:: 120-150
Funding:: Savings and Incremental Spending (That's why we are having such a long engagement)
Age:: 26 {I will be 27 in two weeks!} & 26
What a great post! I have learned to negotiate.
Budget? Around $12-14K not including the rings...I kind of stopped keeping track of the little stuff, but it was right around there. $10K for the reception/ceremony/catering (all at one place, thank you hotels!) and the suites to get ready in. $800 for flowers, $500 for DJ, $300 for cake, $700 for my dress.
Where? Magnolia Hotel in Omaha, NE
How many people? 120 guests
Ages? I'm 27 and hubby is 25.
How are you funding? My parents paid for the flowers, and my husband's mom paid for the RD. Other than that, I paid for it all myself using money from my second job.
Budget: Our budget was 30K but we ended up spending $40,000. This includes wedding bands, e-ring, honeymoon, dress, groomsmens' and bridesmaids' clothing and everything.
Location: Houston, TX
Guests: 400 for a 9 course Asian banquet on a Saturday evening.
Payment: Savings and Incremental Spending
Date: Semtember 2008, 18 month engagement
Ages: 28 and 31
A long engagement really does wonders when you're saving up for something. I already had money saved up before the engagement so that was really helpful. Since my DH and I have been out of school for 5 years we were really lucky.
Budget - $10,000: Rings, Wedding, Honeymoon, and spruce up the house included
Wedding - will be in Minnesota at a wilderness education facility (totally beautiful by the way)
Guests - 50 (crowd-a-phobic)
Funding - All on our own, I saved up for about 5 years, he has some savings and were on a teeny tiny budget til the big day.
Date - June 6, 9 month engagement (not by choice, we originally wanted to get hitched in March...)
Ages - Were both 25
What's your budget? $40,000 (not including honeymoon which FBIL has graciously offered to pay for as our gift).
Where is your wedding being held? Church ceremony and banquet hall reception in Toronto, Ontario Canada in November 2009.
How many people are you planning on having attend? 200-220 guests.
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending? We started a joint savings account before we got engaged for our wedding. Most of our deposits were paid by cash (not out of our joint account) as well as our gifts to wedding party. The balances will be paid from our joint account. Guests at weddings here usually give monetary gifts as they enter the reception so we'll be making some of the money we spent back! A lot of couples break even (which would be ideal) but we're not expecting that. We'll also be looking for a place to live next year so we're most likely using my line of credit which will be our only debt as a couple.
Ages? I'm 28 and fiancee is 29.
What's your budget?
It started out at about $15K, but it'll end up somewhere between that and $20, including the honeymoon in Punta Cana.
Where is your wedding being held?
Church ceremony and reception at Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashua, NH.
How many people are you planning on having attend?
~125
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending?
Long engagement. I wasn't a fan of waiting two years for my wedding (I wanted to get married NOW!!), but looking back, I'm glad. We will be able to save enough money to have the wedding that we want, with minimal help from our parents.
We budgeted less than $10,000 for an afternoon wedding for 65 people in NC. We did put quite a bit on credit (more than I'd like), but most just came from savings over the course of a long engagement and some very kind gifts from grandparents.
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budget:
well it started out at $50k but because i have expensive tastes it ended up being over $200k.
where: tampa, fl
no. people: 200
funding: i basically worked my butt off the last 2 years.
What is your budget? $40,000, not including e-ring, honeymoon, dress, and rehearsal dinner. Our paren't have contributed $5k, but the remaining $35k is on us!
Where is your wedding being held? Philadelphia, PA. Our ceremony will be held at Headhouse Square and our reception is at the Independence Visitor Center.
How many people are you planning on having attend? 160
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending? Savings!!! Lots and lots of savings. Everything will be paid for in cash. We may put some big stuff on the credit cards and pay them off right away. We get hotel points with every $ we spend, so we can have a few nights of the honeymoon taken care of with that!
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What’s your budget? Right now it stands at $11,000 including E-ring and Honey moon.
Where is your wedding being held? An ourdoor location in the Eugene/Springfield area
How many people are you planning on having attend? About 250
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending?HOpefully mostly savings, but we will likely use some credit. Either of our parents may give us some money, but no one has commited to that.
What's your budget? $10K – not including the honeymoon or the rings.
How many people are you planning on having attend? – 100 people invited. We have a $4750 minimum at our location.
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending? We are paying for it through savings and incremental spending.
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Budget: $1000 (yup thats right!) doesn't include my e-ring or honeymoon. (technically I guess we r taking two. We are going to austin for a few days, then in september we are going on a cruise with several other couples)
Where: Family friend's house. They have a HUGE deck and BEAUTIFUL 1 acre backyard in the country. Right outside of Tyler, Tx
Number of ppl: Less than 100
Funding: Already have the money, but everything is being put on a CC so we can get points and redeem them for money :)
What's your budget? My parents are paying up to $6K, not including the dress, so we're covering the rest--no more than $4K on our part, not including the engagement ring
Where is your wedding being held? Asheville, NC
How many people are you planning on having attend? 100
How are you funding? Credit cards? Savings? Incremental spending? Incremental spending and a lot of DIY
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