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Growing up, I used to have this arbitrary idea that weddings cost about $30,000. I never even thought about it that hard, but that was the number I chose.
I perused all kinds of sources of wedding inspiration before getting engaged (like many of us!) and was, well, inspired. Many of my browser bookmarks were wedding-related. I was fascinated by the culture of weddings in the US.
It wasn't until I got engaged this past July and really started looking for inspiration-to-manifestation for the wedding that I actually looked at numbers--estimates, counts and prices.
We set our budget at $10,000. That seemed all fine and dandy and before I even found my first price quote on anything, I got a big head thinking that we would be bucking the wedding industry.
Well, we are avoiding many budget and inspiration ditches that the industry has but since you really don't know the costs of a wedding until you plan one, it's actually hard to start with a relevant budget. It was for me anyway. Of course you think of the big costs--venue, catering, clothes, photography. Well, you know they are the bigger costs even if you don't know price points for them when you first get engaged.
We have tried to limit costs through the guest list which works for us anyways since we want an intimate wedding (can it be intimate with potentially 150 people?). I have forgotten that Chiavari chairs exist and I don't even understand why someone would pay more for satin napkins (I'd feel weird wiping my mouth on that).
I feel like I sound like a cheapskate when I talk to friends about my cost-cutting measures. Maybe I get their reactions that make me feel that way because they aren't aware of how much things can cost for a wedding. Maybe I should reframe my exciting news about choosing non-floral centerpieces to save HUNDREDS of dollars.
Well, when I heard from a rental company that renting a floor-length round tablecloth was $20 a piece, I had a double take.
Now I know why weddings cost what they do. Tablecloths, chair covers, favors, cake that people won't eat, wedding photography packages.
I don't want to sound like a downer. Luckily, the things that tend to cost the most aren't priorities in my wedding planning--either I don't have them or I have an alternative that I like style-wise and budget-wise.
What wedding prices surprised you?
The thing about wedding prices that surprises me most is that the moment you mention the word "WEDDING", the price jumps up.
At the hair salon where we'll be getting our hair and makeup done... on their price list, a regular updo is about $45... a BRIDAL updo is $65. This makes no sense to me. What is the difference?!?
well the thing that suprised me most was the cost of cars and invitations, my friends getting married a month after me and she's crazy payed over $500 for invites and $1500 for cars, such a waste of money, we're doing diy invites and getting mates with nice cars to drop us at venue ceremony. save your money and put it towards your honeymoon.
kimmylyn- i'm a hairdresser and if ur having any kind of upstyle it takes alot longer and a lot more skill than a simple style, therefore more money. if your having loose curls or just down they should not be charging you more.
The price of a photogrophy! It is insane! Lucky for us I found someone amazing with even more amazing pricing! I know a lot of brides dont agree with me but there is no way I would ever spend 1k+ on a photog.
I think everything did! But I also wasn't willing to pay for things that either aren't priorities, or I could do myself cheaper.
@gso_bride: The hair and make up cost and the trials were a huge surprise form. If you are still lookling for table cloth rentals, I found this really inexpensive location that I am using
I have my venue, photographer, baker, and close to getting a caterer booked. I did a ton of research for each task prior to putting down the deposit. No other vendor has given me more sticker shock than a DJ! I mean really? Play music, pump up a crowd and get paid $250/hour? I am in the wrong line of business...
I haven't been shocked by any wedding-related costs, with the sole exception of the officiant! The average cost around here is $600-$1000... for a half-hour ceremony?! I find it absurd. We're still waffling about going with an expensive officiant who will craft us our own ceremony or asking a close friend to read something we write ourselves. I guess I just don't understand what aspect of the job warrents that cost.
I'm boycotting most of the wedding industry by doing everything myself...finding a dressmaker instead of spending hundreds or thousands on a dress, using a grocery store, caterer, DIYing flowers. I do not understand why most people spend so much one day (probably because FH and I are poor, lol), but to each her own. :) The only thing I'm doing traditionally is hair and makeup...which I'm sure will bite me in the ass with cost!
the cost for hair and makeup was shocking to me. i thought it'd be something like $75-100 hair, $50-75 makeup. boy, was i wrong!!! around here, it's about $500 for hair & makeup! seriously, for that i could buy all my bridesmaid dresses, and accessories.
Ooh, I thought of another one! The cost of a string quartet!! The CHEAPEST I was able to find was $550... and that's after I researched 10-15 different quartets. $550 for half an hour of your time?!?! I seriously considered just humming the bridal march to save money. :)
my sticker shock was the officiant, like @BostonBaby ... we're spending $400 on ours (UGH) & thats the going rate around here (& upwards), whether its custom written or straight out out of a pre-written scripted selection.
