Weddingbee boards

When we first started planning our wedding, our families gave us $30K for our wedding. We were thrilled at the generous gift! Since my fiance and I are struggling financially at the moment, we decided to spend much less than $30K. At first we aimed for $10K (not including the honeymoon), but my in-laws kept insisting that wasn't feasible (we're in the LA area, and the average is about $30K.) They kept harping on us about how we shouldn't embarrass the family with a cheap wedding. My fiance's sister got married on a $40K budget and the family kept talking about her wedding as if that's how much we should spend. Since the family is putting in a lot of money toward the wedding, we thought we'd try to achieve an elegant wedding but keep costs down as much as possible. We told them we would shoot for a $10K wedding with a $5K buffer. They made remarks that if we worked with that budget, then we would resign ourselves a small, cheap-looking wedding. We told them we would prove them wrong.

Now, a few months into planning, we booked all of our major vendors. We're over our initial plan of $10K by $2K at $12K, but including our honeymoon to Hawaii, we're still under our $15K maximum.  We got an elegant venue, the church wedding, the DJ, fine food, photographer, videographer, hotel rooms for our wedding party and wedding coordinator for much less than what everyone thought we would spend. But instead of my in-laws being happy we're saving money, they're making comments about how they're disappointed we're going over our initial $10K budget. They have nothing nice to say about our choice of vendors, even though they all come with great references and reviews.  First they say we're spending way too little.  Now they say we're spending too much. What's the deal? Am I missing something here, or can they not be happy with anything we do?