I'm DIY-ing a TON of things, thank god I'm creative & have time to do it. Photographer & venue are the other big tickets, but only because A. photos are the one tangible item to look at years down the road, and B. the venue creates the setting for us.
There are a ton of ways to cut corners & save money, it just takes time, patience & research...and a lot of TLC.
Yikes. Wishing we eloped. Too late now LOL
I had the same experience with being totally surprised how much wedding things add up if you don't have time/desire to DIY everything and you want a more "typical" style of wedding. Since we're having a smaller wedding (under 50), I initially assumed it could be done for $5-7k if we didn't go crazy on anything. But it's ended up being like twice that when all is said and done (not including e ring or honeymoon). There are a lot of fixed costs that would be the same whether you had a small or huge guest list - I think those ended up costing far more than I would have guessed. The actual food/drink costs were not that surprising.
Biggest shocks -
I thought my dress would be around $500-600 - it's $1k with alterations
I thought my photographer would be around $1000-1500 - it's $2500
I thought my hair and makeup (just for me!) might be $200-300 (incl. a trial) - it's more like $600 when you throw in one round of trials and the tips
Everything surprised me really. Especially stupid things like the cheap-o favors that only cost $0.05 to make, but because they are for a "wedding" they cost $5 each. I think most of my irritation comes from the fact that whoever runs these some of these businesses think that us brides, who are so excited for our wedding day and it's the one day that we've been waiting for our entire lives and we've been planning to be pretty pretty princesses since we were five, are brainless enough to spend that kind of money.
I'm just really glad that I had a long engagement and had plenty of time to shop around and wait for deals!
I guess i always thought about the big stuff like cake, band, venue, dress etc but the little things like lighting, invitations and stamps really add up! Also the alcohol was a lot more than i thought.
The thing that shocked me was the cost of the DJ. We're having an outdoor ceremony and wanted a person who could play music for the ceremony and later, about 4 hours total. I don't know WHAT I was thinking, but the $600 caused me to blink a little! Bridesmaid dresses were another think at $240 each, but the girls picked them out.
@mishelleez: Agree. We almost decided to go with family photos because of the price. I understand that this requires skill, but if you break down the cost of a photo package, the hourly rate is ridiculous! I wish I made that much an hour.... but the pictures are forever, so it's important to me. Sigh.
@Allyser: The little things adding up -- this. I expected a dress and hall to be the major costs. But yeah, invitations? What?!
Uh, getting quoted $1100 for hair and makeup? I'm not THAT ugly!
That, or the bite of buying postage stamps.
I was shocked at some photographer's prices. When I first saw 3800 for one I flipped out. But after seeing their packages and results it doesn't seem as scary as before.
Photographer...actually, the albums. I'm fortunate to have the skills to do them myself for about a tenth of the price.
Everything seems a bit more expensive where I live, but I was floored when I saw the cost of some photographers: $2,500, $3,500, $6,000?!?!?
Wedding dresses were way high up on my list. For my first wedding, in 1977, my dress was $100--or about $350 in today's dollars. We went to one salon in which there was not a single dress under $1,000. With two brides, buying two $1,000 dresses would have been a huge chunk of our budget. Fortunately, we ended up finding ones we liked at a consignment store for under $500 apiece. But thinking of $500 as a low price, for a dress that will be worn only once, still strikes me as ridiculous.
Oh, and then there was hair and make-up. We had two brides, and wanted to get hair and make-up done first for the ceremony and luncheon in Massachusettts, and again for the at-home reception in DC. People were talking about spending hundreds of dollars to get hair and make-up done once. Fortunately, we found people on Craigslist to do it for $50 pp in MA, and $60 pp in DC.
The biggest sticker shock I receved has been dry cleaning for your wedding dress- $150! Give me a break.... You charge me $1 to clean my shirt and $150 to clean my dress. $50-$75 seems more reasonable.
Everything, haha! Probably b/c the prices are so jacked up just b/c it's for a wedding. So I used to order cakes for parties that were like $50. Same size and same ingredients add a 0 if it's for a wedding!
I've just started looking, but the venue rental. We want an outdoor on the water wedding.
We've found some places we love but they require you rent the venue for the whole week (!) at $10k - $20k. That does mean you have some lodging for family & wedding party, but still, that's a lot.
Veils, I was completely prepared for catering/dress/flower costs but how can a big piece of fabric attached to a comb cost $1200? it boggles my mind
Photography and invites.
All I can say is... it's effing PAPER! Why the hell does paper cost that much?!
I think I legit fainted when I got the quote back from the first photog I looked at. 4k?? Seriously?!? I am sure there will be more sticker shock as we go on, but we're in the beginning phases right now....
I am surprised about the cost of invitiations, photography, and videography. I stopped adding how much my wedding cost a long time ago because I am afraid of what we are spending.
Bridesmaid dresses - why do they charge $200 for something no one really wants to wear in the first place?
Photography - for sure. I couldn't find ANYONE that was in our budget. My FI and I luckily have an acquaintance who has offered to take our pics for FREE. He is a amateur photographer trying to get into the "business"of professional photography. Of course, we will pay him, but the offer was so generous!! I didn't know what we were going to do if he had not offered.
hair & make up shocked me the most! Why can you charge double if its the bride!?!
also flowers - yikes I paid too much for ours (even after neg it down...) but I was soo in love with my bouquet. I carried it around the entire wedding and slept with it by me on the table that night. Probably tmi but I really loved our flowers despite the cost!
@CantWaittillMAY: That's wonderful... I had a friend who offered to take our photos for us too -- but that was before we told him we wanted him to be in the wedding party! ;-)
I was amazed at the cost of a videographer. I got a price from someone i went to school with for $300-$400 per hour. Thats friggin crazy. I found someone on craigslist for $450 for 6 hours....thats $75 per hour. Luckily some people are not out to screw you. Now all i get is what she taped, no editing, but i don't want them editing out stuff anyways. I want it to look like a home video with people talking and kids being annoying. Who knows, they may edit something out that i want.
Photography, day-of-coordinators ($1500 in our area), hair (why so much more for a wedding up-do than for a regular party event?). Oh, and chapel fees. It's God's house and we're providing our own pastor, why make money off us?
Kimmlyn- I totally agree with you on the when you mention the word wedding the price jumps up. I went into a florist yesterday, with my centerpiece idea, to see if she could tell me roughly how many flowers I would need. She tells me and then asks me what type of event is this for. I figured I wasn't buying from them, so I would lie. She said "Oh well that's good, because our flower prices go up if it's for a wedding." I was like "Oh, well I'm not buying anything from here. I just wanted to know how many flowers this would need roughly. I plan on doing this myself. Thanks for your time." and I walk out. I mean what's the difference between doing the same centerpiece for a wedding then any other event? Doesn't make sense to me. I plan on telling no one this stuff is for a wedding, unless I have to tell them. My friend went into a florist once and had them make centerpices, and when they asked her what it was for, she said just a family reunion thing. They didn't question it, and she had someone come pick the flowers up so they wouldn't know it was for her wedding, but she knew they would of jacked up their prices if she would of told them it was for a wedding.
Can't Wait - I agree that it's ridiculous how some churches/chapels require you to pay a fee to use their facilities. I would obvisouly contribute some kind of money to the church, like an offering, but some of these places can charge you up to like $2,000. It's ridiculous to charge so much to use a place for 30 mins, longer if you are doing mass along with it, but still not long enough to charge me what my reception area costs. Luckily are church is not so big, so I am hoping they don't charge us a huge amount. FFIL is the treasurer there, and saud we might not even have to pay to use the church because we are members but isn't for sure. We will have to pay the pastor who marries us though.
Photography is a big one. I am trying to find someone who will just give us a cd of all our images, and I will edit them as I like on the computer and go get them printed, but I'm finding it hard to find someone who will just do that. There are lots of places that will give you the cd, but you are also paying for other things, and I don't want those other things. FI knows a few people who are in school, and one friend who is out of school who takes some pretty good pictures, and I'm, hoping FI talks to him sometime soon about doing our wedding. I don't expect him to give us a discount, but I'm hoping he will, haha.
I totally agree that what surprised me was that once you mention the word wedding you can bet you'll pay about double the price. How they can get away with that I'm not sure, especially when places like the salon clearly lists that a "normal" updo is a different price than the "bridal" updo. There is no difference... if I could go back, I would have just said I needed an updo and put the veil in myself.
@kimmylyn: Most of them are probably union- meaning they have a set per hour rate that's pretty hefty (my brother got a union-paying gig in high school and made more that afternoon then I did playing community concerts for three years).
Veils- I understand a price increase if one would want hand crafted lace, but I don't believe a blusher should cost $65-150. The materials cost less then 20 (allowing for better tulle then what is sold at Joann's) and with a slightly better than hourly rate, that's a huge markup!
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